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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Men's Wives, by William Makepeace Thackeray
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Men's Wives
+
+Author: William Makepeace Thackeray
+
+Posting Date: October 23, 2008 [EBook #1985]
+Release Date: December, 1999
+Last Updated: March 5, 2018
+
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MEN'S WIVES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Les Bowler
+
+
+
+
+
+MEN'S WIVES
+
+By William Makepeace Thackeray
+
+
+
+Contents.
+
+The Ravenswing.
+
+I. Which is entirely introductory--contains an account of Miss Crump,
+her suitors, and her family circle.
+
+II. In which Mr. Walker makes three attempts to ascertain the dwelling
+of Morgiana.
+
+III. What came of Mr. Walker's discovery of the “Bootjack.”
+
+IV. In which the heroine has a number more lovers, and cuts a very
+dashing figure in the world.
+
+V. In which Mr. Walker falls into difficulties, and Mrs. Walker makes
+many foolish attempts to rescue him.
+
+VI. In which Mr. Walker still remains in difficulties, but shows great
+resignation under his misfortunes.
+
+VII. In which Morgiana advances towards fame and honour, and in which
+several great literary characters make their appearance.
+
+VIII. In which Mr. Walker shows great prudence and forbearance.
+
+
+Mr. and Mrs. Frank Berry.
+
+I. The fight at Slaughter House.
+
+II. The combat at Versailles.
+
+
+Dennis Haggarty's wife.
+
+
+
+
+MEN'S WIVES, BY G. FITZ-BOODLE
+
+
+
+
+THE RAVENSWING
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I. WHICH IS ENTIRELY INTRODUCTORY--CONTAINS AN ACCOUNT OF MISS
+CRUMP, HER SUITORS, AND HER FAMILY CIRCLE.
+
+In a certain quiet and sequestered nook of the retired village of
+London--perhaps in the neighbourhood of Berkeley Square, or at any
+rate somewhere near Burlington Gardens--there was once a house of
+entertainment called the “Bootjack Hotel.” Mr. Crump, the landlord, had,
+in the outset of life, performed the duties of Boots in some inn even
+more frequented than his own, and, far from being ashamed of his origin,
+as many persons are in the days of their prosperity, had thus solemnly
+recorded it over the hospitable gate of his hotel.
+
+Crump married Miss Budge, so well known to the admirers of the festive
+dance on the other side of the water as Miss Delancy; and they had
+one daughter, named Morgiana, after that celebrated part in the “Forty
+Thieves” which Miss Budge performed with unbounded applause both at
+the “Surrey” and “The Wells.” Mrs. Crump sat in a little bar, profusely
+ornamented with pictures of the dancers of all ages, from Hillisberg,
+Rose, Parisot, who plied the light fantastic toe in 1805, down to the
+Sylphides of our day. There was in the collection a charming portrait of
+herself, done by De Wilde; she was in the dress of Morgiana, and in the
+act of pouring, to very slow music, a quantity of boiling oil into one
+of the forty jars. In this sanctuary she sat, with black eyes, black
+hair, a purple face and a turban, and morning, noon, or night, as you
+went into the parlour of the hotel, there was Mrs. Crump taking tea
+(with a little something in it), looking at the fashions, or reading
+Cumberland's “British Theatre.” The Sunday Times was her paper, for she
+voted the Dispatch, that journal which is taken in by most ladies of her
+profession, to be vulgar and Radical, and loved the theatrical gossip in
+which the other mentioned journal abounds.
+
+The fact is, that the “Royal Bootjack,” though a humble, was a very
+genteel house; and a very little persuasion would induce Mr. Crump, as
+he looked at his own door in the sun, to tell you that he had himself
+once drawn off with that very bootjack the top-boots of His Royal
+Highness the Prince of Wales and the first gentleman in Europe. While,
+then, the houses of entertainment in the neighbourhood were loud in
+their pretended Liberal politics, the “Bootjack” stuck to the good old
+Conservative line, and was only frequented by such persons as were of
+that way of thinking. There were two parlours, much accustomed, one for
+the gentlemen of the shoulder-knot, who came from the houses of their
+employers hard by; another for some “gents who used the 'ouse,” as Mrs.
+Crump would say (Heaven bless her!) in her simple Cockniac dialect, and
+who formed a little club there.
+
+I forgot to say that while Mrs. C. was sipping her eternal tea or
+washing up her endless blue china, you might often hear Miss Morgiana
+employed at the little red-silk cottage piano, singing, “Come where the
+haspens quiver,” or “Bonny lad, march over hill and furrow,” or “My art
+and lute,” or any other popular piece of the day. And the dear girl sang
+with very considerable skill, too, for she had a fine loud voice, which,
+if not always in tune, made up for that defect by its great energy and
+activity; and Morgiana was not content with singing the mere tune, but
+gave every one of the roulades, flourishes, and ornaments as she heard
+them at the theatres by Mrs. Humby, Mrs. Waylett, or Madame Vestris.
+The girl had a fine black eye like her mamma, a grand enthusiasm for
+the stage, as every actor's child will have, and, if the truth must be
+known, had appeared many and many a time at the theatre in Catherine
+Street, in minor parts first, and then in Little Pickle, in Desdemona,
+in Rosina, and in Miss Foote's part where she used to dance: I have not
+the name to my hand, but think it is Davidson. Four times in the week,
+at least, her mother and she used to sail off at night to some place of
+public amusement, for Mrs. Crump had a mysterious acquaintance with
+all sorts of theatrical personages; and the gates of her old haunt “The
+Wells,” of the “Cobourg” (by the kind permission of Mrs. Davidge), nay,
+of the “Lane” and the “Market” themselves, flew open before her
+“Open sesame,” as the robbers' door did to her colleague, Ali Baba
+(Hornbuckle), in the operatic piece in which she was so famous.
+
+Beer was Mr. Crump's beverage, diversified by a little gin, in the
+evenings; and little need be said of this gentleman, except that he
+discharged his duties honourably, and filled the president's chair at
+the club as completely as it could possibly be filled; for he could not
+even sit in it in his greatcoat, so accurately was the seat adapted to
+him. His wife and daughter, perhaps, thought somewhat slightingly of
+him, for he had no literary tastes, and had never been at a theatre
+since he took his bride from one. He was valet to Lord Slapper at the
+time, and certain it is that his lordship set him up in the “Bootjack,”
+ and that stories HAD been told. But what are such to you or me? Let
+bygones be bygones; Mrs. Crump was quite as honest as her neighbours,
+and Miss had five hundred pounds to be paid down on the day of her
+wedding.
+
+Those who know the habits of the British tradesman are aware that he has
+gregarious propensities like any lord in the land; that he loves a joke,
+that he is not averse to a glass; that after the day's toil he is happy
+to consort with men of his degree; and that as society is not so far
+advanced among us as to allow him to enjoy the comforts of splendid
+club-houses, which are open to many persons with not a tenth part of his
+pecuniary means, he meets his friends in the cosy tavern parlour, where
+a neat sanded floor, a large Windsor chair, and a glass of hot something
+and water, make him as happy as any of the clubmen in their magnificent
+saloons.
+
+At the “Bootjack” was, as we have said, a very genteel and select
+society, called the “Kidney Club,” from the fact that on Saturday
+evenings a little graceful supper of broiled kidneys was usually
+discussed by the members of the club. Saturday was their grand night;
+not but that they met on all other nights in the week when inclined for
+festivity: and indeed some of them could not come on Saturdays in the
+summer having elegant villas in the suburbs, where they passed the
+six-and-thirty hours of recreation that are happily to be found at the
+end of every week.
+
+There was Mr. Balls, the great grocer of South Audley Street, a warm
+man, who, they say, had his twenty thousand pounds; Jack Snaffle, of the
+mews hard by, a capital fellow for a song; Clinker, the ironmonger:
+all married gentlemen, and in the best line of business; Tressle, the
+undertaker, etc. No liveries were admitted into the room, as may be
+imagined, but one or two select butlers and major-domos joined the
+circle; for the persons composing it knew very well how important it
+was to be on good terms with these gentlemen and many a time my lord's
+account would never have been paid, and my lady's large order never have
+been given, but for the conversation which took place at the “Bootjack,”
+ and the friendly intercourse subsisting between all the members of the
+society.
+
+The tiptop men of the society were two bachelors, and two as fashionable
+tradesmen as any in the town: Mr. Woolsey, from Stultz's, of the famous
+house of Linsey, Woolsey and Co. of Conduit Street, Tailors; and Mr.
+Eglantine, the celebrated perruquier and perfumer of Bond Street, whose
+soaps, razors, and patent ventilating scalps are know throughout Europe.
+Linsey, the senior partner of the tailors' firm had his handsome mansion
+in Regent's Park, drove his buggy, and did little more than lend his
+name to the house. Woolsey lived in it, was the working man of the firm,
+and it was said that his cut was as magnificent as that of any man in
+the profession. Woolsey and Eglantine were rivals in many ways--rivals
+in fashion, rivals in wit, and, above all, rivals for the hand of
+an amiable young lady whom we have already mentioned, the dark-eyed
+songstress Morgiana Crump. They were both desperately in love with her,
+that was the truth; and each, in the absence of the other, abused his
+rival heartily. Of the hairdresser Woolsey said, that as for Eglantine
+being his real name, it was all his (Mr. Woolsey's) eye; that he was in
+the hands of the Jews, and his stock and grand shop eaten up by usury.
+And with regard to Woolsey, Eglantine remarked, that his pretence
+of being descended from the Cardinal was all nonsense; that he was a
+partner, certainly, in the firm, but had only a sixteenth share; and
+that the firm could never get their moneys in, and had an immense number
+of bad debts in their books. As is usual, there was a great deal of
+truth and a great deal of malice in these tales; however, the gentlemen
+were, take them all in all, in a very fashionable way of business, and
+had their claims to Miss Morgiana's hand backed by the parents. Mr.
+Crump was a partisan of the tailor; while Mrs. C. was a strong advocate
+for the claims of the enticing perfumer.
+
+Now, it was a curious fact, that these two gentlemen were each in
+need of the other's services--Woolsey being afflicted with premature
+baldness, or some other necessity for a wig still more fatal--Eglantine
+being a very fat man, who required much art to make his figure at all
+decent. He wore a brown frock-coat and frogs, and attempted by all sorts
+of contrivances to hide his obesity; but Woolsey's remark, that, dress
+as he would, he would always look like a snob, and that there was
+only one man in England who could make a gentleman of him, went to the
+perfumer's soul; and if there was one thing on earth he longed for (not
+including the hand of Miss Crump) it was to have a coat from Linsey's,
+in which costume he was sure that Morgiana would not resist him.
+
+If Eglantine was uneasy about the coat, on the other hand he attacked
+Woolsey atrociously on the score of his wig; for though the latter went
+to the best makers, he never could get a peruke to sit naturally upon
+him and the unhappy epithet of Mr. Wiggins, applied to him on one
+occasion by the barber, stuck to him ever after in the club, and
+made him writhe when it was uttered. Each man would have quitted the
+“Kidneys” in disgust long since, but for the other--for each had an
+attraction in the place, and dared not leave the field in possession of
+his rival.
+
+To do Miss Morgiana justice, it must be said, that she did not encourage
+one more than another; but as far as accepting eau-de-Cologne and
+hair-combs from the perfumer--some opera tickets, a treat to Greenwich,
+and a piece of real Genoa velvet for a bonnet (it had originally been
+intended for a waistcoat), from the admiring tailor, she had been
+equally kind to each, and in return had made each a present of a lock
+of her beautiful glossy hair. It was all she had to give, poor girl!
+and what could she do but gratify her admirers by this cheap and artless
+testimony of her regard? A pretty scene and quarrel took place between
+the rivals on the day when they discovered that each was in possession
+of one of Morgiana's ringlets.
+
+Such, then, were the owners and inmates of the little “Bootjack,”
+ from whom and which, as this chapter is exceedingly discursive and
+descriptive, we must separate the reader for a while, and carry him--it
+is only into Bond Street, so no gentleman need be afraid--carry him into
+Bond Street, where some other personages are awaiting his consideration.
+
+Not far from Mr. Eglantine's shop in Bond Street, stand, as is very well
+known, the Windsor Chambers. The West Diddlesex Association (Western
+Branch), the British and Foreign Soap Company, the celebrated attorneys
+Kite and Levison, have their respective offices here; and as the names
+of the other inhabitants of the chambers are not only painted on the
+walls, but also registered in Mr. Boyle's “Court Guide,” it is quite
+unnecessary that they should be repeated here. Among them, on the
+entresol (between the splendid saloons of the Soap Company on the first
+floor, with their statue of Britannia presenting a packet of the soap to
+Europe, Asia, Africa, and America, and the West Diddlesex Western Branch
+on the basement)--lives a gentleman by the name of Mr. Howard Walker.
+The brass plate on the door of that gentleman's chambers had the word
+“Agency” inscribed beneath his name; and we are therefore at liberty
+to imagine that he followed that mysterious occupation. In person Mr.
+Walker was very genteel; he had large whiskers, dark eyes (with a slight
+cast in them), a cane, and a velvet waistcoat. He was a member of a
+club; had an admission to the opera, and knew every face behind the
+scenes; and was in the habit of using a number of French phrases in his
+conversation, having picked up a smattering of that language during a
+residence “on the Continent;” in fact, he had found it very convenient
+at various times of his life to dwell in the city of Boulogne, where
+he acquired a knowledge of smoking, ecarte, and billiards, which was
+afterwards of great service to him. He knew all the best tables in
+town, and the marker at Hunt's could only give him ten. He had some
+fashionable acquaintances too, and you might see him walking arm-in-arm
+with such gentlemen as my Lord Vauxhall, the Marquess of Billingsgate,
+or Captain Buff; and at the same time nodding to young Moses, the
+dandy bailiff; or Loder, the gambling-house keeper; or Aminadab, the
+cigar-seller in the Quadrant. Sometimes he wore a pair of moustaches,
+and was called Captain Walker; grounding his claim to that title upon
+the fact of having once held a commission in the service of Her Majesty
+the Queen of Portugal. It scarcely need be said that he had been through
+the Insolvent Court many times. But to those who did not know his
+history intimately there was some difficulty in identifying him with the
+individual who had so taken the benefit of the law, inasmuch as in
+his schedule his name appeared as Hooker Walker, wine-merchant,
+commission-agent, music-seller, or what not. The fact is, that though he
+preferred to call himself Howard, Hooker was his Christian name, and it
+had been bestowed on him by his worthy old father, who was a clergyman,
+and had intended his son for that profession. But as the old gentleman
+died in York gaol, where he was a prisoner for debt, he was never able
+to put his pious intentions with regard to his son into execution; and
+the young fellow (as he was wont with many oaths to assert) was thrown
+on his own resources, and became a man of the world at a very early age.
+
+What Mr. Howard Walker's age was at the time of the commencement of this
+history, and, indeed, for an indefinite period before or afterwards, it
+is impossible to determine. If he were eight-and-twenty, as he asserted
+himself, Time had dealt hardly with him: his hair was thin, there were
+many crows'-feet about his eyes, and other signs in his countenance
+of the progress of decay. If, on the contrary, he were forty, as Sam
+Snaffle declared, who himself had misfortunes in early life, and vowed
+he knew Mr. Walker in Whitecross Street Prison in 1820, he was a very
+young-looking person considering his age. His figure was active and
+slim, his leg neat, and he had not in his whiskers a single white hair.
+
+It must, however, be owned that he used Mr. Eglantine's Regenerative
+Unction (which will make your whiskers as black as your boot), and, in
+fact, he was a pretty constant visitor at that gentleman's emporium;
+dealing with him largely for soaps and articles of perfumery, which he
+had at an exceedingly low rate. Indeed, he was never known to pay Mr.
+Eglantine one single shilling for those objects of luxury, and, having
+them on such moderate terms, was enabled to indulge in them pretty
+copiously. Thus Mr. Walker was almost as great a nosegay as Mr.
+Eglantine himself: his handkerchief was scented with verbena, his hair
+with jessamine, and his coat had usually a fine perfume of cigars, which
+rendered his presence in a small room almost instantaneously remarkable.
+I have described Mr. Walker thus accurately, because, in truth, it
+is more with characters than with astounding events that this little
+history deals, and Mr. Walker is one of the principal of our dramatis
+personae.
+
+And so, having introduced Mr. W., we will walk over with him to Mr.
+Eglantine's emporium, where that gentleman is in waiting, too, to have
+his likeness taken.
+
+There is about an acre of plate glass under the Royal arms on Mr.
+Eglantine's shop-window; and at night, when the gas is lighted, and the
+washballs are illuminated, and the lambent flame plays fitfully over
+numberless bottles of vari-coloured perfumes--now flashes on a case
+of razors, and now lightens up a crystal vase, containing a hundred
+thousand of his patent tooth-brushes--the effect of the sight may be
+imagined. You don't suppose that he is a creature who has those odious,
+simpering wax figures in his window, that are called by the vulgar
+dummies? He is above such a wretched artifice; and it is my belief
+that he would as soon have his own head chopped off, and placed as a
+trunkless decoration to his shop-window, as allow a dummy to figure
+there. On one pane you read in elegant gold letters “Eglantinia”--'tis
+his essence for the handkerchief; on the other is written “Regenerative
+Unction”--'tis his invaluable pomatum for the hair.
+
+There is no doubt about it: Eglantine's knowledge of his profession
+amounts to genius. He sells a cake of soap for seven shillings, for
+which another man would not get a shilling, and his tooth-brushes go off
+like wildfire at half-a-guinea apiece. If he has to administer rouge or
+pearl-powder to ladies, he does it with a mystery and fascination which
+there is no resisting, and the ladies believe there are no cosmetics
+like his. He gives his wares unheard-of names, and obtains for them sums
+equally prodigious. He CAN dress hair--that is a fact--as few men in
+this age can; and has been known to take twenty pounds in a single
+night from as many of the first ladies of England when ringlets were in
+fashion. The introduction of bands, he says, made a difference of two
+thousand pounds a year in his income; and if there is one thing in the
+world he hates and despises, it is a Madonna. “I'm not,” says he, “a
+tradesman--I'm a HARTIST” (Mr. Eglantine was born in London)--“I'm a
+hartist; and show me a fine 'ead of air, and I'll dress it for nothink.”
+ He vows that it was his way of dressing Mademoiselle Sontag's hair, that
+caused the count her husband to fall in love with her; and he has a lock
+of it in a brooch, and says it was the finest head he ever saw, except
+one, and that was Morgiana Crump's.
+
+With his genius and his position in the profession, how comes it, then,
+that Mr. Eglantine was not a man of fortune, as many a less clever has
+been? If the truth must be told, he loved pleasure, and was in the hands
+of the Jews. He had been in business twenty years: he had borrowed a
+thousand pounds to purchase his stock and shop; and he calculated that
+he had paid upwards of twenty thousand pounds for the use of the one
+thousand, which was still as much due as on the first day when he
+entered business. He could show that he had received a thousand dozen
+of champagne from the disinterested money-dealers with whom he usually
+negotiated his paper. He had pictures all over his “studios,” which had
+been purchased in the same bargains. If he sold his goods at an enormous
+price, he paid for them at a rate almost equally exorbitant. There
+was not an article in his shop but came to him through his Israelite
+providers; and in the very front shop itself sat a gentleman who was the
+nominee of one of them, and who was called Mr. Mossrose. He was there to
+superintend the cash account, and to see that certain instalments were
+paid to his principals, according to certain agreements entered into
+between Mr. Eglantine and them.
+
+Having that sort of opinion of Mr. Mossrose which Damocles may have had
+of the sword which hung over his head, of course Mr. Eglantine hated his
+foreman profoundly. “HE an artist,” would the former gentleman exclaim;
+“why, he's only a disguised bailiff! Mossrose indeed! The chap's name's
+Amos, and he sold oranges before he came here.” Mr. Mossrose, on his
+side, utterly despised Mr. Eglantine, and looked forward to the day when
+he would become the proprietor of the shop, and take Eglantine for a
+foreman; and then it would HIS turn to sneer and bully, and ride the
+high horse.
+
+Thus it will be seen that there was a skeleton in the great perfumer's
+house, as the saying is: a worm in his heart's core, and though to all
+appearance prosperous, he was really in an awkward position.
+
+What Mr. Eglantine's relations were with Mr. Walker may be imagined from
+the following dialogue which took place between the two gentlemen at
+five o'clock one summer's afternoon, when Mr. Walker, issuing from his
+chambers, came across to the perfumer's shop:--
+
+“Is Eglantine at home, Mr. Mossrose?” said Walker to the foreman, who
+sat in the front shop.
+
+“Don't know--go and look” (meaning go and be hanged); for Mossrose also
+hated Mr. Walker.
+
+“If you're uncivil I'll break your bones, Mr. AMOS,” says Mr. Walker,
+sternly.
+
+“I should like to see you try, Mr. HOOKER Walker,” replies the undaunted
+shopman; on which the Captain, looking several tremendous canings at
+him, walked into the back room or “studio.”
+
+“How are you, Tiny my buck?” says the Captain. “Much doing?”
+
+“Not a soul in town. I 'aven't touched the hirons all day,” replied Mr.
+Eglantine, in rather a desponding way.
+
+“Well, just get them ready now, and give my whiskers a turn. I'm going
+to dine with Billingsgate and some out-and-out fellows at the 'Regent,'
+and so, my lad, just do your best.”
+
+“I can't,” says Mr. Eglantine. “I expect ladies, Captain, every minute.”
+
+“Very good; I don't want to trouble such a great man, I'm sure.
+Good-bye, and let me hear from you THIS DAY WEEK, Mr. Eglantine.”
+ “This day week” meant that at seven days from that time a certain bill
+accepted by Mr. Eglantine would be due, and presented for payment.
+
+“Don't be in such a hurry, Captain--do sit down. I'll curl you in one
+minute. And, I say, won't the party renew?”
+
+“Impossible--it's the third renewal.”
+
+“But I'll make the thing handsome to you;--indeed I will.”
+
+“How much?”
+
+“Will ten pounds do the business?”
+
+“What! offer my principal ten pounds? Are you mad, Eglantine?--A little
+more of the iron to the left whisker.”
+
+“No, I meant for commission.”
+
+“Well, I'll see if that will do. The party I deal with, Eglantine, has
+power, I know, and can defer the matter no doubt. As for me, you know,
+I'VE nothing to do in the affair, and only act as a friend between you
+and him. I give you my honour and soul, I do.”
+
+“I know you do, my dear sir.” The last two speeches were lies. The
+perfumer knew perfectly well that Mr. Walker would pocket the ten
+pounds; but he was too easy to care for paying it, and too timid to
+quarrel with such a powerful friend. And he had on three different
+occasions already paid ten pounds' fine for the renewal of the bill in
+question, all of which bonuses he knew went to his friend Mr. Walker.
+
+Here, too, the reader will perceive what was, in part, the meaning of
+the word “Agency” on Mr. Walker's door. He was a go-between between
+money-lenders and borrowers in this world, and certain small sums always
+remained with him in the course of the transaction. He was an agent for
+wine, too; an agent for places to be had through the influence of
+great men; he was an agent for half-a-dozen theatrical people, male and
+female, and had the interests of the latter especially, it was said,
+at heart. Such were a few of the means by which this worthy gentleman
+contrived to support himself, and if, as he was fond of high living,
+gambling, and pleasures of all kinds, his revenue was not large enough
+for his expenditure--why, he got into debt, and settled his bills that
+way. He was as much at home in the Fleet as in Pall Mall, and quite as
+happy in the one place as in the other. “That's the way I take things,”
+ would this philosopher say. “If I've money, I spend; if I've credit,
+I borrow; if I'm dunned, I whitewash; and so you can't beat me down.”
+ Happy elasticity of temperament! I do believe that, in spite of his
+misfortunes and precarious position, there was no man in England whose
+conscience was more calm, and whose slumbers were more tranquil, than
+those of Captain Howard Walker.
+
+As he was sitting under the hands of Mr. Eglantine, he reverted to “the
+ladies,” whom the latter gentleman professed to expect; said he was a
+sly dog, a lucky ditto, and asked him if the ladies were handsome.
+
+Eglantine thought there could be no harm in telling a bouncer to a
+gentleman with whom he was engaged in money transactions; and so, to
+give the Captain an idea of his solvency and the brilliancy of his
+future prospects, “Captain,” said he, “I've got a hundred and eighty
+pounds out with you, which you were obliging enough to negotiate for me.
+Have I, or have I not, two bills out to that amount?”
+
+“Well, my good fellow, you certainly have; and what then?”
+
+“What then? Why, I bet you five pounds to one, that in three months
+those bills are paid.”
+
+“Done! five pounds to one. I take it.”
+
+This sudden closing with him made the perfumer rather uneasy; but he was
+not to pay for three months, and so he said, “Done!” too, and went on:
+“What would you say if your bills were paid?”
+
+“Not mine; Pike's.”
+
+“Well, if Pike's were paid; and the Minories' man paid, and every single
+liability I have cleared off; and that Mossrose flung out of winder, and
+me and my emporium as free as hair?”
+
+“You don't say so? Is Queen Anne dead? and has she left you a fortune?
+or what's the luck in the wind now?”
+
+“It's better than Queen Anne, or anybody dying. What should you say to
+seeing in that very place where Mossrose now sits (hang him!)--seeing
+the FINEST HEAD OF 'AIR NOW IN EUROPE? A woman, I tell you--a
+slap-up lovely woman, who, I'm proud to say, will soon be called Mrs.
+Heglantine, and will bring me five thousand pounds to her fortune.”
+
+“Well, Tiny, this IS good luck indeed. I say, you'll be able to do a
+bill or two for ME then, hay? You won't forget an old friend?”
+
+“That I won't. I shall have a place at my board for you, Capting; and
+many's the time I shall 'ope to see you under that ma'ogany.”
+
+“What will the French milliner say? She'll hang herself for despair,
+Eglantine.”
+
+“Hush! not a word about 'ER. I've sown all my wild oats, I tell you.
+Eglantine is no longer the gay young bachelor, but the sober married
+man. I want a heart to share the feelings of mine. I want repose. I'm
+not so young as I was: I feel it.”
+
+“Pooh! pooh! you are--you are--”
+
+“Well, but I sigh for an 'appy fireside; and I'll have it.”
+
+“And give up that club which you belong to, hay?”
+
+“'The Kidneys?' Oh! of course, no married man should belong to such
+places: at least, I'LL not; and I'll have my kidneys broiled at home.
+But be quiet, Captain, if you please; the ladies appointed to--”
+
+“And is it THE lady you expect? eh, you rogue!”
+
+“Well, get along. It's her and her Ma.”
+
+But Mr. Walker determined he wouldn't get along, and would see these
+lovely ladies before he stirred.
+
+The operation on Mr. Walker's whiskers being concluded, he was arranging
+his toilet before the glass in an agreeable attitude: his neck out,
+his enormous pin settled in his stock to his satisfaction, his eyes
+complacently directed towards the reflection of his left and favourite
+whisker. Eglantine was laid on a settee, in an easy, though melancholy
+posture; he was twiddling the tongs with which he had just operated on
+Walker with one hand, and his right-hand ringlet with the other, and he
+was thinking--thinking of Morgiana; and then of the bill which was to
+become due on the 16th; and then of a light-blue velvet waistcoat with
+gold sprigs, in which he looked very killing, and so was trudging round
+in his little circle of loves, fears, and vanities. “Hang it!” Mr.
+Walker was thinking, “I AM a handsome man. A pair of whiskers like mine
+are not met with every day. If anybody can see that my tuft is dyed, may
+I be--” When the door was flung open, and a large lady with a curl
+on her forehead, yellow shawl, a green-velvet bonnet with feathers,
+half-boots, and a drab gown with tulips and other large exotics painted
+on it--when, in a word, Mrs. Crump and her daughter bounced into the
+room.
+
+“Here we are, Mr. E,” cries Mrs. Crump, in a gay folatre confidential
+air. “But law! there's a gent in the room!”
+
+“Don't mind me, ladies,” said the gent alluded to, in his fascinating
+way. “I'm a friend of Eglantine's; ain't I, Egg? a chip of the old
+block, hay?”
+
+“THAT you are,” said the perfumer, starting up.
+
+“An 'air-dresser?” asked Mrs. Crump. “Well, I thought he was; there's
+something, Mr. E., in gentlemen of your profession so exceeding, so
+uncommon distangy.”
+
+“Madam, you do me proud,” replied the gentleman so complimented, with
+great presence of mind. “Will you allow me to try my skill upon you, or
+upon Miss, your lovely daughter? I'm not so clever as Eglantine, but no
+bad hand, I assure you.”
+
+“Nonsense, Captain,” interrupted the perfumer, who was uncomfortable
+somehow at the rencontre between the Captain and the object of his
+affection. “HE'S not in the profession, Mrs. C. This is my friend
+Captain Walker, and proud I am to call him my friend.” And then aside to
+Mrs. C., “One of the first swells on town, ma'am--a regular tiptopper.”
+
+Humouring the mistake which Mrs. Crump had just made, Mr. Walker thrust
+the curling-irons into the fire in a minute, and looked round at the
+ladies with such a fascinating grace, that both, now made acquainted
+with his quality, blushed and giggled, and were quite pleased. Mamma
+looked at 'Gina, and 'Gina looked at mamma; and then mamma gave 'Gina a
+little blow in the region of her little waist, and then both burst out
+laughing, as ladies will laugh, and as, let us trust, they may laugh
+for ever and ever. Why need there be a reason for laughing? Let us laugh
+when we are laughy, as we sleep when we are sleepy. And so Mrs. Crump
+and her demoiselle laughed to their hearts' content; and both fixed
+their large shining black eyes repeatedly on Mr. Walker.
+
+“I won't leave the room,” said he, coming forward with the heated iron
+in his hand, and smoothing it on the brown paper with all the dexterity
+of a professor (for the fact is, Mr. W. every morning curled his own
+immense whiskers with the greatest skill and care)--“I won't leave the
+room, Eglantine my boy. My lady here took me for a hairdresser, and so,
+you know, I've a right to stay.”
+
+“He can't stay,” said Mrs. Crump, all of a sudden, blushing as red as a
+peony.
+
+“I shall have on my peignoir, Mamma,” said Miss, looking at the
+gentleman, and then dropping down her eyes and blushing too.
+
+“But he can't stay, 'Gina, I tell you: do you think that I would, before
+a gentleman, take off my--”
+
+“Mamma means her FRONT!” said Miss, jumping up, and beginning to laugh
+with all her might; at which the honest landlady of the “Bootjack,” who
+loved a joke, although at her own expense, laughed too, and said that no
+one, except Mr. Crump and Mr. Eglantine, had ever seen her without the
+ornament in question.
+
+“DO go now, you provoking thing, you!” continued Miss C. to Mr. Walker;
+“I wish to hear the hoverture, and it's six o'clock now, and we shall
+never be done against then:” but the way in which Morgiana said “DO go,”
+ clearly indicated “don't” to the perspicacious mind of Mr. Walker.
+
+“Perhaps you 'ad better go,” continued Mr. Eglantine, joining in this
+sentiment, and being, in truth, somewhat uneasy at the admiration which
+his “swell friend” excited.
+
+“I'll see you hanged first, Eggy my boy! Go I won't, until these ladies
+have had their hair dressed: didn't you yourself tell me that Miss
+Crump's was the most beautiful hair in Europe? And do you think that
+I'll go away without seeing it? No, here I stay.”
+
+“You naughty wicked odious provoking man!” said Miss Crump. But, at the
+same time, she took off her bonnet, and placed it on one of the side
+candlesticks of Mr. Eglantine's glass (it was a black-velvet bonnet,
+trimmed with sham lace, and with a wreath of nasturtiums, convolvuluses,
+and wallflowers within), and then said, “Give me the peignoir, Mr.
+Archibald, if you please;” and Eglantine, who would do anything for her
+when she called him Archibald, immediately produced that garment, and
+wrapped round the delicate shoulders of the lady, who, removing a sham
+gold chain which she wore on her forehead, two brass hair-combs set with
+glass rubies, and the comb which kept her back hair together--removing
+them, I say, and turning her great eyes towards the stranger, and giving
+her head a shake, down let tumble such a flood of shining waving heavy
+glossy jetty hair, as would have done Mr. Rowland's heart good to see.
+It tumbled down Miss Morgiana's back, and it tumbled over her shoulders,
+it tumbled over the chair on which she sat, and from the midst of it her
+jolly bright-eyed rosy face beamed out with a triumphant smile, which
+said, “A'n't I now the most angelic being you ever saw?”
+
+“By Heaven! it's the most beautiful thing I ever saw!” cried Mr. Walker,
+with undisguised admiration.
+
+“ISN'T it?” said Mrs. Crump, who made her daughter's triumph her own.
+“Heigho! when I acted at 'The Wells' in 1820, before that dear girl was
+born, _I_ had such a head of hair as that, to a shade, sir, to a shade.
+They called me Ravenswing on account of it. I lost my head of hair when
+that dear child was born, and I often say to her, 'Morgiana, you came
+into the world to rob your mother of her 'air.' Were you ever at 'The
+Wells,' sir, in 1820? Perhaps you recollect Miss Delancy? I am that Miss
+Delancy. Perhaps you recollect,--
+
+     “'Tink-a-tink, tink-a-tink,
+         By the light of the star,
+       On the blue river's brink,
+         I heard a guitar.
+
+     “'I heard a guitar,
+         On the blue waters clear,
+       And knew by its mu-u-sic,
+         That Selim was near!'
+
+You remember that in the 'Bagdad Bells'? Fatima, Delancy; Selim,
+Benlomond (his real name was Bunnion: and he failed, poor fellow, in
+the public line afterwards). It was done to the tambourine, and dancing
+between each verse,--
+
+     “'Tink-a-tink, tink-a-tink,
+         How the soft music swells,
+       And I hear the soft clink
+         Of the minaret bells!
+
+     “'Tink-a--'”
+
+“Oh!” here cried Miss Crump, as if in exceeding pain (and whether Mr.
+Eglantine had twitched, pulled, or hurt any one individual hair of that
+lovely head I don't know)--“Oh, you are killing me, Mr. Eglantine!”
+
+And with this mamma, who was in her attitude, holding up the end of her
+boa as a visionary tambourine, and Mr. Walker, who was looking at her,
+and in his amusement at the mother's performances had almost forgotten
+the charms of the daughter--both turned round at once, and looked at
+her with many expressions of sympathy, while Eglantine, in a voice of
+reproach, said, “KILLED you, Morgiana! I kill YOU?”
+
+“I'm better now,” said the young lady, with a smile--“I'm better, Mr.
+Archibald, now.” And if the truth must be told, no greater coquette than
+Miss Morgiana existed in all Mayfair--no, not among the most fashionable
+mistresses of the fashionable valets who frequented the “Bootjack.” She
+believed herself to be the most fascinating creature that the world ever
+produced; she never saw a stranger but she tried these fascinations upon
+him; and her charms of manner and person were of that showy sort which
+is most popular in this world, where people are wont to admire most that
+which gives them the least trouble to see; and so you will find a tulip
+of a woman to be in fashion when a little humble violet or daisy of
+creation is passed over without remark. Morgiana was a tulip among
+women, and the tulip fanciers all came flocking round her.
+
+Well, the said “Oh” and “I'm better now, Mr. Archibald,” thereby
+succeeded in drawing everybody's attention to her lovely self. By the
+latter words Mr. Eglantine was specially inflamed; he glanced at Mr.
+Walker, and said, “Capting! didn't I tell you she was a CREECHER? See
+her hair, sir: it's as black and as glossy as satting. It weighs fifteen
+pound, that hair, sir; and I wouldn't let my apprentice--that blundering
+Mossrose, for instance (hang him!)--I wouldn't let anyone but myself
+dress that hair for five hundred guineas! Ah, Miss Morgiana, remember
+that you MAY ALWAYS have Eglantine to dress your hair!--remember that,
+that's all.” And with this the worthy gentleman began rubbing delicately
+a little of the Eglantinia into those ambrosial locks, which he loved
+with all the love of a man and an artist.
+
+And as for Morgiana showing her hair, I hope none of my readers will
+entertain a bad opinion of the poor girl for doing so. Her locks were
+her pride; she acted at the private theatre “hair parts,” where she
+could appear on purpose to show them in a dishevelled state; and that
+her modesty was real, and not affected may be proved by the fact that
+when Mr. Walker, stepping up in the midst of Eglantine's last speech,
+took hold of a lock of her hair very gently with his hand, she cried
+“Oh!” and started with all her might. And Mr. Eglantine observed
+very gravely, “Capting! Miss Crump's hair is to be seen and not to be
+touched, if you please.”
+
+“No more it is, Mr. Eglantine!” said her mamma. “And now, as it's come
+to my turn, I beg the gentleman will be so obliging as to go.”
+
+“MUST I?” cried Mr. Walker; and as it was half-past six, and he was
+engaged to dinner at the “Regent Club,” and as he did not wish to make
+Eglantine jealous, who evidently was annoyed by his staying, he took his
+hat just as Miss Crump's coiffure was completed, and saluting her and
+her mamma, left the room.
+
+“A tip-top swell, I can assure you,” said Eglantine, nodding after him:
+“a regular bang-up chap, and no MISTAKE. Intimate with the Marquess of
+Billingsgate, and Lord Vauxhall, and that set.”
+
+“He's very genteel,” said Mrs. Crump.
+
+“Law! I'm sure I think nothing of him,” said Morgiana.
+
+And Captain Walker walked towards his club, meditating on the beauties
+of Morgiana. “What hair,” said he, “what eyes the girl has! they're as
+big as billiard-balls; and five thousand pounds. Eglantine's in luck!
+five thousand pounds--she can't have it, it's impossible!”
+
+No sooner was Mrs. Crump's front arranged, during the time of which
+operation Morgiana sat in perfect contentment looking at the last French
+fashions in the Courrier des Dames, and thinking how her pink satin
+slip would dye, and make just such a mantilla as that represented in the
+engraving--no sooner was Mrs. Crump's front arranged, than both ladies,
+taking leave of Mr. Eglantine, tripped back to the “Bootjack Hotel” in
+the neighbourhood, where a very neat green fly was already in waiting,
+the gentleman on the box of which (from a livery-stable in the
+neighbourhood) gave a knowing touch to his hat, and a salute with his
+whip, to the two ladies, as they entered the tavern.
+
+“Mr. W.'s inside,” said the man--a driver from Mr. Snaffle's
+establishment; “he's been in and out this score of times, and looking
+down the street for you.” And in the house, in fact, was Mr. Woolsey,
+the tailor, who had hired the fly, and was engaged to conduct the ladies
+that evening to the play.
+
+It was really rather too bad to think that Miss Morgiana, after going to
+one lover to have her hair dressed, should go with another to the play;
+but such is the way with lovely woman! Let her have a dozen admirers,
+and the dear coquette will exercise her power upon them all: and as a
+lady, when she has a large wardrobe, and a taste for variety in dress,
+will appear every day in a different costume, so will the young and
+giddy beauty wear her lovers, encouraging now the black whiskers, now
+smiling on the brown, now thinking that the gay smiling rattle of an
+admirer becomes her very well, and now adopting the sad sentimental
+melancholy one, according as her changeful fancy prompts her. Let us not
+be too angry with these uncertainties and caprices of beauty; and depend
+on it that, for the most part, those females who cry out loudest against
+the flightiness of their sisters, and rebuke their undue encouragement
+of this man or that, would do as much themselves if they had the chance,
+and are constant, as I am to my coat just now, because I have no other.
+
+“Did you see Doubleyou, 'Gina dear?” said her mamma, addressing that
+young lady. “He's in the bar with your Pa, and has his military coat
+with the king's buttons, and looks like an officer.”
+
+This was Mr. Woolsey's style, his great aim being to look like an army
+gent, for many of whom he in his capacity of tailor made those splendid
+red and blue coats which characterise our military. As for the royal
+button, had not he made a set of coats for his late Majesty, George
+IV.? and he would add, when he narrated this circumstance, “Sir, Prince
+Blucher and Prince Swartzenberg's measure's in the house now; and what's
+more, I've cut for Wellington.” I believe he would have gone to St.
+Helena to make a coat for Napoleon, so great was his ardour. He wore a
+blue-black wig, and his whiskers were of the same hue. He was brief and
+stern in conversations; and he always went to masquerades and balls in a
+field-marshal's uniform.
+
+“He looks really quite the thing to-night,” continued Mrs. Crump.
+
+“Yes,” said 'Gina; “but he's such an odious wig, and the dye of his
+whiskers always comes off on his white gloves.”
+
+“Everybody has not their own hair, love,” continued Mrs. Crump with a
+sigh; “but Eglantine's is beautiful.”
+
+“Every hairdresser's is,” answered Morgiana, rather contemptuously;
+“but what I can't bear is that their fingers is always so very fat and
+pudgy.”
+
+In fact, something had gone wrong with the fair Morgiana. Was it that
+she had but little liking for the one pretender or the other? Was it
+that young Glauber, who acted Romeo in the private theatricals, was far
+younger and more agreeable than either? Or was it, that seeing a
+REAL GENTLEMAN, such as Mr. Walker, with whom she had had her first
+interview, she felt more and more the want of refinement in her other
+declared admirers? Certain, however, it is, that she was very reserved
+all the evening, in spite of the attentions of Mr. Woolsey; that she
+repeatedly looked round at the box-door, as if she expected someone to
+enter; and that she partook of only a very few oysters, indeed, out of
+the barrel which the gallant tailor had sent down to the “Bootjack,” and
+off which the party supped.
+
+“What is it?” said Mr. Woolsey to his ally, Crump, as they sat together
+after the retirement of the ladies. “She was dumb all night. She never
+once laughed at the farce, nor cried at the tragedy, and you know she
+laughs and cries uncommon. She only took half her negus, and not above a
+quarter of her beer.”
+
+“No more she did!” replied Mr. Crump, very calmly. “I think it must
+be the barber as has been captivating her: he dressed her hair for the
+play.”
+
+“Hang him, I'll shoot him!” said Mr. Woolsey. “A fat foolish effeminate
+beast like that marry Miss Morgiana? Never! I WILL shoot him. I'll
+provoke him next Saturday--I'll tread on his toe--I'll pull his nose.”
+
+“No quarrelling at the 'Kidneys!'” answered Crump sternly; “there shall
+be no quarrelling in that room as long as I'm in the chair!”
+
+
+“Well, at any rate you'll stand my friend?”
+
+“You know I will,” answered the other. “You are honourable, and I like
+you better than Eglantine. I trust you more than Eglantine, sir. You're
+more of a man than Eglantine, though you ARE a tailor; and I wish with
+all my heart you may get Morgiana. Mrs. C. goes the other way, I know:
+but I tell you what, women will go their own ways, sir, and Morgy's
+like her mother in this point, and depend upon it, Morgy will decide for
+herself.”
+
+Mr. Woolsey presently went home, still persisting in his plan for the
+assassination of Eglantine. Mr. Crump went to bed very quietly, and
+snored through the night in his usual tone. Mr. Eglantine passed some
+feverish moments of jealousy, for he had come down to the club in the
+evening, and had heard that Morgiana was gone to the play with his
+rival. And Miss Morgiana dreamed, of a man who was--must we say
+it?--exceedingly like Captain Howard Walker. “Mrs. Captain So-and-so!”
+ thought she. “Oh, I do love a gentleman dearly!”
+
+And about this time, too, Mr. Walker himself came rolling home from
+the “Regent,” hiccupping. “Such hair!--such eyebrows!--such eyes! like
+b-b-billiard-balls, by Jove!”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II. IN WHICH MR. WALKER MAKES THREE ATTEMPTS TO ASCERTAIN THE
+DWELLING OF MORGIANA.
+
+The day after the dinner at the “Regent Club,” Mr. Walker stepped over
+to the shop of his friend the perfumer, where, as usual, the young man,
+Mr. Mossrose, was established in the front premises.
+
+For some reason or other, the Captain was particularly good-humoured;
+and, quite forgetful of the words which had passed between him and Mr.
+Eglantine's lieutenant the day before, began addressing the latter with
+extreme cordiality.
+
+“A good morning to you, Mr. Mossrose,” said Captain Walker. “Why, sir,
+you look as fresh as your namesake--you do, indeed, now, Mossrose.”
+
+“You look ash yellow ash a guinea,” responded Mr. Mossrose, sulkily. He
+thought the Captain was hoaxing him.
+
+“My good sir,” replies the other, nothing cast down, “I drank rather too
+freely last night.”
+
+“The more beast you!” said Mr. Mossrose.
+
+“Thank you, Mossrose; the same to you,” answered the Captain.
+
+“If you call me a beast, I'll punch your head off!” answered the young
+man, who had much skill in the art which many of his brethren practise.
+
+“I didn't, my fine fellow,” replied Walker. “On the contrary, you--”
+
+“Do you mean to give me the lie?” broke out the indignant Mossrose, who
+hated the agent fiercely, and did not in the least care to conceal his
+hate.
+
+In fact, it was his fixed purpose to pick a quarrel with Walker, and to
+drive him, if possible, from Mr. Eglantine's shop. “Do you mean to give
+me the lie, I say, Mr. Hooker Walker?”
+
+“For Heaven's sake, Amos, hold your tongue!” exclaimed the Captain, to
+whom the name of Hooker was as poison; but at this moment a customer
+stepping in, Mr. Amos exchanged his ferocious aspect for a bland grin,
+and Mr. Walker walked into the studio.
+
+When in Mr. Eglantine's presence, Walker, too, was all smiles in a
+minute, sank down on a settee, held out his hand to the perfumer, and
+began confidentially discoursing with him.
+
+“SUCH a dinner, Tiny my boy,” said he; “such prime fellows to eat
+it, too! Billingsgate, Vauxhall, Cinqbars, Buff of the Blues, and
+half-a-dozen more of the best fellows in town. And what do you think the
+dinner cost a head? I'll wager you'll never guess.”
+
+“Was it two guineas a head?--In course I mean without wine,” said the
+genteel perfumer.
+
+“Guess again!”
+
+“Well, was it ten guineas a head? I'll guess any sum you please,”
+ replied Mr. Eglantine: “for I know that when you NOBS are together, you
+don't spare your money. I myself, at the “Star and Garter” at Richmond,
+once paid--”
+
+“Eighteenpence?”
+
+“Heighteenpence, sir!--I paid five-and-thirty shillings per 'ead. I'd
+have you to know that I can act as a gentleman as well as any other
+gentleman, sir,” answered the perfumer with much dignity.
+
+“Well, eighteenpence was what WE paid, and not a rap more, upon my
+honour.”
+
+“Nonsense, you're joking. The Marquess of Billinsgate dine for
+eighteenpence! Why, hang it, if I was a marquess, I'd pay a five-pound
+note for my lunch.”
+
+“You little know the person, Master Eglantine,” replied the Captain,
+with a smile of contemptuous superiority; “you little know the real
+man of fashion, my good fellow. Simplicity, sir--simplicity's the
+characteristic of the real gentleman, and so I'll tell you what we had
+for dinner.”
+
+“Turtle and venison, of course:--no nob dines without THEM.”
+
+“Psha! we're sick of 'em! We had pea soup and boiled tripe! What do you
+think of THAT? We had sprats and herrings, a bullock's heart, a baked
+shoulder of mutton and potatoes, pig's-fry and Irish stew. _I_ ordered
+the dinner, sir, and got more credit for inventing it than they ever
+gave to Ude or Soyer. The Marquess was in ecstasies, the Earl devoured
+half a bushel of sprats, and if the Viscount is not laid up with a
+surfeit of bullock's heart, my name's not Howard Walker. Billy, as I
+call him, was in the chair, and gave my health; and what do you think
+the rascal proposed?”
+
+“What DID his Lordship propose?”
+
+“That every man present should subscribe twopence, and pay for my share
+of the dinner. By Jove! it is true, and the money was handed to me in
+a pewter-pot, of which they also begged to make me a present. We
+afterwards went to Tom Spring's, from Tom's to the 'Finish,' from the
+'Finish' to the watch-house--that is, THEY did--and sent for me, just as
+I was getting into bed, to bail them all out.”
+
+“They're happy dogs, those young noblemen,” said Mr Eglantine; “nothing
+but pleasure from morning till night; no affectation neither--no HOTURE;
+but manly downright straightforward good fellows.”
+
+“Should you like to meet them, Tiny my boy?” said the Captain.
+
+“If I did sir, I hope I should show myself to be gentleman,” answered
+Mr. Eglantine.
+
+“Well, you SHALL meet them, and Lady Billingsgate shall order her
+perfumes at your shop. We are going to dine, next week, all our set,
+at Mealy-faced Bob's, and you shall be my guest,” cried the Captain,
+slapping the delighted artist on the back. “And now, my boy, tell me how
+YOU spent the evening.”
+
+“At my club, sir,” answered Mr. Eglantine, blushing rather.
+
+“What! not at the play with the lovely black-eyed Miss--What is her
+name, Eglantine?
+
+“Never mind her name, Captain,” replied Eglantine, partly from prudence
+and partly from shame. He had not the heart to own it was Crump, and he
+did not care that the Captain should know more of his destined bride.
+
+“You wish to keep the five thousand to yourself--eh, you rogue?”
+ responded the Captain, with a good-humoured air, although exceedingly
+mortified; for, to say the truth, he had put himself to the trouble
+of telling the above long story of the dinner, and of promising to
+introduce Eglantine to the lords, solely that he might elicit from that
+gentleman's good-humour some further particulars regarding the young
+lady with the billiard-ball eyes. It was for the very same reason, too,
+that he had made the attempt at reconciliation with Mr. Mossrose which
+had just so signally failed. Nor would the reader, did he know Mr. W.
+better, at all require to have the above explanation; but as yet we are
+only at the first chapter of his history, and who is to know what the
+hero's motives can be unless we take the trouble to explain?
+
+Well, the little dignified answer of the worthy dealer in bergamot,
+“NEVER MIND HER NAME, CAPTAIN!” threw the gallant Captain quite aback;
+and though he sat for a quarter of an hour longer, and was exceedingly
+kind; and though he threw out some skilful hints, yet the perfumer was
+quite unconquerable; or, rather, he was too frightened to tell: the
+poor fat timid easy good-natured gentleman was always the prey of
+rogues,--panting and floundering in one rascal's snare or another's. He
+had the dissimulation, too, which timid men have; and felt the presence
+of a victimiser as a hare does of a greyhound. Now he would be quite
+still, now he would double, and now he would run, and then came the end.
+He knew, by his sure instinct of fear, that the Captain had, in asking
+these questions, a scheme against him, and so he was cautious, and
+trembled, and doubted. And oh! how he thanked his stars when Lady
+Grogmore's chariot drove up, with the Misses Grogmore, who wanted their
+hair dressed, and were going to a breakfast at three o'clock!
+
+“I'll look in again, Tiny,” said the Captain, on hearing the summons.
+
+“DO, Captain,” said the other: “THANK YOU;” and went into the lady's
+studio with a heavy heart.
+
+“Get out of the way, you infernal villain!” roared the Captain, with
+many oaths, to Lady Grogmore's large footman, with ruby-coloured tights,
+who was standing inhaling the ten thousand perfumes of the shop; and the
+latter, moving away in great terror, the gallant agent passed out, quite
+heedless of the grin of Mr. Mossrose.
+
+Walker was in a fury at his want of success, and walked down Bond Street
+in a fury. “I WILL know where the girl lives!” swore he. “I'll spend a
+five-pound note, by Jove! rather than not know where she lives!”
+
+“THAT YOU WOULD--I KNOW YOU WOULD!” said a little grave low voice, all
+of a sudden, by his side. “Pooh! what's money to you?”
+
+Walker looked down: it was Tom Dale.
+
+Who in London did not know little Tom Dale? He had cheeks like an apple,
+and his hair curled every morning, and a little blue stock, and always
+two new magazines under his arm, and an umbrella and a little brown
+frock-coat, and big square-toed shoes with which he went PAPPING down
+the street. He was everywhere at once. Everybody met him every day, and
+he knew everything that everybody ever did; though nobody ever knew what
+HE did. He was, they say, a hundred years old, and had never dined at
+his own charge once in those hundred years. He looked like a figure out
+of a waxwork, with glassy clear meaningless eyes: he always spoke with
+a grin; he knew what you had for dinner the day before he met you, and
+what everybody had had for dinner for a century back almost. He was
+the receptacle of all the scandal of all the world, from Bond Street
+to Bread Street; he knew all the authors, all the actors, all the
+“notorieties” of the town, and the private histories of each. That is,
+he never knew anything really, but supplied deficiencies of truth and
+memory with ready-coined, never-failing lies. He was the most benevolent
+man in the universe, and never saw you without telling you everything
+most cruel of your neighbour, and when he left you he went to do the
+same kind turn by yourself.
+
+“Pooh! what's money to you, my dear boy?” said little Tom Dale, who had
+just come out of Ebers's, where he had been filching an opera-ticket.
+“You make it in bushels in the City, you know you do---in thousands.
+I saw you go into Eglantine's. Fine business that; finest in London.
+Five-shilling cakes of soap, my dear boy. I can't wash with such.
+Thousands a year that man has made--hasn't he?”
+
+“Upon my word, Tom, I don't know,” says the Captain.
+
+“YOU not know? Don't tell me. You know everything--you agents. You KNOW
+he makes five thousand a year--ay, and might make ten, but you know why
+he don't.”
+
+“Indeed I don't.”
+
+“Nonsense. Don't humbug a poor old fellow like me. Jews--Amos--fifty per
+cent., ay? Why can't he get his money from a good Christian?”
+
+“I HAVE heard something of that sort,” said Walker, laughing. “Why, by
+Jove, Tom, you know everything!”
+
+“YOU know everything, my dear boy. You know what a rascally trick that
+opera creature served him, poor fellow. Cashmere shawls--Storr and
+Mortimer's--'Star and Garter.' Much better dine quiet off pea-soup and
+sprats--ay? His betters have, as you know very well.”
+
+“Pea-soup and sprats! What! have you heard of that already?”
+
+“Who bailed Lord Billingsgate, hey, you rogue?” and here Tom gave a
+knowing and almost demoniacal grin. “Who wouldn't go to the 'Finish'?
+Who had the piece of plate presented to him filled with sovereigns? And
+you deserved it, my dear boy--you deserved it. They said it was only
+halfpence, but I know better!” and here Tom went off in a cough.
+
+“I say, Tom,” cried Walker, inspired with a sudden thought, “you, who
+know everything, and are a theatrical man, did you ever know a Miss
+Delancy, an actress?”
+
+“At 'Sadler's Wells' in '16? Of course I did. Real name was Budge. Lord
+Slapper admired her very much, my dear boy. She married a man by the
+name of Crump, his Lordship's black footman, and brought him five
+thousand pounds; and they keep the 'Bootjack' public-house in Bunker's
+Buildings, and they've got fourteen children. Is one of them handsome,
+eh, you sly rogue--and is it that which you will give five pounds to
+know? God bless you, my dear dear boy. Jones, my dear friend, how are
+you?”
+
+And now, seizing on Jones, Tom Dale left Mr. Walker alone, and proceeded
+to pour into Mr. Jones's ear an account of the individual whom he had
+just quitted; how he was the best fellow in the world, and Jones KNEW
+it; how he was in a fine way of making his fortune; how he had been in
+the Fleet many times, and how he was at this moment employed in looking
+out for a young lady of whom a certain great marquess (whom Jones knew
+very well, too) had expressed an admiration.
+
+But for these observations, which he did not hear, Captain Walker, it
+may be pronounced, did not care. His eyes brightened up, he marched
+quickly and gaily away; and turning into his own chambers opposite
+Eglantine's, shop, saluted that establishment with a grin of triumph.
+“You wouldn't tell me her name, wouldn't you?” said Mr. Walker. “Well,
+the luck's with me now, and here goes.”
+
+Two days after, as Mr. Eglantine, with white gloves and a case of
+eau-de-Cologne as a present in his pocket, arrived at the “Bootjack
+Hotel,” Little Bunker's Buildings, Berkeley Square (for it must
+out--that was the place in which Mr. Crump's inn was situated),
+he paused for a moment at the threshold of the little house of
+entertainment, and listened, with beating heart, to the sound of
+delicious music that a well-known voice was uttering within.
+
+The moon was playing in silvery brightness down the gutter of the humble
+street. A “helper,” rubbing down one of Lady Smigsmag's carriage-horses,
+even paused in his whistle to listen to the strain. Mr. Tressle's man,
+who had been professionally occupied, ceased his tap-tap upon the coffin
+which he was getting in readiness. The greengrocer (there is always a
+greengrocer in those narrow streets, and he goes out in white Berlin
+gloves as a supernumerary footman) was standing charmed at his little
+green gate; the cobbler (there is always a cobbler too) was drunk, as
+usual, of evenings, but, with unusual subordination, never sang except
+when the refrain of the ditty arrived, when he hiccupped it forth with
+tipsy loyalty; and Eglantine leaned against the chequers painted on
+the door-side under the name of Crump, and looked at the red illumined
+curtain of the bar, and the vast well-known shadow of Mrs. Crump's
+turban within. Now and again the shadow of that worthy matron's hand
+would be seen to grasp the shadow of a bottle; then the shadow of a
+cup would rise towards the turban, and still the strain proceeded.
+Eglantine, I say, took out his yellow bandanna, and brushed the beady
+drops from his brow, and laid the contents of his white kids on his
+heart, and sighed with ecstatic sympathy. The song began,--
+
+         “Come to the greenwood tree, [1]
+          Come where the dark woods be,
+          Dearest, O come with me!
+     Let us rove--O my love--O my love!
+                             O my-y love!
+
+(Drunken Cobbler without)
+                             O my-y love!”
+
+“Beast!” says Eglantine.
+
+         “Come--'tis the moonlight hour,
+          Dew is on leaf and flower,
+          Come to the linden bower,
+     Let us rove--O my love--O my love!
+   Let us ro-o-ove, lurlurliety; yes, we'll rove, lurlurliety,
+   Through the gro-o-ove, lurlurliety--lurlurli-e-i-e-i-e-i!
+
+(Cobbler, as usual)--
+                             Let us ro-o-ove,” etc.
+
+“YOU here?” says another individual, coming clinking up the street, in
+a military-cut dress-coat, the buttons whereof shone very bright in the
+moonlight. “YOU here, Eglantine?--You're always here.”
+
+“Hush, Woolsey,” said Mr. Eglantine to his rival the tailor (for he
+was the individual in question); and Woolsey, accordingly, put his
+back against the opposite door-post and chequers, so that (with poor
+Eglantine's bulk) nothing much thicker than a sheet of paper could pass
+out or in. And thus these two amorous caryatides kept guard as the song
+continued:--
+
+          “Dark is the wood, and wide,
+           Dangers, they say, betide;
+           But, at my Albert's side,
+     Nought, I fear, O my love--O my love!
+
+          “Welcome the greenwood tree,
+           Welcome the forest tree,
+           Dearest, with thee, with thee,
+     Nought I fear, O my love--O ma-a-y love!”
+
+Eglantine's fine eyes were filled with tears as Morgiana passionately
+uttered the above beautiful words. Little Woolsey's eyes glistened, as
+he clenched his fist with an oath, and said, “Show me any singing that
+can beat THAT. Cobbler, shut your mouth, or I'll break your head!”
+
+But the cobbler, regardless of the threat, continued to perform the
+“Lurlurliety” with great accuracy; and when that was ended, both on his
+part and Morgiana's, a rapturous knocking of glasses was heard in the
+little bar, then a great clapping of hands, and finally somebody shouted
+“Brava!”
+
+“Brava!”
+
+At that word Eglantine turned deadly pale, then gave a start, then a
+rush forward, which pinned, or rather cushioned, the tailor against the
+wall; then twisting himself abruptly round, he sprang to the door of the
+bar, and bounced into that apartment.
+
+“HOW ARE YOU, MY NOSEGAY?” exclaimed the same voice which had shouted
+“Brava!” It was that of Captain Walker.
+
+At ten o'clock the next morning, a gentleman, with the King's button
+on his military coat, walked abruptly into Mr. Eglantine's shop, and,
+turning on Mr. Mossrose, said, “Tell your master I want to see him.”
+
+“He's in his studio,” said Mr. Mossrose.
+
+“Well, then, fellow, go and fetch him!”
+
+And Mossrose, thinking it must be the Lord Chamberlain, or Doctor
+Praetorius at least, walked into the studio, where the perfumer was
+seated in a very glossy old silk dressing-gown, his fair hair hanging
+over his white face, his double chin over his flaccid whity-brown
+shirt-collar, his pea-green slippers on the hob, and on the fire the pot
+of chocolate which was simmering for his breakfast. A lazier fellow
+than poor Eglantine it would be hard to find; whereas, on the contrary,
+Woolsey was always up and brushed, spick-and-span, at seven o'clock; and
+had gone through his books, and given out the work for the journeymen,
+and eaten a hearty breakfast of rashers of bacon, before Eglantine had
+put the usual pound of grease to his hair (his fingers were always as
+damp and shiny as if he had them in a pomatum-pot), and arranged his
+figure for the day.
+
+“Here's a gent wants you in the shop,” says Mr. Mossrose, leaving the
+door of communication wide open.
+
+“Say I'm in bed, Mr. Mossrose; I'm out of sperrets, and really can see
+nobody.”
+
+“It's someone from Vindsor, I think; he's got the royal button,” says
+Mossrose.
+
+“It's me--Woolsey,” shouted the little man from the shop.
+
+Mr. Eglantine at this jumped up, made a rush to the door leading to his
+private apartment, and disappeared in a twinkling. But it must not be
+imagined that he fled in order to avoid Mr. Woolsey. He only went away
+for one minute just to put on his belt, for he was ashamed to be seen
+without it by his rival.
+
+This being assumed, and his toilet somewhat arranged, Mr. Woolsey was
+admitted into his private room. And Mossrose would have heard every
+word of the conversation between those two gentlemen, had not Woolsey,
+opening the door, suddenly pounced on the assistant, taken him by
+the collar, and told him to disappear altogether into the shop: which
+Mossrose did; vowing he would have his revenge.
+
+The subject on which Woolsey had come to treat was an important one.
+“Mr. Eglantine,” says he, “there's no use disguising from one another
+that we are both of us in love with Miss Morgiana, and that our chances
+up to this time have been pretty equal. But that Captain whom you
+introduced, like an ass as you were--”
+
+“An ass, Mr. Woolsey! I'd have you to know, sir, that I'm no more a hass
+than you are, sir; and as for introducing the Captain, I did no such
+thing.”
+
+“Well, well, he's got a-poaching into our preserves somehow. He's
+evidently sweet upon the young woman, and is a more fashionable chap
+than either of us two. We must get him out of the house, sir--we must
+circumwent him; and THEN, Mr. Eglantine, will be time enough for you and
+me to try which is the best man.”
+
+“HE the best man?” thought Eglantine; “the little bald unsightly
+tailor-creature! A man with no more soul than his smoothing-hiron!” The
+perfumer, as may be imagined, did not utter this sentiment aloud, but
+expressed himself quite willing to enter into any HAMICABLE arrangement
+by which the new candidate for Miss Crump's favour must be thrown over.
+It was accordingly agreed between the two gentlemen that they should
+coalesce against the common enemy; that they should, by reciting many
+perfectly well-founded stories in the Captain's disfavour, influence the
+minds of Miss Crump's parents, and of herself, if possible, against this
+wolf in sheep's clothing; and that, when they were once fairly rid of
+him, each should be at liberty, as before, to prefer his own claim.
+
+“I have thought of a subject,” said the little tailor, turning very red,
+and hemming and hawing a great deal. “I've thought, I say, of a pint,
+which may be resorted to with advantage at the present juncture, and in
+which each of us may be useful to the other. An exchange, Mr. Eglantine:
+do you take?”
+
+“Do you mean an accommodation-bill?” said Eglantine, whose mind ran a
+good deal on that species of exchange.
+
+“Pooh, nonsense, sir! The name of OUR firm is, I flatter myself, a
+little more up in the market than some other people's names.”
+
+“Do you mean to insult the name of Archibald Eglantine, sir? I'd have
+you to know that at three months--”
+
+“Nonsense!” says Mr. Woolsey, mastering his emotion. “There's no use
+a-quarrelling, Mr. E.: we're not in love with each other, I know that.
+You wish me hanged, or as good, I know that!”
+
+“Indeed I don't, sir!”
+
+“You do, sir; I tell you, you do! and what's more, I wish the same
+to you--transported, at any rate! But as two sailors, when a boat's
+a-sinking, though they hate each other ever so much, will help and bale
+the boat out; so, sir, let US act: let us be the two sailors.”
+
+“Bail, sir?” said Eglantine, as usual mistaking the drift of the
+argument. “I'll bail no man! If you're in difficulties, I think you had
+better go to your senior partner, Mr Woolsey.” And Eglantine's cowardly
+little soul was filled with a savage satisfaction to think that his
+enemy was in distress, and actually obliged to come to HIM for succour.
+
+“You're enough to make Job swear, you great fat stupid lazy old barber!”
+ roared Mr. Woolsey, in a fury.
+
+Eglantine jumped up and made for the bell-rope. The gallant little
+tailor laughed.
+
+“There's no need to call in Betsy,” said he. “I'm not a-going to eat
+you, Eglantine; you're a bigger man than me: if you were just to fall on
+me, you'd smother me! Just sit still on the sofa and listen to reason.”
+
+“Well, sir, pro-ceed,” said the barber with a gasp.
+
+“Now, listen! What's the darling wish of your heart? I know it, sir!
+you've told it to Mr. Tressle, sir, and other gents at the club. The
+darling wish of your heart, sir, is to have a slap-up coat turned out of
+the ateliers of Messrs. Linsey, Woolsey and Company. You said you'd give
+twenty guineas for one of our coats, you know you did! Lord Bolsterton's
+a fatter man than you, and look what a figure we turn HIM out. Can any
+firm in England dress Lord Bolsterton but us, so as to make his Lordship
+look decent? I defy 'em, sir! We could have given Daniel Lambert a
+figure!”
+
+“If I want a coat, sir,” said Mr. Eglantine, “and I don't deny it,
+there's some people want a HEAD OF HAIR!”
+
+“That's the very point I was coming to,” said the tailor, resuming the
+violent blush which was mentioned as having suffused his countenance
+at the beginning of the conversation. “Let us have terms of mutual
+accommodation. Make me a wig, Mr. Eglantine, and though I never yet cut
+a yard of cloth except for a gentleman, I'll pledge you my word I'll
+make you a coat.”
+
+“WILL you, honour bright?” says Eglantine.
+
+“Honour bright,” says the tailor. “Look!” and in an instant he drew
+from his pocket one of those slips of parchment which gentlemen of his
+profession carry, and putting Eglantine into the proper position, began
+to take the preliminary observations. He felt Eglantine's heart
+thump with happiness as his measure passed over that soft part of the
+perfumer's person.
+
+Then pulling down the window-blind, and looking that the door was
+locked, and blushing still more deeply than ever, the tailor seated
+himself in an arm-chair towards which Mr. Eglantine beckoned him, and,
+taking off his black wig, exposed his head to the great perruquier's
+gaze. Mr. Eglantine looked at it, measured it, manipulated it, sat
+for three minutes with his head in his hand and his elbow on his knee,
+gazing at the tailor's cranium with all his might, walked round it twice
+or thrice, and then said, “It's enough, Mr. Woolsey. Consider the job
+as done. And now, sir,” said he, with a greatly relieved air--“and now,
+Woolsey, let us 'ave a glass of curacoa to celebrate this hauspicious
+meeting.”
+
+The tailor, however, stiffly replied that he never drank in a morning,
+and left the room without offering to shake Mr. Eglantine by the hand:
+for he despised that gentleman very heartily, and himself, too, for
+coming to any compromise with him, and for so far demeaning himself as
+to make a coat for a barber.
+
+Looking from his chambers on the other side of the street, that
+inevitable Mr. Walker saw the tailor issuing from the perfumer's shop,
+and was at no loss to guess that something extraordinary must be in
+progress when two such bitter enemies met together.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III. WHAT CAME OF MR WALKER'S DISCOVERY OF THE “BOOTJACK.”
+
+It is very easy to state how the Captain came to take up that proud
+position at the “Bootjack” which we have seen him occupy on the evening
+when the sound of the fatal “Brava!” so astonished Mr. Eglantine.
+
+The mere entry into the establishment was, of course, not difficult. Any
+person by simply uttering the words “A pint of beer,” was free of the
+“Bootjack;” and it was some such watchword that Howard Walker employed
+when he made his first appearance. He requested to be shown into a
+parlour, where he might repose himself for a while, and was ushered into
+that very sanctum where the “Kidney Club” met. Then he stated that the
+beer was the best he had ever tasted, except in Bavaria, and in some
+parts of Spain, he added; and professing to be extremely “peckish,”
+ requested to know if there were any cold meat in the house whereof he
+could make a dinner.
+
+“I don't usually dine at this hour, landlord,” said he, flinging down
+a half-sovereign for payment of the beer; “but your parlour looks so
+comfortable, and the Windsor chairs are so snug, that I'm sure I could
+not dine better at the first club in London.”
+
+“ONE of the first clubs in London is held in this very room,” said Mr.
+Crump, very well pleased; “and attended by some of the best gents in
+town, too. We call it the 'Kidney Club'.”
+
+“Why, bless my soul! it is the very club my friend Eglantine has so
+often talked to me about, and attended by some of the tip-top tradesmen
+of the metropolis!”
+
+“There's better men here than Mr. Eglantine,” replied Mr. Crump, “though
+he's a good man--I don't say he's not a good man--but there's better.
+Mr. Clinker, sir; Mr. Woolsey, of the house of Linsey, Woolsey and Co--”
+
+“The great army-clothiers!” cried Walker; “the first house in town!”
+ and so continued, with exceeding urbanity, holding conversation with Mr.
+Crump, until the honest landlord retired delighted, and told Mrs. Crump
+in the bar that there was a tip-top swell in the “Kidney” parlour, who
+was a-going to have his dinner there.
+
+Fortune favoured the brave Captain in every way. It was just Mr. Crump's
+own dinner-hour; and on Mrs. Crump stepping into the parlour to ask the
+guest whether he would like a slice of the joint to which the family
+were about to sit down, fancy that lady's start of astonishment at
+recognising Mr. Eglantine's facetious friend of the day before. The
+Captain at once demanded permission to partake of the joint at the
+family table; the lady could not with any great reason deny this
+request; the Captain was inducted into the bar; and Miss Crump, who
+always came down late for dinner, was even more astonished than her
+mamma, on beholding the occupier of the fourth place at the table. Had
+she expected to see the fascinating stranger so soon again? I think she
+had. Her big eyes said as much, as, furtively looking up at Mr. Walker's
+face, they caught his looks; and then bouncing down again towards her
+plate, pretended to be very busy in looking at the boiled beef and
+carrots there displayed. She blushed far redder than those carrots, but
+her shining ringlets hid her confusion together with her lovely face.
+
+Sweet Morgiana! the billiard-ball eyes had a tremendous effect on the
+Captain. They fell plump, as it were, into the pocket of his heart; and
+he gallantly proposed to treat the company to a bottle of champagne,
+which was accepted without much difficulty.
+
+Mr. Crump, under pretence of going to the cellar (where he said he had
+some cases of the finest champagne in Europe), called Dick, the boy,
+to him, and despatched him with all speed to a wine merchant's, where a
+couple of bottles of the liquor were procured.
+
+“Bring up two bottles, Mr. C.,” Captain Walker gallantly said when Crump
+made his move, as it were, to the cellar and it may be imagined after
+the two bottles were drunk (of which Mrs. Crump took at least nine
+glasses to her share), how happy, merry, and confidential the whole
+party had become. Crump told his story of the “Bootjack,” and whose boot
+it had drawn; the former Miss Delancy expatiated on her past theatrical
+life, and the pictures hanging round the room. Miss was equally
+communicative; and, in short, the Captain had all the secrets of the
+little family in his possession ere sunset. He knew that Miss cared
+little for either of her suitors, about whom mamma and papa had a little
+quarrel. He heard Mrs. Crump talk of Morgiana's property, and fell more
+in love with her than ever. Then came tea, the luscious crumpet, the
+quiet game at cribbage, and the song--the song which poor Eglantine
+heard, and which caused Woolsey's rage and his despair.
+
+At the close of the evening the tailor was in a greater rage, and the
+perfumer in greater despair than ever. He had made his little present
+of eau-de-Cologne. “Oh fie!” says the Captain, with a horse-laugh, “it
+SMELLS OF THE SHOP!” He taunted the tailor about his wig, and the honest
+fellow had only an oath to give by way of repartee. He told his stories
+about his club and his lordly friends. What chance had either against
+the all-accomplished Howard Walker?
+
+Old Crump, with a good innate sense of right and wrong, hated the man;
+Mrs. Crump did not feel quite at her ease regarding him; but Morgiana
+thought him the most delightful person the world ever produced.
+
+Eglantine's usual morning costume was a blue satin neck-cloth
+embroidered with butterflies and ornamented with a brandy-ball brooch, a
+light shawl waistcoat, and a rhubarb-coloured coat of the sort which, I
+believe, are called Taglionis, and which have no waist-buttons, and made
+a pretence, as it were, to have no waists, but are in reality adopted by
+the fat in order to give them a waist. Nothing easier for an obese man
+than to have a waist; he has but to pinch his middle part a little, and
+the very fat on either side pushed violently forward MAKES a waist,
+as it were, and our worthy perfumer's figure was that of a bolster cut
+almost in two with a string.
+
+Walker presently saw him at his shop-door grinning in this costume,
+twiddling his ringlets with his dumpy greasy fingers, glittering with
+oil and rings, and looking so exceedingly contented and happy that the
+estate-agent felt assured some very satisfactory conspiracy had been
+planned between the tailor and him. How was Mr. Walker to learn what the
+scheme was? Alas! the poor fellow's vanity and delight were such, that
+he could not keep silent as to the cause of his satisfaction; and rather
+than not mention it at all, in the fulness of his heart he would have
+told his secret to Mr. Mossrose himself.
+
+“When I get my coat,” thought the Bond Street Alnaschar, “I'll hire
+of Snaffle that easy-going cream-coloured 'oss that he bought from
+Astley's, and I'll canter through the Park, and WON'T I pass through
+Little Bunker's Buildings, that's all? I'll wear my grey trousers with
+the velvet stripe down the side, and get my spurs lacquered up, and a
+French polish to my boot; and if I don't DO for the Captain, and the
+tailor too, my name's not Archibald. And I know what I'll do: I'll hire
+the small clarence, and invite the Crumps to dinner at the 'Gar and
+Starter'” (this was his facetious way of calling the “Star and Garter”),
+“and I'll ride by them all the way to Richmond. It's rather a long ride,
+but with Snaffle's soft saddle I can do it pretty easy, I dare say.” And
+so the honest fellow built castles upon castles in the air; and the last
+most beautiful vision of all was Miss Crump “in white satting, with a
+horange flower in her 'air,” putting him in possession of “her lovely
+'and before the haltar of St. George's, 'Anover Square.” As for Woolsey,
+Eglantine determined that he should have the best wig his art could
+produce; for he had not the least fear of his rival.
+
+These points then being arranged to the poor fellow's satisfaction, what
+does he do but send out for half a quire of pink note-paper, and in a
+filagree envelope despatch a note of invitation to the ladies at the
+“Bootjack”:--
+
+
+“BOWER OF BLOOM, BOND STREET:
+
+“Thursday.
+
+“MR. ARCHIBALD EGLANTINE presents his compliments to Mrs. and Miss
+Crump, and requests the HONOUR AND PLEASURE of their company at the
+'Star and Garter' at Richmond to an early dinner on Sunday next.
+
+“IF AGREEABLE, Mr. Eglantine's carriage will be at your door at three
+o'clock, and I propose to accompany them on horseback, if agreeable
+likewise.”
+
+
+This note was sealed with yellow wax, and sent to its destination; and
+of course Mr. Eglantine went himself for the answer in the evening: and
+of course he told the ladies to look out for a certain new coat he was
+going to sport on Sunday; and of course Mr. Walker happens to call the
+next day with spare tickets for Mrs. Crump and her daughter, when the
+whole secret was laid bare to him--how the ladies were going to Richmond
+on Sunday in Mr. Snaffle's clarence, and how Mr. Eglantine was to ride
+by their side.
+
+Mr. Walker did not keep horses of his own; his magnificent friends at
+the “Regent” had plenty in their stables, and some of these were at
+livery at the establishment of the Captain's old “college” companion,
+Mr. Snaffle. It was easy, therefore, for the Captain to renew his
+acquaintance with that individual. So, hanging on the arm of my Lord
+Vauxhall, Captain Walker next day made his appearance at Snaffle's
+livery-stables, and looked at the various horses there for sale or
+at bait, and soon managed, by putting some facetious questions to Mr.
+Snaffle regarding the “Kidney Club,” etc. to place himself on a friendly
+footing with that gentleman, and to learn from him what horse Mr.
+Eglantine was to ride on Sunday.
+
+The monster Walker had fully determined in his mind that Eglantine
+should FALL off that horse in the course of his Sunday's ride.
+
+“That sing'lar hanimal,” said Mr. Snaffle, pointing to the old horse,
+“is the celebrated Hemperor that was the wonder of Hastley's some years
+back, and was parted with by Mr. Ducrow honly because his feelin's
+wouldn't allow him to keep him no longer after the death of the first
+Mrs. D., who invariably rode him. I bought him, thinking that p'raps
+ladies and Cockney bucks might like to ride him (for his haction is
+wonderful, and he canters like a harm-chair); but he's not safe on any
+day except Sundays.”
+
+“And why's that?” asked Captain Walker. “Why is he safer on Sundays than
+other days?”
+
+“BECAUSE THERE'S NO MUSIC in the streets on Sundays. The first gent that
+rode him found himself dancing a quadrille in Hupper Brook Street to
+an 'urdy-gurdy that was playing 'Cherry Ripe,' such is the natur of the
+hanimal. And if you reklect the play of the 'Battle of Hoysterlitz,' in
+which Mrs. D. hacted 'the female hussar,' you may remember how she
+and the horse died in the third act to the toon of 'God preserve the
+Emperor,' from which this horse took his name. Only play that toon to
+him, and he rears hisself up, beats the hair in time with his forelegs,
+and then sinks gently to the ground as though he were carried off by a
+cannon-ball. He served a lady hopposite Hapsley 'Ouse so one day, and
+since then I've never let him out to a friend except on Sunday, when, in
+course, there's no danger. Heglantine IS a friend of mine, and of course
+I wouldn't put the poor fellow on a hanimal I couldn't trust.”
+
+After a little more conversation, my lord and his friend quitted Mr.
+Snaffle's, and as they walked away towards the “Regent,” his Lordship
+might be heard shrieking with laughter, crying, “Capital, by jingo!
+exthlent! Dwive down in the dwag! Take Lungly. Worth a thousand pound,
+by Jove!” and similar ejaculations, indicative of exceeding delight.
+
+On Saturday morning, at ten o'clock to a moment, Mr. Woolsey called at
+Mr. Eglantine's with a yellow handkerchief under his arm. It contained
+the best and handsomest body-coat that ever gentleman put on. It fitted
+Eglantine to a nicety--it did not pinch him in the least, and yet it was
+of so exquisite a cut that the perfumer found, as he gazed delighted
+in the glass, that he looked like a manly portly high-bred gentleman--a
+lieutenant-colonel in the army, at the very least.
+
+“You're a full man, Eglantine,” said the tailor, delighted, too, with
+his own work; “but that can't be helped. You look more like Hercules
+than Falstaff now, sir, and if a coat can make a gentleman, a gentleman
+you are. Let me recommend you to sink the blue cravat, and take the
+stripes off your trousers. Dress quiet, sir; draw it mild. Plain
+waistcoat, dark trousers, black neckcloth, black hat, and if there's a
+better-dressed man in Europe to-morrow, I'm a Dutchman.”
+
+“Thank you, Woolsey--thank you, my dear sir,” said the charmed perfumer.
+“And now I'll just trouble you to try on this here.”
+
+The wig had been made with equal skill; it was not in the florid style
+which Mr. Eglantine loved in his own person, but, as the perfumer said,
+a simple straightforward head of hair. “It seems as if it had grown
+there all your life, Mr. Woolsey; nobody would tell that it was not
+your nat'ral colour” (Mr. Woolsey blushed)--“it makes you look ten year
+younger; and as for that scarecrow yonder, you'll never, I think, want
+to wear that again.”
+
+Woolsey looked in the glass, and was delighted too. The two rivals shook
+hands and straightway became friends, and in the overflowing of his
+heart the perfumer mentioned to the tailor the party which he had
+arranged for the next day, and offered him a seat in the carriage and
+at the dinner at the “Star and Garter.” “Would you like to ride?” said
+Eglantine, with rather a consequential air. “Snaffle will mount you, and
+we can go one on each side of the ladies, if you like.”
+
+But Woolsey humbly said he was not a riding man, and gladly consented to
+take a place in the clarence carriage, provided he was allowed to bear
+half the expenses of the entertainment. This proposal was agreed to by
+Mr. Eglantine, and the two gentlemen parted to meet once more at the
+“Kidneys” that night, when everybody was edified by the friendly tone
+adopted between them.
+
+Mr. Snaffle, at the club meeting, made the very same proposal to Mr.
+Woolsey that the perfumer had made; and stated that as Eglantine was
+going to ride Hemperor, Woolsey, at least, ought to mount too. But he
+was met by the same modest refusal on the tailor's part, who stated that
+he had never mounted a horse yet, and preferred greatly the use of a
+coach.
+
+Eglantine's character as a “swell” rose greatly with the club that
+evening.
+
+Two o'clock on Sunday came: the two beaux arrived punctually at the door
+to receive the two smiling ladies.
+
+“Bless us, Mr. Eglantine!” said Miss Crump, quite struck by him, “I
+never saw you look so handsome in your life.” He could have flung his
+arms around her neck at the compliment. “And law, Ma! what has happened
+to Mr. Woolsey? doesn't he look ten years younger than yesterday?” Mamma
+assented, and Woolsey bowed gallantly, and the two gentlemen exchanged a
+nod of hearty friendship.
+
+The day was delightful. Eglantine pranced along magnificently on his
+cantering armchair, with his hat on one ear, his left hand on his side,
+and his head flung over his shoulder, and throwing under-glances at
+Morgiana whenever the “Emperor” was in advance of the clarence. The
+“Emperor” pricked up his ears a little uneasily passing the Ebenezer
+chapel in Richmond, where the congregation were singing a hymn, but
+beyond this no accident occurred; nor was Mr. Eglantine in the least
+stiff or fatigued by the time the party reached Richmond, where he
+arrived time enough to give his steed into the charge of an ostler, and
+to present his elbow to the ladies as they alighted from the clarence
+carriage.
+
+What this jovial party ate for dinner at the “Star and Garter” need
+not here be set down. If they did not drink champagne I am very much
+mistaken. They were as merry as any four people in Christendom; and
+between the bewildering attentions of the perfumer, and the manly
+courtesy of the tailor, Morgiana very likely forgot the gallant Captain,
+or, at least, was very happy in his absence.
+
+At eight o'clock they began to drive homewards. “WON'T you come into the
+carriage?” said Morgiana to Eglantine, with one of her tenderest looks;
+“Dick can ride the horse.” But Archibald was too great a lover of
+equestrian exercise. “I'm afraid to trust anybody on this horse,” said
+he with a knowing look; and so he pranced away by the side of the little
+carriage. The moon was brilliant, and, with the aid of the gas-lamps,
+illuminated the whole face of the country in a way inexpressibly lovely.
+
+Presently, in the distance, the sweet and plaintive notes of a bugle
+were heard, and the performer, with great delicacy, executed a religious
+air. “Music, too! heavenly!” said Morgiana, throwing up her eyes to the
+stars. The music came nearer and nearer, and the delight of the company
+was only more intense. The fly was going at about four miles an hour,
+and the “Emperor” began cantering to time at the same rapid pace.
+
+“This must be some gallantry of yours, Mr. Woolsey,” said the romantic
+Morgiana, turning upon that gentleman. “Mr. Eglantine treated us to the
+dinner, and you have provided us with the music.”
+
+Now Woolsey had been a little, a very little, dissatisfied during the
+course of the evening's entertainment, by fancying that Eglantine, a
+much more voluble person than himself, had obtained rather an undue
+share of the ladies' favour; and as he himself paid half of the
+expenses, he felt very much vexed to think that the perfumer should take
+all the credit of the business to himself. So when Miss Crump asked if
+he had provided the music, he foolishly made an evasive reply to her
+query, and rather wished her to imagine that he HAD performed that
+piece of gallantry. “If it pleases YOU, Miss Morgiana,” said this artful
+Schneider, “what more need any man ask? wouldn't I have all Drury Lane
+orchestra to please you?”
+
+The bugle had by this time arrived quite close to the clarence carriage,
+and if Morgiana had looked round she might have seen whence the music
+came. Behind her came slowly a drag, or private stage-coach, with
+four horses. Two grooms with cockades and folded arms were behind;
+and driving on the box, a little gentleman, with a blue bird's-eye
+neckcloth, and a white coat. A bugleman was by his side, who performed
+the melodies which so delighted Miss Crump. He played very gently and
+sweetly, and “God save the King” trembled so softly out of the brazen
+orifice of his bugle, that the Crumps, the tailor, and Eglantine
+himself, who was riding close by the carriage, were quite charmed and
+subdued.
+
+“Thank you, DEAR Mr. Woolsey,” said the grateful Morgiana; which made
+Eglantine stare, and Woolsey was just saying, “Really, upon my word,
+I've nothing to do with it,” when the man on the drag-box said to the
+bugleman, “Now!”
+
+The bugleman began the tune of--
+
+     “Heaven preserve our Emperor Fra-an-cis,
+      Rum tum-ti-tum-ti-titty-ti.”
+
+At the sound, the “Emperor” reared himself (with a roar from Mr.
+Eglantine)--reared and beat the air with his fore-paws. Eglantine flung
+his arms round the beast's neck; still he kept beating time with
+his fore-paws. Mrs. Crump screamed: Mr. Woolsey, Dick, the clarence
+coachman, Lord Vauxhall (for it was he), and his Lordship's two grooms,
+burst into a shout of laughter; Morgiana cries “Mercy! mercy!” Eglantine
+yells “Stop!”--“Wo!”--“Oh!” and a thousand ejaculations of hideous
+terror; until, at last, down drops the “Emperor” stone dead in the
+middle of the road, as if carried off by a cannon-ball.
+
+Fancy the situation, ye callous souls who laugh at the misery of
+humanity, fancy the situation of poor Eglantine under the “Emperor”! He
+had fallen very easy, the animal lay perfectly quiet, and the perfumer
+was to all intents and purposes as dead as the animal. He had not
+fainted, but he was immovable with terror; he lay in a puddle, and
+thought it was his own blood gushing from him; and he would have lain
+there until Monday morning, if my Lord's grooms, descending, had not
+dragged him by the coat-collar from under the beast, who still lay
+quiet.
+
+“Play 'Charming Judy Callaghan,' will ye?” says Mr. Snaffle's man,
+the fly-driver; on which the bugler performed that lively air, and up
+started the horse, and the grooms, who were rubbing Mr. Eglantine down
+against a lamp-post, invited him to remount.
+
+But his heart was too broken for that. The ladies gladly made room for
+him in the clarence. Dick mounted “Emperor” and rode homewards. The
+drag, too, drove away, playing “Oh dear, what can the matter be?” and
+with a scowl of furious hate, Mr. Eglantine sat and regarded his rival.
+His pantaloons were split, and his coat torn up the back.
+
+“Are you hurt much, dear Mr. Archibald?” said Morgiana, with unaffected
+compassion.
+
+“N-not much,” said the poor fellow, ready to burst into tears.
+
+“Oh, Mr. Woolsey,” added the good-natured girl, “how could you play such
+a trick?”
+
+“Upon my word,” Woolsey began, intending to plead innocence; but the
+ludicrousness of the situation was once more too much for him, and he
+burst out into a roar of laughter.
+
+“You! you cowardly beast!” howled out Eglantine, now driven to
+fury--“YOU laugh at me, you miserable cretur! Take THAT, sir!” and he
+fell upon him with all his might, and well-nigh throttled the tailor,
+and pummelling his eyes, his nose, his ears, with inconceivable
+rapidity, wrenched, finally, his wig off his head, and flung it into the
+road.
+
+Morgiana saw that Woolsey had red hair. [2]
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV. IN WHICH THE HEROINE HAS A NUMBER MORE LOVERS, AND CUTS A
+VERY DASHING FIGURE IN THE WORLD.
+
+Two years have elapsed since the festival at Richmond, which, begun so
+peaceably, ended in such general uproar. Morgiana never could be brought
+to pardon Woolsey's red hair, nor to help laughing at Eglantine's
+disasters, nor could the two gentlemen be reconciled to one another.
+Woolsey, indeed, sent a challenge to the perfumer to meet him with
+pistols, which the latter declined, saying, justly, that tradesmen had
+no business with such weapons; on this the tailor proposed to meet
+him with coats off, and have it out like men, in the presence of their
+friends of the “Kidney Club”. The perfumer said he would be party to no
+such vulgar transaction; on which, Woolsey, exasperated, made an oath
+that he would tweak the perfumer's nose so surely as he ever entered the
+club-room; and thus ONE member of the “Kidneys” was compelled to vacate
+his armchair.
+
+Woolsey himself attended every meeting regularly, but he did not evince
+that gaiety and good-humour which render men's company agreeable in
+clubs. On arriving, he would order the boy to “tell him when that
+scoundrel Eglantine came;” and, hanging up his hat on a peg, would scowl
+round the room, and tuck up his sleeves very high, and stretch, and
+shake his fingers and wrists, as if getting them ready for that pull
+of the nose which he intended to bestow upon his rival. So prepared, he
+would sit down and smoke his pipe quite silently, glaring at all, and
+jumping up, and hitching up his coat-sleeves, when anyone entered the
+room.
+
+The “Kidneys” did not like this behaviour. Clinker ceased to come.
+Bustard, the poulterer, ceased to come. As for Snaffle, he also
+disappeared, for Woolsey wished to make him answerable for the
+misbehaviour of Eglantine, and proposed to him the duel which the latter
+had declined. So Snaffle went. Presently they all went, except the
+tailor and Tressle, who lived down the street, and these two would
+sit and pug their tobacco, one on each side of Crump, the landlord, as
+silent as Indian chiefs in a wigwam. There grew to be more and more room
+for poor old Crump in his chair and in his clothes; the “Kidneys” were
+gone, and why should he remain? One Saturday he did not come down to
+preside at the club (as he still fondly called it), and the Saturday
+following Tressle had made a coffin for him; and Woolsey, with the
+undertaker by his side, followed to the grave the father of the
+“Kidneys.”
+
+Mrs. Crump was now alone in the world. “How alone?” says some innocent
+and respected reader. Ah! my dear sir, do you know so little of human
+nature as not to be aware that, one week after the Richmond affair,
+Morgiana married Captain Walker? That did she privately, of course; and,
+after the ceremony, came tripping back to her parents, as young people
+do in plays, and said, “Forgive me, dear Pa and Ma, I'm married, and
+here is my husband the Captain!” Papa and mamma did forgive her, as why
+shouldn't they? and papa paid over her fortune to her, which she carried
+home delighted to the Captain. This happened several months before the
+demise of old Crump; and Mrs. Captain Walker was on the Continent with
+her Howard when that melancholy event took place; hence Mrs. Crump's
+loneliness and unprotected condition. Morgiana had not latterly seen
+much of the old people; how could she, moving in her exalted sphere,
+receive at her genteel new residence in the Edgware Road the old
+publican and his wife?
+
+Being, then, alone in the world, Mrs. Crump could not abear, she said,
+to live in the house where she had been so respected and happy: so she
+sold the goodwill of the “Bootjack,” and, with the money arising from
+this sale and her own private fortune, being able to muster some sixty
+pounds per annum, retired to the neighbourhood of her dear old “Sadler's
+Wells,” where she boarded with one of Mrs. Serle's forty pupils. Her
+heart was broken, she said; but, nevertheless, about nine months after
+Mr. Crump's death, the wallflowers, nasturtiums, polyanthuses, and
+convolvuluses began to blossom under her bonnet as usual; in a year she
+was dressed quite as fine as ever, and now never missed “The Wells,” or
+some other place of entertainment, one single night, but was as regular
+as the box-keeper. Nay, she was a buxom widow still, and an old flame of
+hers, Fisk, so celebrated as pantaloon in Grimaldi's time, but now doing
+the “heavy fathers” at “The Wells,” proposed to her to exchange her name
+for his.
+
+But this proposal the worthy widow declined altogether. To say truth,
+she was exceedingly proud of her daughter, Mrs. Captain Walker. They
+did not see each other much at first; but every now and then Mrs. Crump
+would pay a visit to the folks in Connaught Square; and on the days when
+“the Captain's” lady called in the City Road, there was not a single
+official at “The Wells,” from the first tragedian down to the call-boy,
+who was not made aware of the fact.
+
+It has been said that Morgiana carried home her fortune in her own
+reticule, and, smiling, placed the money in her husband's lap; and hence
+the reader may imagine, who knows Mr. Walker to be an extremely selfish
+fellow, that a great scene of anger must have taken place, and many
+coarse oaths and epithets of abuse must have come from him, when he
+found that five hundred pounds was all that his wife had, although he
+had expected five thousand with her. But, to say the truth, Walker was
+at this time almost in love with his handsome rosy good-humoured simple
+wife. They had made a fortnight's tour, during which they had been
+exceedingly happy; and there was something so frank and touching in the
+way in which the kind creature flung her all into his lap, saluting
+him with a hearty embrace at the same time, and wishing that it were a
+thousand billion billion times more, so that her darling Howard might
+enjoy it, that the man would have been a ruffian indeed could he have
+found it in his heart to be angry with her; and so he kissed her in
+return, and patted her on the shining ringlets, and then counted over
+the notes with rather a disconsolate air, and ended by locking them up
+in his portfolio. In fact, SHE had never deceived him; Eglantine
+had, and he in return had out-tricked Eglantine and so warm were his
+affections for Morgiana at this time that, upon my word and honour, I
+don't think he repented of his bargain. Besides, five hundred pounds in
+crisp bank-notes was a sum of money such as the Captain was not in the
+habit of handling every day; a dashing sanguine fellow, he fancied there
+was no end to it, and already thought of a dozen ways by which it should
+increase and multiply into a plum. Woe is me! Has not many a simple soul
+examined five new hundred-pound notes in this way, and calculated their
+powers of duration and multiplication?
+
+This subject, however, is too painful to be dwelt on. Let us hear what
+Walker did with his money. Why, he furnished the house in the Edgware
+Road before mentioned, he ordered a handsome service of plate, he
+sported a phaeton and two ponies, he kept a couple of smart maids and
+a groom foot-boy--in fact, he mounted just such a neat unpretending
+gentleman-like establishment as becomes a respectable young couple on
+their outset in life. “I've sown my wild oats,” he would say to his
+acquaintances; “a few years since, perhaps, I would have longed to cut
+a dash, but now prudence is the word; and I've settled every farthing of
+Mrs. Walker's fifteen thousand on herself.” And the best proof that the
+world had confidence in him is the fact, that for the articles of plate,
+equipage, and furniture, which have been mentioned as being in his
+possession, he did not pay one single shilling; and so prudent was he,
+that but for turnpikes, postage-stamps, and king's taxes, he hardly had
+occasion to change a five-pound note of his wife's fortune.
+
+To tell the truth, Mr. Walker had determined to make his fortune. And
+what is easier in London? Is not the share-market open to all? Do
+not Spanish and Columbian bonds rise and fall? For what are companies
+invented, but to place thousands in the pockets of shareholders and
+directors? Into these commercial pursuits the gallant Captain now
+plunged with great energy, and made some brilliant hits at first
+starting, and bought and sold so opportunely, that his name began to
+rise in the City as a capitalist, and might be seen in the printed list
+of directors of many excellent and philanthropic schemes, of which there
+is never any lack in London. Business to the amount of thousands was
+done at his agency; shares of vast value were bought and sold under his
+management. How poor Mr. Eglantine used to hate him and envy him, as
+from the door of his emporium (the firm was Eglantine and Mossrose now)
+he saw the Captain daily arrive in his pony-phaeton, and heard of the
+start he had taken in life.
+
+The only regret Mrs. Walker had was that she did not enjoy enough of her
+husband's society. His business called him away all day; his business,
+too, obliged him to leave her of evenings very frequently alone; whilst
+he (always in pursuit of business) was dining with his great friends at
+the club, and drinking claret and champagne to the same end.
+
+She was a perfectly good-natured and simple soul, never made him a
+single reproach; but when he could pass an evening at home with her
+she was delighted, and when he could drive with her in the Park she was
+happy for a week after. On these occasions, and in the fulness of her
+heart, she would drive to her mother and tell her story. “Howard drove
+with me in the Park yesterday, Mamma;” and “Howard has promised to
+take me to the Opera,” and so forth. And that evening the manager, Mr.
+Gawler, the first tragedian, Mrs. Serle and her forty pupils, all the
+box-keepers, bonnet-women--nay, the ginger-beer girls themselves at “The
+Wells,” knew that Captain and Mrs. Walker were at Kensington Gardens,
+or were to have the Marchioness of Billingsgate's box at the Opera. One
+night--O joy of joys!--Mrs. Captain Walker appeared in a private box
+at “The Wells.” That's she with the black ringlets and Cashmere shawl,
+smelling-bottle, and black-velvet gown, and bird of paradise in her hat.
+Goodness gracious! how they all acted at her, Gawler and all, and how
+happy Mrs. Crump was! She kissed her daughter between all the acts, she
+nodded to all her friends on the stage, in the slips, or in the
+real water; she introduced her daughter, Mrs. Captain Walker, to the
+box-opener; and Melvil Delamere (the first comic), Canterfield (the
+tyrant), and Jonesini (the celebrated Fontarabian Statuesque), were all
+on the steps, and shouted for Mrs. Captain Walker's carriage, and waved
+their hats, and bowed as the little pony-phaeton drove away. Walker, in
+his moustaches, had come in at the end of the play, and was not a little
+gratified by the compliments paid to himself and lady.
+
+Among the other articles of luxury with which the Captain furnished
+his house we must not omit to mention an extremely grand piano, which
+occupied four-fifths of Mrs. Walker's little back drawing-room, and at
+which she was in the habit of practising continually. All day and all
+night during Walker's absences (and these occurred all night and all
+day), you might hear--the whole street might hear--the voice of the lady
+at No. 23, gurgling, and shaking, and quavering, as ladies do when they
+practise. The street did not approve of the continuance of the noise;
+but neighbours are difficult to please, and what would Morgiana have had
+to do if she had ceased to sing? It would be hard to lock a blackbird in
+a cage and prevent him from singing too. And so Walker's blackbird, in
+the snug little cage in the Edgware Road, sang and was not unhappy.
+
+After the pair had been married for about a year, the omnibus that
+passes both by Mrs. Crump's house near “The Wells,” and by Mrs. Walker's
+street off the Edgware Road, brought up the former-named lady almost
+every day to her daughter. She came when the Captain had gone to his
+business; she stayed to a two-o'clock dinner with Morgiana; she drove
+with her in the pony-carriage round the Park; but she never stopped
+later than six. Had she not to go to the play at seven? And, besides,
+the Captain might come home with some of his great friends, and he
+always swore and grumbled much if he found his mother-in-law on the
+premises. As for Morgiana, she was one of those women who encourage
+despotism in husbands. What the husband says must be right, because he
+says it; what he orders must be obeyed tremblingly. Mrs. Walker gave up
+her entire reason to her lord. Why was it? Before marriage she had been
+an independent little person; she had far more brains than her Howard.
+I think it must have been his moustaches that frightened her, and caused
+in her this humility.
+
+Selfish husbands have this advantage in maintaining with easy-minded
+wives a rigid and inflexible behaviour, viz. that if they DO by any
+chance grant a little favour, the ladies receive it with such transports
+of gratitude as they would never think of showing to a lord and master
+who was accustomed to give them everything they asked for; and hence,
+when Captain Walker signified his assent to his wife's prayer that she
+should take a singing-master, she thought his generosity almost divine,
+and fell upon her mamma's neck, when that lady came the next day, and
+said what a dear adorable angel her Howard was, and what ought she not
+to do for a man who had taken her from her humble situation, and raised
+her to be what she was! What she was, poor soul! She was the wife of a
+swindling parvenu gentleman. She received visits from six ladies of her
+husband's acquaintances--two attorneys' ladies, his bill-broker's lady,
+and one or two more, of whose characters we had best, if you please,
+say nothing; and she thought it an honour to be so distinguished: as
+if Walker had been a Lord Exeter to marry a humble maiden, or a noble
+prince to fall in love with a humble Cinderella, or a majestic Jove
+to come down from heaven and woo a Semele. Look through the world,
+respectable reader, and among your honourable acquaintances, and say if
+this sort of faith in women is not very frequent? They WILL believe in
+their husbands, whatever the latter do. Let John be dull, ugly, vulgar,
+and a humbug, his Mary Ann never finds it out; let him tell his stories
+ever so many times, there is she always ready with her kind smile; let
+him be stingy, she says he is prudent; let him quarrel with his best
+friend, she says he is always in the right; let him be prodigal, she
+says he is generous, and that his health requires enjoyment; let him
+be idle, he must have relaxation; and she will pinch herself and
+her household that he may have a guinea for his club. Yes; and every
+morning, as she wakes and looks at the face, snoring on the pillow by
+her side--every morning, I say, she blesses that dull ugly countenance,
+and the dull ugly soul reposing there, and thinks both are something
+divine. I want to know how it is that women do not find out their
+husbands to be humbugs? Nature has so provided it, and thanks to her.
+When last year they were acting the “Midsummer Night's Dream,” and all
+the boxes began to roar with great coarse heehaws at Titania hugging
+Bottom's long long ears--to me, considering these things, it seemed that
+there were a hundred other male brutes squatted round about, and treated
+just as reasonably as Bottom was. Their Titanias lulled them to sleep
+in their laps, summoned a hundred smiling delicate household fairies to
+tickle their gross intellects and minister to their vulgar pleasures;
+and (as the above remarks are only supposed to apply to honest women
+loving their own lawful spouses) a mercy it is that no wicked Puck is
+in the way to open their eyes, and point out their folly. Cui bono? let
+them live on in their deceit: I know two lovely ladies who will read
+this, and will say it is just very likely, and not see in the least,
+that it has been written regarding THEM.
+
+Another point of sentiment, and one curious to speculate on. Have
+you not remarked the immense works of art that women get through? The
+worsted-work sofas, the counterpanes patched or knitted (but these are
+among the old-fashioned in the country), the bushels of pincushions,
+the albums they laboriously fill, the tremendous pieces of music they
+practise, the thousand other fiddle-faddles which occupy the attention
+of the dear souls--nay, have we not seen them seated of evenings in a
+squad or company, Louisa employed at the worsted-work before mentioned,
+Eliza at the pincushions, Amelia at card-racks or filagree matches, and,
+in the midst, Theodosia with one of the candles, reading out a novel
+aloud? Ah! my dear sir, mortal creatures must be very hard put to it for
+amusement, be sure of that, when they are forced to gather together in
+a company and hear novels read aloud! They only do it because they can't
+help it, depend upon it: it is a sad life, a poor pastime. Mr. Dickens,
+in his American book, tells of the prisoners at the silent prison,
+how they had ornamented their rooms, some of them with a frightful
+prettiness and elaboration. Women's fancy-work is of this
+sort often--only prison work, done because there was no other
+exercising-ground for their poor little thoughts and fingers; and hence
+these wonderful pincushions are executed, these counterpanes woven,
+these sonatas learned. By everything sentimental, when I see two kind
+innocent fresh-cheeked young women go to a piano, and sit down opposite
+to it upon two chairs piled with more or less music-books (according to
+their convenience), and, so seated, go through a set of double-barrelled
+variations upon this or that tune by Herz or Kalkbrenner--I say, far
+from receiving any satisfaction at the noise made by the performance,
+my too susceptible heart is given up entirely to bleeding for the
+performers. What hours, and weeks, nay, preparatory years of study, has
+that infernal jig cost them! What sums has papa paid, what scoldings has
+mamma administered (“Lady Bullblock does not play herself;” Sir Thomas
+says, “but she has naturally the finest ear for music ever known!”);
+what evidences of slavery, in a word, are there! It is the condition
+of the young lady's existence. She breakfasts at eight, she does
+“Mangnall's Questions” with the governess till ten, she practises till
+one, she walks in the square with bars round her till two, then she
+practises again, then she sews or hems, or reads French, or Hume's
+“History,” then she comes down to play to papa, because he likes music
+whilst he is asleep after dinner, and then it is bed-time, and the
+morrow is another day with what are called the same “duties” to be gone
+through. A friend of mine went to call at a nobleman's house the other
+day, and one of the young ladies of the house came into the room with a
+tray on her head; this tray was to give Lady Maria a graceful carriage.
+Mon Dieu! and who knows but at that moment Lady Bell was at work with
+a pair of her dumb namesakes, and Lady Sophy lying flat on a
+stretching-board? I could write whole articles on this theme but peace!
+we are keeping Mrs. Walker waiting all the while.
+
+Well, then, if the above disquisitions have anything to do with the
+story, as no doubt they have, I wish it to be understood that, during
+her husband's absence, and her own solitary confinement, Mrs. Howard
+Walker bestowed a prodigious quantity of her time and energy on the
+cultivation of her musical talent; and having, as before stated, a very
+fine loud voice, speedily attained no ordinary skill in the use of it.
+She first had for teacher little Podmore, the fat chorus-master at “The
+Wells,” and who had taught her mother the “Tink-a-tink” song which has
+been such a favourite since it first appeared. He grounded her well, and
+bade her eschew the singing of all those “Eagle Tavern” ballads in which
+her heart formerly delighted; and when he had brought her to a certain
+point of skill, the honest little chorus-master said she should have a
+still better instructor, and wrote a note to Captain Walker (enclosing
+his own little account), speaking in terms of the most flattering
+encomium of his lady's progress, and recommending that she should take
+lessons of the celebrated Baroski. Captain Walker dismissed Podmore
+then, and engaged Signor Baroski, at a vast expense; as he did not fail
+to tell his wife. In fact, he owed Baroski no less than two hundred and
+twenty guineas when he was--But we are advancing matters.
+
+Little Baroski is the author of the opera of “Eliogabalo,” of the
+oratorio of “Purgatorio,” which made such an immense sensation, of songs
+and ballet-musics innumerable. He is a German by birth, and shows such
+an outrageous partiality for pork and sausages, and attends at church so
+constantly, that I am sure there cannot be any foundation in the story
+that he is a member of the ancient religion. He is a fat little man,
+with a hooked nose and jetty whiskers, and coal-black shining eyes, and
+plenty of rings and jewels on his fingers and about his person, and a
+very considerable portion of his shirtsleeves turned over his coat to
+take the air. His great hands (which can sprawl over half a piano, and
+produce those effects on the instrument for which he is celebrated) are
+encased in lemon-coloured kids, new, or cleaned daily. Parenthetically,
+let us ask why so many men, with coarse red wrists and big hands,
+persist in the white kid glove and wristband system? Baroski's gloves
+alone must cost him a little fortune; only he says with a leer, when
+asked the question, “Get along vid you; don't you know dere is a
+gloveress that lets me have dem very sheap?” He rides in the Park; has
+splendid lodgings in Dover Street; and is a member of the “Regent Club,”
+ where he is a great source of amusement to the members, to whom he tells
+astonishing stories of his successes with the ladies, and for whom he
+has always play and opera tickets in store. His eye glistens and his
+little heart beats when a lord speaks to him; and he has been known to
+spend large sums of money in giving treats to young sprigs of fashion at
+Richmond and elsewhere. “In my bolyticks,” he says, “I am consarevatiff
+to de bag-bone.” In fine, he is a puppy, and withal a man of
+considerable genius in his profession.
+
+This gentleman, then, undertook to complete the musical education
+of Mrs. Walker. He expressed himself at once “enshanted vid her
+gababilities,” found that the extent of her voice was “brodigious,” and
+guaranteed that she should become a first-rate singer. The pupil was
+apt, the master was exceedingly skilful; and, accordingly, Mrs. Walker's
+progress was very remarkable: although, for her part, honest Mrs. Crump,
+who used to attend her daughter's lessons, would grumble not a little at
+the new system, and the endless exercises which she, Morgiana, was made
+to go through. It was very different in HER time, she said. Incledon
+knew no music, and who could sing so well now? Give her a good English
+ballad: it was a thousand times sweeter than your “Figaros” and
+“Semiramides.”
+
+In spite of these objections, however, and with amazing perseverance and
+cheerfulness, Mrs. Walker pursued the method of study pointed out to her
+by her master. As soon as her husband went to the City in the morning
+her operations began; if he remained away at dinner, her labours still
+continued: nor is it necessary for me to particularise her course of
+study, nor, indeed, possible; for, between ourselves, none of the
+male Fitz-Boodles ever could sing a note, and the jargon of scales and
+solfeggios is quite unknown to me. But as no man can have seen persons
+addicted to music without remarking the prodigious energies they display
+in the pursuit, as there is no father of daughters, however ignorant,
+but is aware of the piano-rattling and voice-exercising which go on in
+his house from morning till night, so let all fancy, without further
+inquiry, how the heroine of our story was at this stage of her existence
+occupied.
+
+Walker was delighted with her progress, and did everything but pay
+Baroski, her instructor. We know why he didn't pay. It was his nature
+not to pay bills, except on extreme compulsion; but why did not Baroski
+employ that extreme compulsion? Because, if he had received his money,
+he would have lost his pupil, and because he loved his pupil more than
+money. Rather than lose her, he would have given her a guinea as well
+as her cachet. He would sometimes disappoint a great personage, but he
+never missed his attendance on HER; and the truth must out, that he was
+in love with her, as Woolsey and Eglantine had been before.
+
+“By the immortel Chofe!” he would say, “dat letell ding sents me mad vid
+her big ice! But only vait avile: in six veeks I can bring any voman
+in England on her knees to me and you shall see vat I vill do vid my
+Morgiana.” He attended her for six weeks punctually, and yet Morgiana
+was never brought down on her knees; he exhausted his best stock of
+“gomblimends,” and she never seemed disposed to receive them with
+anything but laughter. And, as a matter of course, he only grew more
+infatuated with the lovely creature who was so provokingly good-humoured
+and so laughingly cruel.
+
+Benjamin Baroski was one of the chief ornaments of the musical
+profession in London; he charged a guinea for a lesson of three-quarters
+of an hour abroad, and he had, furthermore, a school at his own
+residence, where pupils assembled in considerable numbers, and of that
+curious mixed kind which those may see who frequent these places of
+instruction. There were very innocent young ladies with their mammas,
+who would hurry them off trembling to the farther corner of the room
+when certain doubtful professional characters made their appearance.
+There was Miss Grigg, who sang at the “Foundling,” and Mr. Johnson,
+who sang at the “Eagle Tavern,” and Madame Fioravanti (a very doubtful
+character), who sang nowhere, but was always coming out at the Italian
+Opera. There was Lumley Limpiter (Lord Tweedledale's son), one of the
+most accomplished tenors in town, and who, we have heard, sings with
+the professionals at a hundred concerts; and with him, too, was Captain
+Guzzard, of the Guards, with his tremendous bass voice, which all the
+world declared to be as fine as Porto's, and who shared the applause of
+Baroski's school with Mr. Bulger, the dentist of Sackville Street, who
+neglected his ivory and gold plates for his voice, as every unfortunate
+individual will do who is bitten by the music mania. Then among
+the ladies there were a half-score of dubious pale governesses and
+professionals with turned frocks and lank damp bandeaux of hair under
+shabby little bonnets; luckless creatures these, who were parting with
+their poor little store of half-guineas to be enabled to say they were
+pupils of Signor Baroski, and so get pupils of their own among the
+British youths, or employment in the choruses of the theatres.
+
+The prima donna of the little company was Amelia Larkins, Baroski's own
+articled pupil, on whose future reputation the eminent master staked his
+own, whose profits he was to share, and whom he had farmed, to this end,
+from her father, a most respectable sheriff's officer's assistant, and
+now, by his daughter's exertions, a considerable capitalist. Amelia is
+blonde and blue-eyed, her complexion is as bright as snow, her ringlets
+of the colour of straw, her figure--but why describe her figure? Has not
+all the world seen her at the Theatres Royal and in America under the
+name of Miss Ligonier?
+
+Until Mrs. Walker arrived, Miss Larkins was the undisputed princess of
+the Baroski company--the Semiramide, the Rosina, the Tamina, the Donna
+Anna. Baroski vaunted her everywhere as the great rising genius of the
+day, bade Catalani look to her laurels, and questioned whether Miss
+Stephens could sing a ballad like his pupil. Mrs. Howard Walker arrived,
+and created, on the first occasion, no small sensation. She improved,
+and the little society became speedily divided into Walkerites and
+Larkinsians; and between these two ladies (as indeed between Guzzard and
+Bulger before mentioned, between Miss Brunck and Miss Horsman, the two
+contraltos, and between the chorus-singers, after their kind) a great
+rivalry arose. Larkins was certainly the better singer; but could
+her straw-coloured curls and dumpy high-shouldered figure bear any
+comparison with the jetty ringlets and stately form of Morgiana? Did not
+Mrs. Walker, too, come to the music-lesson in her carriage, and with a
+black velvet gown and Cashmere shawl, while poor Larkins meekly stepped
+from Bell Yard, Temple Bar, in an old print gown and clogs, which she
+left in the hall? “Larkins sing!” said Mrs. Crump, sarcastically; “I'm
+sure she ought; her mouth's big enough to sing a duet.” Poor Larkins had
+no one to make epigrams in her behoof; her mother was at home tending
+the younger ones, her father abroad following the duties of his
+profession; she had but one protector, as she thought, and that one
+was Baroski. Mrs. Crump did not fail to tell Lumley Limpiter of her own
+former triumphs, and to sing him “Tink-a-tink,” which we have previously
+heard, and to state how in former days she had been called the
+Ravenswing. And Lumley, on this hint, made a poem, in which he compared
+Morgiana's hair to the plumage of the Raven's wing, and Larkinissa's to
+that of the canary; by which two names the ladies began soon to be known
+in the school.
+
+Ere long the flight of the Ravenswing became evidently stronger, whereas
+that of the canary was seen evidently to droop. When Morgiana sang, all
+the room would cry “Bravo!” when Amelia performed, scarce a hand
+was raised for applause of her, except Morgiana's own, and that the
+Larkinses thought was lifted in odious triumph, rather than in sympathy,
+for Miss L. was of an envious turn, and little understood the generosity
+of her rival.
+
+At last, one day, the crowning victory of the Ravenswing came. In the
+trio of Baroski's own opera of “Eliogabalo,” “Rosy lips and rosy wine,”
+ Miss Larkins, who was evidently unwell, was taking the part of the
+English captive, which she had sung in public concerts before royal
+dukes, and with considerable applause, and, from some reason, performed
+it so ill, that Baroski, slapping down the music on the piano in a fury,
+cried, “Mrs. Howard Walker, as Miss Larkins cannot sing to-day, will
+you favour us by taking the part of Boadicetta?” Mrs. Walker got up
+smilingly to obey--the triumph was too great to be withstood; and, as
+she advanced to the piano, Miss Larkins looked wildly at her, and stood
+silent for a while, and, at last, shrieked out, “BENJAMIN!” in a tone of
+extreme agony, and dropped fainting down on the ground. Benjamin looked
+extremely red, it must be confessed, at being thus called by what
+we shall denominate his Christian name, and Limpiter looked round at
+Guzzard, and Miss Brunck nudged Miss Horsman, and the lesson concluded
+rather abruptly that day; for Miss Larkins was carried off to the next
+room, laid on a couch, and sprinkled with water.
+
+Good-natured Morgiana insisted that her mother should take Miss Larkins
+to Bell Yard in her carriage, and went herself home on foot; but I don't
+know that this piece of kindness prevented Larkins from hating her. I
+should doubt if it did.
+
+Hearing so much of his wife's skill as a singer, the astute Captain
+Walker determined to take advantage of it for the purpose of increasing
+his “connection.” He had Lumley Limpiter at his house before long, which
+was, indeed, no great matter, for honest Lum would go anywhere for a
+good dinner--and an opportunity to show off his voice afterwards,
+and Lumley was begged to bring any more clerks in the Treasury of his
+acquaintance; Captain Guzzard was invited, and any officers of the
+Guards whom he might choose to bring; Bulger received occasional
+cards:--in a word, and after a short time, Mrs. Howard Walker's
+musical parties began to be considerably suivies. Her husband had the
+satisfaction to see his rooms filled by many great personages; and once
+or twice in return (indeed, whenever she was wanted, or when people
+could not afford to hire the first singers) she was asked to parties
+elsewhere, and treated with that killing civility which our English
+aristocracy knows how to bestow on artists. Clever and wise aristocracy!
+It is sweet to mark your ways, and study your commerce with inferior
+men.
+
+I was just going to commence a tirade regarding the aristocracy
+here, and to rage against that cool assumption of superiority which
+distinguishes their lordships' commerce with artists of all sorts: that
+politeness which, if it condescends to receive artists at all, takes
+care to have them altogether, so that there can be no mistake about
+their rank--that august patronage of art which rewards it with a silly
+flourish of knighthood, to be sure, but takes care to exclude it from
+any contact with its betters in society--I was, I say, just going to
+commence a tirade against the aristocracy for excluding artists from
+their company, and to be extremely satirical upon them, for instance,
+for not receiving my friend Morgiana, when it suddenly came into my head
+to ask, was Mrs. Walker fit to move in the best society?--to which query
+it must humbly be replied that she was not. Her education was not such
+as to make her quite the equal of Baker Street. She was a kind honest
+and clever creature; but, it must be confessed, not refined. Wherever
+she went she had, if not the finest, at any rate the most showy gown
+in the room; her ornaments were the biggest; her hats, toques, berets,
+marabouts, and other fallals, always the most conspicuous. She drops
+“h's” here and there. I have seen her eat peas with a knife (and Walker,
+scowling on the opposite side of the table, striving in vain to catch
+her eye); and I shall never forget Lady Smigsmag's horror when she
+asked for porter at dinner at Richmond, and began to drink it out of the
+pewter pot. It was a fine sight. She lifted up the tankard with one of
+the finest arms, covered with the biggest bracelets ever seen; and had
+a bird of paradise on her head, that curled round the pewter disc of the
+pot as she raised it, like a halo. These peculiarities she had, and has
+still. She is best away from the genteel world, that is the fact. When
+she says that “The weather is so 'ot that it is quite debiliating;” when
+she laughs, when she hits her neighbour at dinner on the side of the
+waistcoat (as she will if he should say anything that amuses her), she
+does what is perfectly natural and unaffected on her part, but what
+is not customarily done among polite persons, who can sneer at her
+odd manners and her vanity, but don't know the kindness, honesty, and
+simplicity which distinguish her. This point being admitted, it follows,
+of course, that the tirade against the aristocracy would, in the present
+instance, be out of place--so it shall be reserved for some other
+occasion.
+
+The Ravenswing was a person admirably disposed by nature to be happy.
+She had a disposition so kindly that any small attention would satisfy
+it; was pleased when alone; was delighted in a crowd; was charmed with
+a joke, however old; was always ready to laugh, to sing, to dance, or to
+be merry; was so tender-hearted that the smallest ballad would make her
+cry: and hence was supposed, by many persons, to be extremely affected,
+and by almost all to be a downright coquette. Several competitors for
+her favour presented themselves besides Baroski. Young dandies used to
+canter round her phaeton in the park, and might be seen haunting her
+doors in the mornings. The fashionable artist of the day made a drawing
+of her, which was engraved and sold in the shops; a copy of it was
+printed in a song, “Black-eyed Maiden of Araby,” the words by Desmond
+Mulligan, Esquire, the music composed and dedicated to MRS. HOWARD
+WALKER, by her most faithful and obliged servant, Benjamin Baroski; and
+at night her Opera-box was full. Her Opera-box? Yes, the heiress of the
+“Bootjack” actually had an Opera-box, and some of the most fashionable
+manhood of London attended it.
+
+Now, in fact, was the time of her greatest prosperity; and her husband
+gathering these fashionable characters about him, extended his “agency”
+ considerably, and began to thank his stars that he had married a woman
+who was as good as a fortune to him.
+
+In extending his agency, however, Mr. Walker increased his expenses
+proportionably, and multiplied his debts accordingly. More furniture and
+more plate, more wines and more dinner-parties, became necessary; the
+little pony-phaeton was exchanged for a brougham of evenings; and we may
+fancy our old friend Mr. Eglantine's rage and disgust, as he looked from
+the pit of the Opera, to see Mrs. Walker surrounded by what he called
+“the swell young nobs” about London, bowing to my Lord, and laughing
+with his Grace, and led to carriage by Sir John.
+
+The Ravenswing's position at this period was rather an exceptional
+one. She was an honest woman, visited by that peculiar class of our
+aristocracy who chiefly associate with ladies who are NOT honest. She
+laughed with all, but she encouraged none. Old Crump was constantly at
+her side now when she appeared in public, the most watchful of mammas,
+always awake at the Opera, though she seemed to be always asleep; but no
+dandy debauchee could deceive her vigilance, and for this reason Walker,
+who disliked her (as every man naturally will, must, and should dislike
+his mother-in-law), was contented to suffer her in his house to act as a
+chaperon to Morgiana.
+
+None of the young dandies ever got admission of mornings to the little
+mansion in the Edgware Road; the blinds were always down; and though you
+might hear Morgiana's voice half across the Park as she was practising,
+yet the youthful hall-porter in the sugar-loaf buttons was instructed to
+deny her, and always declared that his mistress was gone out, with the
+most admirable assurance.
+
+After some two years of her life of splendour, there were, to be sure, a
+good number of morning visitors, who came with SINGLE knocks, and asked
+for Captain Walker; but these were no more admitted than the dandies
+aforesaid, and were referred, generally, to the Captain's office,
+whither they went or not at their convenience. The only man who obtained
+admission into the house was Baroski, whose cab transported him thrice
+a week to the neighbourhood of Connaught Square, and who obtained ready
+entrance in his professional capacity.
+
+But even then, and much to the wicked little music-master's
+disappointment, the dragon Crump was always at the piano, with her
+endless worsted work, or else reading her unfailing Sunday Times; and
+Baroski could only employ “de langvitch of de ice,” as he called it,
+with his fair pupil, who used to mimic his manner of rolling his eyes
+about afterwards, and perform “Baroski in love” for the amusement of her
+husband and her mamma. The former had his reasons for overlooking the
+attentions of the little music-master; and as for the latter, had she
+not been on the stage, and had not many hundreds of persons, in jest or
+earnest, made love to her? What else can a pretty woman expect who is
+much before the public? And so the worthy mother counselled her daughter
+to bear these attentions with good humour, rather than to make them a
+subject of perpetual alarm and quarrel.
+
+Baroski, then, was allowed to go on being in love, and was never in the
+least disturbed in his passion; and if he was not successful, at least
+the little wretch could have the pleasure of HINTING that he was, and
+looking particularly roguish when the Ravenswing was named, and assuring
+his friends at the club, that “upon his vort dere vas no trut IN DAT
+REBORT.”
+
+At last one day it happened that Mrs. Crump did not arrive in time for
+her daughter's lesson (perhaps it rained and the omnibus was full--a
+smaller circumstance than that has changed a whole life ere now)--Mrs.
+Crump did not arrive, and Baroski did, and Morgiana, seeing no great
+harm, sat down to her lesson as usual, and in the midst of it down
+went the music-master on his knees, and made a declaration in the most
+eloquent terms he could muster.
+
+“Don't be a fool, Baroski!” said the lady--(I can't help it if her
+language was not more choice, and if she did not rise with cold dignity,
+exclaiming, “Unhand me, sir!”)--“Don't be a fool!” said Mrs. Walker,
+“but get up and let's finish the lesson.”
+
+“You hard-hearted adorable little greature, vill you not listen to me?”
+
+“No, I vill not listen to you, Benjamin!” concluded the lady. “Get up
+and take a chair, and don't go on in that ridiklous way, don't!”
+
+But Baroski, having a speech by heart, determined to deliver himself
+of it in that posture, and begged Morgiana not to turn avay her divine
+hice, and to listen to de voice of his despair, and so forth; he seized
+the lady's hand, and was going to press it to his lips, when she said,
+with more spirit, perhaps, than grace,--
+
+“Leave go my hand, sir; I'll box your ears if you don't!”
+
+But Baroski wouldn't release her hand, and was proceeding to imprint
+a kiss upon it; and Mrs. Crump, who had taken the omnibus at a
+quarter-past twelve instead of that at twelve, had just opened the
+drawing-room door and was walking in, when Morgiana, turning as red as
+a peony, and unable to disengage her left hand, which the musician held,
+raised up her right hand, and, with all her might and main, gave her
+lover such a tremendous slap in the face as caused him abruptly to
+release the hand which he held, and would have laid him prostrate on
+the carpet but for Mrs. Crump, who rushed forward and prevented him from
+falling by administering right and left a whole shower of slaps, such as
+he had never endured since the day he was at school.
+
+“What imperence!” said that worthy lady; “you'll lay hands on my
+daughter, will you? (one, two). You'll insult a woman in distress, will
+you, you little coward? (one, two). Take that, and mind your manners,
+you filthy monster!”
+
+Baroski bounced up in a fury. “By Chofe, you shall hear of dis!” shouted
+he; “you shall pay me dis!”
+
+“As many more as you please, little Benjamin,” cried the widow.
+“Augustus” (to the page), “was that the Captain's knock?” At this
+Baroski made for his hat. “Augustus, show this imperence to the door;
+and if he tries to come in again, call a policeman: do you hear?”
+
+The music-master vanished very rapidly, and the two ladies, instead of
+being frightened or falling into hysterics, as their betters would have
+done, laughed at the odious monster's discomfiture, as they called him.
+“Such a man as that set himself up against my Howard!” said Morgiana,
+with becoming pride; but it was agreed between them that Howard should
+know nothing of what had occurred, for fear of quarrels, or lest he
+should be annoyed. So when he came home not a word was said; and only
+that his wife met him with more warmth than usual, you could not have
+guessed that anything extraordinary had occurred. It is not my fault
+that my heroine's sensibilities were not more keen, that she had not the
+least occasion for sal-volatile or symptom of a fainting fit; but so it
+was, and Mr. Howard Walker knew nothing of the quarrel between his wife
+and her instructor until--
+
+Until he was arrested next day at the suit of Benjamin Baroski for two
+hundred and twenty guineas, and, in default of payment, was conducted by
+Mr. Tobias Larkins to his principal's lock-up house in Chancery Lane.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V. IN WHICH MR. WALKER FALLS INTO DIFFICULTIES, AND MRS. WALKER
+MAKES MANY FOOLISH ATTEMPTS TO RESCUE HIM.
+
+I hope the beloved reader is not silly enough to imagine that Mr.
+Walker, on finding himself inspunged for debt in Chancery Lane, was
+so foolish as to think of applying to any of his friends (those great
+personages who have appeared every now and then in the course of this
+little history, and have served to give it a fashionable air). No, no;
+he knew the world too well; and that, though Billingsgate would give him
+as many dozen of claret as he could carry away under his belt, as the
+phrase is (I can't help it, madam, if the phrase is not more genteel),
+and though Vauxhall would lend him his carriage, slap him on the back,
+and dine at his house,--their lordships would have seen Mr. Walker
+depending from a beam in front of the Old Bailey rather than have helped
+him to a hundred pounds.
+
+And why, forsooth, should we expect otherwise in the world? I observe
+that men who complain of its selfishness are quite as selfish as the
+world is, and no more liberal of money than their neighbours; and I am
+quite sure with regard to Captain Walker that he would have treated a
+friend in want exactly as he when in want was treated. There was only
+his lady who was in the least afflicted by his captivity; and as for the
+club, that went on, we are bound to say, exactly as it did on the day
+previous to his disappearance.
+
+By the way, about clubs--could we not, but for fear of detaining the
+fair reader too long, enter into a wholesome dissertation here on the
+manner of friendship established in those institutions, and the noble
+feeling of selfishness which they are likely to encourage in the male
+race? I put out of the question the stale topics of complaint, such as
+leaving home, encouraging gormandising and luxurious habits, etc.; but
+look also at the dealings of club-men with one another. Look at the rush
+for the evening paper! See how Shiverton orders a fire in the dog-days,
+and Swettenham opens the windows in February. See how Cramley takes
+the whole breast of the turkey on his plate, and how many times Jenkins
+sends away his beggarly half-pint of sherry! Clubbery is organised
+egotism. Club intimacy is carefully and wonderfully removed from
+friendship. You meet Smith for twenty years, exchange the day's news
+with him, laugh with him over the last joke, grow as well acquainted as
+two men may be together--and one day, at the end of the list of members
+of the club, you read in a little paragraph by itself, with all the
+honours,
+
+     MEMBER DECEASED.
+     Smith, John, Esq.;
+
+or he, on the other hand, has the advantage of reading your own name
+selected for a similar typographical distinction. There it is, that
+abominable little exclusive list at the end of every club-catalogue--you
+can't avoid it. I belong to eight clubs myself, and know that one year
+Fitz-Boodle, George Savage, Esq. (unless it should please fate to remove
+my brother and his six sons, when of course it would be Fitz-Boodle, Sir
+George Savage, Bart.), will appear in the dismal category. There is that
+list; down I must go in it:--the day will come, and I shan't be seen in
+the bow-window, someone else will be sitting in the vacant armchair:
+the rubber will begin as usual, and yet somehow Fitz will not be there.
+“Where's Fitz?” says Trumpington, just arrived from the Rhine. “Don't
+you know?” says Punter, turning down his thumb to the carpet. “You led
+the club, I think?” says Ruff to his partner (the OTHER partner!), and
+the waiter snuffs the candles.
+
+                    *****
+
+I hope in the course of the above little pause, every single member of
+a club who reads this has profited by the perusal. He may belong, I
+say, to eight clubs; he will die, and not be missed by any of the five
+thousand members. Peace be to him; the waiters will forget him, and his
+name will pass away, and another great-coat will hang on the hook whence
+his own used to be dependent.
+
+And this, I need not say, is the beauty of the club-institutions. If it
+were otherwise--if, forsooth, we were to be sorry when our friends died,
+or to draw out our purses when our friends were in want, we should be
+insolvent, and life would be miserable. Be it ours to button up our
+pockets and our hearts; and to make merry--it is enough to swim down
+this life-stream for ourselves; if Poverty is clutching hold of our
+heels, or Friendship would catch an arm, kick them both off. Every man
+for himself, is the word, and plenty to do too.
+
+My friend Captain Walker had practised the above maxims so long and
+resolutely as to be quite aware when he came himself to be in distress,
+that not a single soul in the whole universe would help him, and he took
+his measures accordingly.
+
+When carried to Mr. Bendigo's lock-up house, he summoned that gentleman
+in a very haughty way, took a blank banker's cheque out of his
+pocket-book, and filling it up for the exact sum of the writ, orders Mr.
+Bendigo forthwith to open the door and let him go forth.
+
+Mr. Bendigo, smiling with exceeding archness, and putting a finger
+covered all over with diamond rings to his extremely aquiline nose,
+inquired of Mr. Walker whether he saw anything green about his face?
+intimating by this gay and good-humoured interrogatory his suspicion
+of the unsatisfactory nature of the document handed over to him by Mr.
+Walker.
+
+“Hang it, sir!” says Mr. Walker, “go and get the cheque cashed, and be
+quick about it. Send your man in a cab, and here's a half-crown to pay
+for it.” The confident air somewhat staggers the bailiff, who asked him
+whether he would like any refreshment while his man was absent getting
+the amount of the cheque, and treated his prisoner with great civility
+during the time of the messenger's journey.
+
+But as Captain Walker had but a balance of two pounds five and twopence
+(this sum was afterwards divided among his creditors, the law expenses
+being previously deducted from it), the bankers of course declined to
+cash the Captain's draft for two hundred and odd pounds, simply writing
+the words “No effects” on the paper; on receiving which reply Walker,
+far from being cast down, burst out laughing very gaily, produced a real
+five-pound note, and called upon his host for a bottle of champagne,
+which the two worthies drank in perfect friendship and good-humour. The
+bottle was scarcely finished, and the young Israelitish gentleman who
+acts as waiter in Cursitor Street had only time to remove the flask and
+the glasses, when poor Morgiana with a flood of tears rushed into her
+husband's arms, and flung herself on his neck, and calling him her
+“dearest, blessed Howard,” would have fainted at his feet; but that he,
+breaking out in a fury of oaths, asked her how, after getting him into
+that scrape through her infernal extravagance, she dared to show her
+face before him? This address speedily frightened the poor thing out
+of her fainting fit--there is nothing so good for female hysterics as a
+little conjugal sternness, nay, brutality, as many husbands can aver who
+are in the habit of employing the remedy.
+
+“My extravagance, Howard?” said she, in a faint way; and quite put off
+her purpose of swooning by the sudden attack made upon her--“Surely, my
+love, you have nothing to complain of--”
+
+“To complain of, ma'am?” roared the excellent Walker. “Is two hundred
+guineas to a music-master nothing to complain of? Did you bring me such
+a fortune as to authorise your taking guinea lessons? Haven't I raised
+you out of your sphere of life and introduced you to the best of the
+land? Haven't I dressed you like a duchess? Haven't I been for you such
+a husband as very few women in the world ever had, madam?--answer me
+that.”
+
+“Indeed, Howard, you were always very kind,” sobbed the lady.
+
+“Haven't I toiled and slaved for you--been out all day working for you?
+Haven't I allowed your vulgar old mother to come to your house--to my
+house, I say? Haven't I done all this?”
+
+She could not deny it, and Walker, who was in a rage (and when a man is
+in a rage, for what on earth is a wife made but that he should vent his
+rage on her?), continued for some time in this strain, and so abused,
+frightened, and overcame poor Morgiana that she left her husband fully
+convinced that she was the most guilty of beings, and bemoaning his
+double bad fortune, that her Howard was ruined and she the cause of his
+misfortunes.
+
+When she was gone, Mr. Walker resumed his equanimity (for he was not
+one of those men whom a few months of the King's Bench were likely to
+terrify), and drank several glasses of punch in company with his host;
+with whom in perfect calmness he talked over his affairs. That he
+intended to pay his debt and quit the spunging-house next day is a
+matter of course; no one ever was yet put in a spunging-house that did
+not pledge his veracity he intended to quit it to-morrow. Mr. Bendigo
+said he should be heartily glad to open the door to him, and in the
+meantime sent out diligently to see among his friends if there were
+any more detainers against the Captain, and to inform the Captain's
+creditors to come forward against him.
+
+Morgiana went home in profound grief, it may be imagined, and could
+hardly refrain from bursting into tears when the sugar-loaf page asked
+whether master was coming home early, or whether he had taken his key;
+she lay awake tossing and wretched the whole night, and very early in
+the morning rose up, and dressed, and went out.
+
+Before nine o'clock she was in Cursitor Street, and once more joyfully
+bounced into her husband's arms; who woke up yawning and swearing
+somewhat, with a severe headache, occasioned by the jollification of the
+previous night: for, strange though it may seem, there are perhaps no
+places in Europe where jollity is more practised than in prisons for
+debt; and I declare for my own part (I mean, of course, that I went
+to visit a friend) I have dined at Mr. Aminadab's as sumptuously as at
+Long's.
+
+But it is necessary to account for Morgiana's joyfulness; which was
+strange in her husband's perplexity, and after her sorrow of the
+previous night. Well, then, when Mrs. Walker went out in the morning,
+she did so with a very large basket under her arm. “Shall I carry the
+basket, ma'am?” said the page, seizing it with much alacrity.
+
+“No, thank you,” cried his mistress, with equal eagerness: “it's only--”
+
+“Of course, ma'am,” replied the boy, sneering, “I knew it was that.”
+
+“Glass,” continued Mrs. Walker, turning extremely red. “Have
+the goodness to call a coach, sir, and not to speak till you are
+questioned.”
+
+The young gentleman disappeared upon his errand: the coach was called
+and came. Mrs. Walker slipped into it with her basket, and the page went
+downstairs to his companions in the kitchen, and said, “It's a-comin'!
+master's in quod, and missus has gone out to pawn the plate.” When the
+cook went out that day, she somehow had by mistake placed in her basket
+a dozen of table-knives and a plated egg-stand. When the lady's-maid
+took a walk in the course of the afternoon, she found she had occasion
+for eight cambric pocket-handkerchiefs, (marked with her mistress's
+cipher), half-a-dozen pair of shoes, gloves, long and short, some silk
+stockings, and a gold-headed scent-bottle. “Both the new cashmeres is
+gone,” said she, “and there's nothing left in Mrs. Walker's trinket-box
+but a paper of pins and an old coral bracelet.” As for the page, he
+rushed incontinently to his master's dressing-room and examined every
+one of the pockets of his clothes; made a parcel of some of them, and
+opened all the drawers which Walker had not locked before his departure.
+He only found three-halfpence and a bill stamp, and about forty-five
+tradesmen's accounts, neatly labelled and tied up with red tape.
+These three worthies, a groom who was a great admirer of Trimmer the
+lady's-maid, and a policeman a friend of the cook's, sat down to a
+comfortable dinner at the usual hour, and it was agreed among them all
+that Walker's ruin was certain. The cook made the policeman a present of
+a china punch-bowl which Mrs. Walker had given her; and the lady's-maid
+gave her friend the “Book of Beauty” for last year, and the third volume
+of Byron's poems from the drawing-room table.
+
+“I'm dash'd if she ain't taken the little French clock, too,” said the
+page, and so indeed Mrs. Walker had; it slipped in the basket where
+it lay enveloped in one of her shawls, and then struck madly and
+unnaturally a great number of times, as Morgiana was lifting her store
+of treasures out of the hackney-coach. The coachman wagged his head
+sadly as he saw her walking as quick as she could under her heavy load,
+and disappearing round the corner of the street at which Mr. Balls's
+celebrated jewellery establishment is situated. It is a grand shop, with
+magnificent silver cups and salvers, rare gold-headed canes, flutes,
+watches, diamond brooches, and a few fine specimens of the old masters
+in the window, and under the words--
+
+     BALLS, JEWELLER,
+
+you read
+
+       Money Lent.
+
+in the very smallest type, on the door.
+
+The interview with Mr. Balls need not be described; but it must have
+been a satisfactory one, for at the end of half an hour Morgiana
+returned and bounded into the coach with sparkling eyes, and told the
+driver to GALLOP to Cursitor Street; which, smiling, he promised to do,
+and accordingly set off in that direction at the rate of four miles an
+hour. “I thought so,” said the philosophic charioteer. “When a man's
+in quod, a woman don't mind her silver spoons;” and he was so delighted
+with her action, that he forgot to grumble when she came to settle
+accounts with him, even though she gave him only double his fare.
+
+“Take me to him,” said she to the young Hebrew who opened the door.
+
+“To whom?” says the sarcastic youth; “there's twenty HIM'S here. You're
+precious early.”
+
+“To Captain Walker, young man,” replied Morgiana haughtily; whereupon
+the youth opening the second door, and seeing Mr. Bendigo in a flowered
+dressing-gown descending the stairs, exclaimed, “Papa, here's a lady for
+the Captain.” “I'm come to free him,” said she, trembling, and holding
+out a bundle of bank-notes. “Here's the amount of your claim, sir--two
+hundred and twenty guineas, as you told me last night.” The Jew took the
+notes, and grinned as he looked at her, and grinned double as he looked
+at his son, and begged Mrs. Walker to step into his study and take a
+receipt. When the door of that apartment closed upon the lady and his
+father, Mr. Bendigo the younger fell back in an agony of laughter, which
+it is impossible to describe in words, and presently ran out into a
+court where some of the luckless inmates of the house were already
+taking the air, and communicated something to them which made those
+individuals also laugh as uproariously as he had previously done.
+
+Well, after joyfully taking the receipt from Mr. Bendigo (how her cheeks
+flushed and her heart fluttered as she dried it on the blotting-book!),
+and after turning very pale again on hearing that the Captain had had a
+very bad night: “And well he might, poor dear!” said she (at which Mr.
+Bendigo, having no person to grin at, grinned at a marble bust of
+Mr. Pitt, which ornamented his sideboard)--Morgiana, I say, these
+preliminaries being concluded, was conducted to her husband's apartment,
+and once more flinging her arms round her dearest Howard's neck, told
+him with one of the sweetest smiles in the world, to make haste and
+get up and come home, for breakfast was waiting and the carriage at the
+door.
+
+“What do you mean, love?” said the Captain, starting up and looking
+exceedingly surprised.
+
+“I mean that my dearest is free; that the odious little creature is
+paid--at least the horrid bailiff is.”
+
+“Have you been to Baroski?” said Walker, turning very red.
+
+“Howard!” said his wife, quite indignant.
+
+“Did--did your mother give you the money?” asked the Captain.
+
+“No; I had it by me” replies Mrs. Walker, with a very knowing look.
+
+Walker was more surprised than ever. “Have you any more by you?” said
+he.
+
+Mrs. Walker showed him her purse with two guineas. “That is all, love,”
+ she said. “And I wish,” continued she, “you would give me a draft to pay
+a whole list of little bills that have somehow all come in within the
+last few days.”
+
+“Well, well, you shall have the cheque,” continued Mr. Walker, and began
+forthwith to make his toilet, which completed, he rang for Mr. Bendigo,
+and his bill, and intimated his wish to go home directly.
+
+The honoured bailiff brought the bill, but with regard to his being
+free, said it was impossible.
+
+“How impossible?” said Mrs. Walker, turning very red: and then very
+pale. “Did I not pay just now?”
+
+“So you did, and you've got the reshipt; but there's another detainer
+against the Captain for a hundred and fifty. Eglantine and Mossrose, of
+Bond Street;--perfumery for five years, you know.”
+
+“You don't mean to say you were such a fool as to pay without asking if
+there were any more detainers?” roared Walker to his wife.
+
+“Yes, she was though,” chuckled Mr. Bendigo; “but she'll know better the
+next time: and, besides, Captain, what's a hundred and fifty pounds to
+you?”
+
+Though Walker desired nothing so much in the world at that moment as
+the liberty to knock down his wife, his sense of prudence overcame his
+desire for justice: if that feeling may be called prudence on his part,
+which consisted in a strong wish to cheat the bailiff into the idea that
+he (Walker) was an exceedingly respectable and wealthy man. Many worthy
+persons indulge in this fond notion, that they are imposing upon the
+world; strive to fancy, for instance, that their bankers consider
+them men of property because they keep a tolerable balance, pay little
+tradesmen's bills with ostentatious punctuality, and so forth--but the
+world, let us be pretty sure, is as wise as need be, and guesses our
+real condition with a marvellous instinct, or learns it with curious
+skill. The London tradesman is one of the keenest judges of human nature
+extant; and if a tradesman, how much more a bailiff? In reply to the
+ironic question, “What's a hundred and fifty pounds to you?” Walker,
+collecting himself, answers, “It is an infamous imposition, and I owe
+the money no more than you do; but, nevertheless, I shall instruct
+my lawyers to pay it in the course of the morning: under protest, of
+course.”
+
+“Oh, of course,” said Mr. Bendigo, bowing and quitting the room, and
+leaving Mrs. Walker to the pleasure of a tete-a-tete with her husband.
+
+And now being alone with the partner of his bosom, the worthy gentleman
+began an address to her which cannot be put down on paper here; because
+the world is exceedingly squeamish, and does not care to hear the whole
+truth about rascals, and because the fact is that almost every other
+word of the Captain's speech was a curse, such as would shock the
+beloved reader were it put in print.
+
+Fancy, then, in lieu of the conversation, a scoundrel, disappointed and
+in a fury, wreaking his brutal revenge upon an amiable woman, who sits
+trembling and pale, and wondering at this sudden exhibition of wrath.
+Fancy how he clenches his fists and stands over her, and stamps and
+screams out curses with a livid face, growing wilder and wilder in his
+rage; wrenching her hand when she wants to turn away, and only stopping
+at last when she has fallen off the chair in a fainting fit, with
+a heart-breaking sob that made the Jew-boy who was listening at the
+key-hole turn quite pale and walk away. Well, it is best, perhaps, that
+such a conversation should not be told at length:--at the end of
+it, when Mr. Walker had his wife lifeless on the floor, he seized a
+water-jug and poured it over her; which operation pretty soon brought
+her to herself, and shaking her black ringlets, she looked up once more
+again timidly into his face, and took his hand, and began to cry.
+
+He spoke now in a somewhat softer voice, and let her keep paddling on
+with his hand as before; he COULDN'T speak very fiercely to the poor
+girl in her attitude of defeat, and tenderness, and supplication.
+“Morgiana,” said he, “your extravagance and carelessness have brought me
+to ruin, I'm afraid. If you had chosen to have gone to Baroski, a word
+from you would have made him withdraw the writ, and my property wouldn't
+have been sacrificed, as it has now been, for nothing. It mayn't be yet
+too late, however, to retrieve ourselves. This bill of Eglantine's is
+a regular conspiracy, I am sure, between Mossrose and Bendigo here: you
+must go to Eglantine--he's an old--an old flame of yours, you know.”
+
+She dropped his hand: “I can't go to Eglantine after what has passed
+between us,” she said; but Walker's face instantly began to wear a
+certain look, and she said with a shudder, “Well, well, dear, I WILL
+go.” “You will go to Eglantine, and ask him to take a bill for the
+amount of this shameful demand--at any date, never mind what. Mind,
+however, to see him alone, and I'm sure if you choose you can settle the
+business. Make haste; set off directly, and come back, as there may be
+more detainers in.”
+
+Trembling, and in a great flutter, Morgiana put on her bonnet and
+gloves, and went towards the door. “It's a fine morning,” said Mr.
+Walker, looking out: “a walk will do you good; and--Morgiana--didn't you
+say you had a couple of guineas in your pocket?”
+
+“Here it is,” said she, smiling all at once, and holding up her face to
+be kissed. She paid the two guineas for the kiss. Was it not a mean act?
+“Is it possible that people can love where they do not respect?” says
+Miss Prim: “_I_ never would.” Nobody asked you, Miss Prim: but recollect
+Morgiana was not born with your advantages of education and breeding;
+and was, in fact, a poor vulgar creature, who loved Mr. Walker, not
+because her mamma told her, nor because he was an exceedingly eligible
+and well-brought-up young man, but because she could not help it, and
+knew no better. Nor is Mrs. Walker set up as a model of virtue: ah, no!
+when I want a model of virtue I will call in Baker Street, and ask for a
+sitting of my dear (if I may be permitted to say so) Miss Prim.
+
+We have Mr. Howard Walker safely housed in Mr. Bendigo's establishment
+in Cursitor Street, Chancery Lane; and it looks like mockery and want of
+feeling towards the excellent hero of this story (or, as should rather
+be said, towards the husband of the heroine) to say what he might have
+been but for the unlucky little circumstance of Baroski's passion for
+Morgiana.
+
+If Baroski had not fallen in love with Morgiana, he would not have given
+her two hundred guineas' worth of lessons; he would not have so far
+presumed as to seize her hand, and attempt to kiss it; if he had not
+attempted to kiss her, she would not have boxed his ears; he would not
+have taken out the writ against Walker; Walker would have been free,
+very possibly rich, and therefore certainly respected: he always said
+that a month's more liberty would have set him beyond the reach of
+misfortune.
+
+The assertion is very likely a correct one; for Walker had a flashy
+enterprising genius, which ends in wealth sometimes; in the King's Bench
+not seldom; occasionally, alas! in Van Diemen's Land. He might have been
+rich, could he have kept his credit, and had not his personal expenses
+and extravagances pulled him down. He had gallantly availed himself of
+his wife's fortune; nor could any man in London, as he proudly said,
+have made five hundred pounds go so far. He had, as we have seen,
+furnished a house, sideboard, and cellar with it: he had a carriage, and
+horses in his stable, and with the remainder he had purchased shares
+in four companies--of three of which he was founder and director, had
+conducted innumerable bargains in the foreign stocks, had lived and
+entertained sumptuously, and made himself a very considerable income. He
+had set up THE CAPITOL Loan and Life Assurance Company, had discovered
+the Chimborazo gold mines, and the Society for Recovering and Draining
+the Pontine Marshes; capital ten millions; patron HIS HOLINESS THE POPE.
+It certainly was stated in an evening paper that His Holiness had made
+him a Knight of the Spur, and had offered to him the rank of Count; and
+he was raising a loan for His Highness, the Cacique of Panama, who had
+sent him (by way of dividend) the grand cordon of His Highness's order
+of the Castle and Falcon, which might be seen any day at his office in
+Bond Street, with the parchments signed and sealed by the Grand Master
+and Falcon King-at-arms of His Highness. In a week more Walker would
+have raised a hundred thousand pounds on His Highness's twenty per cent.
+loan; he would have had fifteen thousand pounds commission for himself;
+his companies would have risen to par, he would have realised his
+shares; he would have gone into Parliament; he would have been made a
+baronet, who knows? a peer, probably! “And I appeal to you, sir,” Walker
+would say to his friends, “could any man have shown better proof of his
+affection for his wife than by laying out her little miserable money as
+I did? They call me heartless, sir, because I didn't succeed; sir, my
+life has been a series of sacrifices for that woman, such as no man ever
+performed before.”
+
+A proof of Walker's dexterity and capability for business may be seen
+in the fact that he had actually appeased and reconciled one of his
+bitterest enemies--our honest friend Eglantine. After Walker's marriage
+Eglantine, who had now no mercantile dealings with his former agent,
+became so enraged with him, that, as the only means of revenge in his
+power, he sent him in his bill for goods supplied to the amount of
+one hundred and fifty guineas, and sued him for the amount. But Walker
+stepped boldly over to his enemy, and in the course of half an hour they
+were friends.
+
+Eglantine promised to forego his claim; and accepted in lieu of it three
+hundred-pound shares of the ex-Panama stock, bearing twenty-five per
+cent., payable half-yearly at the house of Hocus Brothers, St. Swithin's
+Lane; three hundred-pound shares, and the SECOND class of the order
+of the Castle and Falcon, with the riband and badge. “In four years,
+Eglantine, my boy, I hope to get you the Grand Cordon of the order,”
+ said Walker: “I hope to see you a KNIGHT GRAND CROSS, with a grant of a
+hundred thousand acres reclaimed from the Isthmus.”
+
+To do my poor Eglantine justice, he did not care for the hundred
+thousand acres--it was the star that delighted him--ah! how his fat
+chest heaved with delight as he sewed on the cross and riband to his
+dress-coat, and lighted up four wax candles and looked at himself in
+the glass. He was known to wear a great-coat after that--it was that he
+might wear the cross under it. That year he went on a trip to Boulogne.
+He was dreadfully ill during the voyage, but as the vessel entered
+the port he was seen to emerge from the cabin, his coat open, the star
+blazing on his chest; the soldiers saluted him as he walked the streets,
+he was called Monsieur le Chevalier, and when he went home he entered
+into negotiations with Walker to purchase a commission in His Highness's
+service. Walker said he would get him the nominal rank of Captain, the
+fees at the Panama War Office were five-and-twenty pounds, which
+sum honest Eglantine produced, and had his commission, and a pack of
+visiting cards printed as Captain Archibald Eglantine, K.C.F. Many a
+time he looked at them as they lay in his desk, and he kept the cross in
+his dressing-table, and wore it as he shaved every morning.
+
+His Highness the Cacique, it is well known, came to England, and had
+lodgings in Regent Street, where he held a levee, at which Eglantine
+appeared in the Panama uniform, and was most graciously received by
+his Sovereign. His Highness proposed to make Captain Eglantine his
+aide-de-camp with the rank of Colonel, but the Captain's exchequer
+was rather low at that moment, and the fees at the “War Office” were
+peremptory. Meanwhile His Highness left Regent Street, was said by some
+to have returned to Panama, by others to be in his native city of Cork,
+by others to be leading a life of retirement in the New Cut, Lambeth;
+at any rate was not visible for some time, so that Captain Eglantine's
+advancement did not take place. Eglantine was somehow ashamed to mention
+his military and chivalric rank to Mr. Mossrose, when that gentleman
+came into partnership with him; and kept these facts secret, until
+they were detected by a very painful circumstance. On the very day when
+Walker was arrested at the suit of Benjamin Baroski, there appeared in
+the newspapers an account of the imprisonment of His Highness the Prince
+of Panama for a bill owing to a licensed victualler in Ratcliff Highway.
+The magistrate to whom the victualler subsequently came to complain
+passed many pleasantries on the occasion. He asked whether His Highness
+did not drink like a swan with two necks; whether he had brought any
+Belles savages with him from Panama, and so forth; and the whole court,
+said the report, “was convulsed with laughter when Boniface produced a
+green and yellow riband with a large star of the order of the Castle
+and Falcon, with which His Highness proposed to gratify him, in lieu of
+paying his little bill.”
+
+It was as he was reading the above document with a bleeding heart that
+Mr. Mossrose came in from his daily walk to the City. “Vell, Eglantine,”
+ says he, “have you heard the newsh?”
+
+“About His Highness?”
+
+“About your friend Valker; he's arrested for two hundred poundsh!”
+
+Eglantine at this could contain no more; but told his story of how he
+had been induced to accept three hundred pounds of Panama stock for
+his account against Walker, and cursed his stars for his folly. “Vell,
+you've only to bring in another bill,” said the younger perfumer;
+“swear he owes you a hundred and fifty pounds, and we'll have a writ out
+against him this afternoon.”
+
+And so a second writ was taken out against Captain Walker.
+
+“You'll have his wife here very likely in a day or two,” said Mr.
+Mossrose to his partner; “them chaps always sends their wives, and I
+hope you know how to deal with her.”
+
+“I don't value her a fig's hend,” said Eglantine. “I'll treat her like
+the dust of the hearth. After that woman's conduct to me, I should like
+to see her have the haudacity to come here; and if she does, you'll see
+how I'll serve her.”
+
+The worthy perfumer was, in fact, resolved to be exceedingly
+hard-hearted in his behaviour towards his old love, and acted over at
+night in bed the scene which was to occur when the meeting should take
+place. Oh, thought he, but it will be a grand thing to see the proud
+Morgiana on her knees to me; and me a-pointing to the door, and saying,
+“Madam, you've steeled this 'eart against you, you have;--bury the
+recollection of old times, of those old times when I thought my 'eart
+would have broke, but it didn't--no: 'earts are made of sterner stuff. I
+didn't die, as I thought I should; I stood it, and live to see the woman
+I despised at my feet--ha, ha, at my feet!”
+
+In the midst of these thoughts Mr. Eglantine fell asleep; but it
+was evident that the idea of seeing Morgiana once more agitated him
+considerably, else why should he have been at the pains of preparing
+so much heroism? His sleep was exceedingly fitful and troubled; he saw
+Morgiana in a hundred shapes; he dreamed that he was dressing her hair;
+that he was riding with her to Richmond; that the horse turned into a
+dragon, and Morgiana into Woolsey, who took him by the throat and choked
+him, while the dragon played the key-bugle. And in the morning when
+Mossrose was gone to his business in the City, and he sat reading the
+Morning Post in his study, ah! what a thump his heart gave as the lady
+of his dreams actually stood before him!
+
+Many a lady who purchased brushes at Eglantine's shop would have given
+ten guineas for such a colour as his when he saw her. His heart beat
+violently, he was almost choking in his stays: he had been prepared for
+the visit, but his courage failed him now it had come. They were both
+silent for some minutes.
+
+“You know what I am come for,” at last said Morgiana from under her
+veil, but she put it aside as she spoke.
+
+“I--that is--yes--it's a painful affair, mem,” he said, giving one look
+at her pale face, and then turning away in a flurry. “I beg to refer
+you to Blunt, Hone, and Sharpus, my lawyers, mem,” he added, collecting
+himself.
+
+“I didn't expect this from YOU, Mr. Eglantine,” said the lady, and began
+to sob.
+
+“And after what's 'appened, I didn't expect a visit from YOU, mem.
+I thought Mrs. Capting Walker was too great a dame to visit poor
+Harchibald Eglantine (though some of the first men in the country DO
+visit him). Is there anything in which I can oblige you, mem?”
+
+“O heavens!” cried the poor woman; “have I no friend left? I never
+thought that you, too, would have deserted me, Mr. Archibald.”
+
+The “Archibald,” pronounced in the old way, had evidently an effect on
+the perfumer; he winced and looked at her very eagerly for a moment.
+“What can I do for you, mem?” at last said he.
+
+“What is this bill against Mr. Walker, for which he is now in prison?”
+
+“Perfumery supplied for five years; that man used more 'air-brushes than
+any duke in the land, and as for eau-de-Cologne, he must have bathed
+himself in it. He hordered me about like a lord. He never paid me one
+shilling--he stabbed me in my most vital part--but ah! ah! never mind
+THAT: and I said I would be revenged, and I AM.”
+
+The perfumer was quite in a rage again by this time, and wiped his fat
+face with his pocket-handkerchief, and glared upon Mrs. Walker with a
+most determined air.
+
+“Revenged on whom? Archibald--Mr. Eglantine, revenged on me--on a poor
+woman whom you made miserable! You would not have done so once.”
+
+“Ha! and a precious way you treated me ONCE,” said Eglantine: “don't
+talk to me, mem, of ONCE. Bury the recollection of once for hever!
+I thought my 'eart would have broke once, but no: 'earts are made of
+sterner stuff. I didn't die, as I thought I should; I stood it--and I
+live to see the woman who despised me at my feet.”
+
+“Oh, Archibald!” was all the lady could say, and she fell to sobbing
+again: it was perhaps her best argument with the perfumer.
+
+“Oh, Harchibald, indeed!” continued he, beginning to swell; “don't call
+me Harchibald, Morgiana. Think what a position you might have held if
+you'd chose: when, when--you MIGHT have called me Harchibald. Now
+it's no use,” added he, with harrowing pathos; “but, though I've been
+wronged, I can't bear to see women in tears--tell me what I can do.”
+
+“Dear good Mr. Eglantine, send to your lawyers and stop this horrid
+prosecution--take Mr. Walker's acknowledgment for the debt. If he is
+free, he is sure to have a very large sum of money in a few days, and
+will pay you all. Do not ruin him--do not ruin me by persisting now. Be
+the old kind Eglantine you were.”
+
+Eglantine took a hand, which Morgiana did not refuse; he thought about
+old times. He had known her since childhood almost; as a girl he dandled
+her on his knee at the “Kidneys;” as a woman he had adored her--his
+heart was melted.
+
+“He did pay me in a sort of way,” reasoned the perfumer with
+himself--“these bonds, though they are not worth much, I took 'em for
+better or for worse, and I can't bear to see her crying, and to trample
+on a woman in distress. Morgiana,” he added, in a loud cheerful voice,
+“cheer up; I'll give you a release for your husband: I WILL be the old
+kind Eglantine I was.”
+
+“Be the old kind jackass you vash!” here roared a voice that made Mr.
+Eglantine start. “Vy, vat an old fat fool you are, Eglantine, to give up
+our just debts because a voman comes snivelling and crying to you--and
+such a voman, too!” exclaimed Mr. Mossrose, for his was the voice.
+
+“Such a woman, sir?” cried the senior partner.
+
+“Yes; such a woman--vy, didn't she jilt you herself?--hasn't she been
+trying the same game with Baroski; and are you so green as to give up
+a hundred and fifty pounds because she takes a fancy to come vimpering
+here? I won't, I can tell you. The money's as much mine as it is yours,
+and I'll have it or keep Walker's body, that's what I will.”
+
+At the presence of his partner, the timid good genius of Eglantine,
+which had prompted him to mercy and kindness, at once outspread its
+frightened wings and flew away.
+
+“You see how it is, Mrs. W.,” said he, looking down; “it's an affair
+of business--in all these here affairs of business Mr. Mossrose is the
+managing man; ain't you, Mr. Mossrose?”
+
+“A pretty business it would be if I wasn't,” replied Mossrose, doggedly.
+“Come, ma'am,” says he, “I'll tell you vat I do: I take fifty per shent;
+not a farthing less--give me that, and out your husband goes.”
+
+“Oh, sir, Howard will pay you in a week.”
+
+“Vell, den, let him stop at my uncle Bendigo's for a week, and come out
+den--he's very comfortable there,” said Shylock with a grin. “Hadn't
+you better go to the shop, Mr. Eglantine,” continued he, “and look after
+your business? Mrs. Walker can't want you to listen to her all day.”
+
+Eglantine was glad of the excuse, and slunk out of the studio; not into
+the shop, but into his parlour; where he drank off a great glass of
+maraschino, and sat blushing and exceedingly agitated, until Mossrose
+came to tell him that Mrs. W. was gone, and wouldn't trouble him any
+more. But although he drank several more glasses of maraschino, and went
+to the play that night, and to the Cider-cellars afterwards, neither
+the liquor, nor the play, nor the delightful comic songs at the cellars,
+could drive Mrs. Walker out of his head, and the memory of old times,
+and the image of her pale weeping face.
+
+Morgiana tottered out of the shop, scarcely heeding the voice of Mr.
+Mossrose, who said, “I'll take forty per shent” (and went back to his
+duty cursing himself for a soft-hearted fool for giving up so much of
+his rights to a puling woman). Morgiana, I say, tottered out of the
+shop, and went up Conduit Street, weeping, weeping with all her eyes.
+She was quite faint, for she had taken nothing that morning but the
+glass of water which the pastry-cook in the Strand had given her, and
+was forced to take hold of the railings of a house for support just as
+a little gentleman with a yellow handkerchief under his arm was issuing
+from the door.
+
+“Good heavens, Mrs. Walker!” said the gentleman. It was no other than
+Mr. Woolsey, who was going forth to try a body-coat for a customer. “Are
+you ill?--what's the matter?--for God's sake come in!” and he took her
+arm under his, and led her into his back-parlour, and seated her, and
+had some wine and water before her in one minute, before she had said
+one single word regarding herself.
+
+As soon as she was somewhat recovered, and with the interruption of
+a thousand sobs, the poor thing told as well as she could her little
+story. Mr. Eglantine had arrested Mr. Walker: she had been trying to
+gain time for him; Eglantine had refused.
+
+“The hard-hearted cowardly brute to refuse HER anything!” said loyal Mr.
+Woolsey. “My dear,” says he, “I've no reason to love your husband, and I
+know too much about him to respect him; but I love and respect YOU, and
+will spend my last shilling to serve you.” At which Morgiana could only
+take his hand and cry a great deal more than ever. She said Mr. Walker
+would have a great deal of money in a week, that he was the best of
+husbands, and she was sure Mr. Woolsey would think better of him when
+he knew him; that Mr. Eglantine's bill was one hundred and fifty pounds,
+but that Mr. Mossrose would take forty per cent. if Mr. Woolsey could
+say how much that was.
+
+“I'll pay a thousand pound to do you good,” said Mr. Woolsey, bouncing
+up; “stay here for ten minutes, my dear, until my return, and all shall
+be right, as you will see.” He was back in ten minutes, and had called
+a cab from the stand opposite (all the coachmen there had seen and
+commented on Mrs. Walker's woebegone looks), and they were off for
+Cursitor Street in a moment. “They'll settle the whole debt for twenty
+pounds,” said he, and showed an order to that effect from Mr. Mossrose
+to Mr. Bendigo, empowering the latter to release Walker on receiving Mr.
+Woolsey's acknowledgment for the above sum.
+
+“There's no use paying it,” said Mr. Walker, doggedly; “it would only
+be robbing you, Mr. Woolsey--seven more detainers have come in while my
+wife has been away. I must go through the court now; but,” he added in a
+whisper to the tailor, “my good sir, my debts of HONOUR are sacred, and
+if you will have the goodness to lend ME the twenty pounds, I pledge you
+my word as a gentleman to return it when I come out of quod.”
+
+It is probable that Mr. Woolsey declined this; for, as soon as he was
+gone, Walker, in a tremendous fury, began cursing his wife for dawdling
+three hours on the road. “Why the deuce, ma'am, didn't you take a cab?”
+ roared he, when he heard she had walked to Bond Street. “Those writs
+have only been in half an hour, and I might have been off but for you.”
+
+“Oh, Howard,” said she, “didn't you take--didn't I give you my--my last
+shilling?” and fell back and wept again more bitterly than ever.
+
+“Well, love,” said her amiable husband, turning rather red, “never mind,
+it wasn't your fault. It is but going through the court. It is no great
+odds. I forgive you.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI. IN WHICH MR. WALKER STILL REMAINS IN DIFFICULTIES, BUT SHOWS
+GREAT RESIGNATION UNDER HIS MISFORTUNES.
+
+The exemplary Walker, seeing that escape from his enemies was hopeless,
+and that it was his duty as a man to turn on them and face them, now
+determined to quit the splendid though narrow lodgings which Mr.
+Bendigo had provided for him, and undergo the martyrdom of the Fleet.
+Accordingly, in company with that gentleman, he came over to Her
+Majesty's prison, and gave himself into the custody of the officers
+there; and did not apply for the accommodation of the Rules (by which
+in those days the captivity of some debtors was considerably lightened),
+because he knew perfectly well that there was no person in the wide
+world who would give a security for the heavy sums for which Walker was
+answerable. What these sums were is no matter, and on this head we do
+not think it at all necessary to satisfy the curiosity of the reader. He
+may have owed hundreds--thousands, his creditors only can tell; he paid
+the dividend which has been formerly mentioned, and showed thereby his
+desire to satisfy all claims upon him to the uttermost farthing.
+
+As for the little house in Connaught Square, when, after quitting her
+husband, Morgiana drove back thither, the door was opened by the page,
+who instantly thanked her to pay his wages; and in the drawing-room, on
+a yellow satin sofa, sat a seedy man (with a pot of porter beside him
+placed on an album for fear of staining the rosewood table), and the
+seedy man signified that he had taken possession of the furniture in
+execution for a judgment debt. Another seedy man was in the dining-room,
+reading a newspaper, and drinking gin; he informed Mrs. Walker that
+he was the representative of another judgment debt and of another
+execution:--“There's another on 'em in the kitchen,” said the page,
+“taking an inwentory of the furniture; and he swears he'll have you took
+up for swindling, for pawning the plate.”
+
+“Sir,” said Mr. Woolsey, for that worthy man had conducted Morgiana
+home--“sir,” said he, shaking his stick at the young page, “if you give
+any more of your impudence, I'll beat every button off your jacket:” and
+as there were some four hundred of these ornaments, the page was silent.
+It was a great mercy for Morgiana that the honest and faithful tailor
+had accompanied her. The good fellow had waited very patiently for her
+for an hour in the parlour or coffee-room of the lock-up house, knowing
+full well that she would want a protector on her way homewards; and his
+kindness will be more appreciated when it is stated that, during
+the time of his delay in the coffee-room, he had been subject to the
+entreaties, nay, to the insults, of Cornet Fipkin of the Blues, who was
+in prison at the suit of Linsey, Woolsey and Co., and who happened to be
+taking his breakfast in the apartment when his obdurate creditor entered
+it. The Cornet (a hero of eighteen, who stood at least five feet three
+in his boots, and owed fifteen thousand pounds) was so enraged at the
+obduracy of his creditor that he said he would have thrown him out of
+the window but for the bars which guarded it; and entertained serious
+thoughts of knocking the tailor's head off, but that the latter, putting
+his right leg forward and his fists in a proper attitude, told the
+young officer to “come on;” on which the Cornet cursed the tailor for a
+“snob,” and went back to his breakfast.
+
+The execution people having taken charge of Mr. Walker's house, Mrs.
+Walker was driven to take refuge with her mamma near “Sadler's Wells,”
+ and the Captain remained comfortably lodged in the Fleet. He had some
+ready money, and with it managed to make his existence exceedingly
+comfortable. He lived with the best society of the place, consisting of
+several distinguished young noblemen and gentlemen. He spent the morning
+playing at fives and smoking cigars; the evening smoking cigars and
+dining comfortably. Cards came after dinner; and, as the Captain was
+an experienced player, and near a score of years older than most of his
+friends, he was generally pretty successful: indeed, if he had received
+all the money that was owed to him, he might have come out of prison
+and paid his creditors twenty shillings in the pound--that is, if he had
+been minded to do so. But there is no use in examining into that point
+too closely, for the fact is, young Fipkin only paid him forty pounds
+out of seven hundred, for which he gave him I.O.U.'s; Algernon Deuceace
+not only did not pay him three hundred and twenty which he lost at blind
+hookey, but actually borrowed seven and sixpence in money from Walker,
+which has never been repaid to this day; and Lord Doublequits actually
+lost nineteen thousand pounds to him at heads and tails, which he never
+paid, pleading drunkenness and his minority. The reader may recollect a
+paragraph which went the round of the papers entitled--
+
+“Affair of honour in the Fleet Prison.--Yesterday morning (behind the
+pump in the second court) Lord D-bl-qu-ts and Captain H-w-rd W-lk-r (a
+near relative, we understand, of his Grace the Duke of N-rf-lk) had
+a hostile meeting and exchanged two shots. These two young sprigs of
+nobility were attended to the ground by Major Flush, who, by the way,
+is FLUSH no longer, and Captain Pam, late of the ---- Dragoons. Play is
+said to have been the cause of the quarrel, and the gallant Captain is
+reported to have handled the noble lord's nose rather roughly at one
+stage of the transactions.”
+
+When Morgiana at “Sadler's Wells” heard these news, she was ready to
+faint with terror; and rushed to the Fleet Prison, and embraced her lord
+and master with her usual expansion and fits of tears: very much to that
+gentleman's annoyance, who happened to be in company with Pain and Flush
+at the time, and did not care that his handsome wife should be seen
+too much in the dubious precincts of the Fleet. He had at least so much
+shame about him, and had always rejected her entreaties to be allowed to
+inhabit the prison with him.
+
+“It is enough,” would he say, casting his eyes heavenward, and with a
+most lugubrious countenance--“it is enough, Morgiana, that _I_ should
+suffer, even though your thoughtlessness has been the cause of my ruin.
+But enough of THAT! I will not rebuke you for faults for which I know
+you are now repentant; and I never could bear to see you in the midst
+of the miseries of this horrible place. Remain at home with your mother,
+and let me drag on the weary days here alone. If you can get me any more
+of that pale sherry, my love, do. I require something to cheer me in
+solitude, and have found my chest very much relieved by that wine. Put
+more pepper and eggs, my dear, into the next veal-pie you make me. I
+can't eat the horrible messes in the coffee-room here.”
+
+It was Walker's wish, I can't tell why, except that it is the wish of
+a great number of other persons in this strange world, to make his
+wife believe that he was wretched in mind and ill in health; and all
+assertions to this effect the simple creature received with numberless
+tears of credulity: she would go home to Mrs. Crump, and say how her
+darling Howard was pining away, how he was ruined for HER, and with what
+angelic sweetness he bore his captivity. The fact is, he bore it with so
+much resignation that no other person in the world could see that he
+was unhappy. His life was undisturbed by duns; his day was his own from
+morning till night; his diet was good, his acquaintances jovial, his
+purse tolerably well supplied, and he had not one single care to annoy
+him.
+
+Mrs. Crump and Woolsey, perhaps, received Morgiana's account of her
+husband's miseries with some incredulity. The latter was now a daily
+visitor to “Sadler's Wells.” His love for Morgiana had become a warm
+fatherly generous regard for her; it was out of the honest fellow's
+cellar that the wine used to come which did so much good to Mr. Walker's
+chest; and he tried a thousand ways to make Morgiana happy.
+
+A very happy day, indeed, it was when, returning from her visit to the
+Fleet, she found in her mother's sitting-room her dear grand rosewood
+piano, and every one of her music-books, which the kind-hearted tailor
+had purchased at the sale of Walker's effects. And I am not ashamed
+to say that Morgiana herself was so charmed, that when, as usual, Mr.
+Woolsey came to drink tea in the evening, she actually gave him a kiss;
+which frightened Mr. Woolsey, and made him blush exceedingly. She
+sat down, and played him that evening every one of the songs which
+he liked--the OLD songs--none of your Italian stuff. Podmore, the old
+music-master, was there too, and was delighted and astonished at the
+progress in singing which Morgiana had made; and when the little party
+separated, he took Mr. Woolsey by the hand, and said, “Give me leave to
+tell you, sir, that you're a TRUMP.”
+
+“That he is,” said Canterfield, the first tragic; “an honour to human
+nature. A man whose hand is open as day to melting charity, and whose
+heart ever melts at the tale of woman's distress.”
+
+“Pooh, pooh, stuff and nonsense, sir,” said the tailor; but, upon my
+word, Mr. Canterfield's words were perfectly correct. I wish as much
+could be said in favour of Woolsey's old rival, Mr. Eglantine, who
+attended the sale too, but it was with a horrid kind of satisfaction
+at the thought that Walker was ruined. He bought the yellow satin
+sofa before mentioned, and transferred it to what he calls his
+“sitting-room,” where it is to this day, bearing many marks of the best
+bear's grease. Woolsey bid against Baroski for the piano, very nearly
+up to the actual value of the instrument, when the artist withdrew from
+competition; and when he was sneering at the ruin of Mr. Walker, the
+tailor sternly interrupted him by saying, “What the deuce are YOU
+sneering at? You did it, sir; and you're paid every shilling of your
+claim, ain't you?” On which Baroski turned round to Miss Larkins,
+and said, Mr. Woolsey was a “snop;” the very word, though pronounced
+somewhat differently, which the gallant Cornet Fipkin had applied to
+him.
+
+Well; so he WAS a snob. But, vulgar as he was, I declare, for my part,
+that I have a greater respect for Mr. Woolsey than for any single
+nobleman or gentleman mentioned in this true history.
+
+It will be seen from the names of Messrs. Canterfield and Podmore
+that Morgiana was again in the midst of the widow Crump's favourite
+theatrical society; and this, indeed, was the case. The widow's little
+room was hung round with the pictures which were mentioned at the
+commencement of the story as decorating the bar of the “Bootjack;” and
+several times in a week she received her friends from “The Wells,” and
+entertained them with such humble refreshments of tea and crumpets as
+her modest means permitted her to purchase. Among these persons Morgiana
+lived and sang quite as contentedly as she had ever done among the
+demireps of her husband's society; and, only she did not dare to own it
+to herself, was a great deal happier than she had been for many a day.
+Mrs. Captain Walker was still a great lady amongst them. Even in his
+ruin, Walker, the director of three companies, and the owner of the
+splendid pony-chaise, was to these simple persons an awful character;
+and when mentioned they talked with a great deal of gravity of his being
+in the country, and hoped Mrs. Captain W. had good news of him. They all
+knew he was in the Fleet; but had he not in prison fought a duel with a
+viscount? Montmorency (of the Norfolk Circuit) was in the Fleet too;
+and when Canterfield went to see poor Montey, the latter had pointed out
+Walker to his friend, who actually hit Lord George Tennison across the
+shoulders in play with a racket-bat; which event was soon made known to
+the whole green-room.
+
+“They had me up one day,” said Montmorency, “to sing a comic song, and
+give my recitations; and we had champagne and lobster-salad: SUCH nobs!”
+ added the player. “Billingsgate and Vauxhall were there too, and left
+college at eight o'clock.”
+
+When Morgiana was told of the circumstance by her mother, she hoped her
+dear Howard had enjoyed the evening, and was thankful that for once he
+could forget his sorrows. Nor, somehow, was she ashamed of herself for
+being happy afterwards, but gave way to her natural good-humour without
+repentance or self-rebuke. I believe, indeed (alas! why are we made
+acquainted with the same fact regarding ourselves long after it is past
+and gone?)--I believe these were the happiest days of Morgiana's whole
+life. She had no cares except the pleasant one of attending on her
+husband, an easy smiling temperament which made her regardless of
+to-morrow; and, add to this, a delightful hope relative to a certain
+interesting event which was about to occur, and which I shall not
+particularise further than by saying, that she was cautioned against too
+much singing by Mr. Squills, her medical attendant; and that widow Crump
+was busy making up a vast number of little caps and diminutive cambric
+shirts, such as delighted GRANDMOTHERS are in the habit of fashioning.
+I hope this is as genteel a way of signifying the circumstance which
+was about to take place in the Walker family as Miss Prim herself could
+desire. Mrs. Walker's mother was about to become a grandmother. There's
+a phrase! The Morning Post, which says this story is vulgar, I'm sure
+cannot quarrel with that. I don't believe the whole Court Guide would
+convey an intimation more delicately.
+
+Well, Mrs. Crump's little grandchild was born, entirely to the
+dissatisfaction, I must say, of his father; who, when the infant was
+brought to him in the Fleet, had him abruptly covered up in his cloak
+again, from which he had been removed by the jealous prison doorkeepers:
+why, do you think? Walker had a quarrel with one of them, and the wretch
+persisted in believing that the bundle Mrs. Crump was bringing to her
+son-in-law was a bundle of disguised brandy!
+
+“The brutes!” said the lady; “and the father's a brute, too,” said she.
+“He takes no more notice of me than if I was a kitchen-maid, and of
+Woolsey than if he was a leg of mutton--the dear blessed little cherub!”
+
+Mrs. Crump was a mother-in-law; let us pardon her hatred of her
+daughter's husband.
+
+The Woolsey compared in the above sentence both to a leg of mutton and
+a cherub, was not the eminent member of the firm of Linsey, Woolsey, and
+Co., but the little baby, who was christened Howard Woolsey Walker, with
+the full consent of the father; who said the tailor was a deuced good
+fellow, and felt really obliged to him for the sherry, for a frock-coat
+which he let him have in prison, and for his kindness to Morgiana. The
+tailor loved the little boy with all his soul; he attended his mother
+to her churching, and the child to the font; and, as a present to his
+little godson on his christening, he sent two yards of the finest white
+kerseymere in his shop, to make him a cloak. The Duke had had a pair of
+inexpressibles off that very piece.
+
+House-furniture is bought and sold, music-lessons are given, children
+are born and christened, ladies are confined and churched--time, in
+other words, passes--and yet Captain Walker still remains in prison!
+Does it not seem strange that he should still languish there between
+palisaded walls near Fleet Market, and that he should not be restored to
+that active and fashionable world of which he was an ornament? The fact
+is, the Captain had been before the court for the examination of his
+debts; and the Commissioner, with a cruelty quite shameful towards
+a fallen man, had qualified his ways of getting money in most severe
+language, and had sent him back to prison again for the space of nine
+calendar months, an indefinite period, and until his accounts could
+be made up. This delay Walker bore like a philosopher, and, far from
+repining, was still the gayest fellow of the tennis-court, and the soul
+of the midnight carouse.
+
+There is no use in raking up old stories, and hunting through files
+of dead newspapers, to know what were the specific acts which made the
+Commissioner so angry with Captain Walker. Many a rogue has come before
+the Court, and passed through it since then: and I would lay a wager
+that Howard Walker was not a bit worse than his neighbours. But as he
+was not a lord, and as he had no friends on coming out of prison, and
+had settled no money on his wife, and had, as it must be confessed, an
+exceedingly bad character, it is not likely that the latter would
+be forgiven him when once more free in the world. For instance, when
+Doublequits left the Fleet, he was received with open arms by his
+family, and had two-and-thirty horses in his stables before a week
+was over. Pam, of the Dragoons, came out, and instantly got a place as
+government courier--a place found so good of late years (and no wonder,
+it is better pay than that of a colonel), that our noblemen and gentry
+eagerly press for it. Frank Hurricane was sent out as registrar of
+Tobago, or Sago, or Ticonderago; in fact, for a younger son of good
+family it is rather advantageous to get into debt twenty or thirty
+thousand pounds: you are sure of a good place afterwards in the
+colonies. Your friends are so anxious to get rid of you, that they will
+move heaven and earth to serve you. And so all the above companions of
+misfortune with Walker were speedily made comfortable; but HE had no
+rich parents; his old father was dead in York jail. How was he to start
+in the world again? What friendly hand was there to fill his pocket with
+gold, and his cup with sparkling champagne? He was, in fact, an object
+of the greatest pity--for I know of no greater than a gentleman of his
+habits without the means of gratifying them. He must live well, and
+he has not the means. Is there a more pathetic case? As for a mere low
+beggar--some labourless labourer, or some weaver out of place--don't
+let us throw away our compassion upon THEM. Psha! they're accustomed
+to starve. They CAN sleep upon boards, or dine off a crust; whereas
+a gentleman would die in the same situation. I think this was poor
+Morgiana's way of reasoning. For Walker's cash in prison beginning
+presently to run low, and knowing quite well that the dear fellow could
+not exist there without the luxuries to which he had been accustomed,
+she borrowed money from her mother, until the poor old lady was a sec.
+She even confessed, with tears, to Woolsey, that she was in particular
+want of twenty pounds, to pay a poor milliner, whose debt she could not
+bear to put in her husband's schedule. And I need not say she carried
+the money to her husband, who might have been greatly benefited by
+it--only he had a bad run of luck at the cards; and how the deuce can a
+man help THAT?
+
+Woolsey had repurchased for her one of the Cashmere shawls. She left it
+behind her one day at the Fleet prison, and some rascal stole it there;
+having the grace, however, to send Woolsey the ticket, signifying the
+place where it had been pawned. Who could the scoundrel have been?
+Woolsey swore a great oath, and fancied he knew; but if it was Walker
+himself (as Woolsey fancied, and probably as was the case) who made away
+with the shawl, being pressed thereto by necessity, was it fair to call
+him a scoundrel for so doing, and should we not rather laud the delicacy
+of his proceeding? He was poor: who can command the cards? But he did
+not wish his wife should know HOW poor: he could not bear that she
+should suppose him arrived at the necessity of pawning a shawl.
+
+She who had such beautiful ringlets, of a sudden pleaded cold in the
+head, and took to wearing caps. One summer evening, as she and the baby
+and Mrs. Crump and Woolsey (let us say all four babies together) were
+laughing and playing in Mrs. Crump's drawing-room--playing the most
+absurd gambols, fat Mrs. Crump, for instance, hiding behind the sofa,
+Woolsey chuck-chucking, cock-a-doodle-dooing, and performing those
+indescribable freaks which gentlemen with philoprogenitive organs will
+execute in the company of children--in the midst of their play the baby
+gave a tug at his mother's cap; off it came--her hair was cut close to
+her head!
+
+Morgiana turned as red as sealing-wax, and trembled very much; Mrs.
+Crump screamed, “My child, where is your hair?” and Woolsey, bursting
+out with a most tremendous oath against Walker that would send Miss Prim
+into convulsions, put his handkerchief to his face, and actually wept.
+“The infernal bubble-ubble-ackguard!” said he, roaring and clenching his
+fists.
+
+As he had passed the Bower of Bloom a few days before, he saw Mossrose,
+who was combing out a jet-black ringlet, and held it up, as if for
+Woolsey's examination, with a peculiar grin. The tailor did not
+understand the joke, but he saw now what had happened. Morgiana had sold
+her hair for five guineas; she would have sold her arm had her husband
+bidden her. On looking in her drawers it was found she had sold almost
+all her wearing apparel; the child's clothes were all there, however.
+It was because her husband talked of disposing of a gilt coral that
+the child had, that she had parted with the locks which had formed her
+pride.
+
+“I'll give you twenty guineas for that hair, you infamous fat coward,”
+ roared the little tailor to Eglantine that evening. “Give it up, or I'll
+kill you-”
+
+“Mr. Mossrose! Mr. Mossrose!” shouted the perfumer.
+
+“Vell, vatsh de matter, vatsh de row, fight avay, my boys; two to one
+on the tailor,” said Mr. Mossrose, much enjoying the sport (for Woolsey,
+striding through the shop without speaking to him, had rushed into the
+studio, where he plumped upon Eglantine).
+
+“Tell him about that hair, sir.”
+
+“That hair! Now keep yourself quiet, Mister Timble, and don't tink for
+to bully ME. You mean Mrs. Valker's 'air? Vy, she sold it me.”
+
+“And the more blackguard you for buying it! Will you take twenty guineas
+for it?”
+
+“No,” said Mossrose.
+
+“Twenty-five?”
+
+“Can't,” said Mossrose.
+
+“Hang it! will you take forty? There!”
+
+“I vish I'd kep it,” said the Hebrew gentleman, with unfeigned regret.
+“Eglantine dressed it this very night.”
+
+“For Countess Baldenstiern, the Swedish Hambassador's lady,” says
+Eglantine (his Hebrew partner was by no means a favourite with the
+ladies, and only superintended the accounts of the concern). “It's this
+very night at Devonshire 'Ouse, with four hostrich plumes, lappets, and
+trimmings. And now, Mr. Woolsey, I'll trouble you to apologise.”
+
+Mr. Woolsey did not answer, but walked up to Mr. Eglantine, and snapped
+his fingers so close under the perfumer's nose that the latter started
+back and seized the bell-rope. Mossrose burst out laughing, and the
+tailor walked majestically from the shop, with both hands stuck between
+the lappets of his coat.
+
+“My dear,” said he to Morgiana a short time afterwards, “you must
+not encourage that husband of yours in his extravagance, and sell the
+clothes off your poor back that he may feast and act the fine gentleman
+in prison.”
+
+“It is his health, poor dear soul!” interposed Mrs. Walker: “his chest.
+Every farthing of the money goes to the doctors, poor fellow!”
+
+“Well, now listen: I am a rich man” (it was a great fib, for Woolsey's
+income, as a junior partner of the firm, was but a small one); “I can
+very well afford to make him an allowance while he is in the Fleet, and
+have written to him to say so. But if you ever give him a penny, or sell
+a trinket belonging to you, upon my word and honour I will withdraw
+the allowance, and, though it would go to my heart, I'll never see you
+again. You wouldn't make me unhappy, would you?”
+
+“I'd go on my knees to serve you, and Heaven bless you,” said the wife.
+
+“Well, then, you must give me this promise.” And she did. “And now,”
+ said he, “your mother, and Podmore, and I have been talking over
+matters, and we've agreed that you may make a very good income for
+yourself; though, to be sure, I wish it could have been managed any
+other way; but needs must, you know. You're the finest singer in the
+universe.”
+
+“La!” said Morgiana, highly delighted.
+
+“_I_ never heard anything like you, though I'm no judge. Podmore says he
+is sure you will do very well, and has no doubt you might get very good
+engagements at concerts or on the stage; and as that husband will never
+do any good, and you have a child to support, sing you must.”
+
+“Oh! how glad I should be to pay his debts and repay all he has done for
+me,” cried Mrs. Walker. “Think of his giving two hundred guineas to Mr.
+Baroski to have me taught. Was not that kind of him? Do you REALLY think
+I should succeed?
+
+“There's Miss Larkins has succeeded.”
+
+“The little high-shouldered vulgar thing!” says Morgiana. “I'm sure I
+ought to succeed if SHE did.”
+
+“She sing against Morgiana?” said Mrs. Crump. “I'd like to see her,
+indeed! She ain't fit to snuff a candle to her.”
+
+“I dare say not,” said the tailor, “though I don't understand the thing
+myself: but if Morgiana can make a fortune, why shouldn't she?”
+
+“Heaven knows we want it, Woolsey,” cried Mrs. Crump. “And to see her on
+the stage was always the wish of my heart:” and so it had formerly been
+the wish of Morgiana; and now, with the hope of helping her husband and
+child, the wish became a duty, and she fell to practising once more from
+morning till night.
+
+One of the most generous of men and tailors who ever lived now promised,
+if further instruction should be considered necessary (though that he
+could hardly believe possible), that he would lend Morgiana any sum
+required for the payment of lessons; and accordingly she once more
+betook herself, under Podmore's advice, to the singing school. Baroski's
+academy was, after the passages between them, out of the question,
+and she placed herself under the instruction of the excellent English
+composer Sir George Thrum, whose large and awful wife, Lady Thrum,
+dragon of virtue and propriety, kept watch over the master and the
+pupils, and was the sternest guardian of female virtue on or off any
+stage.
+
+Morgiana came at a propitious moment. Baroski had launched Miss Larkins
+under the name of Ligonier. The Ligonier was enjoying considerable
+success, and was singing classical music to tolerable audiences; whereas
+Miss Butts, Sir George's last pupil, had turned out a complete failure,
+and the rival house was only able to make a faint opposition to the new
+star with Miss M'Whirter, who, though an old favourite, had lost her
+upper notes and her front teeth, and, the fact was, drew no longer.
+
+Directly Sir George heard Mrs. Walker, he tapped Podmore, who
+accompanied her, on the waistcoat, and said, “Poddy, thank you; we'll
+cut the orange boy's throat with that voice.” It was by the familiar
+title of orange boy that the great Baroski was known among his
+opponents.
+
+“We'll crush him, Podmore,” said Lady Thrum, in her deep hollow voice.
+“You may stop and dine.” And Podmore stayed to dinner, and ate cold
+mutton, and drank Marsala with the greatest reverence for the great
+English composer. The very next day Lady Thrum hired a pair of horses,
+and paid a visit to Mrs. Crump and her daughter at “Sadler's Wells.”
+
+All these things were kept profoundly secret from Walker, who received
+very magnanimously the allowance of two guineas a week which Woolsey
+made him, and with the aid of the few shillings his wife could bring
+him, managed to exist as best he might. He did not dislike gin when he
+could get no claret, and the former liquor, under the name of “tape,”
+ used to be measured out pretty liberally in what was formerly Her
+Majesty's prison of the Fleet.
+
+Morgiana pursued her studies under Thrum, and we shall hear in the next
+chapter how it was she changed her name to RAVENSWING.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII. IN WHICH MORGIANA ADVANCES TOWARDS FAME AND HONOUR, AND IN
+WHICH SEVERAL GREAT LITERARY CHARACTERS MAKE THEIR APPEARANCE.
+
+“We must begin, my dear madam,” said Sir George Thrum, “by unlearning
+all that Mr. Baroski (of whom I do not wish to speak with the slightest
+disrespect) has taught you!”
+
+Morgiana knew that every professor says as much, and submitted to
+undergo the study requisite for Sir George's system with perfect good
+grace. Au fond, as I was given to understand, the methods of the two
+artists were pretty similar; but as there was rivalry between them, and
+continual desertion of scholars from one school to another, it was
+fair for each to take all the credit he could get in the success of
+any pupil. If a pupil failed, for instance, Thrum would say Baroski had
+spoiled her irretrievably; while the German would regret “Dat dat yong
+voman, who had a good organ, should have trown away her dime wid dat old
+Drum.” When one of these deserters succeeded, “Yes, yes,” would either
+professor cry, “I formed her; she owes her fortune to me.” Both of them
+thus, in future days, claimed the education of the famous Ravenswing;
+and even Sir George Thrum, though he wished to ecraser the Ligonier,
+pretended that her present success was his work because once she had
+been brought by her mother, Mrs. Larkins, to sing for Sir George's
+approval.
+
+When the two professors met it was with the most delighted cordiality
+on the part of both. “Mein lieber Herr,” Thrum would say (with some
+malice), “your sonata in x flat is divine.” “Chevalier,” Baroski would
+reply, “dat andante movement in w is worthy of Beethoven. I gif you
+my sacred honour,” and so forth. In fact, they loved each other as
+gentlemen in their profession always do.
+
+The two famous professors conduct their academies on very opposite
+principles. Baroski writes ballet music; Thrum, on the contrary, says
+“he cannot but deplore the dangerous fascinations of the dance,” and
+writes more for Exeter Hall and Birmingham. While Baroski drives a cab
+in the Park with a very suspicious Mademoiselle Leocadie, or Amenaide,
+by his side, you may see Thrum walking to evening church with his lady,
+and hymns are sung there of his own composition. He belongs to the
+“Athenaeum Club,” he goes to the Levee once a year, he does
+everything that a respectable man should; and if, by the means of this
+respectability, he manages to make his little trade far more profitable
+than it otherwise would be, are we to quarrel with him for it?
+
+Sir George, in fact, had every reason to be respectable. He had been a
+choir-boy at Windsor, had played to the old King's violoncello, had
+been intimate with him, and had received knighthood at the hand of his
+revered sovereign. He had a snuff-box which His Majesty gave him, and
+portraits of him and the young princes all over the house. He had also
+a foreign order (no other, indeed, than the Elephant and Castle of
+Kalbsbraten-Pumpernickel), conferred upon him by the Grand Duke when
+here with the allied sovereigns in 1814. With this ribbon round his
+neck, on gala days, and in a white waistcoat, the old gentleman looked
+splendid as he moved along in a blue coat with the Windsor button, and
+neat black small-clothes, and silk stockings. He lived in an old tall
+dingy house, furnished in the reign of George III., his beloved master,
+and not much more cheerful now than a family vault. They are awfully
+funereal, those ornaments of the close of the last century--tall gloomy
+horse-hair chairs, mouldy Turkey carpets with wretched druggets to guard
+them, little cracked sticking-plaster miniatures of people in tours and
+pigtails over high-shouldered mantelpieces, two dismal urns on each side
+of a lanky sideboard, and in the midst a queer twisted receptacle
+for worn-out knives with green handles. Under the sideboard stands a
+cellaret that looks as if it held half a bottle of currant wine, and
+a shivering plate-warmer that never could get any comfort out of the
+wretched old cramped grate yonder. Don't you know in such houses the
+grey gloom that hangs over the stairs, the dull-coloured old carpet that
+winds its way up the same, growing thinner, duller, and more threadbare
+as it mounts to the bedroom floors? There is something awful in the
+bedroom of a respectable old couple of sixty-five. Think of the old
+feathers, turbans, bugles, petticoats, pomatum-pots, spencers, white
+satin shoes, false fronts, the old flaccid boneless stays tied up in
+faded riband, the dusky fans, the old forty-years-old baby linen, the
+letters of Sir George when he was young, the doll of poor Maria who died
+in 1803, Frederick's first corduroy breeches, and the newspaper which
+contains the account of his distinguishing himself at the siege of
+Seringapatam. All these lie somewhere, damp and squeezed down into glum
+old presses and wardrobes. At that glass the wife has sat many times
+these fifty years; in that old morocco bed her children were born. Where
+are they now? Fred the brave captain, and Charles the saucy colleger:
+there hangs a drawing of him done by Mr. Beechey, and that sketch by
+Cosway was the very likeness of Louisa before--
+
+“Mr. Fitz-Boodle! for Heaven's sake come down. What are you doing in a
+lady's bedroom?”
+
+“The fact is, madam, I had no business there in life; but, having had
+quite enough wine with Sir George, my thoughts had wandered upstairs
+into the sanctuary of female excellence, where your Ladyship nightly
+reposes. You do not sleep so well now as in old days, though there is no
+patter of little steps to wake you overhead.”
+
+They call that room the nursery still, and the little wicket still hangs
+at the upper stairs: it has been there for forty years--bon Dieu! Can't
+you see the ghosts of little faces peering over it? I wonder whether
+they get up in the night as the moonlight shines into the blank vacant
+old room, and play there solemnly with little ghostly horses, and the
+spirits of dolls, and tops that turn and turn but don't hum.
+
+Once more, sir, come down to the lower storey--that is to the Morgiana
+story--with which the above sentences have no more to do than this
+morning's leading article in The Times; only it was at this house of
+Sir George Thrum's that I met Morgiana. Sir George, in old days, had
+instructed some of the female members of our family, and I recollect
+cutting my fingers as a child with one of those attenuated green-handled
+knives in the queer box yonder.
+
+In those days Sir George Thrum was the first great musical teacher
+of London, and the royal patronage brought him a great number of
+fashionable pupils, of whom Lady Fitz-Boodle was one. It was a long long
+time ago: in fact, Sir George Thrum was old enough to remember persons
+who had been present at Mr. Braham's first appearance, and the old
+gentleman's days of triumph had been those of Billington and Incledon,
+Catalani and Madame Storace.
+
+He was the author of several operas (“The Camel Driver,” “Britons
+Alarmed; or, the Siege of Bergen-op-Zoom,” etc. etc.), and, of course,
+of songs which had considerable success in their day, but are forgotten
+now, and are as much faded and out of fashion as those old carpets which
+we have described in the professor's house, and which were, doubtless,
+very brilliant once. But such is the fate of carpets, of flowers, of
+music, of men, and of the most admirable novels--even this story will
+not be alive for many centuries. Well, well, why struggle against Fate?
+
+But, though his heyday of fashion was gone, Sir George still held his
+place among the musicians of the old school, conducted occasionally
+at the Ancient Concerts and the Philharmonic, and his glees are
+still favourites after public dinners, and are sung by those old
+bacchanalians, in chestnut wigs, who attend for the purpose of amusing
+the guests on such occasions of festivity. The great old people at
+the gloomy old concerts before mentioned always pay Sir George marked
+respect; and, indeed, from the old gentleman's peculiar behaviour to his
+superiors, it is impossible they should not be delighted with him, so he
+leads at almost every one of the concerts in the old-fashioned houses in
+town.
+
+Becomingly obsequious to his superiors, he is with the rest of the world
+properly majestic, and has obtained no small success by his admirable
+and undeviating respectability. Respectability has been his great card
+through life; ladies can trust their daughters at Sir George Thrum's
+academy. “A good musician, madam,” says he to the mother of a new pupil,
+“should not only have a fine ear, a good voice, and an indomitable
+industry, but, above all, a faultless character--faultless, that is, as
+far as our poor nature will permit. And you will remark that those young
+persons with whom your lovely daughter, Miss Smith, will pursue her
+musical studies, are all, in a moral point of view, as spotless as that
+charming young lady. How should it be otherwise? I have been myself the
+father of a family; I have been honoured with the intimacy of the wisest
+and best of kings, my late sovereign George III., and I can proudly show
+an example of decorum to my pupils in my Sophia. Mrs. Smith, I have the
+honour of introducing to you my Lady Thrum.”
+
+The old lady would rise at this, and make a gigantic curtsey, such a
+one as had begun the minuet at Ranelagh fifty years ago; and, the
+introduction ended, Mrs. Smith would retire, after having seen the
+portraits of the princes, his late Majesty's snuff-box, and a piece of
+music which he used to play, noted by himself--Mrs. Smith, I say, would
+drive back to Baker Street, delighted to think that her Frederica had
+secured so eligible and respectable a master. I forgot to say that,
+during the interview between Mrs. Smith and Sir George, the latter would
+be called out of his study by his black servant, and my Lady Thrum would
+take that opportunity of mentioning when he was knighted, and how he
+got his foreign order, and deploring the sad condition of OTHER musical
+professors, and the dreadful immorality which sometimes arose in
+consequence of their laxness. Sir George was a good deal engaged to
+dinners in the season, and if invited to dine with a nobleman, as he
+might possibly be on the day when Mrs. Smith requested the honour of
+his company, he would write back “that he should have had the sincerest
+happiness in waiting upon Mrs. Smith in Baker Street, if, previously, my
+Lord Tweedledale had not been so kind as to engage him.” This letter,
+of course, shown by Mrs. Smith to her friends, was received by them with
+proper respect; and thus, in spite of age and new fashions, Sir George
+still reigned pre-eminent for a mile round Cavendish Square. By the
+young pupils of the academy he was called Sir Charles Grandison;
+and, indeed, fully deserved this title on account of the indomitable
+respectability of his whole actions.
+
+It was under this gentleman that Morgiana made her debut in public life.
+I do not know what arrangements may have been made between Sir George
+Thrum and his pupil regarding the profits which were to accrue to the
+former from engagements procured by him for the latter; but there was,
+no doubt, an understanding between them. For Sir George, respectable as
+he was, had the reputation of being extremely clever at a bargain; and
+Lady Thrum herself, in her great high-tragedy way, could purchase a pair
+of soles or select a leg of mutton with the best housekeeper in London.
+
+When, however, Morgiana had been for some six months under his tuition,
+he began, for some reason or other, to be exceedingly hospitable, and
+invited his friends to numerous entertainments: at one of which, as I
+have said, I had the pleasure of meeting Mrs. Walker.
+
+Although the worthy musician's dinners were not good, the old knight
+had some excellent wine in his cellar, and his arrangement of his party
+deserves to be commended.
+
+For instance, he meets me and Bob Fitz-Urse in Pall Mall, at whose
+paternal house he was also a visitor. “My dear young gentlemen,” says
+he, “will you come and dine with a poor musical composer? I have some
+Comet hock, and, what is more curious to you, perhaps, as men of wit,
+one or two of the great literary characters of London whom you would
+like to see--quite curiosities, my dear young friends.” And we agreed to
+go.
+
+To the literary men he says: “I have a little quiet party at home: Lord
+Roundtowers, the Honourable Mr. Fitz-Urse of the Life Guards, and a few
+more. Can you tear yourself away from the war of wits, and take a quiet
+dinner with a few mere men about town?”
+
+The literary men instantly purchase new satin stocks and white gloves,
+and are delighted to fancy themselves members of the world of fashion.
+Instead of inviting twelve Royal Academicians, or a dozen authors, or
+a dozen men of science to dinner, as his Grace the Duke of ---- and the
+Right Honourable Sir Robert ---- are in the habit of doing once a
+year, this plan of fusion is the one they should adopt. Not invite all
+artists, as they would invite all farmers to a rent dinner; but they
+should have a proper commingling of artists and men of the world. There
+is one of the latter whose name is George Savage Fitz-Boodle, who-- But
+let us return to Sir George Thrum.
+
+Fitz-Urse and I arrive at the dismal old house, and are conducted up the
+staircase by a black servant, who shouts out, “Missa Fiss-Boodle--the
+HONOURABLE Missa Fiss-Urse!” It was evident that Lady Thrum had
+instructed the swarthy groom of the chambers (for there is nothing
+particularly honourable in my friend Fitz's face that I know of, unless
+an abominable squint may be said to be so). Lady Thrum, whose figure is
+something like that of the shot-tower opposite Waterloo Bridge, makes a
+majestic inclination and a speech to signify her pleasure at receiving
+under her roof two of the children of Sir George's best pupils. A
+lady in black velvet is seated by the old fireplace, with whom a stout
+gentleman in an exceedingly light coat and ornamental waistcoat is
+talking very busily. “The great star of the night,” whispers our host.
+“Mrs. Walker, gentlemen--the RAVENSWING! She is talking to the famous
+Mr. Slang, of the ---- Theatre.”
+
+“Is she a fine singer?” says Fitz-Urse. “She's a very fine woman.”
+
+“My dear young friends, you shall hear to-night! I, who have heard every
+fine voice in Europe, confidently pledge my respectability that the
+Ravenswing is equal to them all. She has the graces, sir, of a Venus
+with the mind of a Muse. She is a siren, sir, without the dangerous
+qualities of one. She is hallowed, sir, by her misfortunes as by her
+genius; and I am proud to think that my instructions have been the means
+of developing the wondrous qualities that were latent within her until
+now.”
+
+“You don't say so!” says gobemouche Fitz-Urse.
+
+Having thus indoctrinated Mr. Fitz-Urse, Sir George takes another of his
+guests, and proceeds to work upon him. “My dear Mr. Bludyer, how do you
+do? Mr. Fitz-Boodle, Mr. Bludyer, the brilliant and accomplished
+wit, whose sallies in the Tomahawk delight us every Saturday. Nay, no
+blushes, my dear sir; you are very wicked, but oh! SO pleasant. Well,
+Mr. Bludyer, I am glad to see you, sir, and hope you will have
+a favourable opinion of our genius, sir. As I was saying to Mr.
+Fitz-Boodle, she has the graces of a Venus with the mind of a Muse. She
+is a siren, without the dangerous qualities of one,” etc. This
+little speech was made to half-a-dozen persons in the course of the
+evening--persons, for the most part, connected with the public journals
+or the theatrical world. There was Mr. Squinny, the editor of the
+Flowers of Fashion; Mr. Desmond Mulligan, the poet, and reporter for
+a morning paper; and other worthies of their calling. For though
+Sir George is a respectable man, and as high-minded and moral an old
+gentleman as ever wore knee-buckles, he does not neglect the little arts
+of popularity, and can condescend to receive very queer company if need
+be.
+
+For instance, at the dinner-party at which I had the honour of
+assisting, and at which, on the right hand of Lady Thrum, sat the oblige
+nobleman, whom the Thrums were a great deal too wise to omit (the sight
+of a lord does good to us commoners, or why else should we be so anxious
+to have one?). In the second place of honour, and on her ladyship's left
+hand, sat Mr. Slang, the manager of one of the theatres; a gentleman
+whom my Lady Thrum would scarcely, but for a great necessity's sake,
+have been induced to invite to her table. He had the honour of leading
+Mrs. Walker to dinner, who looked splendid in black velvet and turban,
+full of health and smiles.
+
+Lord Roundtowers is an old gentleman who has been at the theatres five
+times a week for these fifty years, a living dictionary of the stage,
+recollecting every actor and actress who has appeared upon it for half a
+century. He perfectly well remembered Miss Delancy in Morgiana; he knew
+what had become of Ali Baba, and how Cassim had left the stage, and was
+now the keeper of a public-house. All this store of knowledge he
+kept quietly to himself, or only delivered in confidence to his next
+neighbour in the intervals of the banquet, which he enjoys prodigiously.
+He lives at an hotel: if not invited to dine, eats a mutton-chop
+very humbly at his club, and finishes his evening after the play at
+Crockford's, whither he goes not for the sake of the play, but of the
+supper there. He is described in the Court Guide as of “Simmer's Hotel,”
+ and of Roundtowers, county Cork. It is said that the round towers really
+exist. But he has not been in Ireland since the rebellion; and his
+property is so hampered with ancestral mortgages, and rent-charges, and
+annuities, that his income is barely sufficient to provide the modest
+mutton-chop before alluded to. He has, any time these fifty years, lived
+in the wickedest company in London, and is, withal, as harmless, mild,
+good-natured, innocent an old gentleman as can readily be seen.
+
+“Roundy,” shouts the elegant Mr. Slang, across the table, with a voice
+which makes Lady Thrum shudder, “Tuff, a glass of wine.”
+
+My Lord replies meekly, “Mr. Slang, I shall have very much pleasure.
+What shall it be?”
+
+“There is Madeira near you, my Lord,” says my Lady, pointing to a tall
+thin decanter of the fashion of the year.
+
+“Madeira! Marsala, by Jove, your Ladyship means!” shouts Mr. Slang. “No,
+no, old birds are not caught with chaff. Thrum, old boy, let's have some
+of your Comet hock.”
+
+“My Lady Thrum, I believe that IS Marsala,” says the knight, blushing a
+little, in reply to a question from his Sophia. “Ajax, the hock to Mr.
+Slang.”
+
+“I'm in that,” yells Bludyer from the end of the table. “My Lord, I'll
+join you.”
+
+“Mr. ----, I beg your pardon--I shall be very happy to take wine with
+you, sir.”
+
+“It is Mr. Bludyer, the celebrated newspaper writer,” whispers Lady
+Thrum.
+
+“Bludyer, Bludyer? A very clever man, I dare say. He has a very loud
+voice, and reminds me of Brett. Does your Ladyship remember Brett, who
+played the 'Fathers' at the Haymarket in 1802?”
+
+“What an old stupid Roundtowers is!” says Slang, archly, nudging Mrs.
+Walker in the side. “How's Walker, eh?”
+
+“My husband is in the country,” replied Mrs. Walker, hesitatingly.
+
+“Gammon! _I_ know where he is! Law bless you!--don't blush. I've been
+there myself a dozen times. We were talking about quod, Lady Thrum. Were
+you ever in college?”
+
+“I was at the Commemoration at Oxford in 1814, when the sovereigns were
+there, and at Cambridge when Sir George received his degree of Doctor of
+Music.”
+
+“Laud, Laud, THAT'S not the college WE mean.”
+
+“There is also the college in Gower Street, where my grandson--”
+
+“This is the college in QUEER STREET, ma'am, haw, haw! Mulligan, you
+divvle (in an Irish accent), a glass of wine with you. Wine, here, you
+waiter! What's your name, you black nigger? 'Possum up a gum-tree, eh?
+Fill him up. Dere he go” (imitating the Mandingo manner of speaking
+English)
+
+In this agreeable way would Mr. Slang rattle on, speedily making himself
+the centre of the conversation, and addressing graceful familiarities to
+all the gentlemen and ladies round him.
+
+It was good to see how the little knight, the most moral and calm of
+men, was compelled to receive Mr. Slang's stories and the frightened air
+with which, at the conclusion of one of them, he would venture upon
+a commendatory grin. His lady, on her part too, had been laboriously
+civil; and, on the occasion on which I had the honour of meeting this
+gentleman and Mrs. Walker, it was the latter who gave the signal for
+withdrawing to the lady of the house, by saying, “I think, Lady Thrum,
+it is quite time for us to retire.” Some exquisite joke of Mr. Slang's
+was the cause of this abrupt disappearance. But, as they went upstairs
+to the drawing-room, Lady Thrum took occasion to say, “My dear, in
+the course of your profession you will have to submit to many such
+familiarities on the part of persons of low breeding, such as I fear Mr.
+Slang is. But let me caution you against giving way to your temper
+as you did. Did you not perceive that _I_ never allowed him to see my
+inward dissatisfaction? And I make it a particular point that you should
+be very civil to him to-night. Your interests--our interests depend upon
+it.”
+
+“And are my interests to make me civil to a wretch like that?”
+
+“Mrs. Walker, would you wish to give lessons in morality and behaviour
+to Lady Thrum?” said the old lady, drawing herself up with great
+dignity. It was evident that she had a very strong desire indeed to
+conciliate Mr. Slang; and hence I have no doubt that Sir George was to
+have a considerable share of Morgiana's earnings.
+
+Mr. Bludyer, the famous editor of the Tomahawk, whose jokes Sir George
+pretended to admire so much (Sir George who never made a joke in his
+life), was a press bravo of considerable talent and no principle, and
+who, to use his own words, would “back himself for a slashing article
+against any man in England!” He would not only write, but fight on a
+pinch; was a good scholar, and as savage in his manner as with his
+pen. Mr. Squinny is of exactly the opposite school, as delicate as
+milk-and-water, harmless in his habits, fond of the flute when the state
+of his chest will allow him, a great practiser of waltzing and dancing
+in general, and in his journal mildly malicious. He never goes beyond
+the bounds of politeness, but manages to insinuate a great deal that is
+disagreeable to an author in the course of twenty lines of criticism.
+Personally he is quite respectable, and lives with two maiden aunts at
+Brompton. Nobody, on the contrary, knows where Mr. Bludyer lives. He has
+houses of call, mysterious taverns, where he may be found at particular
+hours by those who need him, and where panting publishers are in the
+habit of hunting him up. For a bottle of wine and a guinea he will write
+a page of praise or abuse of any man living, or on any subject, or on
+any line of politics. “Hang it, sir!” says he, “pay me enough and I will
+write down my own father!” According to the state of his credit, he
+is dressed either almost in rags or else in the extremest flush of the
+fashion. With the latter attire he puts on a haughty and aristocratic
+air, and would slap a duke on the shoulder. If there is one thing more
+dangerous than to refuse to lend him a sum of money when he asks for it,
+it is to lend it to him; for he never pays, and never pardons a man to
+whom he owes. “Walker refused to cash a bill for me,” he had been heard
+to say, “and I'll do for his wife when she comes out on the stage!” Mrs.
+Walker and Sir George Thrum were in an agony about the Tomahawk; hence
+the latter's invitation to Mr. Bludyer. Sir George was in a great tremor
+about the Flowers of Fashion, hence his invitation to Mr. Squinny. Mr.
+Squinny was introduced to Lord Roundtowers and Mr. Fitz-Urse as one of
+the most delightful and talented of our young men of genius; and Fitz,
+who believes everything anyone tells him, was quite pleased to have
+the honour of sitting near the live editor of a paper. I have reason to
+think that Mr. Squinny himself was no less delighted: I saw him giving
+his card to Fitz-Urse at the end of the second course.
+
+No particular attention was paid to Mr. Desmond Mulligan. Political
+enthusiasm is his forte. He lives and writes in a rapture. He is,
+of course, a member of an inn of court, and greatly addicted to
+after-dinner speaking as a preparation for the bar, where as a young man
+of genius he hopes one day to shine. He is almost the only man to whom
+Bludyer is civil; for, if the latter will fight doggedly when there is
+a necessity for so doing, the former fights like an Irishman, and has a
+pleasure in it. He has been “on the ground” I don't know how many
+times, and quitted his country on account of a quarrel with Government
+regarding certain articles published by him in the Phoenix newspaper.
+With the third bottle, he becomes overpoweringly great on the wrongs
+of Ireland, and at that period generally volunteers a couple or more of
+Irish melodies, selecting the most melancholy in the collection. At five
+in the afternoon, you are sure to see him about the House of Commons,
+and he knows the “Reform Club” (he calls it the Refawrum) as well as if
+he were a member. It is curious for the contemplative mind to mark those
+mysterious hangers-on of Irish members of Parliament--strange runners
+and aides-de-camp which all the honourable gentlemen appear to possess.
+Desmond, in his political capacity, is one of these, and besides his
+calling as reporter to a newspaper, is “our well-informed correspondent”
+ of that famous Munster paper, the Green Flag of Skibbereen.
+
+With Mr. Mulligan's qualities and history I only became subsequently
+acquainted. On the present evening he made but a brief stay at the
+dinner-table, being compelled by his professional duties to attend the
+House of Commons.
+
+The above formed the party with whom I had the honour to dine. What
+other repasts Sir George Thrum may have given, what assemblies of men
+of mere science he may have invited to give their opinion regarding his
+prodigy, what other editors of papers he may have pacified or rendered
+favourable, who knows? On the present occasion, we did not quit the
+dinner-table until Mr. Slang the manager was considerably excited
+by wine, and music had been heard for some time in the drawing-room
+overhead during our absence. An addition had been made to the Thrum
+party by the arrival of several persons to spend the evening,--a man to
+play on the violin between the singing, a youth to play on the piano,
+Miss Horsman to sing with Mrs. Walker, and other scientific characters.
+In a corner sat a red-faced old lady, of whom the mistress of the
+mansion took little notice; and a gentleman with a royal button, who
+blushed and looked exceedingly modest.
+
+“Hang me!” says Mr. Bludyer, who had perfectly good reasons for
+recognising Mr Woolsey, and who on this day chose to assume his
+aristocratic air; “there's a tailor in the room! What do they mean by
+asking ME to meet tradesmen?”
+
+“Delancy, my dear,” cries Slang, entering the room with a reel, “how's
+your precious health? Give us your hand! When ARE we to be married? Make
+room for me on the sofa, that's a duck!”
+
+“Get along, Slang,” says Mrs. Crump, addressed by the manager by her
+maiden name (artists generally drop the title of honour which people
+adopt in the world, and call each other by their simple surnames)--“get
+along, Slang, or I'll tell Mrs. S.!” The enterprising manager replies by
+sportively striking Mrs. Crump on the side a blow which causes a great
+giggle from the lady insulted, and a most good-humoured threat to box
+Slang's ears. I fear very much that Morgiana's mother thought Mr. Slang
+an exceedingly gentlemanlike and agreeable person; besides, she was
+eager to have his good opinion of Mrs. Walker's singing.
+
+The manager stretched himself out with much gracefulness on the sofa,
+supporting two little dumpy legs encased in varnished boots on a chair.
+
+“Ajax, some tea to Mr. Slang,” said my Lady, looking towards that
+gentleman with a countenance expressive of some alarm, I thought.
+
+“That's right, Ajax, my black prince!” exclaimed Slang when the negro
+brought the required refreshment; “and now I suppose you'll be wanted in
+the orchestra yonder. Don't Ajax play the cymbals, Sir George?”
+
+“Ha, ha, ha! very good--capital!” answered the knight, exceedingly
+frightened; “but ours is not a MILITARY band. Miss Horsman, Mr. Craw,
+my dear Mrs. Ravenswing, shall we begin the trio? Silence, gentlemen, if
+you please; it is a little piece from my opera of the 'Brigand's Bride.'
+Miss Horsman takes the Page's part, Mr. Craw is Stiletto the Brigand, my
+accomplished pupil is the Bride;” and the music began.
+
+          “THE BRIDE.
+
+     “My heart with joy is beating,
+        My eyes with tears are dim;
+
+          “THE PAGE.
+
+     “Her heart with joy is beating
+        Her eyes are fixed on him;
+
+          “THE BRIGAND.
+
+     “My heart with rage is beating,
+        In blood my eye-balls swim!”
+
+What may have been the merits of the music or the singing, I, of course,
+cannot guess. Lady Thrum sat opposite the tea-cups, nodding her head
+and beating time very gravely. Lord Roundtowers, by her side, nodded his
+head too, for awhile, and then fell asleep. I should have done the same
+but for the manager, whose actions were worth of remark. He sang with
+all the three singers, and a great deal louder than any of them; he
+shouted bravo! or hissed as he thought proper; he criticised all the
+points of Mrs. Walker's person. “She'll do, Crump, she'll do--a splendid
+arm--you'll see her eyes in the shilling gallery! What sort of a
+foot has she? She's five feet three, if she's an inch! Bravo--slap
+up--capital--hurrah!” And he concluded by saying, with the aid of the
+Ravenswing, he would put Ligonier's nose out of Joint!
+
+The enthusiasm of Mr. Slang almost reconciled Lady Thrum to the
+abruptness of his manners, and even caused Sir George to forget that
+his chorus had been interrupted by the obstreperous familiarity of the
+manager.
+
+“And what do YOU think, Mr. Bludyer,” said the tailor, delighted that
+his protegee should be thus winning all hearts: “isn't Mrs. Walker a
+tip-top singer, eh, sir?”
+
+“I think she's a very bad one, Mr. Woolsey,” said the illustrious
+author, wishing to abbreviate all communications with a tailor to whom
+he owed forty pounds.
+
+“Then, sir,” says Mr. Woolsey, fiercely, “I'll--I'll thank you to pay me
+my little bill!”
+
+It is true there was no connection between Mrs. Walker's singing and
+Woolsey's little bill; that the “THEN, sir,” was perfectly illogical on
+Woolsey's part; but it was a very happy hit for the future fortunes of
+Mrs. Walker. Who knows what would have come of her debut but for that
+“Then, sir,” and whether a “smashing article” from the Tomahawk might
+not have ruined her for ever?
+
+“Are you a relation of Mrs. Walker's?” said Mr. Bludyer, in reply to the
+angry tailor.
+
+“What's that to you, whether I am or not?” replied Woolsey, fiercely.
+“But I'm the friend of Mrs. Walker, sir; proud am I to say so, sir; and,
+as the poet says, sir, 'a little learning's a dangerous thing,' sir;
+and I think a man who don't pay his bills may keep his tongue quiet at
+least, sir, and not abuse a lady, sir, whom everybody else praises,
+sir. You shan't humbug ME any more, sir; you shall hear from my attorney
+to-morrow, so mark that!”
+
+“Hush, my dear Mr. Woolsey,” cried the literary man, “don't make a
+noise; come into this window: is Mrs. Walker REALLY a friend of yours?”
+
+“I've told you so, sir.”
+
+“Well, in that case, I shall do my utmost to serve her and, look you,
+Woolsey, any article you choose to send about her to the Tomahawk I
+promise you I'll put in.”
+
+“WILL you, though? then we'll say nothing about the little bill.”
+
+“You may do on that point,” answered Bludyer, haughtily, “exactly as
+you please. I am not to be frightened from my duty, mind that; and mind,
+too, that I can write a slashing article better than any man in England:
+I could crush her by ten lines.”
+
+The tables were now turned, and it was Woolsey's turn to be alarmed.
+
+“Pooh! pooh! I WAS angry,” said he, “because you abuse Mrs. Walker,
+who's an angel on earth; but I'm very willing to apologise. I
+say--come--let me take your measure for some new clothes, eh! Mr. B.?”
+
+“I'll come to your shop,” answered the literary man, quite appeased.
+“Silence! they're beginning another song.”
+
+The songs, which I don't attempt to describe (and, upon my word and
+honour, as far as I can understand matters, I believe to this day that
+Mrs. Walker was only an ordinary singer)--the songs lasted a great deal
+longer than I liked; but I was nailed, as it were, to the spot, having
+agreed to sup at Knightsbridge barracks with Fitz-Urse, whose carriage
+was ordered at eleven o'clock.
+
+“My dear Mr. Fitz-Boodle,” said our old host to me, “you can do me the
+greatest service in the world.”
+
+“Speak, sir!” said I.
+
+“Will you ask your honourable and gallant friend, the Captain, to drive
+home Mr. Squinny to Brompton?”
+
+“Can't Mr. Squinny get a cab?”
+
+Sir George looked particularly arch. “Generalship, my dear young
+friend--a little harmless generalship. Mr. Squinny will not give much
+for MY opinion of my pupil, but he will value very highly the opinion of
+the Honourable Mr. FitzUrse.”
+
+For a moral man, was not the little knight a clever fellow? He had
+bought Mr. Squinny for a dinner worth ten shillings, and for a ride in
+a carriage with a lord's son. Squinny was carried to Brompton, and set
+down at his aunts' door, delighted with his new friends, and exceedingly
+sick with a cigar they had made him smoke.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII. IN WHICH MR. WALKER SHOWS GREAT PRUDENCE AND FORBEARANCE.
+
+The describing of all these persons does not advance Morgiana's story
+much. But, perhaps, some country readers are not acquainted with the
+class of persons by whose printed opinions they are guided, and are
+simple enough to imagine that mere merit will make a reputation on the
+stage or elsewhere. The making of a theatrical success is a much more
+complicated and curious thing than such persons fancy it to be. Immense
+are the pains taken to get a good word from Mr. This of the Star, or Mr.
+That of the Courier, to propitiate the favour of the critic of the day,
+and get the editors of the metropolis into a good humour,--above all, to
+have the name of the person to be puffed perpetually before the public.
+Artists cannot be advertised like Macassar oil or blacking, and they
+want it to the full as much; hence endless ingenuity must be practised
+in order to keep the popular attention awake. Suppose a great actor
+moves from London to Windsor, the Brentford Champion must state that
+“Yesterday Mr. Blazes and suite passed rapidly through our city; the
+celebrated comedian is engaged, we hear, at Windsor, to give some of his
+inimitable readings of our great national bard to the MOST ILLUSTRIOUS
+AUDIENCE in the realm.” This piece of intelligence the Hammersmith
+Observer will question the next week, as thus:--“A contemporary, the
+Brentford Champion, says that Blazes is engaged to give Shakspearian
+readings at Windsor to “the most illustrious audience in the realm.” We
+question this fact very much. We would, indeed, that it were true; but
+the MOST ILLUSTRIOUS AUDIENCE in the realm prefer FOREIGN melodies to
+THE NATIVE WOOD-NOTES WILD of the sweet song-bird of Avon. Mr. Blazes
+is simply gone to Eton, where his son, Master Massinger Blazes, is
+suffering, we regret to hear, under a severe attack of the chicken-pox.
+This complaint (incident to youth) has raged, we understand, with
+frightful virulence in Eton School.”
+
+And if, after the above paragraphs, some London paper chooses to attack
+the folly of the provincial press, which talks of Mr. Blazes, and
+chronicles his movements, as if he were a crowned head, what harm is
+done? Blazes can write in his own name to the London journal, and say
+that it is not HIS fault if provincial journals choose to chronicle
+his movements, and that he was far from wishing that the afflictions of
+those who are dear to him should form the subject of public comment,
+and be held up to public ridicule. “We had no intention of hurting the
+feelings of an estimable public servant,” writes the editor; “and our
+remarks on the chicken-pox were general, not personal. We sincerely
+trust that Master Massinger Blazes has recovered from that complaint,
+and that he may pass through the measles, the whooping-cough, the fourth
+form, and all other diseases to which youth is subject, with comfort to
+himself, and credit to his parents and teachers.” At his next appearance
+on the stage after this controversy, a British public calls for Blazes
+three times after the play; and somehow there is sure to be someone with
+a laurel-wreath in a stage-box, who flings that chaplet at the inspired
+artist's feet.
+
+I don't know how it was, but before the debut of Morgiana, the English
+press began to heave and throb in a convulsive manner, as if indicative
+of the near birth of some great thing. For instance, you read in one
+paper,--
+
+“Anecdote of Karl Maria Von Weber.--When the author of 'Oberon' was in
+England, he was invited by a noble duke to dinner, and some of the most
+celebrated of our artists were assembled to meet him. The signal being
+given to descend to the salle-a-manger, the German composer was invited
+by his noble host (a bachelor) to lead the way. 'Is it not the fashion
+in your country,' said he, simply, 'for the man of the first eminence to
+take the first place? Here is one whose genius entitles him to be first
+ANYWHERE.' And, so saying, he pointed to our admirable English composer,
+Sir George Thrum. The two musicians were friends to the last, and Sir
+George has still the identical piece of rosin which the author of the
+'Freischutz' gave him.”--The Moon (morning paper), June 2.
+
+“George III. a composer.--Sir George Thrum has in his possession the
+score of an air, the words from 'Samson Agonistes,' an autograph of the
+late revered monarch. We hear that that excellent composer has in store
+for us not only an opera, but a pupil, with whose transcendent merits
+the elite of our aristocracy are already familiar.”--Ibid., June 5.
+
+“Music with a Vengeance.--The march to the sound of which the 49th and
+75th regiments rushed up the breach of Badajoz was the celebrated air
+from 'Britons Alarmed; or, The Siege of Bergen-op-Zoom,' by our famous
+English composer, Sir George Thrum. Marshal Davoust said that the
+French line never stood when that air was performed to the charge of the
+bayonet. We hear the veteran musician has an opera now about to
+appear, and have no doubt that Old England will now, as then, show its
+superiority over ALL foreign opponents.”--Albion.
+
+“We have been accused of preferring the produit of the etranger to the
+talent of our own native shores; but those who speak so, little know
+us. We are fanatici per la musica wherever it be, and welcome merit dans
+chaque pays du monde. What do we say? Le merite n'a point de pays, as
+Napoleon said; and Sir George Thrum (Chevalier de l'Ordre de l'Elephant
+et Chateau de Kalbsbraten-Pumpernickel,) is a maestro whose fame
+appartient a l'Europe.
+
+“We have just heard the lovely eleve, whose rare qualities the Cavaliere
+has brought to perfection,--we have heard THE RAVENSWING (pourquoi
+cacher un nom que demain un monde va saluer?), and a creature more
+beautiful and gifted never bloomed before dans nos climats. She sang
+the delicious duet of the 'Nabucodonosore,' with Count Pizzicato, with
+a bellezza, a grandezza, a raggio, that excited in the bosom of the
+audience a corresponding furore: her scherzando was exquisite, though we
+confess we thought the concluding fioritura in the passage in Y flat a
+leetle, a very leetle sforzata. Surely the words,
+
+     'Giorno d'orrore,
+      Delire, dolore,
+      Nabucodonosore,'
+
+should be given andante, and not con strepito: but this is a faute bien
+legere in the midst of such unrivalled excellence, and only mentioned
+here that we may have SOMETHING to criticise.
+
+“We hear that the enterprising impresario of one of the royal theatres
+has made an engagement with the Diva; and, if we have a regret, it is
+that she should be compelled to sing in the unfortunate language of our
+rude northern clime, which does not preter itself near so well to the
+bocca of the cantatrice as do the mellifluous accents of the Lingua
+Toscana, the langue par excellence of song.
+
+“The Ravenswing's voice is a magnificent contra-basso of nine octaves,”
+ etc.--Flowers of Fashion, June 10.
+
+“Old Thrum, the composer, is bringing out an opera and a pupil. The
+opera is good, the pupil first-rate. The opera will do much more than
+compete with the infernal twaddle and disgusting slip-slop of Donizetti,
+and the milk-and-water fools who imitate him: it will (and we ask the
+readers of the Tomahawk, were we EVER mistaken?) surpass all these; it
+is GOOD, of downright English stuff. The airs are fresh and pleasing,
+the choruses large and noble, the instrumentation solid and rich, the
+music is carefully written. We wish old Thrum and his opera well.
+
+“His pupil is a SURE CARD, a splendid woman, and a splendid singer. She
+is so handsome that she might sing as much out of tune as Miss Ligonier,
+and the public would forgive her; and sings so well, that were she as
+ugly as the aforesaid Ligonier, the audience would listen to her. The
+Ravenswing, that is her fantastical theatrical name (her real name is
+the same with that of a notorious scoundrel in the Fleet, who invented
+the Panama swindle, the Pontine Marshes' swindle, the Soap swindle--HOW
+ARE YOU OFF FOR SOAP NOW, Mr. W-lk-r?)--the Ravenswing, we say, will do.
+Slang has engaged her at thirty guineas per week, and she appears next
+month in Thrum's opera, of which the words are written by a great ass
+with some talent--we mean Mr. Mulligan.
+
+“There is a foreign fool in the Flowers of Fashion who is doing his best
+to disgust the public by his filthy flattery. It is enough to make
+one sick. Why is the foreign beast not kicked out of the paper?”--The
+Tomahawk, June 17.
+
+The first three “anecdotes” were supplied by Mulligan to his paper,
+with many others which need not here be repeated: he kept them up
+with amazing energy and variety. Anecdotes of Sir George Thrum met you
+unexpectedly in queer corners of country papers: puffs of the English
+school of music appeared perpetually in “Notices to Correspondents” in
+the Sunday prints, some of which Mr. Slang commanded, and in others over
+which the indefatigable Mulligan had a control. This youth was the soul
+of the little conspiracy for raising Morgiana into fame: and humble as
+he is, and great and respectable as is Sir George Thrum, it is my belief
+that the Ravenswing would never have been the Ravenswing she is but for
+the ingenuity and energy of the honest Hibernian reporter.
+
+It is only the business of the great man who writes the leading articles
+which appear in the large type of the daily papers to compose those
+astonishing pieces of eloquence; the other parts of the paper are
+left to the ingenuity of the sub-editor, whose duty it is to select
+paragraphs, reject or receive horrid accidents, police reports,
+etc.; with which, occupied as he is in the exercise of his tremendous
+functions, the editor himself cannot be expected to meddle. The fate
+of Europe is his province; the rise and fall of empires, and the great
+questions of State demand the editor's attention: the humble puff,
+the paragraph about the last murder, or the state of the crops, or the
+sewers in Chancery Lane, is confided to the care of the sub; and it
+is curious to see what a prodigious number of Irishmen exist among the
+sub-editors of London. When the Liberator enumerates the services of his
+countrymen, how the battle of Fontenoy was won by the Irish Brigade, how
+the battle of Waterloo would have been lost but for the Irish regiments,
+and enumerates other acts for which we are indebted to Milesian heroism
+and genius--he ought at least to mention the Irish brigade of the press,
+and the amazing services they do to this country.
+
+The truth is, the Irish reporters and soldiers appear to do their duty
+right well; and my friend Mr. Mulligan is one of the former. Having the
+interests of his opera and the Ravenswing strongly at heart, and being
+amongst his brethren an exceedingly popular fellow, he managed matters
+so that never a day passed but some paragraph appeared somewhere
+regarding the new singer, in whom, for their countryman's sake, all his
+brothers and sub-editors felt an interest.
+
+These puffs, destined to make known to all the world the merits of
+the Ravenswing, of course had an effect upon a gentleman very closely
+connected with that lady, the respectable prisoner in the Fleet, Captain
+Walker. As long as he received his weekly two guineas from Mr. Woolsey,
+and the occasional half-crowns which his wife could spare in her almost
+daily visits to him, he had never troubled himself to inquire what her
+pursuits were, and had allowed her (though the worthy woman longed with
+all her might to betray herself) to keep her secret. He was far from
+thinking, indeed, that his wife would prove such a treasure to him.
+
+But when the voice of fame and the columns of the public journals
+brought him each day some new story regarding the merits, genius, and
+beauty of the Ravenswing; when rumours reached him that she was the
+favourite pupil of Sir George Thrum; when she brought him five guineas
+after singing at the “Philharmonic” (other five the good soul had spent
+in purchasing some smart new cockades, hats, cloaks, and laces, for her
+little son); when, finally, it was said that Slang, the great manager,
+offered her an engagement at thirty guineas per week, Mr. Walker became
+exceedingly interested in his wife's proceedings, of which he demanded
+from her the fullest explanation.
+
+Using his marital authority, he absolutely forbade Mrs. Walker's
+appearance on the public stage; he wrote to Sir George Thrum a letter
+expressive of his highest indignation that negotiations so important
+should ever have been commenced without his authorisation; and he wrote
+to his dear Slang (for these gentlemen were very intimate, and in the
+course of his transactions as an agent Mr. W. had had many dealings
+with Mr. S.) asking his dear Slang whether the latter thought his friend
+Walker would be so green as to allow his wife to appear on the stage,
+and he remain in prison with all his debts on his head?
+
+And it was a curious thing now to behold how eager those very creditors
+who but yesterday (and with perfect correctness) had denounced Mr.
+Walker as a swindler; who had refused to come to any composition with
+him, and had sworn never to release him; how they on a sudden became
+quite eager to come to an arrangement with him, and offered, nay, begged
+and prayed him to go free,--only giving them his own and Mrs. Walker's
+acknowledgment of their debt, with a promise that a part of the lady's
+salary should be devoted to the payment of the claim.
+
+“The lady's salary!” said Mr. Walker, indignantly, to these gentlemen
+and their attorneys. “Do you suppose I will allow Mrs. Walker to go on
+the stage?--do you suppose I am such a fool as to sign bills to the full
+amount of these claims against me, when in a few months more I can walk
+out of prison without paying a shilling? Gentlemen, you take Howard
+Walker for an idiot. I like the Fleet, and rather than pay I'll stay
+here for these ten years.”
+
+In other words, it was the Captain's determination to make some
+advantageous bargain for himself with his creditors and the gentlemen
+who were interested in bringing forward Mrs. Walker on the stage. And
+who can say that in so determining he did not act with laudable prudence
+and justice?
+
+“You do not, surely, consider, my very dear sir, that half the amount of
+Mrs. Walker's salaries is too much for my immense trouble and pains in
+teaching her?” cried Sir George Thrum (who, in reply to Walker's note,
+thought it most prudent to wait personally on that gentleman). “Remember
+that I am the first master in England; that I have the best interest in
+England; that I can bring her out at the Palace, and at every concert
+and musical festival in England; that I am obliged to teach her every
+single note that she utters; and that without me she could no more sing
+a song than her little baby could walk without its nurse.”
+
+“I believe about half what you say,” said Mr. Walker.
+
+“My dear Captain Walker! would you question my integrity? Who was it
+that made Mrs. Millington's fortune,--the celebrated Mrs. Millington,
+who has now got a hundred thousand pounds? Who was it that brought out
+the finest tenor in Europe, Poppleton? Ask the musical world, ask
+those great artists themselves, and they will tell you they owe their
+reputation, their fortune, to Sir George Thrum.”
+
+“It is very likely,” replied the Captain, coolly. “You ARE a good
+master, I dare say, Sir George; but I am not going to article Mrs.
+Walker to you for three years, and sign her articles in the Fleet. Mrs.
+Walker shan't sing till I'm a free man, that's flat: if I stay here till
+you're dead she shan't.”
+
+“Gracious powers, sir!” exclaimed Sir George, “do you expect me to pay
+your debts?”
+
+“Yes, old boy,” answered the Captain, “and to give me something handsome
+in hand, too; and that's my ultimatum: and so I wish you good morning,
+for I'm engaged to play a match at tennis below.”
+
+This little interview exceedingly frightened the worthy knight, who
+went home to his lady in a delirious state of alarm occasioned by the
+audacity of Captain Walker.
+
+Mr. Slang's interview with him was scarcely more satisfactory. He
+owed, he said, four thousand pounds. His creditors might be brought to
+compound for five shillings in the pound. He would not consent to allow
+his wife to make a single engagement until the creditors were satisfied,
+and until he had a handsome sum in hand to begin the world with. “Unless
+my wife comes out, you'll be in the Gazette yourself, you know you will.
+So you may take her or leave her, as you think fit.”
+
+“Let her sing one night as a trial,” said Mr. Slang.
+
+“If she sings one night, the creditors will want their money in full,”
+ replied the Captain. “I shan't let her labour, poor thing, for the
+profit of those scoundrels!” added the prisoner, with much feeling. And
+Slang left him with a much greater respect for Walker than he had ever
+before possessed. He was struck with the gallantry of the man who could
+triumph over misfortunes, nay, make misfortune itself an engine of good
+luck.
+
+Mrs. Walker was instructed instantly to have a severe sore throat. The
+journals in Mr. Slang's interest deplored this illness pathetically;
+while the papers in the interest of the opposition theatre magnified it
+with great malice. “The new singer,” said one, “the great wonder which
+Slang promised us, is as hoarse as a RAVEN!” “Doctor Thorax pronounces,”
+ wrote another paper, “that the quinsy, which has suddenly prostrated
+Mrs. Ravenswing, whose singing at the Philharmonic, previous to her
+appearance at the 'T.R----,' excited so much applause, has destroyed the
+lady's voice for ever. We luckily need no other prima donna, when that
+place, as nightly thousands acknowledge, is held by Miss Ligonier.” The
+Looker-on said, “That although some well-informed contemporaries had
+declared Mrs. W. Ravenswing's complaint to be a quinsy, others, on
+whose authority they could equally rely, had pronounced it to be a
+consumption. At all events, she was in an exceedingly dangerous state;
+from which, though we do not expect, we heartily trust she may recover.
+Opinions differ as to the merits of this lady, some saying that she was
+altogether inferior to Miss Ligonier, while other connoisseurs declare
+the latter lady to be by no means so accomplished a person. This point,
+we fear,” continued the Looker-on, “can never now be settled; unless,
+which we fear is improbable, Mrs. Ravenswing should ever so far recover
+as to be able to make her debut; and even then, the new singer will
+not have a fair chance unless her voice and strength shall be fully
+restored. This information, which we have from exclusive resources, may
+be relied on,” concluded the Looker-on, “as authentic.”
+
+It was Mr. Walker himself, that artful and audacious Fleet prisoner, who
+concocted those very paragraphs against his wife's health which appeared
+in the journals of the Ligonier party. The partisans of that lady were
+delighted, the creditors of Mr. Walker astounded, at reading them.
+Even Sir George Thrum was taken in, and came to the Fleet prison in
+considerable alarm.
+
+“Mum's the word, my good sir!” said Mr. Walker. “Now is the time to make
+arrangements with the creditors.”
+
+Well, these arrangements were finally made. It does not matter how many
+shillings in the pound satisfied the rapacious creditors of Morgiana's
+husband. But it is certain that her voice returned to her all of a
+sudden upon the Captain's release. The papers of the Mulligan faction
+again trumpeted her perfections; the agreement with Mr. Slang was
+concluded; that with Sir George Thrum the great composer satisfactorily
+arranged; and the new opera underlined in immense capitals in the
+bills, and put in rehearsal with immense expenditure on the part of the
+scene-painter and costumier.
+
+Need we tell with what triumphant success the “Brigand's Bride” was
+received? All the Irish sub-editors the next morning took care to have
+such an account of it as made Miss Ligonier and Baroski die with envy.
+All the reporters who could spare time were in the boxes to support
+their friend's work. All the journeymen tailors of the establishment of
+Linsey, Woolsey, and Co. had pit tickets given to them, and applauded
+with all their might. All Mr. Walker's friends of the “Regent Club”
+ lined the side-boxes with white kid gloves; and in a little box by
+themselves sat Mrs. Crump and Mr. Woolsey, a great deal too much
+agitated to applaud--so agitated, that Woolsey even forgot to fling down
+the bouquet he had brought for the Ravenswing.
+
+But there was no lack of those horticultural ornaments. The theatre
+servants wheeled away a wheelbarrow-full (which were flung on the stage
+the next night over again); and Morgiana, blushing, panting, weeping,
+was led off by Mr. Poppleton, the eminent tenor, who had crowned her
+with one of the most conspicuous of the chaplets.
+
+Here she flew to her husband, and flung her arms round his neck. He was
+flirting behind the side-scenes with Mademoiselle Flicflac, who had
+been dancing in the divertissement; and was probably the only man in
+the theatre of those who witnessed the embrace that did not care for it.
+Even Slang was affected, and said with perfect sincerity that he wished
+he had been in Walker's place. The manager's fortune was made, at least
+for the season. He acknowledged so much to Walker, who took a week's
+salary for his wife in advance that very night.
+
+There was, as usual, a grand supper in the green-room. The terrible Mr.
+Bludyer appeared in a new coat of the well-known Woolsey cut, and the
+little tailor himself and Mrs. Crump were not the least happy of the
+party. But when the Ravenswing took Woolsey's hand, and said she never
+would have been there but for him, Mr. Walker looked very grave,
+and hinted to her that she must not, in her position, encourage the
+attentions of persons in that rank of life. “I shall pay,” said he,
+proudly, “every farthing that is owing to Mr. Woolsey, and shall employ
+him for the future. But you understand, my love, that one cannot at
+one's own table receive one's own tailor.”
+
+Slang proposed Morgiana's health in a tremendous speech, which elicited
+cheers, and laughter, and sobs, such as only managers have the art of
+drawing from the theatrical gentlemen and ladies in their employ. It
+was observed, especially among the chorus-singers at the bottom of the
+table, that their emotion was intense. They had a meeting the next day
+and voted a piece of plate to Adolphus Slang, Esquire, for his eminent
+services in the cause of the drama.
+
+Walker returned thanks for his lady. That was, he said, the proudest
+moment of his life. He was proud to think that he had educated her for
+the stage, happy to think that his sufferings had not been in vain, and
+that his exertions in her behalf were crowned with full success. In her
+name and his own he thanked the company, and sat down, and was once more
+particularly attentive to Mademoiselle Flicflac.
+
+Then came an oration from Sir George Thrum, in reply to Slang's toast
+to HIM. It was very much to the same effect as the speech by Walker,
+the two gentlemen attributing to themselves individually the merit of
+bringing out Mrs. Walker. He concluded by stating that he should always
+hold Mrs. Walker as the daughter of his heart, and to the last moment of
+his life should love and cherish her. It is certain that Sir George was
+exceedingly elated that night, and would have been scolded by his lady
+on his return home, but for the triumph of the evening.
+
+Mulligan's speech of thanks, as author of the “Brigand's Bride,” was, it
+must be confessed, extremely tedious. It seemed there would be no end
+to it; when he got upon the subject of Ireland especially, which somehow
+was found to be intimately connected with the interests of music and the
+theatre. Even the choristers pooh-poohed this speech, coming though it
+did from the successful author, whose songs of wine, love, and battle,
+they had been repeating that night.
+
+The “Brigand's Bride” ran for many nights. Its choruses were tuned on
+the organs of the day. Morgiana's airs, “The Rose upon my Balcony”
+ and the “Lightning on the Cataract” (recitative and scena) were on
+everybody's lips, and brought so many guineas to Sir George Thrum that
+he was encouraged to have his portrait engraved, which still may be
+seen in the music-shops. Not many persons, I believe, bought proof
+impressions of the plate, price two guineas; whereas, on the contrary,
+all the young clerks in banks, and all the FAST young men of the
+universities, had pictures of the Ravenswing in their apartments--as
+Biondetta (the brigand's bride), as Zelyma (in the “Nuptials of
+Benares”), as Barbareska (in the “Mine of Tobolsk”), and in all her
+famous characters. In the latter she disguises herself as a Uhlan, in
+order to save her father, who is in prison; and the Ravenswing looked so
+fascinating in this costume in pantaloons and yellow boots, that Slang
+was for having her instantly in Captain Macheath, whence arose their
+quarrel.
+
+She was replaced at Slang's theatre by Snooks, the rhinoceros-tamer,
+with his breed of wild buffaloes. Their success was immense. Slang gave
+a supper, at which all the company burst into tears; and assembling
+in the green-room next day, they, as usual, voted a piece of plate to
+Adolphus Slang, Esquire, for his eminent services to the drama.
+
+In the Captain Macheath dispute Mr. Walker would have had his wife
+yield; but on this point, and for once, she disobeyed her husband and
+left the theatre. And when Walker cursed her (according to his wont) for
+her abominable selfishness and disregard of his property, she burst
+into tears and said she had spent but twenty guineas on herself and baby
+during the year, that her theatrical dressmaker's bills were yet unpaid,
+and that she had never asked him how much he spent on that odious French
+figurante.
+
+All this was true, except about the French figurante. Walker, as the
+lord and master, received all Morgiana's earnings, and spent them as
+a gentleman should. He gave very neat dinners at a cottage in Regent's
+Park (Mr. and Mrs. Walker lived at Green Street, Grosvenor Square), he
+played a good deal at the “Regent;” but as to the French figurante, it
+must be confessed, that Mrs. Walker was in a sad error: THAT lady and
+the Captain had parted long ago; it was Madame Dolores de Tras-os-Montes
+who inhabited the cottage in St. John's Wood now.
+
+But if some little errors of this kind might be attributable to the
+Captain, on the other hand, when his wife was in the provinces, he was
+the most attentive of husbands; made all her bargains, and received
+every shilling before he would permit her to sing a note. Thus he
+prevented her from being cheated, as a person of her easy temper
+doubtless would have been, by designing managers and needy
+concert-givers. They always travelled with four horses; and Walker was
+adored in every one of the principal hotels in England. The waiters flew
+at his bell. The chambermaids were afraid he was a sad naughty man, and
+thought his wife no such great beauty; the landlords preferred him to
+any duke. HE never looked at their bills, not he! In fact his income was
+at least four thousand a year for some years of his life.
+
+Master Woolsey Walker was put to Doctor Wapshot's seminary, whence,
+after many disputes on the Doctor's part as to getting his half-year's
+accounts paid, and after much complaint of ill-treatment on the little
+boy's side, he was withdrawn, and placed under the care of the Reverend
+Mr. Swishtail, at Turnham Green; where all his bills are paid by his
+godfather, now the head of the firm of Woolsey and Co.
+
+As a gentleman, Mr. Walker still declines to see him; but he has not,
+as far as I have heard, paid the sums of money which he threatened to
+refund; and, as he is seldom at home the worthy tailor can come to Green
+Street at his leisure. He and Mrs. Crump, and Mrs. Walker often take the
+omnibus to Brentford, and a cake with them to little Woolsey at school;
+to whom the tailor says he will leave every shilling of his property.
+
+The Walkers have no other children; but when she takes her airing in the
+Park she always turns away at the sight of a low phaeton, in which sits
+a woman with rouged cheeks, and a great number of overdressed children
+and a French bonne, whose name, I am given to understand, is Madame
+Dolores de Tras-os-Montes. Madame de Tras-os-Montes always puts a great
+gold glass to her eye as the Ravenswing's carriage passes, and looks
+into it with a sneer. The two coachmen used always to exchange queer
+winks at each other in the ring, until Madame de Tras-os-Montes lately
+adopted a tremendous chasseur, with huge whiskers and a green and gold
+livery; since which time the formerly named gentlemen do not recognise
+each other.
+
+The Ravenswing's life is one of perpetual triumph on the stage; and, as
+every one of the fashionable men about town have been in love with her,
+you may fancy what a pretty character she has. Lady Thrum would die
+sooner than speak to that unhappy young woman; and, in fact, the Thrums
+have a new pupil, who is a siren without the dangerous qualities of one,
+who has the person of Venus, and the mind of a Muse, and who is coming
+out at one of the theatres immediately. Baroski says, “De liddle
+Rafenschwing is just as font of me as effer!” People are very shy about
+receiving her in society; and when she goes to sing at a concert, Miss
+Prim starts up and skurries off in a state of the greatest alarm, lest
+“that person” should speak to her.
+
+Walker is voted a good, easy, rattling, gentlemanly fellow, and nobody's
+enemy but his own. His wife, they say, is dreadfully extravagant: and,
+indeed, since his marriage, and in spite of his wife's large income,
+he has been in the Bench several times; but she signs some bills and
+he comes out again, and is as gay and genial as ever. All mercantile
+speculations he has wisely long since given up; he likes to throw a
+main of an evening, as I have said, and to take his couple of bottles at
+dinner. On Friday he attends at the theatre for his wife's salary, and
+transacts no other business during the week. He grows exceedingly stout,
+dyes his hair, and has a bloated purple look about the nose and cheeks,
+very different from that which first charmed the heart of Morgiana.
+
+By the way, Eglantine has been turned out of the Bower of Bloom, and now
+keeps a shop at Tunbridge Wells. Going down thither last year without a
+razor, I asked a fat seedy man lolling in a faded nankeen jacket at the
+door of a tawdry little shop in the Pantiles, to shave me. He said in
+reply, “Sir, I do not practise in that branch of the profession!” and
+turned back into the little shop. It was Archibald Eglantine. But in the
+wreck of his fortunes he still has his captain's uniform, and his grand
+cross of the order of the Castle and Falcon of Panama.
+
+                    *****
+
+POSTSCRIPT.
+
+G. Fitz-Boodle, Esq., to O. Yorke, Esq.
+
+ZUM TRIERISCHEN HOP, COBLENZ: July 10, 1843.
+
+MY DEAR YORKE,--The story of the Ravenswing was written a long time
+since, and I never could account for the bad taste of the publishers of
+the metropolis who refused it an insertion in their various magazines.
+This fact would never have been alluded to but for the following
+circumstance:--
+
+Only yesterday, as I was dining at this excellent hotel, I remarked a
+bald-headed gentleman in a blue coat and brass buttons, who looked
+like a colonel on half-pay, and by his side a lady and a little boy
+of twelve, whom the gentleman was cramming with an amazing quantity of
+cherries and cakes. A stout old dame in a wonderful cap and ribands was
+seated by the lady's side, and it was easy to see they were English, and
+I thought I had already made their acquaintance elsewhere.
+
+The younger of the ladies at last made a bow with an accompanying blush.
+
+“Surely,” said I, “I have the honour of speaking to Mrs. Ravenswing?”
+
+“Mrs. Woolsey, sir,” said the gentleman; “my wife has long since left
+the stage:” and at this the old lady in the wonderful cap trod on my
+toes very severely, and nodded her head and all her ribands in a most
+mysterious way. Presently the two ladies rose and left the table, the
+elder declaring that she heard the baby crying.
+
+“Woolsey, my dear, go with your mamma,” said Mr. Woolsey, patting the
+boy on the head. The young gentleman obeyed the command, carrying off a
+plate of macaroons with him.
+
+“Your son is a fine boy, sir,” said I.
+
+“My step-son, sir,” answered Mr. Woolsey; and added, in a louder voice,
+“I knew you, Mr. Fitz-Boodle, at once, but did not mention your name
+for fear of agitating my wife. She don't like to have the memory of old
+times renewed, sir; her former husband, whom you know, Captain Walker,
+made her very unhappy. He died in America, sir, of this, I fear”
+ (pointing to the bottle), “and Mrs. W. quitted the stage a year before I
+quitted business. Are you going on to Wiesbaden?”
+
+They went off in their carriage that evening, the boy on the box making
+great efforts to blow out of the postilion's tasselled horn.
+
+I am glad that poor Morgiana is happy at last, and hasten to inform
+you of the fact. I am going to visit the old haunts of my youth at
+Pumpernickel. Adieu.
+
+Yours,
+
+G. F.-B.
+
+
+
+
+MR. AND MRS. FRANK BERRY.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I. THE FIGHT AT SLAUGHTER HOUSE.
+
+I am very fond of reading about battles, and have most of Marlborough's
+and Wellington's at my fingers' ends; but the most tremendous combat I
+ever saw, and one that interests me to think of more than Malplaquet or
+Waterloo (which, by the way, has grown to be a downright nuisance, so
+much do men talk of it after dinner, prating most disgustingly about
+“the Prussians coming up,” and what not)--I say the most tremendous
+combat ever known was that between Berry and Biggs the gown-boy, which
+commenced in a certain place called Middle Briars, situated in the midst
+of the cloisters that run along the side of the playground of Slaughter
+House School, near Smithfield, London. It was there, madam, that your
+humble servant had the honour of acquiring, after six years' labour,
+that immense fund of classical knowledge which in after life has been so
+exceedingly useful to him.
+
+The circumstances of the quarrel were these:--Biggs, the gown-boy (a
+man who, in those days, I thought was at least seven feet high, and was
+quite thunderstruck to find in after life that he measured no more than
+five feet four), was what we called “second cock” of the school; the
+first cock was a great big, good-humoured, lazy, fair-haired fellow,
+Old Hawkins by name, who, because he was large and good-humoured, hurt
+nobody. Biggs, on the contrary, was a sad bully; he had half-a-dozen
+fags, and beat them all unmercifully. Moreover, he had a little brother,
+a boarder in Potky's house, whom, as a matter of course, he hated and
+maltreated worse than anyone else.
+
+Well, one day, because young Biggs had not brought his brother his
+hoops, or had not caught a ball at cricket, or for some other equally
+good reason, Biggs the elder so belaboured the poor little fellow, that
+Berry, who was sauntering by, and saw the dreadful blows which the
+elder brother was dealing to the younger with his hockey-stick, felt
+a compassion for the little fellow (perhaps he had a jealousy against
+Biggs, and wanted to try a few rounds with him, but that I can't vouch
+for); however, Berry passing by, stopped and said, “Don't you think
+you have thrashed the boy enough, Biggs?” He spoke this in a very civil
+tone, for he never would have thought of interfering rudely with the
+sacred privilege that an upper boy at a public school always has of
+beating a junior, especially when they happen to be brothers.
+
+The reply of Biggs, as might be expected, was to hit young Biggs with
+the hockey-stick twice as hard as before, until the little wretch howled
+with pain. “I suppose it's no business of yours, Berry,” said Biggs,
+thumping away all the while, and laid on worse and worse.
+
+Until Berry (and, indeed, little Biggs) could bear it no longer, and the
+former, bouncing forward, wrenched the stick out of old Biggs's hands,
+and sent it whirling out of the cloister window, to the great wonder of
+a crowd of us small boys, who were looking on. Little boys always like
+to see a little companion of their own soundly beaten.
+
+“There!” said Berry, looking into Biggs's face, as much as to say, “I've
+gone and done it;” and he added to the brother, “Scud away, you little
+thief; I've saved you this time.”
+
+“Stop, young Biggs!” roared out his brother after a pause; “or I'll
+break every bone in your infernal scoundrelly skin!”
+
+Young Biggs looked at Berry, then at his brother, then came at his
+brother's order, as if back to be beaten again; but lost heart, and ran
+away as fast as his little legs could carry him.
+
+“I'll do for him another time,” said Biggs. “Here, under-boy, take my
+coat;” and we all began to gather round and formed a ring.
+
+“We had better wait till after school, Biggs,” cried Berry, quite cool,
+but looking a little pale. “There are only five minutes now, and it will
+take you more than that to thrash me.”
+
+Biggs upon this committed a great error; for he struck Berry slightly
+across the face with the back of his hand, saying, “You are in a funk.”
+ But this was a feeling which Frank Berry did not in the least entertain;
+for, in reply to Biggs's back-hander, and as quick as thought, and with
+all his might and main--pong! he delivered a blow upon old Biggs's nose
+that made the claret spirt, and sent the second cock down to the ground
+as if he had been shot.
+
+He was up again, however, in a minute, his face white and gashed with
+blood, his eyes glaring, a ghastly spectacle; and Berry, meanwhile,
+had taken his coat off, and by this time there were gathered in the
+cloisters, on all the windows, and upon each other's shoulders, one
+hundred and twenty young gentlemen at the very least, for the news had
+gone out through the playground of “a fight between Berry and Biggs.”
+
+But Berry was quite right in his remark about the propriety of deferring
+the business, for at this minute Mr. Chip, the second master, came down
+the cloisters going into school, and grinned in his queer way as he saw
+the state of Biggs's face. “Holloa, Mr. Biggs,” said he, “I suppose you
+have run against a finger-post.” That was the regular joke with us at
+school, and you may be sure we all laughed heartily: as we always did
+when Mr. Chip made a joke, or anything like a joke. “You had better go
+to the pump, sir, and get yourself washed, and not let Doctor Buckle see
+you in that condition.” So saying, Mr. Chip disappeared to his duties in
+the under-school, whither all we little boys followed him.
+
+It was Wednesday, a half-holiday, as everybody knows, and boiled-beef
+day at Slaughter House. I was in the same boarding-house with Berry,
+and we all looked to see whether he ate a good dinner, just as one would
+examine a man who was going to be hanged. I recollected, in after-life,
+in Germany, seeing a friend who was going to fight a duel eat five larks
+for his breakfast, and thought I had seldom witnessed greater courage.
+Berry ate moderately of the boiled beef--BOILED CHILD we used to call it
+at school, in our elegant jocular way; he knew a great deal better than
+to load his stomach upon the eve of such a contest as was going to take
+place.
+
+Dinner was very soon over, and Mr. Chip, who had been all the while
+joking Berry, and pressing him to eat, called him up into his study,
+to the great disappointment of us all, for we thought he was going to
+prevent the fight; but no such thing. The Reverend Edward Chip took
+Berry into his study, and poured him out two glasses of port-wine, which
+he made him take with a biscuit, and patted him on the back, and went
+off. I have no doubt he was longing, like all of us, to see the battle;
+but etiquette, you know, forbade.
+
+When we went out into the green, Old Hawkins was there--the great
+Hawkins, the cock of the school. I have never seen the man since, but
+still think of him as of something awful, gigantic, mysterious: he who
+could thrash everybody, who could beat all the masters; how we longed
+for him to put in his hand and lick Buckle! He was a dull boy, not very
+high in the school, and had all his exercises written for him. Buckle
+knew this, but respected him; never called him up to read Greek plays;
+passed over all his blunders, which were many; let him go out of
+half-holidays into the town as he pleased: how should any man dare to
+stop him--the great calm magnanimous silent Strength! They say he licked
+a Life-Guardsman: I wonder whether it was Shaw, who killed all those
+Frenchmen? No, it could not be Shaw, for he was dead au champ d'honneur;
+but he WOULD have licked Shaw if he had been alive. A bargeman I know he
+licked, at Jack Randall's in Slaughter House Lane. Old Hawkins was too
+lazy to play at cricket; he sauntered all day in the sunshine about the
+green, accompanied by little Tippins, who was in the sixth form, laughed
+and joked at Hawkins eternally, and was the person who wrote all his
+exercises.
+
+Instead of going into town this afternoon, Hawkins remained at Slaughter
+House, to see the great fight between the second and third cocks.
+
+The different masters of the school kept boarding-houses (such as
+Potky's, Chip's, Wickens's, Pinney's, and so on), and the playground, or
+“green” as it was called, although the only thing green about the place
+was the broken glass on the walls that separate Slaughter House from
+Wilderness Row and Goswell Street--(many a time have I seen Mr. Pickwick
+look out of his window in that street, though we did not know him
+then)--the playground, or green, was common to all. But if any stray
+boy from Potky's was found, for instance, in, or entering into, Chip's
+house, the most dreadful tortures were practised upon him: as I can
+answer in my own case.
+
+Fancy, then, our astonishment at seeing a little three-foot wretch, of
+the name of Wills, one of Hawkins's fags (they were both in Potky's),
+walk undismayed amongst us lions at Chip's house, as the “rich and rare”
+ young lady did in Ireland. We were going to set upon him and devour or
+otherwise maltreat him, when he cried out in a little shrill impertinent
+voice, “TELL BERRY I WANT HIM!”
+
+We all roared with laughter. Berry was in the sixth form, and Wills or
+any under-boy would as soon have thought of “wanting” him, as I should
+of wanting the Duke of Wellington.
+
+Little Wills looked round in an imperious kind of way. “Well,” says he,
+stamping his foot, “do you hear? TELL BERRY THAT HAWKINS WANTS HIM!”
+
+As for resisting the law of Hawkins, you might as soon think of
+resisting immortal Jove. Berry and Tolmash, who was to be his
+bottle-holder, made their appearance immediately, and walked out into
+the green where Hawkins was waiting, and, with an irresistible audacity
+that only belonged to himself, in the face of nature and all the
+regulations of the place, was smoking a cigar. When Berry and Tolmash
+found him, the three began slowly pacing up and down in the sunshine,
+and we little boys watched them.
+
+Hawkins moved his arms and hands every now and then, and was evidently
+laying down the law about boxing. We saw his fists darting out every now
+and then with mysterious swiftness, hitting one, two, quick as thought,
+as if in the face of an adversary; now his left hand went up, as if
+guarding his own head, now his immense right fist dreadfully flapped
+the air, as if punishing his imaginary opponent's miserable ribs. The
+conversation lasted for some ten minutes, about which time gown-boys'
+dinner was over, and we saw these youths, in their black horned-button
+jackets and knee-breeches, issuing from their door in the cloisters.
+There were no hoops, no cricket-bats, as usual on a half-holiday. Who
+would have thought of play in expectation of such tremendous sport as
+was in store for us?
+
+Towering among the gown-boys, of whom he was the head and the tyrant,
+leaning upon Bushby's arm, and followed at a little distance by many
+curious pale awe-stricken boys, dressed in his black silk stockings,
+which he always sported, and with a crimson bandanna tied round his
+waist, came BIGGS. His nose was swollen with the blow given before
+school, but his eyes flashed fire. He was laughing and sneering with
+Bushby, and evidently intended to make minced meat of Berry.
+
+The betting began pretty freely: the bets were against poor Berry. Five
+to three were offered--in ginger-beer. I took six to four in raspberry
+open tarts. The upper boys carried the thing farther still: and I know
+for a fact, that Swang's book amounted to four pound three (but he
+hedged a good deal), and Tittery lost seventeen shillings in a single
+bet to Pitts, who took the odds.
+
+As Biggs and his party arrived, I heard Hawkins say to Berry, “For
+heaven's sake, my boy, fib with your right, and MIND HIS LEFT HAND!”
+
+Middle Briars was voted to be too confined a space for the combat, and
+it was agreed that it should take place behind the under-school in
+the shade, whither we all went. Hawkins, with his immense silver
+hunting-watch, kept the time; and water was brought from the pump close
+to Notley's the pastrycook's, who did not admire fisticuffs at all on
+half-holidays, for the fights kept the boys away from his shop. Gutley
+was the only fellow in the school who remained faithful to him, and
+he sat on the counter--the great gormandising brute!--eating tarts the
+whole day.
+
+This famous fight, as every Slaughter House man knows, lasted for two
+hours and twenty-nine minutes, by Hawkins's immense watch. All this time
+the air resounded with cries of “Go it, Berry!” “Go it, Biggs!” “Pitch
+into him!” “Give it him!” and so on. Shall I describe the hundred and
+two rounds of the combat?--No!--It would occupy too much space, and the
+taste for such descriptions has passed away. [3]
+
+1st round. Both the combatants fresh, and in prime order. The weight
+and inches somewhat on the gown-boy's side. Berry goes gallantly in,
+and delivers a clinker on the gown-boy's jaw. Biggs makes play with his
+left. Berry down.
+
+                    *****
+
+4th round. Claret drawn in profusion from the gown-boy's grogshop. (He
+went down, and had his front tooth knocked out, but the blow cut Berry's
+knuckles a great deal.)
+
+                    *****
+
+15th round. Chancery. Fibbing. Biggs makes dreadful work with his
+left. Break away. Rally. Biggs down. Betting still six to four on the
+gown-boy.
+
+                    *****
+
+20th round. The men both dreadfully punished. Berry somewhat shy of his
+adversary's left hand.
+
+                    *****
+
+29th to 42nd round. The Chipsite all this while breaks away from the
+gown-boy's left, and goes down on a knee. Six to four on the gown-boy,
+until the fortieth round, when the bets became equal.
+
+                    *****
+
+102nd and last round. For half-an-hour the men had stood up to each
+other, but were almost too weary to strike. The gown-boy's face hardly
+to be recognised, swollen and streaming with blood. The Chipsite in
+a similar condition, and still more punished about his side from his
+enemy's left hand. Berry gives a blow at his adversary's face, and falls
+over him as he falls.
+
+The gown-boy can't come up to time. And thus ended the great fight of
+Berry and Biggs.
+
+And what, pray, has this horrid description of a battle and parcel of
+schoolboys to do with Men's Wives?
+
+What has it to do with Men's Wives?--A great deal more, madam, than you
+think for. Only read Chapter II., and you shall hear.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II. THE COMBAT AT VERSAILLES.
+
+I afterwards came to be Berry's fag, and, though beaten by him daily, he
+allowed, of course, no one else to lay a hand upon me, and I got no more
+thrashing than was good for me. Thus an intimacy grew up between us,
+and after he left Slaughter House and went into the dragoons, the honest
+fellow did not forget his old friend, but actually made his appearance
+one day in the playground in moustaches and a braided coat, and gave
+me a gold pencil-case and a couple of sovereigns. I blushed when I took
+them, but take them I did; and I think the thing I almost best recollect
+in my life, is the sight of Berry getting behind an immense bay
+cab-horse, which was held by a correct little groom, and was waiting
+near the school in Slaughter House Square. He proposed, too, to have me
+to “Long's,” where he was lodging for the time; but this invitation
+was refused on my behalf by Doctor Buckle, who said, and possibly with
+correctness, that I should get little good by spending my holiday with
+such a scapegrace.
+
+Once afterwards he came to see me at Christ Church, and we made a show
+of writing to one another, and didn't, and always had a hearty mutual
+goodwill; and though we did not quite burst into tears on parting, were
+yet quite happy when occasion threw us together, and so almost lost
+sight of each other. I heard lately that Berry was married, and am
+rather ashamed to say, that I was not so curious as even to ask the
+maiden name of his lady.
+
+Last summer I was at Paris, and had gone over to Versailles to meet a
+party, one of which was a young lady to whom I was tenderly--But, never
+mind. The day was rainy, and the party did not keep its appointment;
+and after yawning through the interminable Palace picture-galleries, and
+then making an attempt to smoke a cigar in the Palace garden--for which
+crime I was nearly run through the body by a rascally sentinel--I was
+driven, perforce, into the great bleak lonely place before the Palace,
+with its roads branching off to all the towns in the world, which Louis
+and Napoleon once intended to conquer, and there enjoyed my favourite
+pursuit at leisure, and was meditating whether I should go back to
+“Vefour's” for dinner, or patronise my friend M. Duboux of the “Hotel
+des Reservoirs” who gives not only a good dinner, but as dear a one as
+heart can desire. I was, I say, meditating these things, when a carriage
+passed by. It was a smart low calash, with a pair of bay horses and a
+postilion in a drab jacket that twinkled with innumerable buttons, and
+I was too much occupied in admiring the build of the machine, and
+the extreme tightness of the fellow's inexpressibles, to look at the
+personages within the carriage, when the gentleman roared out “Fitz!”
+ and the postilion pulled up, and the lady gave a shrill scream, and
+a little black-muzzled spaniel began barking and yelling with all his
+might, and a man with moustaches jumped out of the vehicle, and began
+shaking me by the hand.
+
+“Drive home, John,” said the gentleman: “I'll be with you, my love, in
+an instant--it's an old friend. Fitz, let me present you to Mrs. Berry.”
+
+The lady made an exceedingly gentle inclination of her black-velvet
+bonnet, and said, “Pray, my love, remember that it is just dinner-time.
+However, never mind ME.” And with another slight toss and a nod to the
+postilion, that individual's white leather breeches began to jump up
+and down again in the saddle, and the carriage disappeared, leaving me
+shaking my old friend Berry by the hand.
+
+He had long quitted the army, but still wore his military beard,
+which gave to his fair pink face a fierce and lion-like look. He was
+extraordinarily glad to see me, as only men are glad who live in a small
+town, or in dull company. There is no destroyer of friendships like
+London, where a man has no time to think of his neighbour, and has
+far too many friends to care for them. He told me in a breath of his
+marriage, and how happy he was, and straight insisted that I must
+come home to dinner, and see more of Angelica, who had invited me
+herself--didn't I hear her?
+
+“Mrs. Berry asked YOU, Frank; but I certainly did not hear her ask ME!”
+
+“She would not have mentioned the dinner but that she meant me to ask
+you. I know she did,” cried Frank Berry. “And, besides--hang it--I'm
+master of the house. So come you shall. No ceremony, old boy--one or two
+friends--snug family party--and we'll talk of old times over a bottle of
+claret.”
+
+There did not seem to me to be the slightest objection to this
+arrangement, except that my boots were muddy, and my coat of the morning
+sort. But as it was quite impossible to go to Paris and back again in
+a quarter of an hour, and as a man may dine with perfect comfort to
+himself in a frock-coat, it did not occur to me to be particularly
+squeamish, or to decline an old friend's invitation upon a pretext so
+trivial.
+
+Accordingly we walked to a small house in the Avenue de Paris, and were
+admitted first into a small garden ornamented by a grotto, a fountain,
+and several nymphs in plaster-of-Paris, then up a mouldy old steep stair
+into a hall, where a statue of Cupid and another of Venus welcomed us
+with their eternal simper; then through a salle-a-manger where covers
+were laid for six; and finally to a little saloon, where Fido the dog
+began to howl furiously according to his wont.
+
+It was one of the old pavilions that had been built for a pleasure-house
+in the gay days of Versailles, ornamented with abundance of damp Cupids
+and cracked gilt cornices, and old mirrors let into the walls, and
+gilded once, but now painted a dingy French white. The long low windows
+looked into the court, where the fountain played its ceaseless dribble,
+surrounded by numerous rank creepers and weedy flowers, but in the midst
+of which the statues stood with their bases quite moist and green.
+
+I hate fountains and statues in dark confined places: that cheerless,
+endless plashing of water is the most inhospitable sound ever heard. The
+stiff grin of those French statues, or ogling Canova Graces, is by no
+means more happy, I think, than the smile of a skeleton, and not so
+natural. Those little pavilions in which the old roues sported were
+never meant to be seen by daylight, depend on't. They were lighted up
+with a hundred wax-candles, and the little fountain yonder was meant
+only to cool their claret. And so, my first impression of Berry's
+place of abode was rather a dismal one. However, I heard him in the
+salle-a-manger drawing the corks, which went off with a CLOOP, and that
+consoled me.
+
+As for the furniture of the rooms appertaining to the Berrys, there
+was a harp in a leather case, and a piano, and a flute-box, and a huge
+tambour with a Saracen's nose just begun, and likewise on the table
+a multiplicity of those little gilt books, half sentimental and half
+religious, which the wants of the age and of our young ladies have
+produced in such numbers of late. I quarrel with no lady's taste in that
+way; but heigho! I had rather that Mrs. Fitz-Boodle should read “Humphry
+Clinker!”
+
+Besides these works, there was a “Peerage,” of course. What genteel
+family was ever without one?
+
+I was making for the door to see Frank drawing the corks, and was
+bounced at by the amiable little black-muzzled spaniel, who fastened his
+teeth in my pantaloons, and received a polite kick in consequence, which
+sent him howling to the other end of the room, and the animal was just
+in the act of performing that feat of agility, when the door opened
+and madame made her appearance. Frank came behind her, peering over her
+shoulder with rather an anxious look.
+
+Mrs. Berry is an exceedingly white and lean person. She has thick
+eyebrows, which meet rather dangerously over her nose, which is Grecian,
+and a small mouth with no lips--a sort of feeble pucker in the face as
+it were. Under her eyebrows are a pair of enormous eyes, which she is
+in the habit of turning constantly ceiling-wards. Her hair is rather
+scarce, and worn in bandeaux, and she commonly mounts a sprig of laurel,
+or a dark flower or two, which with the sham tour--I believe that is the
+name of the knob of artificial hair that many ladies sport--gives her
+a rigid and classical look. She is dressed in black, and has invariably
+the neatest of silk stockings and shoes: for forsooth her foot is a fine
+one, and she always sits with it before her, looking at it, stamping it,
+and admiring it a great deal. “Fido,” she says to her spaniel, “you have
+almost crushed my poor foot;” or, “Frank,” to her husband, “bring me a
+footstool:” or, “I suffer so from cold in the feet,” and so forth; but
+be the conversation what it will, she is always sure to put HER FOOT
+into it.
+
+She invariably wears on her neck the miniature of her late father, Sir
+George Catacomb, apothecary to George III.; and she thinks those two men
+the greatest the world ever saw. She was born in Baker Street, Portman
+Square, and that is saying almost enough of her. She is as long, as
+genteel, and as dreary, as that deadly-lively place, and sports, by
+way of ornament, her papa's hatchment, as it were, as every tenth Baker
+Street house has taught her.
+
+What induced such a jolly fellow as Frank Berry to marry Miss Angelica
+Catacomb no one can tell. He met her, he says, at a ball at Hampton
+Court, where his regiment was quartered, and where, to this day, lives
+“her aunt Lady Pash.” She alludes perpetually in conversation to that
+celebrated lady; and if you look in the “Baronetage” to the pedigree
+of the Pash family, you may see manuscript notes by Mrs. Frank Berry,
+relative to them and herself. Thus, when you see in print that Sir John
+Pash married Angelica, daughter of Graves Catacomb, Esquire, in a neat
+hand you find written, AND SISTER OF THE LATE SIR GEORGE CATACOMB, OF
+BAKER STREET, PORTMAN SQUARE: “A.B.” follows of course. It is a wonder
+how fond ladies are of writing in books, and signing their charming
+initials! Mrs. Berry's before-mentioned little gilt books are scored
+with pencil-marks, or occasionally at the margin with a!--note of
+interjection, or the words “TOO TRUE, A.B.” and so on. Much may be
+learned with regard to lovely woman by a look at the books she reads in;
+and I had gained no inconsiderable knowledge of Mrs. Berry by the ten
+minutes spent in the drawing-room, while she was at her toilet in the
+adjoining bedchamber.
+
+“You have often heard me talk of George Fitz,” says Berry, with an
+appealing look to madame.
+
+“Very often,” answered his lady, in a tone which clearly meant “a great
+deal too much.” “Pray, sir,” continued she, looking at my boots with all
+her might, “are we to have your company at dinner?”
+
+“Of course you are, my dear; what else do you think he came for? You
+would not have the man go back to Paris to get his evening coat, would
+you?”
+
+“At least, my love, I hope you will go and put on YOURS, and change
+those muddy boots. Lady Pash will be here in five minutes, and you know
+Dobus is as punctual as clockwork.” Then turning to me with a sort of
+apology that was as consoling as a box on the ear, “We have some friends
+at dinner, sir, who are rather particular persons; but I am sure when
+they hear that you only came on a sudden invitation, they will excuse
+your morning dress.--Bah! what a smell of smoke!”
+
+With this speech madame placed herself majestically on a sofa, put out
+her foot, called Fido, and relapsed into an icy silence. Frank had long
+since evacuated the premises, with a rueful look at his wife, but never
+daring to cast a glance at me. I saw the whole business at once: here
+was this lion of a fellow tamed down by a she Van Amburgh, and fetching
+and carrying at her orders a great deal more obediently than her little
+yowling black-muzzled darling of a Fido.
+
+I am not, however, to be tamed so easily, and was determined in this
+instance not to be in the least disconcerted, or to show the smallest
+sign of ill-humour: so to renouer the conversation, I began about Lady
+Pash.
+
+“I heard you mention the name of Pash, I think?” said I. “I know a lady
+of that name, and a very ugly one it is too.”
+
+“It is most probably not the same person,” answered Mrs. Berry, with
+a look which intimated that a fellow like me could never have had the
+honour to know so exalted a person.
+
+“I mean old Lady Pash of Hampton Court. Fat woman--fair, ain't she?--and
+wears an amethyst in her forehead, has one eye, a blond wig, and dresses
+in light green?”
+
+“Lady Pash, sir, is MY AUNT,” answered Mrs. Berry (not altogether
+displeased, although she expected money from the old lady; but you know
+we love to hear our friends abused when it can be safely done).
+
+“Oh, indeed! she was a daughter of old Catacomb's of Windsor, I
+remember, the undertaker. They called her husband Callipash, and her
+ladyship Pishpash. So you see, madam, that I know the whole family!”
+
+“Mr. Fitz-Simons!” exclaimed Mrs. Berry, rising, “I am not accustomed to
+hear nicknames applied to myself and my family; and must beg you,
+when you honour us with your company, to spare our feelings as much as
+possible. Mr. Catacomb had the confidence of his SOVEREIGN, sir, and Sir
+John Pash was of Charles II.'s creation. The one was my uncle, sir; the
+other my grandfather!”
+
+“My dear madam, I am extremely sorry, and most sincerely apologise
+for my inadvertence. But you owe me an apology too: my name is not
+Fitz-Simons, but Fitz-Boodle.”
+
+“What! of Boodle Hall--my husband's old friend; of Charles I.'s
+creation? My dear sir, I beg you a thousand pardons, and am delighted
+to welcome a person of whom I have heard Frank say so much. Frank!” (to
+Berry, who soon entered in very glossy boots and a white waistcoat), “do
+you know, darling, I mistook Mr. Fitz-Boodle for Mr. Fitz-Simons--that
+horrid Irish horse-dealing person; and I never, never, never can pardon
+myself for being so rude to him.”
+
+The big eyes here assumed an expression that was intended to kill me
+outright with kindness: from being calm, still, reserved, Angelica
+suddenly became gay, smiling, confidential, and folatre. She told me she
+had heard I was a sad creature, and that she intended to reform me, and
+that I must come and see Frank a great deal.
+
+Now, although Mr. Fitz-Simons, for whom I was mistaken, is as low
+a fellow as ever came out of Dublin, and having been a captain in
+somebody's army, is now a blackleg and horse-dealer by profession; yet,
+if I had brought him home to Mrs. Fitz-Boodle to dinner, I should have
+liked far better that that imaginary lady should have received him with
+decent civility, and not insulted the stranger within her husband's
+gates. And, although it was delightful to be received so cordially
+when the mistake was discovered, yet I found that ALL Berry's old
+acquaintances were by no means so warmly welcomed; for another old
+school-chum presently made his appearance, who was treated in a very
+different manner.
+
+This was no other than poor Jack Butts, who is a sort of small artist
+and picture-dealer by profession, and was a dayboy at Slaughter House
+when we were there, and very serviceable in bringing in sausages,
+pots of pickles, and other articles of merchandise, which we could not
+otherwise procure. The poor fellow has been employed, seemingly, in the
+same office of fetcher and carrier ever since; and occupied that post
+for Mrs. Berry. It was, “Mr. Butts, have you finished that drawing for
+Lady Pash's album?” and Butts produced it; and, “Did you match the silk
+for me at Delille's?” and there was the silk, bought, no doubt, with the
+poor fellow's last five francs; and, “Did you go to the furniture-man in
+the Rue St. Jacques; and bring the canary-seed, and call about my
+shawl at that odious dawdling Madame Fichet's; and have you brought the
+guitar-strings?”
+
+Butts hadn't brought the guitar-strings; and thereupon Mrs. Berry's
+countenance assumed the same terrible expression which I had formerly
+remarked in it, and which made me tremble for Berry.
+
+“My dear Angelica,” though said he with some spirit, “Jack Butts isn't
+a baggage-waggon, nor a Jack-of-all-trades; you make him paint pictures
+for your women's albums, and look after your upholsterer, and your
+canary-bird, and your milliners, and turn rusty because he forgets your
+last message.”
+
+“I did not turn RUSTY, Frank, as you call it elegantly. I'm very much
+obliged to Mr. Butts for performing my commissions--very much obliged.
+And as for not paying for the pictures to which you so kindly allude,
+Frank, _I_ should never have thought of offering payment for so paltry a
+service; but I'm sure I shall be happy to pay if Mr. Butts will send me
+in his bill.”
+
+“By Jove, Angelica, this is too much!” bounced out Berry; but the little
+matrimonial squabble was abruptly ended, by Berry's French man flinging
+open the door and announcing MILADI PASH and Doctor Dobus, which two
+personages made their appearance.
+
+The person of old Pash has been already parenthetically described. But
+quite different from her dismal niece in temperament, she is as jolly an
+old widow as ever wore weeds. She was attached somehow to the Court, and
+has a multiplicity of stories about the princesses and the old King,
+to which Mrs. Berry never fails to call your attention in her grave,
+important way. Lady Pash has ridden many a time to the Windsor hounds;
+she made her husband become a member of the Four-in-hand Club, and has
+numberless stories about Sir Godfrey Webster, Sir John Lade, and the
+old heroes of those times. She has lent a rouleau to Dick Sheridan,
+and remembers Lord Byron when he was a sulky slim young lad. She says
+Charles Fox was the pleasantest fellow she ever met with, and has not
+the slightest objection to inform you that one of the princes was very
+much in love with her. Yet somehow she is only fifty-two years old, and
+I have never been able to understand her calculation. One day or other
+before her eye went out, and before those pearly teeth of hers were
+stuck to her gums by gold, she must have been a pretty-looking body
+enough. Yet, in spite of the latter inconvenience, she eats and
+drinks too much every day, and tosses off a glass of maraschino with a
+trembling pudgy hand, every finger of which twinkles with a dozen, at
+least, of old rings. She has a story about every one of those rings, and
+a stupid one too. But there is always something pleasant, I think, in
+stupid family stories: they are good-hearted people who tell them.
+
+As for Mrs. Muchit, nothing need be said of her; she is Pash's
+companion; she has lived with Lady Pash since the peace. Nor does my
+Lady take any more notice of her than of the dust of the earth. She
+calls her “poor Muchit,” and considers her a half-witted creature. Mrs.
+Berry hates her cordially, and thinks she is a designing toad-eater,
+who has formed a conspiracy to rob her of her aunt's fortune. She never
+spoke a word to poor Muchit during the whole of dinner, or offered to
+help her to anything on the table.
+
+In respect to Dobus, he is an old Peninsular man, as you are made to
+know before you have been very long in his company; and, like most army
+surgeons, is a great deal more military in his looks and conversation,
+than the combatant part of the forces. He has adopted the
+sham-Duke-of-Wellington air, which is by no means uncommon in veterans;
+and, though one of the easiest and softest fellows in existence, speaks
+slowly and briefly, and raps out an oath or two occasionally, as it is
+said a certain great captain does. Besides the above, we sat down to
+table with Captain Goff, late of the ---- Highlanders; the Reverend
+Lemuel Whey, who preaches at St. Germains; little Cutler, and the
+Frenchman, who always WILL be at English parties on the Continent, and
+who, after making some frightful efforts to speak English, subsides and
+is heard no more. Young married ladies and heads of families generally
+have him for the purpose of waltzing, and in return he informs his
+friends of the club or the cafe that he has made the conquest of a
+charmante Anglaise. Listen to me, all family men who read this! and
+never LET AN UNMARRIED FRENCHMAN INTO YOUR DOORS. This lecture alone is
+worth the price of the book. It is not that they do any harm in one case
+out of a thousand, Heaven forbid! but they mean harm. They look on our
+Susannas with unholy dishonest eyes. Hearken to two of the grinning
+rogues chattering together as they clink over the asphalte of
+the Boulevard with lacquered boots, and plastered hair, and waxed
+moustaches, and turned-down shirt-collars, and stays and goggling eyes,
+and hear how they talk of a good simple giddy vain dull Baker
+Street creature, and canvass her points, and show her letters, and
+insinuate--never mind, but I tell you my soul grows angry when I think
+of the same; and I can't hear of an Englishwoman marrying a Frenchman
+without feeling a sort of shame and pity for her. [4]
+
+To return to the guests. The Reverend Lemuel Whey is a tea-party man,
+with a curl on his forehead and a scented pocket-handkerchief. He ties
+his white neckcloth to a wonder, and I believe sleeps in it. He brings
+his flute with him; and prefers Handel, of course; but has one or two
+pet profane songs of the sentimental kind, and will occasionally lift
+up his little pipe in a glee. He does not dance, but the honest fellow
+would give the world to do it; and he leaves his clogs in the passage,
+though it is a wonder he wears them, for in the muddiest weather he
+never has a speck on his foot. He was at St. John's College, Cambridge,
+and was rather gay for a term or two, he says. He is, in a word, full of
+the milk-and-water of human kindness, and his family lives near Hackney.
+
+As for Goff, he has a huge shining bald forehead, and immense bristling
+Indian-red whiskers. He wears white wash-leather gloves, drinks fairly,
+likes a rubber, and has a story for after dinner, beginning, “Doctor, ye
+racklackt Sandy M'Lellan, who joined us in the West Indies. Wal, sir,”
+ etc. These and little Cutler made up the party.
+
+Now it may not have struck all readers, but any sharp fellow conversant
+with writing must have found out long ago, that if there had been
+something exceedingly interesting to narrate with regard to this dinner
+at Frank Berry's, I should have come out with it a couple of pages
+since, nor have kept the public looking for so long a time at the
+dish-covers and ornaments of the table.
+
+But the simple fact must now be told, that there was nothing of the
+slightest importance occurred at this repast, except that it gave me an
+opportunity of studying Mrs. Berry in many different ways; and, in spite
+of the extreme complaisance which she now showed me, of forming, I am
+sorry to say, a most unfavourable opinion of that fair lady. Truth to
+tell, I would much rather she should have been civil to Mrs. Muchit,
+than outrageously complimentary to your humble servant; and as she
+professed not to know what on earth there was for dinner, would it not
+have been much more natural for her not to frown, and bob, and wink,
+and point, and pinch her lips as often as Monsieur Anatole, her French
+domestic, not knowing the ways of English dinner-tables, placed anything
+out of its due order? The allusions to Boodle Hall were innumerable,
+and I don't know any greater bore than to be obliged to talk of a place
+which belongs to one's elder brother. Many questions were likewise asked
+about the dowager and her Scotch relatives, the Plumduffs, about whom
+Lady Pash knew a great deal, having seen them at Court and at Lord
+Melville's. Of course she had seen them at Court and at Lord Melville's,
+as she might have seen thousands of Scotchmen besides; but what mattered
+it to me, who care not a jot for old Lady Fitz-Boodle? “When you write,
+you'll say you met an old friend of her Ladyship's,” says Mrs. Berry,
+and I faithfully promised I would when I wrote; but if the New Post
+Office paid us for writing letters (as very possibly it will soon), I
+could not be bribed to send a line to old Lady Fitz.
+
+In a word, I found that Berry, like many simple fellows before him, had
+made choice of an imperious, ill-humoured, and underbred female for a
+wife, and could see with half an eye that he was a great deal too much
+her slave.
+
+The struggle was not over yet, however. Witness that little encounter
+before dinner; and once or twice the honest fellow replied rather
+smartly during the repast, taking especial care to atone as much
+as possible for his wife's inattention to Jack and Mrs. Muchit, by
+particular attention to those personages, whom he helped to everything
+round about and pressed perpetually to champagne; he drank but little
+himself, for his amiable wife's eye was constantly fixed on him.
+
+Just at the conclusion of the dessert, madame, who had bouded Berry
+during dinner-time, became particularly gracious to her lord and master,
+and tenderly asked me if I did not think the French custom was a good
+one, of men leaving table with the ladies.
+
+“Upon my word, ma'am,” says I, “I think it's a most abominable
+practice.”
+
+“And so do I,” says Cutler.
+
+“A most abominable practice! Do you hear THAT?” cries Berry, laughing,
+and filling his glass.
+
+“I'm sure, Frank, when we are alone you always come to the
+drawing-room,” replies the lady, sharply.
+
+“Oh, yes! when we're alone, darling,” says Berry, blushing; “but now
+we're NOT alone--ha, ha! Anatole, du Bordeaux!”
+
+“I'm sure they sat after the ladies at Carlton House; didn't they, Lady
+Pash?” says Dobus, who likes his glass.
+
+“THAT they did!” says my Lady, giving him a jolly nod.
+
+“I racklackt,” exclaims Captain Goff, “when I was in the Mauritius, that
+Mestress MacWhirter, who commanded the Saxty-Sackond, used to say, 'Mac,
+if ye want to get lively, ye'll not stop for more than two hours after
+the leddies have laft ye: if ye want to get drunk, ye'll just dine at
+the mass.' So ye see, Mestress Barry, what was Mac's allowance--haw,
+haw! Mester Whey, I'll trouble ye for the o-lives.”
+
+But although we were in a clear majority, that indomitable woman, Mrs.
+Berry, determined to make us all as uneasy as possible, and would take
+the votes all round. Poor Jack, of course, sided with her, and Whey said
+he loved a cup of tea and a little music better than all the wine of
+Bordeaux. As for the Frenchman, when Mrs. Berry said, “And what do you
+think, M. le Vicomte?”
+
+“Vat you speak?” said M. de Blagueval, breaking silence for the first
+time during two hours. “Yase--eh? to me you speak?”
+
+“Apry deeny, aimy-voo ally avec les dam?”
+
+“Comment avec les dames?”
+
+“Ally avec les dam com a Parry, ou resty avec les Messew com on
+Onglyterre?”
+
+“Ah, madame! vous me le demandez?” cries the little wretch, starting up
+in a theatrical way, and putting out his hand, which Mrs. Berry took,
+and with this the ladies left the room. Old Lady Pash trotted after her
+niece with her hand in Whey's, very much wondering at such practices,
+which were not in the least in vogue in the reign of George III.
+
+Mrs. Berry cast a glance of triumph at her husband, at the defection;
+and Berry was evidently annoyed that three-eighths of his male forces
+had left him.
+
+But fancy our delight and astonishment, when in a minute they all three
+came back again; the Frenchman looking entirely astonished, and the
+parson and the painter both very queer. The fact is, old downright Lady
+Pash, who had never been in Paris in her life before, and had no notion
+of being deprived of her usual hour's respite and nap, said at once to
+Mrs. Berry, “My dear Angelica, you're surely not going to keep these
+three men here? Send them back to the dining-room, for I've a thousand
+things to say to you.” And Angelica, who expects to inherit her aunt's
+property, of course did as she was bid; on which the old lady fell into
+an easy chair, and fell asleep immediately,--so soon, that is, as
+the shout caused by the reappearance of the three gentlemen in the
+dining-room had subsided.
+
+I had meanwhile had some private conversation with little Cutler
+regarding the character of Mrs. Berry. “She's a regular screw,”
+ whispered he; “a regular Tartar. Berry shows fight, though, sometimes,
+and I've known him have his own way for a week together. After dinner
+he is his own master, and hers when he has had his share of wine; and
+that's why she will never allow him to drink any.”
+
+Was it a wicked, or was it a noble and honourable thought which came
+to us both at the same minute, to rescue Berry from his captivity? The
+ladies, of course, will give their verdict according to their gentle
+natures; but I know what men of courage will think, and by their jovial
+judgment will abide.
+
+We received, then, the three lost sheep back into our innocent fold
+again with the most joyous shouting and cheering. We made Berry (who
+was, in truth, nothing loth) order up I don't know how much more claret.
+We obliged the Frenchman to drink malgre lui, and in the course of
+a short time we had poor Whey in such a state of excitement, that he
+actually volunteered to sing a song, which he said he had heard at some
+very gay supper-party at Cambridge, and which begins:
+
+     “A pye sat on a pear-tree,
+      A pye sat on a pear-tree,
+      A pye sat on a pear-tree,
+        Heigh-ho, heigh-ho, heigh-ho!”
+
+Fancy Mrs. Berry's face as she looked in, in the midst of that
+Bacchanalian ditty, when she saw no less a person than the Reverend
+Lemuel Whey carolling it!
+
+“Is it you, my dear?” cries Berry, as brave now as any Petruchio. “Come
+in, and sit down, and hear Whey's song.”
+
+“Lady Pash is asleep, Frank,” said she.
+
+“Well, darling! that's the very reason. Give Mrs. Berry a glass, Jack,
+will you?”
+
+“Would you wake your aunt, sir?” hissed out madame.
+
+“NEVER MIND ME, LOVE! I'M AWAKE, AND LIKE IT!” cried the venerable Lady
+Pash from the salon. “Sing away, gentlemen!”
+
+At which we all set up an audacious cheer; and Mrs. Berry flounced back
+to the drawing-room, but did not leave the door open, that her aunt
+might hear our melodies.
+
+Berry had by this time arrived at that confidential state to which a
+third bottle always brings the well-regulated mind; and he made a clean
+confession to Cutler and myself of his numerous matrimonial annoyances.
+He was not allowed to dine out, he said, and but seldom to ask his
+friends to meet him at home. He never dared smoke a cigar for the life
+of him, not even in the stables. He spent the mornings dawdling in
+eternal shops, the evenings at endless tea-parties, or in reading
+poems or missionary tracts to his wife. He was compelled to take physic
+whenever she thought he looked a little pale, to change his shoes and
+stockings whenever he came in from a walk. “Look here,” said he, opening
+his chest, and shaking his fist at Dobus; “look what Angelica and that
+infernal Dobus have brought me to.”
+
+I thought it might be a flannel waistcoat into which madame had
+forced him; but it was worse: I give you my word of honour it was a
+PITCH-PLASTER!
+
+We all roared at this, and the doctor as loud as anyone; but he vowed
+that he had no hand in the pitch-plaster. It was a favourite family
+remedy of the late apothecary Sir George Catacomb, and had been put on
+by Mrs. Berry's own fair hands.
+
+When Anatole came in with coffee, Berry was in such high courage, that
+he told him to go to the deuce with it; and we never caught sight of
+Lady Pash more, except when, muffled up to the nose, she passed through
+the salle-a-manger to go to her carriage, in which Dobus and the parson
+were likewise to be transported to Paris. “Be a man, Frank,” says she,
+“and hold your own”--for the good old lady had taken her nephew's part
+in the matrimonial business--“and you, Mr. Fitz-Boodle, come and see him
+often. You're a good fellow, take old one-eyed Callipash's word for it.
+Shall I take you to Paris?”
+
+Dear kind Angelica, she had told her aunt all I said!
+
+“Don't go, George,” says Berry, squeezing me by the hand. So I said I
+was going to sleep at Versailles that night; but if she would give a
+convoy to Jack Butts, it would be conferring a great obligation on him;
+with which favour the old lady accordingly complied, saying to him,
+with great coolness, “Get up and sit with John in the rumble, Mr.
+What-d'ye-call-'im.” The fact is, the good old soul despises an artist
+as much as she does a tailor.
+
+Jack tripped to his place very meekly; and “Remember Saturday,” cried
+the Doctor; and “Don't forget Thursday!” exclaimed the divine,--“a
+bachelor's party, you know.” And so the cavalcade drove thundering down
+the gloomy old Avenue de Paris.
+
+The Frenchman, I forgot to say, had gone away exceedingly ill long
+before; and the reminiscences of “Thursday” and “Saturday” evoked by
+Dobus and Whey, were, to tell the truth, parts of our conspiracy; for in
+the heat of Berry's courage, we had made him promise to dine with us all
+round en garcon; with all except Captain Goff, who “racklacted” that he
+was engaged every day for the next three weeks: as indeed he is, to
+a thirty-sous ordinary which the gallant officer frequents, when not
+invited elsewhere.
+
+Cutler and I then were the last on the field; and though we were for
+moving away, Berry, whose vigour had, if possible, been excited by the
+bustle and colloquy in the night air, insisted upon dragging us back
+again, and actually proposed a grill for supper!
+
+We found in the salle-a-manger a strong smell of an extinguished lamp,
+and Mrs. Berry was snuffing out the candles on the sideboard.
+
+“Hullo, my dear!” shouts Berry: “easy, if you please; we've not done
+yet!”
+
+“Not done yet, Mr. Berry!” groans the lady, in a hollow sepulchral tone.
+
+“No, Mrs. B., not done yet. We are going to have some supper, ain't we,
+George?”
+
+“I think it's quite time to go home,” said Mr. Fitz-Boodle (who, to say
+the truth, began to tremble himself).
+
+“I think it is, sir; you are quite right, sir; you will pardon me,
+gentlemen, I have a bad headache, and will retire.”
+
+“Good-night, my dear!” said that audacious Berry. “Anatole, tell the
+cook to broil a fowl and bring some wine.”
+
+If the loving couple had been alone, or if Cutler had not been an
+attache to the embassy, before whom she was afraid of making herself
+ridiculous, I am confident that Mrs. Berry would have fainted away on
+the spot; and that all Berry's courage would have tumbled down lifeless
+by the side of her. So she only gave a martyrised look, and left the
+room; and while we partook of the very unnecessary repast, was good
+enough to sing some hymn-tunes to an exceedingly slow movement in the
+next room, intimating that she was awake, and that, though suffering,
+she found her consolations in religion.
+
+These melodies did not in the least add to our friend's courage. The
+devilled fowl had, somehow, no devil in it. The champagne in the glasses
+looked exceedingly flat and blue. The fact is, that Cutler and I were
+now both in a state of dire consternation, and soon made a move for
+our hats, and lighting each a cigar in the hall, made across the little
+green where the Cupids and nymphs were listening to the dribbling
+fountain in the dark.
+
+“I'm hanged if I don't have a cigar too!” says Berry, rushing after us;
+and accordingly putting in his pocket a key about the size of a shovel,
+which hung by the little handle of the outer grille, forth he sallied,
+and joined us in our fumigation.
+
+He stayed with us a couple of hours, and returned homewards in perfect
+good spirits, having given me his word of honour he would dine with us
+the next day. He put his immense key into the grille, and unlocked it;
+but the gate would not open: IT WAS BOLTED WITHIN.
+
+He began to make a furious jangling and ringing at the bell; and in
+oaths, both French and English, called upon the recalcitrant Anatole.
+
+After much tolling of the bell, a light came cutting across the crevices
+of the inner door; it was thrown open, and a figure appeared with a
+lamp,--a tall slim figure of a woman, clothed in white from head to
+foot.
+
+It was Mrs. Berry, and when Cutler and I saw her, we both ran away as
+fast as our legs could carry us.
+
+Berry, at this, shrieked with a wild laughter. “Remember to-morrow, old
+boys,” shouted he,--“six o'clock;” and we were a quarter of a mile off
+when the gate closed, and the little mansion of the Avenue de Paris was
+once more quiet and dark.
+
+The next afternoon, as we were playing at billiards, Cutler saw Mrs.
+Berry drive by in her carriage; and as soon as rather a long rubber was
+over, I thought I would go and look for our poor friend, and so went
+down to the Pavilion. Every door was open, as the wont is in France, and
+I walked in unannounced, and saw this:
+
+He was playing a duet with her on the flute. She had been out but for
+half-an-hour, after not speaking all the morning; and having seen Cutler
+at the billiard-room window, and suspecting we might take advantage
+of her absence, she had suddenly returned home again, and had flung
+herself, weeping, into her Frank's arms, and said she could not bear to
+leave him in anger. And so, after sitting for a little while sobbing on
+his knee, she had forgotten and forgiven every thing!
+
+The dear angel! I met poor Frank in Bond Street only yesterday; but he
+crossed over to the other side of the way. He had on goloshes, and is
+grown very fat and pale. He has shaved off his moustaches, and, instead,
+wears a respirator. He has taken his name off all his clubs, and lives
+very grimly in Baker Street. Well, ladies, no doubt you say he is right:
+and what are the odds, so long as YOU are happy?
+
+
+
+
+DENNIS HAGGARTY'S WIFE.
+
+
+There was an odious Irishwoman who with her daughter used to frequent
+the “Royal Hotel” at Leamington some years ago, and who went by the name
+of Mrs. Major Gam. Gam had been a distinguished officer in His Majesty's
+service, whom nothing but death and his own amiable wife could overcome.
+The widow mourned her husband in the most becoming bombazeen she could
+muster, and had at least half an inch of lampblack round the immense
+visiting tickets which she left at the houses of the nobility and gentry
+her friends.
+
+Some of us, I am sorry to say, used to call her Mrs. Major Gammon; for
+if the worthy widow had a propensity, it was to talk largely of herself
+and family (of her own family, for she held her husband's very cheap),
+and of the wonders of her paternal mansion, Molloyville, county of Mayo.
+She was of the Molloys of that county; and though I never heard of the
+family before, I have little doubt, from what Mrs. Major Gam stated,
+that they were the most ancient and illustrious family of that part of
+Ireland. I remember there came down to see his aunt a young fellow
+with huge red whiskers and tight nankeens, a green coat, and an awful
+breastpin, who, after two days' stay at the Spa, proposed marriage to
+Miss S----, or, in default, a duel with her father; and who drove a
+flash curricle with a bay and a grey, and who was presented with much
+pride by Mrs. Gam as Castlereagh Molloy of Molloyville. We all agreed
+that he was the most insufferable snob of the whole season, and were
+delighted when a bailiff came down in search of him.
+
+Well, this is all I know personally of the Molloyville family; but at
+the house if you met the widow Gam, and talked on any subject in life,
+you were sure to hear of it. If you asked her to have peas at dinner,
+she would say, “Oh, sir, after the peas at Molloyville, I really don't
+care for any others,--do I, dearest Jemima? We always had a dish in the
+month of June, when my father gave his head gardener a guinea (we had
+three at Molloyville), and sent him with his compliments and a quart of
+peas to our neighbour, dear Lord Marrowfat. What a sweet place Marrowfat
+Park is! isn't it, Jemima?” If a carriage passed by the window, Mrs.
+Major Gammon would be sure to tell you that there were three carriages
+at Molloyville, “the barouche, the chawiot, and the covered cyar.” In
+the same manner she would favour you with the number and names of the
+footmen of the establishment; and on a visit to Warwick Castle (for this
+bustling woman made one in every party of pleasure that was formed from
+the hotel), she gave us to understand that the great walk by the river
+was altogether inferior to the principal avenue of Molloyville Park.
+I should not have been able to tell so much about Mrs. Gam and her
+daughter, but that, between ourselves, I was particularly sweet upon a
+young lady at the time, whose papa lived at the “Royal,” and was under
+the care of Doctor Jephson.
+
+The Jemima appealed to by Mrs. Gam in the above sentence was, of course,
+her daughter, apostrophised by her mother, “Jemima, my soul's darling?”
+ or, “Jemima, my blessed child!” or, “Jemima, my own love!” The
+sacrifices that Mrs. Gam had made for that daughter were, she said,
+astonishing. The money she had spent in masters upon her, the illnesses
+through which she had nursed her, the ineffable love the mother bore
+her, were only known to Heaven, Mrs. Gam said. They used to come into
+the room with their arms round each other's waists: at dinner between
+the courses the mother would sit with one hand locked in her daughter's;
+and if only two or three young men were present at the time, would be
+pretty sure to kiss her Jemima more than once during the time whilst the
+bohea was poured out.
+
+As for Miss Gam, if she was not handsome, candour forbids me to say she
+was ugly. She was neither one nor t'other. She was a person who wore
+ringlets and a band round her forehead; she knew four songs, which
+became rather tedious at the end of a couple of months' acquaintance;
+she had excessively bare shoulders; she inclined to wear numbers of
+cheap ornaments, rings, brooches, ferronnieres, smelling-bottles, and
+was always, we thought, very smartly dressed: though old Mrs. Lynx
+hinted that her gowns and her mother's were turned over and over again,
+and that her eyes were almost put out by darning stockings.
+
+These eyes Miss Gam had very large, though rather red and weak, and used
+to roll them about at every eligible unmarried man in the place. But
+though the widow subscribed to all the balls, though she hired a fly
+to go to the meet of the hounds, though she was constant at church, and
+Jemima sang louder than any person there except the clerk, and though,
+probably, any person who made her a happy husband would be invited down
+to enjoy the three footmen, gardeners, and carriages at Molloyville, yet
+no English gentleman was found sufficiently audacious to propose.
+Old Lynx used to say that the pair had been at Tunbridge, Harrogate,
+Brighton, Ramsgate, Cheltenham, for this eight years past; where they
+had met, it seemed, with no better fortune. Indeed, the widow looked
+rather high for her blessed child: and as she looked with the contempt
+which no small number of Irish people feel upon all persons who get
+their bread by labour or commerce; and as she was a person whose
+energetic manners, costume, and brogue were not much to the taste of
+quiet English country gentlemen, Jemima--sweet, spotless flower--still
+remained on her hands, a thought withered, perhaps, and seedy.
+
+Now, at this time, the 120th Regiment was quartered at Weedon Barracks,
+and with the corps was a certain Assistant-Surgeon Haggarty, a large,
+lean, tough, raw-boned man, with big hands, knock-knees, and carroty
+whiskers, and, withal, as honest a creature as ever handled a lancet.
+Haggarty, as his name imports, was of the very same nation as Mrs. Gam,
+and, what is more, the honest fellow had some of the peculiarities which
+belonged to the widow, and bragged about his family almost as much as
+she did. I do not know of what particular part of Ireland they were
+kings; but monarchs they must have been, as have been the ancestors of
+so many thousand Hibernian families; but they had been men of no small
+consideration in Dublin, “where my father,” Haggarty said, “is as well
+known as King William's statue, and where he 'rowls his carriage, too,'
+let me tell ye.”
+
+Hence, Haggarty was called by the wags “Rowl the carriage,” and several
+of them made inquiries of Mrs. Gam regarding him: “Mrs. Gam, when you
+used to go up from Molloyville to the Lord Lieutenant's balls, and had
+your townhouse in Fitzwilliam Square, used you to meet the famous Doctor
+Haggarty in society?”
+
+“Is it Surgeon Haggarty of Gloucester Street ye mean? The black Papist!
+D'ye suppose that the Molloys would sit down to table with a creature of
+that sort?”
+
+“Why, isn't he the most famous physician in Dublin, and doesn't he rowl
+his carriage there?”
+
+“The horrid wretch! He keeps a shop, I tell ye, and sends his sons out
+with the medicine. He's got four of them off into the army, Ulick and
+Phil, and Terence and Denny, and now it's Charles that takes out the
+physic. But how should I know about these odious creatures? Their mother
+was a Burke, of Burke's Town, county Cavan, and brought Surgeon Haggarty
+two thousand pounds. She was a Protestant; and I am surprised how she
+could have taken up with a horrid odious Popish apothecary!”
+
+From the extent of the widow's information, I am led to suppose that the
+inhabitants of Dublin are not less anxious about their neighbours than
+are the natives of English cities; and I think it is very probable that
+Mrs. Gam's account of the young Haggartys who carried out the medicine
+is perfectly correct, for a lad in the 120th made a caricature of
+Haggarty coming out of a chemist's shop with an oilcloth basket under
+his arm, which set the worthy surgeon in such a fury that there would
+have been a duel between him and the ensign, could the fiery doctor have
+had his way.
+
+Now, Dionysius Haggarty was of an exceedingly inflammable temperament,
+and it chanced that of all the invalids, the visitors, the young squires
+of Warwickshire, the young manufacturers from Birmingham, the young
+officers from the barracks--it chanced, unluckily for Miss Gam and
+himself, that he was the only individual who was in the least smitten
+by her personal charms. He was very tender and modest about his love,
+however, for it must be owned that he respected Mrs. Gam hugely, and
+fully admitted, like a good simple fellow as he was, the superiority of
+that lady's birth and breeding to his own. How could he hope that he, a
+humble assistant-surgeon, with a thousand pounds his Aunt Kitty left
+him for all his fortune--how could he hope that one of the race of
+Molloyville would ever condescend to marry him?
+
+Inflamed, however, by love, and inspired by wine, one day at a picnic at
+Kenilworth, Haggarty, whose love and raptures were the talk of the whole
+regiment, was induced by his waggish comrades to make a proposal in
+form.
+
+“Are you aware, Mr. Haggarty, that you are speaking to a Molloy?”
+ was all the reply majestic Mrs. Gam made when, according to the usual
+formula, the fluttering Jemima referred her suitor to “Mamma.” She left
+him with a look which was meant to crush the poor fellow to earth; she
+gathered up her cloak and bonnet, and precipitately called for her fly.
+She took care to tell every single soul in Leamington that the son of
+the odious Papist apothecary had had the audacity to propose for her
+daughter (indeed a proposal, coming from whatever quarter it may,
+does no harm), and left Haggarty in a state of extreme depression and
+despair.
+
+His down-heartedness, indeed, surprised most of his acquaintances in and
+out of the regiment, for the young lady was no beauty, and a doubtful
+fortune, and Dennis was a man outwardly of an unromantic turn, who
+seemed to have a great deal more liking for beefsteak and whisky-punch
+than for women, however fascinating.
+
+But there is no doubt this shy uncouth rough fellow had a warmer and
+more faithful heart hid within him than many a dandy who is as handsome
+as Apollo. I, for my part, never can understand why a man falls in love,
+and heartily give him credit for so doing, never mind with what or
+whom. THAT I take to be a point quite as much beyond an individual's own
+control as the catching of the small-pox or the colour of his hair. To
+the surprise of all, Assistant-Surgeon Dionysius Haggarty was deeply and
+seriously in love; and I am told that one day he very nearly killed the
+before-mentioned young ensign with a carving-knife, for venturing to
+make a second caricature, representing Lady Gammon and Jemima in a
+fantastical park, surrounded by three gardeners, three carriages, three
+footmen, and the covered cyar. He would have no joking concerning them.
+He became moody and quarrelsome of habit. He was for some time much more
+in the surgery and hospital than in the mess. He gave up the eating, for
+the most part, of those vast quantities of beef and pudding, for which
+his stomach used to afford such ample and swift accommodation; and when
+the cloth was drawn, instead of taking twelve tumblers, and singing
+Irish melodies, as he used to do, in a horrible cracked yelling voice,
+he would retire to his own apartment, or gloomily pace the barrack-yard,
+or madly whip and spur a grey mare he had on the road to Leamington,
+where his Jemima (although invisible for him) still dwelt.
+
+The season at Leamington coming to a conclusion by the withdrawal of the
+young fellows who frequented that watering-place, the widow Gam retired
+to her usual quarters for the other months of the year. Where these
+quarters were, I think we have no right to ask, for I believe she had
+quarrelled with her brother at Molloyville, and besides, was a great
+deal too proud to be a burden on anybody.
+
+Not only did the widow quit Leamington, but very soon afterwards the
+120th received its marching orders, and left Weedon and Warwickshire.
+Haggarty's appetite was by this time partially restored, but his love
+was not altered, and his humour was still morose and gloomy. I am
+informed that at this period of his life he wrote some poems relative to
+his unhappy passion; a wild set of verses of several lengths, and in
+his handwriting, being discovered upon a sheet of paper in which a
+pitch-plaster was wrapped up, which Lieutenant and Adjutant Wheezer was
+compelled to put on for a cold.
+
+Fancy then, three years afterwards, the surprise of all Haggarty's
+acquaintances on reading in the public papers the following
+announcement:
+
+“Married, at Monkstown on the 12th instant, Dionysius Haggarty, Esq.,
+of H.M. 120th Foot, to Jemima Amelia Wilhelmina Molloy, daughter of the
+late Major Lancelot Gam, R.M., and granddaughter of the late, and niece
+of the present Burke Bodkin Blake Molloy, Esq., Molloyville, county
+Mayo.”
+
+“Has the course of true love at last begun to run smooth?” thought I, as
+I laid down the paper; and the old times, and the old leering bragging
+widow, and the high shoulders of her daughter, and the jolly days with
+the 120th, and Doctor Jephson's one-horse chaise, and the Warwickshire
+hunt, and--and Louisa S----, but never mind HER,--came back to my mind.
+Has that good-natured simple fellow at last met with his reward? Well,
+if he has not to marry the mother-in-law too, he may get on well enough.
+
+Another year announced the retirement of Assistant-Surgeon Haggarty
+from the 120th, where he was replaced by Assistant-Surgeon Angus
+Rothsay Leech, a Scotchman, probably; with whom I have not the least
+acquaintance, and who has nothing whatever to do with this little
+history.
+
+Still more years passed on, during which time I will not say that I kept
+a constant watch upon the fortunes of Mr. Haggarty and his lady; for,
+perhaps, if the truth were known, I never thought for a moment about
+them; until one day, being at Kingstown, near Dublin, dawdling on
+the beach, and staring at the Hill of Howth, as most people at that
+watering-place do, I saw coming towards me a tall gaunt man, with a pair
+of bushy red whiskers, of which I thought I had seen the like in former
+years, and a face which could be no other than Haggarty's. It was
+Haggarty, ten years older than when we last met, and greatly more grim
+and thin. He had on one shoulder a young gentleman in a dirty tartan
+costume, and a face exceedingly like his own peeping from under a
+battered plume of black feathers, while with his other hand he was
+dragging a light green go-cart, in which reposed a female infant of some
+two years old. Both were roaring with great power of lungs.
+
+As soon as Dennis saw me, his face lost the dull puzzled expression
+which had seemed to characterise it; he dropped the pole of the go-cart
+from one hand, and his son from the other, and came jumping forward to
+greet me with all his might, leaving his progeny roaring in the road.
+
+“Bless my sowl,” says he, “sure it's Fitz-Boodle? Fitz, don't you
+remember me? Dennis Haggarty of the 120th? Leamington, you know? Molloy,
+my boy, hould your tongue, and stop your screeching, and Jemima's too;
+d'ye hear? Well, it does good to sore eyes to see an old face. How fat
+you're grown, Fitz; and were ye ever in Ireland before? and a'n't ye
+delighted with it? Confess, now, isn't it beautiful?”
+
+This question regarding the merits of their country, which I have
+remarked is put by most Irish persons, being answered in a satisfactory
+manner, and the shouts of the infants appeased from an apple-stall
+hard by, Dennis and I talked of old times; I congratulated him on his
+marriage with the lovely girl whom we all admired, and hoped he had a
+fortune with her, and so forth. His appearance, however, did not bespeak
+a great fortune: he had an old grey hat, short old trousers, an old
+waistcoat with regimental buttons, and patched Blucher boots, such as
+are not usually sported by persons in easy life.
+
+“Ah!” says he, with a sigh, in reply to my queries, “times are changed
+since them days, Fitz-Boodle. My wife's not what she was--the beautiful
+creature you knew her. Molloy, my boy, run off in a hurry to your mamma,
+and tell her an English gentleman is coming home to dine; for you'll
+dine with me, Fitz, in course?” And I agreed to partake of that meal;
+though Master Molloy altogether declined to obey his papa's orders with
+respect to announcing the stranger.
+
+“Well, I must announce you myself,” said Haggarty, with a smile. “Come,
+it's just dinner-time, and my little cottage is not a hundred yards
+off.” Accordingly, we all marched in procession to Dennis's little
+cottage, which was one of a row and a half of one-storied houses, with
+little courtyards before them, and mostly with very fine names on the
+doorposts of each. “Surgeon Haggarty” was emblazoned on Dennis's gate,
+on a stained green copper-plate; and, not content with this, on the
+door-post above the bell was an oval with the inscription of “New
+Molloyville.” The bell was broken, of course; the court, or garden-path,
+was mouldy, weedy, seedy; there were some dirty rocks, by way of
+ornament, round a faded glass-plat in the centre, some clothes and
+rags hanging out of most part of the windows of New Molloyville, the
+immediate entrance to which was by a battered scraper, under a broken
+trellis-work, up which a withered creeper declined any longer to climb.
+
+“Small, but snug,” says Haggarty: “I'll lead the way, Fitz; put your hat
+on the flower-pot there, and turn to the left into the drawing-room.”
+ A fog of onions and turf-smoke filled the whole of the house, and gave
+signs that dinner was not far off. Far off? You could hear it frizzling
+in the kitchen, where the maid was also endeavouring to hush the crying
+of a third refractory child. But as we entered, all three of Haggarty's
+darlings were in full roar.
+
+“Is it you, Dennis?” cried a sharp raw voice, from a dark corner in
+the drawing-room to which we were introduced, and in which a dirty
+tablecloth was laid for dinner, some bottles of porter and a cold
+mutton-bone being laid out on a rickety grand piano hard by. “Ye're
+always late, Mr. Haggarty. Have you brought the whisky from Nowlan's?
+I'll go bail ye've not, now.”
+
+“My dear, I've brought an old friend of yours and mine to take pot-luck
+with us to-day,” said Dennis.
+
+“When is he to come?” said the lady. At which speech I was rather
+surprised, for I stood before her.
+
+“Here he is, Jemima my love,” answered Dennis, looking at me. “Mr.
+Fitz-Boodle: don't you remember him in Warwickshire, darling?”
+
+“Mr. Fitz-Boodle! I am very glad to see him,” said the lady, rising and
+curtseying with much cordiality.
+
+Mrs. Haggarty was blind.
+
+Mrs. Haggarty was not only blind, but it was evident that smallpox
+had been the cause of her loss of vision. Her eyes were bound with a
+bandage, her features were entirely swollen, scarred and distorted by
+the horrible effects of the malady. She had been knitting in a corner
+when we entered, and was wrapped in a very dirty bedgown. Her voice to
+me was quite different to that in which she addressed her husband. She
+spoke to Haggarty in broad Irish: she addressed me in that most odious
+of all languages--Irish-English, endeavouring to the utmost to disguise
+her brogue, and to speak with the true dawdling distingue English air.
+
+“Are you long in I-a-land?” said the poor creature in this accent. “You
+must faind it a sad ba'ba'ous place, Mr Fitz-Boodle, I'm shu-ah! It was
+vary kaind of you to come upon us en famille, and accept a dinner sans
+ceremonie. Mr. Haggarty, I hope you'll put the waine into aice, Mr.
+Fitz-Boodle must be melted with this hot weathah.”
+
+For some time she conducted the conversation in this polite strain, and
+I was obliged to say, in reply to a query of hers, that I did not find
+her the least altered, though I should never have recognised her but for
+this rencontre. She told Haggarty with a significant air to get the wine
+from the cellah, and whispered to me that he was his own butlah; and the
+poor fellow, taking the hint, scudded away into the town for a pound of
+beefsteak and a couple of bottles of wine from the tavern.
+
+“Will the childhren get their potatoes and butther here?” said a
+barefoot girl, with long black hair flowing over her face, which she
+thrust in at the door.
+
+“Let them sup in the nursery, Elizabeth, and send--ah! Edwards to me.”
+
+“Is it cook you mane, ma'am?” said the girl.
+
+“Send her at once!” shrieked the unfortunate woman; and the noise of
+frying presently ceasing, a hot woman made her appearance, wiping her
+brows with her apron, and asking, with an accent decidedly Hibernian,
+what the misthress wanted.
+
+“Lead me up to my dressing-room, Edwards: I really am not fit to be seen
+in this dishabille by Mr. Fitz-Boodle.”
+
+“Fait' I can't!” says Edwards; “sure the masther's at the butcher's, and
+can't look to the kitchen-fire!”
+
+“Nonsense, I must go!” cried Mrs. Haggarty; and Edwards, putting on a
+resigned air, and giving her arm and face a further rub with her apron,
+held out her arm to Mrs. Dennis, and the pair went upstairs.
+
+She left me to indulge my reflections for half-an-hour, at the end of
+which period she came downstairs dressed in an old yellow satin, with
+the poor shoulders exposed just as much as ever. She had mounted a
+tawdry cap, which Haggarty himself must have selected for her. She had
+all sorts of necklaces, bracelets, and earrings in gold, in garnets,
+in mother-of-pearl, in ormolu. She brought in a furious savour of musk,
+which drove the odours of onions and turf-smoke before it; and she
+waved across her wretched angular mean scarred features an old cambric
+handkerchief with a yellow lace-border.
+
+“And so you would have known me anywhere, Mr. Fitz-Boodle?” said she,
+with a grin that was meant to be most fascinating. “I was sure you
+would; for though my dreadful illness deprived me of my sight, it is a
+mercy that it did not change my features or complexion at all!”
+
+This mortification had been spared the unhappy woman; but I don't
+know whether, with all her vanity, her infernal pride, folly, and
+selfishness, it was charitable to leave her in her error.
+
+Yet why correct her? There is a quality in certain people which is
+above all advice, exposure, or correction. Only let a man or woman have
+DULNESS sufficient, and they need bow to no extant authority. A dullard
+recognises no betters; a dullard can't see that he is in the wrong;
+a dullard has no scruples of conscience, no doubts of pleasing, or
+succeeding, or doing right; no qualms for other people's feelings, no
+respect but for the fool himself. How can you make a fool perceive he is
+a fool? Such a personage can no more see his own folly than he can see
+his own ears. And the great quality of Dulness is to be unalterably
+contented with itself. What myriads of souls are there of this admirable
+sort,--selfish, stingy, ignorant, passionate, brutal; bad sons, mothers,
+fathers, never known to do kind actions!
+
+To pause, however, in this disquisition, which was carrying us far off
+Kingstown, New Molloyville, Ireland--nay, into the wide world wherever
+Dulness inhabits--let it be stated that Mrs. Haggarty, from my brief
+acquaintance with her and her mother, was of the order of persons just
+mentioned. There was an air of conscious merit about her, very hard to
+swallow along with the infamous dinner poor Dennis managed, after
+much delay, to get on the table. She did not fail to invite me to
+Molloyville, where she said her cousin would be charmed to see me; and
+she told me almost as many anecdotes about that place as her mother used
+to impart in former days. I observed, moreover, that Dennis cut her
+the favourite pieces of the beefsteak, that she ate thereof with great
+gusto, and that she drank with similar eagerness of the various strong
+liquors at table. “We Irish ladies are all fond of a leetle glass of
+punch,” she said, with a playful air, and Dennis mixed her a powerful
+tumbler of such violent grog as I myself could swallow only with some
+difficulty. She talked of her suffering a great deal, of her sacrifices,
+of the luxuries to which she had been accustomed before marriage,--in
+a word, of a hundred of those themes on which some ladies are in the
+custom of enlarging when they wish to plague some husbands.
+
+But honest Dennis, far from being angry at this perpetual, wearisome,
+impudent recurrence to her own superiority, rather encouraged the
+conversation than otherwise. It pleased him to hear his wife discourse
+about her merits and family splendours. He was so thoroughly beaten
+down and henpecked, that he, as it were, gloried in his servitude, and
+fancied that his wife's magnificence reflected credit on himself. He
+looked towards me, who was half sick of the woman and her egotism, as
+if expecting me to exhibit the deepest sympathy, and flung me glances
+across the table as much as to say, “What a gifted creature my Jemima
+is, and what a fine fellow I am to be in possession of her!” When the
+children came down she scolded them, of course, and dismissed them
+abruptly (for which circumstance, perhaps, the writer of these pages
+was not in his heart very sorry), and, after having sat a preposterously
+long time, left us, asking whether we would have coffee there or in her
+boudoir.
+
+“Oh! here, of course,” said Dennis, with rather a troubled air, and
+in about ten minutes the lovely creature was led back to us again by
+“Edwards,” and the coffee made its appearance. After coffee her husband
+begged her to let Mr. Fitz-Boodle hear her voice: “He longs for some of
+his old favourites.”
+
+“No! DO you?” said she; and was led in triumph to the jingling old
+piano, and with a screechy wiry voice, sang those very abominable old
+ditties which I had heard her sing at Leamington ten years back.
+
+Haggarty, as she sang, flung himself back in the chair delighted.
+Husbands always are, and with the same song, one that they have heard
+when they were nineteen years old probably; most Englishmen's tunes have
+that date, and it is rather affecting, I think, to hear an old gentleman
+of sixty or seventy quavering the old ditty that was fresh when HE was
+fresh and in his prime. If he has a musical wife, depend on it he thinks
+her old songs of 1788 are better than any he has heard since: in fact
+he has heard NONE since. When the old couple are in high good-humour the
+old gentleman will take the old lady round the waist, and say, “My dear,
+do sing me one of your own songs,” and she sits down and sings with her
+old voice, and, as she sings, the roses of her youth bloom again for a
+moment. Ranelagh resuscitates, and she is dancing a minuet in powder and
+a train.
+
+This is another digression. It was occasioned by looking at poor
+Dennis's face while his wife was screeching (and, believe me, the former
+was the more pleasant occupation). Bottom tickled by the fairies could
+not have been in greater ecstasies. He thought the music was divine;
+and had further reason for exulting in it, which was, that his wife was
+always in a good humour after singing, and never would sing but in that
+happy frame of mind. Dennis had hinted so much in our little colloquy
+during the ten minutes of his lady's absence in the “boudoir;” so, at
+the conclusion of each piece, we shouted “Bravo!” and clapped our hands
+like mad.
+
+Such was my insight into the life of Surgeon Dionysius Haggarty and his
+wife; and I must have come upon him at a favourable moment too, for poor
+Dennis has spoken, subsequently, of our delightful evening at Kingstown,
+and evidently thinks to this day that his friend was fascinated by
+the entertainment there. His inward economy was as follows: he had his
+half-pay, a thousand pounds, about a hundred a year that his father
+left, and his wife had sixty pounds a year from the mother; which the
+mother, of course, never paid. He had no practice, for he was absorbed
+in attention to his Jemima and the children, whom he used to wash, to
+dress, to carry out, to walk, or to ride, as we have seen, and who
+could not have a servant, as their dear blind mother could never be left
+alone. Mrs. Haggarty, a great invalid, used to lie in bed till one, and
+have breakfast and hot luncheon there. A fifth part of his income was
+spent in having her wheeled about in a chair, by which it was his duty
+to walk daily for an allotted number of hours. Dinner would ensue, and
+the amateur clergy, who abound in Ireland, and of whom Mrs. Haggarty
+was a great admirer, lauded her everywhere as a model of resignation and
+virtue, and praised beyond measure the admirable piety with which she
+bore her sufferings.
+
+Well, every man to his taste. It did not certainly appear to me that SHE
+was the martyr of the family.
+
+“The circumstances of my marriage with Jemima,” Dennis said to me, in
+some after conversations we had on this interesting subject, “were the
+most romantic and touching you can conceive. You saw what an impression
+the dear girl had made upon me when we were at Weedon; for from the
+first day I set eyes on her, and heard her sing her delightful song of
+'Dark-eyed Maiden of Araby,' I felt, and said to Turniquet of ours, that
+very night, that SHE was the dark-eyed maid of Araby for ME--not that
+she was, you know, for she was born in Shropshire. But I felt that I had
+seen the woman who was to make me happy or miserable for life. You know
+how I proposed for her at Kenilworth, and how I was rejected, and how I
+almost shot myself in consequence--no, you don't know that, for I said
+nothing about it to anyone, but I can tell you it was a very near thing;
+and a very lucky thing for me I didn't do it: for,--would you believe
+it?--the dear girl was in love with me all the time.”
+
+“Was she really?” said I, who recollected that Miss Gam's love of those
+days showed itself in a very singular manner; but the fact is, when
+women are most in love they most disguise it.
+
+“Over head and ears in love with poor Dennis,” resumed that worthy
+fellow, “who'd ever have thought it? But I have it from the best
+authority, from her own mother, with whom I'm not over and above good
+friends now; but of this fact she assured me, and I'll tell you when and
+how.
+
+“We were quartered at Cork three years after we were at Weedon, and it
+was our last year at home; and a great mercy that my dear girl spoke
+in time, or where should we have been now? Well, one day, marching
+home from parade, I saw a lady seated at an open window, by another who
+seemed an invalid, and the lady at the window, who was dressed in the
+profoundest mourning, cried out, with a scream, 'Gracious, heavens! it's
+Mr. Haggarty of the 120th.'
+
+“'Sure I know that voice,' says I to Whiskerton.
+
+“'It's a great mercy you don't know it a deal too well,' says he: 'it's
+Lady Gammon. She's on some husband-hunting scheme, depend on it, for
+that daughter of hers. She was at Bath last year on the same errand, and
+at Cheltenham the year before, where, Heaven bless you! she's as well
+known as the “Hen and Chickens.”'
+
+“'I'll thank you not to speak disrespectfully of Miss Jemima Gam,' said
+I to Whiskerton; 'she's of one of the first families in Ireland, and
+whoever says a word against a woman I once proposed for, insults me,--do
+you understand?'
+
+“'Well, marry her, if you like,' says Whiskerton, quite peevish: 'marry
+her, and be hanged!'
+
+“Marry her! the very idea of it set my brain a-whirling, and made me a
+thousand times more mad than I am by nature.
+
+“You may be sure I walked up the hill to the parade-ground that
+afternoon, and with a beating heart too. I came to the widow's house. It
+was called 'New Molloyville,' as this is. Wherever she takes a house for
+six months she calls it 'New Molloyville;' and has had one in Mallow,
+in Bandon, in Sligo, in Castlebar, in Fermoy, in Drogheda, and the deuce
+knows where besides: but the blinds were down, and though I thought I
+saw somebody behind 'em, no notice was taken of poor Denny Haggarty,
+and I paced up and down all mess-time in hopes of catching a glimpse of
+Jemima, but in vain. The next day I was on the ground again; I was just
+as much in love as ever, that's the fact. I'd never been in that way
+before, look you; and when once caught, I knew it was for life.
+
+“There's no use in telling you how long I beat about the bush, but when
+I DID get admittance to the house (it was through the means of young
+Castlereagh Molloy, whom you may remember at Leamington, and who was
+at Cork for the regatta, and used to dine at our mess, and had taken a
+mighty fancy to me)--when I DID get into the house, I say, I rushed in
+medias res at once; I couldn't keep myself quiet, my heart was too full.
+
+“Oh, Fitz! I shall never forget the day,--the moment I was inthrojuiced
+into the dthrawing-room” (as he began to be agitated, Dennis's brogue
+broke out with greater richness than ever; but though a stranger may
+catch, and repeat from memory, a few words, it is next to impossible for
+him to KEEP UP A CONVERSATION in Irish, so that we had best give up all
+attempts to imitate Dennis). “When I saw old mother Gam,” said he, “my
+feelings overcame me all at once. I rowled down on the ground, sir, as
+if I'd been hit by a musket-ball. 'Dearest madam,' says I, 'I'll die if
+you don't give me Jemima.'
+
+“'Heavens, Mr. Haggarty!' says she, 'how you seize me with surprise!
+Castlereagh, my dear nephew, had you not better leave us?' and away he
+went, lighting a cigar, and leaving me still on the floor.
+
+“'Rise, Mr. Haggarty,' continued the widow. 'I will not attempt to deny
+that this constancy towards my daughter is extremely affecting, however
+sudden your present appeal may be. I will not attempt to deny that,
+perhaps, Jemima may have a similar feeling; but, as I said, I never
+could give my daughter to a Catholic.'
+
+“'I'm as good a Protestant as yourself, ma'am,' says I; 'my mother was
+an heiress, and we were all brought up her way.'
+
+“'That makes the matter very different,' says she, turning up the whites
+of her eyes. 'How could I ever have reconciled it to my conscience to
+see my blessed child married to a Papist? How could I ever have taken
+him to Molloyville? Well, this obstacle being removed, _I_ must put
+myself no longer in the way between two young people. _I_ must sacrifice
+myself; as I always have when my darling girl was in question. YOU shall
+see her, the poor dear lovely gentle sufferer, and learn your fate from
+her own lips.'
+
+“'The sufferer, ma'am,' says I; 'has Miss Gam been ill?'
+
+“'What! haven't you heard?' cried the widow. 'Haven't you heard of the
+dreadful illness which so nearly carried her from me? For nine weeks,
+Mr. Haggarty, I watched her day and night, without taking a wink of
+sleep,--for nine weeks she lay trembling between death and life; and I
+paid the doctor eighty-three guineas. She is restored now; but she is
+the wreck of the beautiful creature she was. Suffering, and, perhaps,
+ANOTHER DISAPPOINTMENT--but we won't mention that NOW--have so pulled
+her down. But I will leave you, and prepare my sweet girl for this
+strange, this entirely unexpected visit.'
+
+“I won't tell you what took place between me and Jemima, to whom I was
+introduced as she sat in the darkened room, poor sufferer! nor describe
+to you with what a thrill of joy I seized (after groping about for it)
+her poor emaciated hand. She did not withdraw it; I came out of that
+room an engaged man, sir; and NOW I was enabled to show her that I had
+always loved her sincerely, for there was my will, made three years
+back, in her favour: that night she refused me, as I told ye. I would
+have shot myself, but they'd have brought me in non compos; and my
+brother Mick would have contested the will, and so I determined to live,
+in order that she might benefit by my dying. I had but a thousand pounds
+then: since that my father has left me two more. I willed every shilling
+to her, as you may fancy, and settled it upon her when we married, as we
+did soon after. It was not for some time that I was allowed to see
+the poor girl's face, or, indeed, was aware of the horrid loss she had
+sustained. Fancy my agony, my dear fellow, when I saw that beautiful
+wreck!”
+
+There was something not a little affecting to think, in the conduct of
+this brave fellow, that he never once, as he told his story, seemed to
+allude to the possibility of his declining to marry a woman who was not
+the same as the woman he loved; but that he was quite as faithful to
+her now, as he had been when captivated by the poor tawdry charms of the
+silly Miss of Leamington. It was hard that such a noble heart as this
+should be flung away upon yonder foul mass of greedy vanity. Was it
+hard, or not, that he should remain deceived in his obstinate humility,
+and continue to admire the selfish silly being whom he had chosen to
+worship?
+
+“I should have been appointed surgeon of the regiment,” continued
+Dennis, “soon after, when it was ordered abroad to Jamaica, where it now
+is. But my wife would not hear of going, and said she would break her
+heart if she left her mother. So I retired on half-pay, and took this
+cottage; and in case any practice should fall in my way--why, there is
+my name on the brass plate, and I'm ready for anything that comes. But
+the only case that ever DID come was one day when I was driving my wife
+in the chaise; and another, one night, of a beggar with a broken head.
+My wife makes me a present of a baby every year, and we've no debts; and
+between you and me and the post, as long as my mother-in-law is out of
+the house, I'm as happy as I need be.”
+
+“What! you and the old lady don't get on well?” said I.
+
+“I can't say we do; it's not in nature, you know,” said Dennis, with a
+faint grin. “She comes into the house, and turns it topsy-turvy. When
+she's here I'm obliged to sleep in the scullery. She's never paid her
+daughter's income since the first year, though she brags about her
+sacrifices as if she had ruined herself for Jemima; and besides, when
+she's here, there's a whole clan of the Molloys, horse, foot, and
+dragoons, that are quartered upon us, and eat me out of house and home.”
+
+“And is Molloyville such a fine place as the widow described it?” asked
+I, laughing, and not a little curious.
+
+“Oh, a mighty fine place entirely!” said Dennis. “There's the oak park
+of two hundred acres, the finest land ye ever saw, only they've cut all
+the wood down. The garden in the old Molloys' time, they say, was the
+finest ever seen in the West of Ireland; but they've taken all the glass
+to mend the house windows: and small blame to them either. There's a
+clear rent-roll of thirty-five hundred a year, only it's in the hand of
+receivers; besides other debts, for which there is no land security.”
+
+“Your cousin-in-law, Castlereagh Molloy, won't come into a large
+fortune?”
+
+“Oh, he'll do very well,” said Dennis. “As long as he can get credit,
+he's not the fellow to stint himself. Faith, I was fool enough to put my
+name to a bit of paper for him, and as they could not catch him in Mayo,
+they laid hold of me at Kingstown here. And there was a pretty to do.
+Didn't Mrs. Gam say I was ruining her family, that's all? I paid it by
+instalments (for all my money is settled on Jemima); and Castlereagh,
+who's an honourable fellow, offered me any satisfaction in life. Anyhow,
+he couldn't do more than THAT.”
+
+“Of course not: and now you're friends?”
+
+“Yes, and he and his aunt have had a tiff, too; and he abuses her
+properly, I warrant ye. He says that she carried about Jemima from place
+to place, and flung her at the head of every unmarried man in England
+a'most--my poor Jemima, and she all the while dying in love with me!
+As soon as she got over the small-pox--she took it at Fermoy--God bless
+her, I wish I'd been by to be her nurse-tender--as soon as she was
+rid of it, the old lady said to Castlereagh, 'Castlereagh, go to the
+bar'cks, and find out in the Army List where the 120th is.' Off she came
+to Cork hot foot. It appears that while she was ill, Jemima's love for
+me showed itself in such a violent way that her mother was overcome, and
+promised that, should the dear child recover, she would try and bring us
+together. Castlereagh says she would have gone after us to Jamaica.”
+
+“I have no doubt she would,” said I.
+
+“Could you have a stronger proof of love than that?” cried Dennis. “My
+dear girl's illness and frightful blindness have, of course, injured her
+health and her temper. She cannot in her position look to the children,
+you know, and so they come under my charge for the most part; and her
+temper is unequal, certainly. But you see what a sensitive, refined,
+elegant creature she is, and may fancy that she's often put out by a
+rough fellow like me.”
+
+Here Dennis left me, saying it was time to go and walk out the children;
+and I think his story has matter of some wholesome reflection in it for
+bachelors who are about to change their condition, or may console some
+who are mourning their celibacy. Marry, gentlemen, if you like; leave
+your comfortable dinner at the club for cold-mutton and curl-papers at
+your home; give up your books or pleasures, and take to yourselves wives
+and children; but think well on what you do first, as I have no doubt
+you will after this advice and example. Advice is always useful in
+matters of love; men always take it; they always follow other people's
+opinions, not their own: they always profit by example. When they see a
+pretty woman, and feel the delicious madness of love coming over them,
+they always stop to calculate her temper, her money, their own money,
+or suitableness for the married life.... Ha, ha, ha! Let us fool in this
+way no more. I have been in love forty-three times with all ranks and
+conditions of women, and would have married every time if they would
+have let me. How many wives had King Solomon, the wisest of men? And is
+not that story a warning to us that Love is master of the wisest? It is
+only fools who defy him.
+
+I must come, however, to the last, and perhaps the saddest, part of poor
+Denny Haggarty's history. I met him once more, and in such a condition
+as made me determine to write this history.
+
+In the month of June last I happened to be at Richmond, a delightful
+little place of retreat; and there, sunning himself upon the terrace,
+was my old friend of the 120th: he looked older, thinner, poorer,
+and more wretched than I had ever seen him. “What! you have given up
+Kingstown?” said I, shaking him by the hand.
+
+“Yes,” says he.
+
+“And is my lady and your family here at Richmond?”
+
+“No,” says he, with a sad shake of the head; and the poor fellow's
+hollow eyes filled with tears.
+
+“Good heavens, Denny! what's the matter?” said I. He was squeezing my
+hand like a vice as I spoke.
+
+“They've LEFT me!” he burst out with a dreadful shout of passionate
+grief--a horrible scream which seemed to be wrenched out of his heart.
+“Left me!” said he, sinking down on a seat, and clenching his great
+fists, and shaking his lean arms wildly. “I'm a wise man now, Mr.
+Fitz-Boodle. Jemima has gone away from me, and yet you know how I loved
+her, and how happy we were! I've got nobody now; but I'll die soon,
+that's one comfort: and to think it's she that'll kill me after all!”
+
+The story, which he told with a wild and furious lamentation such as is
+not known among men of our cooler country, and such as I don't like now
+to recall, was a very simple one. The mother-in-law had taken possession
+of the house, and had driven him from it. His property at his marriage
+was settled on his wife. She had never loved him, and told him this
+secret at last, and drove him out of doors with her selfish scorn and
+ill-temper. The boy had died; the girls were better, he said, brought up
+among the Molloys than they could be with him; and so he was quite alone
+in the world, and was living, or rather dying, on forty pounds a year.
+
+His troubles are very likely over by this time. The two fools who caused
+his misery will never read this history of him; THEY never read godless
+stories in magazines: and I wish, honest reader, that you and I went to
+church as much as they do. These people are not wicked BECAUSE of
+their religious observances, but IN SPITE of them. They are too dull to
+understand humility, too blind to see a tender and simple heart under
+a rough ungainly bosom. They are sure that all their conduct towards my
+poor friend here has been perfectly righteous, and that they have given
+proofs of the most Christian virtue. Haggarty's wife is considered by
+her friends as a martyr to a savage husband, and her mother is the angel
+that has come to rescue her. All they did was to cheat him and desert
+him. And safe in that wonderful self-complacency with which the fools
+of this earth are endowed, they have not a single pang of conscience for
+their villany towards him, consider their heartlessness as a proof and
+consequence of their spotless piety and virtue.
+
+
+
+
+FOOTNOTES
+
+[Footnote 1: The words of this song are copyright, nor will the
+copyright be sold for less than twopence-halfpenny.]
+
+[Footnote 2: A French proverbe furnished the author with the notion of
+the rivalry between the Barber and the Tailor.]
+
+[Footnote 3: As it is very probable that many fair readers may not
+approve of the extremely forcible language in which the combat is
+depicted, I beg them to skip it and pass on to the next chapter, and to
+remember that it has been modelled on the style of the very best writers
+of the sporting papers.]
+
+[Footnote 4: Every person who has lived abroad can, of course, point out
+a score of honourable exceptions to the case above hinted at, and knows
+many such unions in which it is the Frenchman who honours the English
+lady by marrying her. But it must be remembered that marrying in France
+means commonly fortune-hunting: and as for the respect in which marriage
+is held in France, let all the French novels in M. Rolandi's library be
+perused by those who wish to come to a decision upon the question.]
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Men's Wives, by William Makepeace Thackeray
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diff --git a/1985-0.zip b/1985-0.zip
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+<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
+
+<!DOCTYPE html
+   PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
+   "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd" >
+
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en">
+  <head>
+    <title>
+      Men's Wives, by William Makepeace Thackeray
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve">
+
+    body { margin:5%; background:#faebd0; text-align:justify}
+    P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: .25em; }
+    H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; }
+    hr  { width: 50%; text-align: center;}
+    .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; }
+    blockquote {font-size: 97%; font-style: italic; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;}
+    .mynote    {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;}
+    .toc       { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;}
+    .toc2      { margin-left: 20%;}
+    div.fig    { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; }
+    div.middle { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; }
+    .figleft   {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;}
+    .figright  {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;}
+    .pagenum   {display:inline; font-size: 70%; font-style:normal;
+               margin: 0; padding: 0; position: absolute; right: 1%;
+               text-align: right;}
+    pre        { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;}
+
+</style>
+  </head>
+  <body>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Men's Wives, by William Makepeace Thackeray
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Men's Wives
+
+Author: William Makepeace Thackeray
+
+Release Date: October 23, 2008 [EBook #1985]
+Last Updated: March 5, 2018
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MEN'S WIVES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Les Bowler, and David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      MEN'S WIVES
+    </h1>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      By William Makepeace Thackeray
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <big><b>CONTENTS</b></big>
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br />
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0001"> <b>MEN'S WIVES, BY G. FITZ-BOODLE</b> </a>
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br />
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> <b>THE RAVENSWING</b> </a>
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br />
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0001"> CHAPTER I. WHICH IS ENTIRELY INTRODUCTORY&mdash;CONTAINS
+        AN ACCOUNT OF MISS CRUMP, HER SUITORS, AND HER FAMILY CIRCLE. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0002"> CHAPTER II. IN WHICH MR. WALKER MAKES THREE
+        ATTEMPTS TO ASCERTAIN THE DWELLING OF MORGIANA. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0003"> CHAPTER III. WHAT CAME OF MR WALKER'S DISCOVERY
+        OF THE &ldquo;BOOTJACK.&rdquo; </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0004"> CHAPTER IV. IN WHICH THE HEROINE HAS A NUMBER
+        MORE LOVERS, AND CUTS A VERY DASHING FIGURE IN THE WORLD. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0005"> CHAPTER V. IN WHICH MR. WALKER FALLS INTO
+        DIFFICULTIES, AND MRS. WALKER MAKES MANY FOOLISH ATTEMPTS TO RESCUE HIM.
+        </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0006"> CHAPTER VI. IN WHICH MR. WALKER STILL REMAINS
+        IN DIFFICULTIES, BUT SHOWS GREAT RESIGNATION UNDER HIS MISFORTUNES. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0007"> CHAPTER VII. IN WHICH MORGIANA ADVANCES TOWARDS
+        FAME AND HONOUR, AND IN WHICH SEVERAL GREAT LITERARY CHARACTERS MAKE
+        THEIR APPEARANCE. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0008"> CHAPTER VIII. IN WHICH MR. WALKER SHOWS GREAT
+        PRUDENCE AND FORBEARANCE. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br />
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0011"> <b>MR. AND MRS. FRANK BERRY.</b> </a>
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br />
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0009"> CHAPTER I. THE FIGHT AT SLAUGHTER HOUSE. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0010"> CHAPTER II. THE COMBAT AT VERSAILLES. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br />
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0014"> <b>DENNIS HAGGARTY'S WIFE.</b> </a>
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br />
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_FOOT"> FOOTNOTES </a>
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br /> <a name="link2H_4_0001" id="link2H_4_0001">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      MEN'S WIVES, BY G. FITZ-BOODLE
+    </h1>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h1>
+      THE RAVENSWING
+    </h1>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0001" id="link2HCH0001">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER I. WHICH IS ENTIRELY INTRODUCTORY&mdash;CONTAINS AN ACCOUNT OF
+      MISS CRUMP, HER SUITORS, AND HER FAMILY CIRCLE.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      In a certain quiet and sequestered nook of the retired village of London&mdash;perhaps
+      in the neighbourhood of Berkeley Square, or at any rate somewhere near
+      Burlington Gardens&mdash;there was once a house of entertainment called
+      the &ldquo;Bootjack Hotel.&rdquo; Mr. Crump, the landlord, had, in the outset of life,
+      performed the duties of Boots in some inn even more frequented than his
+      own, and, far from being ashamed of his origin, as many persons are in the
+      days of their prosperity, had thus solemnly recorded it over the
+      hospitable gate of his hotel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Crump married Miss Budge, so well known to the admirers of the festive
+      dance on the other side of the water as Miss Delancy; and they had one
+      daughter, named Morgiana, after that celebrated part in the &ldquo;Forty
+      Thieves&rdquo; which Miss Budge performed with unbounded applause both at the
+      &ldquo;Surrey&rdquo; and &ldquo;The Wells.&rdquo; Mrs. Crump sat in a little bar, profusely
+      ornamented with pictures of the dancers of all ages, from Hillisberg,
+      Rose, Parisot, who plied the light fantastic toe in 1805, down to the
+      Sylphides of our day. There was in the collection a charming portrait of
+      herself, done by De Wilde; she was in the dress of Morgiana, and in the
+      act of pouring, to very slow music, a quantity of boiling oil into one of
+      the forty jars. In this sanctuary she sat, with black eyes, black hair, a
+      purple face and a turban, and morning, noon, or night, as you went into
+      the parlour of the hotel, there was Mrs. Crump taking tea (with a little
+      something in it), looking at the fashions, or reading Cumberland's
+      &ldquo;British Theatre.&rdquo; The Sunday Times was her paper, for she voted the
+      Dispatch, that journal which is taken in by most ladies of her profession,
+      to be vulgar and Radical, and loved the theatrical gossip in which the
+      other mentioned journal abounds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The fact is, that the &ldquo;Royal Bootjack,&rdquo; though a humble, was a very
+      genteel house; and a very little persuasion would induce Mr. Crump, as he
+      looked at his own door in the sun, to tell you that he had himself once
+      drawn off with that very bootjack the top-boots of His Royal Highness the
+      Prince of Wales and the first gentleman in Europe. While, then, the houses
+      of entertainment in the neighbourhood were loud in their pretended Liberal
+      politics, the &ldquo;Bootjack&rdquo; stuck to the good old Conservative line, and was
+      only frequented by such persons as were of that way of thinking. There
+      were two parlours, much accustomed, one for the gentlemen of the
+      shoulder-knot, who came from the houses of their employers hard by;
+      another for some &ldquo;gents who used the 'ouse,&rdquo; as Mrs. Crump would say
+      (Heaven bless her!) in her simple Cockniac dialect, and who formed a
+      little club there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I forgot to say that while Mrs. C. was sipping her eternal tea or washing
+      up her endless blue china, you might often hear Miss Morgiana employed at
+      the little red-silk cottage piano, singing, &ldquo;Come where the haspens
+      quiver,&rdquo; or &ldquo;Bonny lad, march over hill and furrow,&rdquo; or &ldquo;My art and lute,&rdquo;
+       or any other popular piece of the day. And the dear girl sang with very
+      considerable skill, too, for she had a fine loud voice, which, if not
+      always in tune, made up for that defect by its great energy and activity;
+      and Morgiana was not content with singing the mere tune, but gave every
+      one of the roulades, flourishes, and ornaments as she heard them at the
+      theatres by Mrs. Humby, Mrs. Waylett, or Madame Vestris. The girl had a
+      fine black eye like her mamma, a grand enthusiasm for the stage, as every
+      actor's child will have, and, if the truth must be known, had appeared
+      many and many a time at the theatre in Catherine Street, in minor parts
+      first, and then in Little Pickle, in Desdemona, in Rosina, and in Miss
+      Foote's part where she used to dance: I have not the name to my hand, but
+      think it is Davidson. Four times in the week, at least, her mother and she
+      used to sail off at night to some place of public amusement, for Mrs.
+      Crump had a mysterious acquaintance with all sorts of theatrical
+      personages; and the gates of her old haunt &ldquo;The Wells,&rdquo; of the &ldquo;Cobourg&rdquo;
+       (by the kind permission of Mrs. Davidge), nay, of the &ldquo;Lane&rdquo; and the
+      &ldquo;Market&rdquo; themselves, flew open before her &ldquo;Open sesame,&rdquo; as the robbers'
+      door did to her colleague, Ali Baba (Hornbuckle), in the operatic piece in
+      which she was so famous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Beer was Mr. Crump's beverage, diversified by a little gin, in the
+      evenings; and little need be said of this gentleman, except that he
+      discharged his duties honourably, and filled the president's chair at the
+      club as completely as it could possibly be filled; for he could not even
+      sit in it in his greatcoat, so accurately was the seat adapted to him. His
+      wife and daughter, perhaps, thought somewhat slightingly of him, for he
+      had no literary tastes, and had never been at a theatre since he took his
+      bride from one. He was valet to Lord Slapper at the time, and certain it
+      is that his lordship set him up in the &ldquo;Bootjack,&rdquo; and that stories HAD
+      been told. But what are such to you or me? Let bygones be bygones; Mrs.
+      Crump was quite as honest as her neighbours, and Miss had five hundred
+      pounds to be paid down on the day of her wedding.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Those who know the habits of the British tradesman are aware that he has
+      gregarious propensities like any lord in the land; that he loves a joke,
+      that he is not averse to a glass; that after the day's toil he is happy to
+      consort with men of his degree; and that as society is not so far advanced
+      among us as to allow him to enjoy the comforts of splendid club-houses,
+      which are open to many persons with not a tenth part of his pecuniary
+      means, he meets his friends in the cosy tavern parlour, where a neat
+      sanded floor, a large Windsor chair, and a glass of hot something and
+      water, make him as happy as any of the clubmen in their magnificent
+      saloons.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the &ldquo;Bootjack&rdquo; was, as we have said, a very genteel and select society,
+      called the &ldquo;Kidney Club,&rdquo; from the fact that on Saturday evenings a little
+      graceful supper of broiled kidneys was usually discussed by the members of
+      the club. Saturday was their grand night; not but that they met on all
+      other nights in the week when inclined for festivity: and indeed some of
+      them could not come on Saturdays in the summer having elegant villas in
+      the suburbs, where they passed the six-and-thirty hours of recreation that
+      are happily to be found at the end of every week.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was Mr. Balls, the great grocer of South Audley Street, a warm man,
+      who, they say, had his twenty thousand pounds; Jack Snaffle, of the mews
+      hard by, a capital fellow for a song; Clinker, the ironmonger: all married
+      gentlemen, and in the best line of business; Tressle, the undertaker, etc.
+      No liveries were admitted into the room, as may be imagined, but one or
+      two select butlers and major-domos joined the circle; for the persons
+      composing it knew very well how important it was to be on good terms with
+      these gentlemen and many a time my lord's account would never have been
+      paid, and my lady's large order never have been given, but for the
+      conversation which took place at the &ldquo;Bootjack,&rdquo; and the friendly
+      intercourse subsisting between all the members of the society.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The tiptop men of the society were two bachelors, and two as fashionable
+      tradesmen as any in the town: Mr. Woolsey, from Stultz's, of the famous
+      house of Linsey, Woolsey and Co. of Conduit Street, Tailors; and Mr.
+      Eglantine, the celebrated perruquier and perfumer of Bond Street, whose
+      soaps, razors, and patent ventilating scalps are know throughout Europe.
+      Linsey, the senior partner of the tailors' firm had his handsome mansion
+      in Regent's Park, drove his buggy, and did little more than lend his name
+      to the house. Woolsey lived in it, was the working man of the firm, and it
+      was said that his cut was as magnificent as that of any man in the
+      profession. Woolsey and Eglantine were rivals in many ways&mdash;rivals in
+      fashion, rivals in wit, and, above all, rivals for the hand of an amiable
+      young lady whom we have already mentioned, the dark-eyed songstress
+      Morgiana Crump. They were both desperately in love with her, that was the
+      truth; and each, in the absence of the other, abused his rival heartily.
+      Of the hairdresser Woolsey said, that as for Eglantine being his real
+      name, it was all his (Mr. Woolsey's) eye; that he was in the hands of the
+      Jews, and his stock and grand shop eaten up by usury. And with regard to
+      Woolsey, Eglantine remarked, that his pretence of being descended from the
+      Cardinal was all nonsense; that he was a partner, certainly, in the firm,
+      but had only a sixteenth share; and that the firm could never get their
+      moneys in, and had an immense number of bad debts in their books. As is
+      usual, there was a great deal of truth and a great deal of malice in these
+      tales; however, the gentlemen were, take them all in all, in a very
+      fashionable way of business, and had their claims to Miss Morgiana's hand
+      backed by the parents. Mr. Crump was a partisan of the tailor; while Mrs.
+      C. was a strong advocate for the claims of the enticing perfumer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, it was a curious fact, that these two gentlemen were each in need of
+      the other's services&mdash;Woolsey being afflicted with premature
+      baldness, or some other necessity for a wig still more fatal&mdash;Eglantine
+      being a very fat man, who required much art to make his figure at all
+      decent. He wore a brown frock-coat and frogs, and attempted by all sorts
+      of contrivances to hide his obesity; but Woolsey's remark, that, dress as
+      he would, he would always look like a snob, and that there was only one
+      man in England who could make a gentleman of him, went to the perfumer's
+      soul; and if there was one thing on earth he longed for (not including the
+      hand of Miss Crump) it was to have a coat from Linsey's, in which costume
+      he was sure that Morgiana would not resist him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If Eglantine was uneasy about the coat, on the other hand he attacked
+      Woolsey atrociously on the score of his wig; for though the latter went to
+      the best makers, he never could get a peruke to sit naturally upon him and
+      the unhappy epithet of Mr. Wiggins, applied to him on one occasion by the
+      barber, stuck to him ever after in the club, and made him writhe when it
+      was uttered. Each man would have quitted the &ldquo;Kidneys&rdquo; in disgust long
+      since, but for the other&mdash;for each had an attraction in the place,
+      and dared not leave the field in possession of his rival.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To do Miss Morgiana justice, it must be said, that she did not encourage
+      one more than another; but as far as accepting eau-de-Cologne and
+      hair-combs from the perfumer&mdash;some opera tickets, a treat to
+      Greenwich, and a piece of real Genoa velvet for a bonnet (it had
+      originally been intended for a waistcoat), from the admiring tailor, she
+      had been equally kind to each, and in return had made each a present of a
+      lock of her beautiful glossy hair. It was all she had to give, poor girl!
+      and what could she do but gratify her admirers by this cheap and artless
+      testimony of her regard? A pretty scene and quarrel took place between the
+      rivals on the day when they discovered that each was in possession of one
+      of Morgiana's ringlets.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such, then, were the owners and inmates of the little &ldquo;Bootjack,&rdquo; from
+      whom and which, as this chapter is exceedingly discursive and descriptive,
+      we must separate the reader for a while, and carry him&mdash;it is only
+      into Bond Street, so no gentleman need be afraid&mdash;carry him into Bond
+      Street, where some other personages are awaiting his consideration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Not far from Mr. Eglantine's shop in Bond Street, stand, as is very well
+      known, the Windsor Chambers. The West Diddlesex Association (Western
+      Branch), the British and Foreign Soap Company, the celebrated attorneys
+      Kite and Levison, have their respective offices here; and as the names of
+      the other inhabitants of the chambers are not only painted on the walls,
+      but also registered in Mr. Boyle's &ldquo;Court Guide,&rdquo; it is quite unnecessary
+      that they should be repeated here. Among them, on the entresol (between
+      the splendid saloons of the Soap Company on the first floor, with their
+      statue of Britannia presenting a packet of the soap to Europe, Asia,
+      Africa, and America, and the West Diddlesex Western Branch on the
+      basement)&mdash;lives a gentleman by the name of Mr. Howard Walker. The
+      brass plate on the door of that gentleman's chambers had the word &ldquo;Agency&rdquo;
+       inscribed beneath his name; and we are therefore at liberty to imagine
+      that he followed that mysterious occupation. In person Mr. Walker was very
+      genteel; he had large whiskers, dark eyes (with a slight cast in them), a
+      cane, and a velvet waistcoat. He was a member of a club; had an admission
+      to the opera, and knew every face behind the scenes; and was in the habit
+      of using a number of French phrases in his conversation, having picked up
+      a smattering of that language during a residence &ldquo;on the Continent;&rdquo; in
+      fact, he had found it very convenient at various times of his life to
+      dwell in the city of Boulogne, where he acquired a knowledge of smoking,
+      ecarte, and billiards, which was afterwards of great service to him. He
+      knew all the best tables in town, and the marker at Hunt's could only give
+      him ten. He had some fashionable acquaintances too, and you might see him
+      walking arm-in-arm with such gentlemen as my Lord Vauxhall, the Marquess
+      of Billingsgate, or Captain Buff; and at the same time nodding to young
+      Moses, the dandy bailiff; or Loder, the gambling-house keeper; or
+      Aminadab, the cigar-seller in the Quadrant. Sometimes he wore a pair of
+      moustaches, and was called Captain Walker; grounding his claim to that
+      title upon the fact of having once held a commission in the service of Her
+      Majesty the Queen of Portugal. It scarcely need be said that he had been
+      through the Insolvent Court many times. But to those who did not know his
+      history intimately there was some difficulty in identifying him with the
+      individual who had so taken the benefit of the law, inasmuch as in his
+      schedule his name appeared as Hooker Walker, wine-merchant,
+      commission-agent, music-seller, or what not. The fact is, that though he
+      preferred to call himself Howard, Hooker was his Christian name, and it
+      had been bestowed on him by his worthy old father, who was a clergyman,
+      and had intended his son for that profession. But as the old gentleman
+      died in York gaol, where he was a prisoner for debt, he was never able to
+      put his pious intentions with regard to his son into execution; and the
+      young fellow (as he was wont with many oaths to assert) was thrown on his
+      own resources, and became a man of the world at a very early age.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What Mr. Howard Walker's age was at the time of the commencement of this
+      history, and, indeed, for an indefinite period before or afterwards, it is
+      impossible to determine. If he were eight-and-twenty, as he asserted
+      himself, Time had dealt hardly with him: his hair was thin, there were
+      many crows'-feet about his eyes, and other signs in his countenance of the
+      progress of decay. If, on the contrary, he were forty, as Sam Snaffle
+      declared, who himself had misfortunes in early life, and vowed he knew Mr.
+      Walker in Whitecross Street Prison in 1820, he was a very young-looking
+      person considering his age. His figure was active and slim, his leg neat,
+      and he had not in his whiskers a single white hair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It must, however, be owned that he used Mr. Eglantine's Regenerative
+      Unction (which will make your whiskers as black as your boot), and, in
+      fact, he was a pretty constant visitor at that gentleman's emporium;
+      dealing with him largely for soaps and articles of perfumery, which he had
+      at an exceedingly low rate. Indeed, he was never known to pay Mr.
+      Eglantine one single shilling for those objects of luxury, and, having
+      them on such moderate terms, was enabled to indulge in them pretty
+      copiously. Thus Mr. Walker was almost as great a nosegay as Mr. Eglantine
+      himself: his handkerchief was scented with verbena, his hair with
+      jessamine, and his coat had usually a fine perfume of cigars, which
+      rendered his presence in a small room almost instantaneously remarkable. I
+      have described Mr. Walker thus accurately, because, in truth, it is more
+      with characters than with astounding events that this little history
+      deals, and Mr. Walker is one of the principal of our dramatis personae.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And so, having introduced Mr. W., we will walk over with him to Mr.
+      Eglantine's emporium, where that gentleman is in waiting, too, to have his
+      likeness taken.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is about an acre of plate glass under the Royal arms on Mr.
+      Eglantine's shop-window; and at night, when the gas is lighted, and the
+      washballs are illuminated, and the lambent flame plays fitfully over
+      numberless bottles of vari-coloured perfumes&mdash;now flashes on a case
+      of razors, and now lightens up a crystal vase, containing a hundred
+      thousand of his patent tooth-brushes&mdash;the effect of the sight may be
+      imagined. You don't suppose that he is a creature who has those odious,
+      simpering wax figures in his window, that are called by the vulgar
+      dummies? He is above such a wretched artifice; and it is my belief that he
+      would as soon have his own head chopped off, and placed as a trunkless
+      decoration to his shop-window, as allow a dummy to figure there. On one
+      pane you read in elegant gold letters &ldquo;Eglantinia&rdquo;&mdash;'tis his essence
+      for the handkerchief; on the other is written &ldquo;Regenerative Unction&rdquo;&mdash;'tis
+      his invaluable pomatum for the hair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is no doubt about it: Eglantine's knowledge of his profession
+      amounts to genius. He sells a cake of soap for seven shillings, for which
+      another man would not get a shilling, and his tooth-brushes go off like
+      wildfire at half-a-guinea apiece. If he has to administer rouge or
+      pearl-powder to ladies, he does it with a mystery and fascination which
+      there is no resisting, and the ladies believe there are no cosmetics like
+      his. He gives his wares unheard-of names, and obtains for them sums
+      equally prodigious. He CAN dress hair&mdash;that is a fact&mdash;as few
+      men in this age can; and has been known to take twenty pounds in a single
+      night from as many of the first ladies of England when ringlets were in
+      fashion. The introduction of bands, he says, made a difference of two
+      thousand pounds a year in his income; and if there is one thing in the
+      world he hates and despises, it is a Madonna. &ldquo;I'm not,&rdquo; says he, &ldquo;a
+      tradesman&mdash;I'm a HARTIST&rdquo; (Mr. Eglantine was born in London)&mdash;&ldquo;I'm
+      a hartist; and show me a fine 'ead of air, and I'll dress it for nothink.&rdquo;
+       He vows that it was his way of dressing Mademoiselle Sontag's hair, that
+      caused the count her husband to fall in love with her; and he has a lock
+      of it in a brooch, and says it was the finest head he ever saw, except
+      one, and that was Morgiana Crump's.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With his genius and his position in the profession, how comes it, then,
+      that Mr. Eglantine was not a man of fortune, as many a less clever has
+      been? If the truth must be told, he loved pleasure, and was in the hands
+      of the Jews. He had been in business twenty years: he had borrowed a
+      thousand pounds to purchase his stock and shop; and he calculated that he
+      had paid upwards of twenty thousand pounds for the use of the one
+      thousand, which was still as much due as on the first day when he entered
+      business. He could show that he had received a thousand dozen of champagne
+      from the disinterested money-dealers with whom he usually negotiated his
+      paper. He had pictures all over his &ldquo;studios,&rdquo; which had been purchased in
+      the same bargains. If he sold his goods at an enormous price, he paid for
+      them at a rate almost equally exorbitant. There was not an article in his
+      shop but came to him through his Israelite providers; and in the very
+      front shop itself sat a gentleman who was the nominee of one of them, and
+      who was called Mr. Mossrose. He was there to superintend the cash account,
+      and to see that certain instalments were paid to his principals, according
+      to certain agreements entered into between Mr. Eglantine and them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Having that sort of opinion of Mr. Mossrose which Damocles may have had of
+      the sword which hung over his head, of course Mr. Eglantine hated his
+      foreman profoundly. &ldquo;HE an artist,&rdquo; would the former gentleman exclaim;
+      &ldquo;why, he's only a disguised bailiff! Mossrose indeed! The chap's name's
+      Amos, and he sold oranges before he came here.&rdquo; Mr. Mossrose, on his side,
+      utterly despised Mr. Eglantine, and looked forward to the day when he
+      would become the proprietor of the shop, and take Eglantine for a foreman;
+      and then it would HIS turn to sneer and bully, and ride the high horse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus it will be seen that there was a skeleton in the great perfumer's
+      house, as the saying is: a worm in his heart's core, and though to all
+      appearance prosperous, he was really in an awkward position.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What Mr. Eglantine's relations were with Mr. Walker may be imagined from
+      the following dialogue which took place between the two gentlemen at five
+      o'clock one summer's afternoon, when Mr. Walker, issuing from his
+      chambers, came across to the perfumer's shop:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is Eglantine at home, Mr. Mossrose?&rdquo; said Walker to the foreman, who sat
+      in the front shop.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't know&mdash;go and look&rdquo; (meaning go and be hanged); for Mossrose
+      also hated Mr. Walker.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you're uncivil I'll break your bones, Mr. AMOS,&rdquo; says Mr. Walker,
+      sternly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should like to see you try, Mr. HOOKER Walker,&rdquo; replies the undaunted
+      shopman; on which the Captain, looking several tremendous canings at him,
+      walked into the back room or &ldquo;studio.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How are you, Tiny my buck?&rdquo; says the Captain. &ldquo;Much doing?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not a soul in town. I 'aven't touched the hirons all day,&rdquo; replied Mr.
+      Eglantine, in rather a desponding way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, just get them ready now, and give my whiskers a turn. I'm going to
+      dine with Billingsgate and some out-and-out fellows at the 'Regent,' and
+      so, my lad, just do your best.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can't,&rdquo; says Mr. Eglantine. &ldquo;I expect ladies, Captain, every minute.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very good; I don't want to trouble such a great man, I'm sure. Good-bye,
+      and let me hear from you THIS DAY WEEK, Mr. Eglantine.&rdquo; &ldquo;This day week&rdquo;
+       meant that at seven days from that time a certain bill accepted by Mr.
+      Eglantine would be due, and presented for payment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't be in such a hurry, Captain&mdash;do sit down. I'll curl you in one
+      minute. And, I say, won't the party renew?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Impossible&mdash;it's the third renewal.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I'll make the thing handsome to you;&mdash;indeed I will.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How much?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will ten pounds do the business?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What! offer my principal ten pounds? Are you mad, Eglantine?&mdash;A
+      little more of the iron to the left whisker.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I meant for commission.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I'll see if that will do. The party I deal with, Eglantine, has
+      power, I know, and can defer the matter no doubt. As for me, you know,
+      I'VE nothing to do in the affair, and only act as a friend between you and
+      him. I give you my honour and soul, I do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know you do, my dear sir.&rdquo; The last two speeches were lies. The
+      perfumer knew perfectly well that Mr. Walker would pocket the ten pounds;
+      but he was too easy to care for paying it, and too timid to quarrel with
+      such a powerful friend. And he had on three different occasions already
+      paid ten pounds' fine for the renewal of the bill in question, all of
+      which bonuses he knew went to his friend Mr. Walker.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here, too, the reader will perceive what was, in part, the meaning of the
+      word &ldquo;Agency&rdquo; on Mr. Walker's door. He was a go-between between
+      money-lenders and borrowers in this world, and certain small sums always
+      remained with him in the course of the transaction. He was an agent for
+      wine, too; an agent for places to be had through the influence of great
+      men; he was an agent for half-a-dozen theatrical people, male and female,
+      and had the interests of the latter especially, it was said, at heart.
+      Such were a few of the means by which this worthy gentleman contrived to
+      support himself, and if, as he was fond of high living, gambling, and
+      pleasures of all kinds, his revenue was not large enough for his
+      expenditure&mdash;why, he got into debt, and settled his bills that way.
+      He was as much at home in the Fleet as in Pall Mall, and quite as happy in
+      the one place as in the other. &ldquo;That's the way I take things,&rdquo; would this
+      philosopher say. &ldquo;If I've money, I spend; if I've credit, I borrow; if I'm
+      dunned, I whitewash; and so you can't beat me down.&rdquo; Happy elasticity of
+      temperament! I do believe that, in spite of his misfortunes and precarious
+      position, there was no man in England whose conscience was more calm, and
+      whose slumbers were more tranquil, than those of Captain Howard Walker.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he was sitting under the hands of Mr. Eglantine, he reverted to &ldquo;the
+      ladies,&rdquo; whom the latter gentleman professed to expect; said he was a sly
+      dog, a lucky ditto, and asked him if the ladies were handsome.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Eglantine thought there could be no harm in telling a bouncer to a
+      gentleman with whom he was engaged in money transactions; and so, to give
+      the Captain an idea of his solvency and the brilliancy of his future
+      prospects, &ldquo;Captain,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;I've got a hundred and eighty pounds out
+      with you, which you were obliging enough to negotiate for me. Have I, or
+      have I not, two bills out to that amount?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, my good fellow, you certainly have; and what then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What then? Why, I bet you five pounds to one, that in three months those
+      bills are paid.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Done! five pounds to one. I take it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This sudden closing with him made the perfumer rather uneasy; but he was
+      not to pay for three months, and so he said, &ldquo;Done!&rdquo; too, and went on:
+      &ldquo;What would you say if your bills were paid?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not mine; Pike's.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, if Pike's were paid; and the Minories' man paid, and every single
+      liability I have cleared off; and that Mossrose flung out of winder, and
+      me and my emporium as free as hair?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don't say so? Is Queen Anne dead? and has she left you a fortune? or
+      what's the luck in the wind now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's better than Queen Anne, or anybody dying. What should you say to
+      seeing in that very place where Mossrose now sits (hang him!)&mdash;seeing
+      the FINEST HEAD OF 'AIR NOW IN EUROPE? A woman, I tell you&mdash;a slap-up
+      lovely woman, who, I'm proud to say, will soon be called Mrs. Heglantine,
+      and will bring me five thousand pounds to her fortune.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, Tiny, this IS good luck indeed. I say, you'll be able to do a bill
+      or two for ME then, hay? You won't forget an old friend?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That I won't. I shall have a place at my board for you, Capting; and
+      many's the time I shall 'ope to see you under that ma'ogany.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What will the French milliner say? She'll hang herself for despair,
+      Eglantine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hush! not a word about 'ER. I've sown all my wild oats, I tell you.
+      Eglantine is no longer the gay young bachelor, but the sober married man.
+      I want a heart to share the feelings of mine. I want repose. I'm not so
+      young as I was: I feel it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pooh! pooh! you are&mdash;you are&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, but I sigh for an 'appy fireside; and I'll have it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And give up that club which you belong to, hay?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'The Kidneys?' Oh! of course, no married man should belong to such
+      places: at least, I'LL not; and I'll have my kidneys broiled at home. But
+      be quiet, Captain, if you please; the ladies appointed to&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And is it THE lady you expect? eh, you rogue!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, get along. It's her and her Ma.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Mr. Walker determined he wouldn't get along, and would see these
+      lovely ladies before he stirred.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The operation on Mr. Walker's whiskers being concluded, he was arranging
+      his toilet before the glass in an agreeable attitude: his neck out, his
+      enormous pin settled in his stock to his satisfaction, his eyes
+      complacently directed towards the reflection of his left and favourite
+      whisker. Eglantine was laid on a settee, in an easy, though melancholy
+      posture; he was twiddling the tongs with which he had just operated on
+      Walker with one hand, and his right-hand ringlet with the other, and he
+      was thinking&mdash;thinking of Morgiana; and then of the bill which was to
+      become due on the 16th; and then of a light-blue velvet waistcoat with
+      gold sprigs, in which he looked very killing, and so was trudging round in
+      his little circle of loves, fears, and vanities. &ldquo;Hang it!&rdquo; Mr. Walker was
+      thinking, &ldquo;I AM a handsome man. A pair of whiskers like mine are not met
+      with every day. If anybody can see that my tuft is dyed, may I be&mdash;&rdquo;
+       When the door was flung open, and a large lady with a curl on her
+      forehead, yellow shawl, a green-velvet bonnet with feathers, half-boots,
+      and a drab gown with tulips and other large exotics painted on it&mdash;when,
+      in a word, Mrs. Crump and her daughter bounced into the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here we are, Mr. E,&rdquo; cries Mrs. Crump, in a gay folatre confidential air.
+      &ldquo;But law! there's a gent in the room!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't mind me, ladies,&rdquo; said the gent alluded to, in his fascinating way.
+      &ldquo;I'm a friend of Eglantine's; ain't I, Egg? a chip of the old block, hay?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;THAT you are,&rdquo; said the perfumer, starting up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;An 'air-dresser?&rdquo; asked Mrs. Crump. &ldquo;Well, I thought he was; there's
+      something, Mr. E., in gentlemen of your profession so exceeding, so
+      uncommon distangy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Madam, you do me proud,&rdquo; replied the gentleman so complimented, with
+      great presence of mind. &ldquo;Will you allow me to try my skill upon you, or
+      upon Miss, your lovely daughter? I'm not so clever as Eglantine, but no
+      bad hand, I assure you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nonsense, Captain,&rdquo; interrupted the perfumer, who was uncomfortable
+      somehow at the rencontre between the Captain and the object of his
+      affection. &ldquo;HE'S not in the profession, Mrs. C. This is my friend Captain
+      Walker, and proud I am to call him my friend.&rdquo; And then aside to Mrs. C.,
+      &ldquo;One of the first swells on town, ma'am&mdash;a regular tiptopper.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Humouring the mistake which Mrs. Crump had just made, Mr. Walker thrust
+      the curling-irons into the fire in a minute, and looked round at the
+      ladies with such a fascinating grace, that both, now made acquainted with
+      his quality, blushed and giggled, and were quite pleased. Mamma looked at
+      'Gina, and 'Gina looked at mamma; and then mamma gave 'Gina a little blow
+      in the region of her little waist, and then both burst out laughing, as
+      ladies will laugh, and as, let us trust, they may laugh for ever and ever.
+      Why need there be a reason for laughing? Let us laugh when we are laughy,
+      as we sleep when we are sleepy. And so Mrs. Crump and her demoiselle
+      laughed to their hearts' content; and both fixed their large shining black
+      eyes repeatedly on Mr. Walker.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I won't leave the room,&rdquo; said he, coming forward with the heated iron in
+      his hand, and smoothing it on the brown paper with all the dexterity of a
+      professor (for the fact is, Mr. W. every morning curled his own immense
+      whiskers with the greatest skill and care)&mdash;&ldquo;I won't leave the room,
+      Eglantine my boy. My lady here took me for a hairdresser, and so, you
+      know, I've a right to stay.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He can't stay,&rdquo; said Mrs. Crump, all of a sudden, blushing as red as a
+      peony.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall have on my peignoir, Mamma,&rdquo; said Miss, looking at the gentleman,
+      and then dropping down her eyes and blushing too.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But he can't stay, 'Gina, I tell you: do you think that I would, before a
+      gentleman, take off my&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mamma means her FRONT!&rdquo; said Miss, jumping up, and beginning to laugh
+      with all her might; at which the honest landlady of the &ldquo;Bootjack,&rdquo; who
+      loved a joke, although at her own expense, laughed too, and said that no
+      one, except Mr. Crump and Mr. Eglantine, had ever seen her without the
+      ornament in question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;DO go now, you provoking thing, you!&rdquo; continued Miss C. to Mr. Walker; &ldquo;I
+      wish to hear the hoverture, and it's six o'clock now, and we shall never
+      be done against then:&rdquo; but the way in which Morgiana said &ldquo;DO go,&rdquo; clearly
+      indicated &ldquo;don't&rdquo; to the perspicacious mind of Mr. Walker.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps you 'ad better go,&rdquo; continued Mr. Eglantine, joining in this
+      sentiment, and being, in truth, somewhat uneasy at the admiration which
+      his &ldquo;swell friend&rdquo; excited.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll see you hanged first, Eggy my boy! Go I won't, until these ladies
+      have had their hair dressed: didn't you yourself tell me that Miss Crump's
+      was the most beautiful hair in Europe? And do you think that I'll go away
+      without seeing it? No, here I stay.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You naughty wicked odious provoking man!&rdquo; said Miss Crump. But, at the
+      same time, she took off her bonnet, and placed it on one of the side
+      candlesticks of Mr. Eglantine's glass (it was a black-velvet bonnet,
+      trimmed with sham lace, and with a wreath of nasturtiums, convolvuluses,
+      and wallflowers within), and then said, &ldquo;Give me the peignoir, Mr.
+      Archibald, if you please;&rdquo; and Eglantine, who would do anything for her
+      when she called him Archibald, immediately produced that garment, and
+      wrapped round the delicate shoulders of the lady, who, removing a sham
+      gold chain which she wore on her forehead, two brass hair-combs set with
+      glass rubies, and the comb which kept her back hair together&mdash;removing
+      them, I say, and turning her great eyes towards the stranger, and giving
+      her head a shake, down let tumble such a flood of shining waving heavy
+      glossy jetty hair, as would have done Mr. Rowland's heart good to see. It
+      tumbled down Miss Morgiana's back, and it tumbled over her shoulders, it
+      tumbled over the chair on which she sat, and from the midst of it her
+      jolly bright-eyed rosy face beamed out with a triumphant smile, which
+      said, &ldquo;A'n't I now the most angelic being you ever saw?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By Heaven! it's the most beautiful thing I ever saw!&rdquo; cried Mr. Walker,
+      with undisguised admiration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;ISN'T it?&rdquo; said Mrs. Crump, who made her daughter's triumph her own.
+      &ldquo;Heigho! when I acted at 'The Wells' in 1820, before that dear girl was
+      born, <i>I</i> had such a head of hair as that, to a shade, sir, to a
+      shade. They called me Ravenswing on account of it. I lost my head of hair
+      when that dear child was born, and I often say to her, 'Morgiana, you came
+      into the world to rob your mother of her 'air.' Were you ever at 'The
+      Wells,' sir, in 1820? Perhaps you recollect Miss Delancy? I am that Miss
+      Delancy. Perhaps you recollect,&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;'Tink-a-tink, tink-a-tink,
+         By the light of the star,
+       On the blue river's brink,
+         I heard a guitar.
+
+     &ldquo;'I heard a guitar,
+         On the blue waters clear,
+       And knew by its mu-u-sic,
+         That Selim was near!'
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      You remember that in the 'Bagdad Bells'? Fatima, Delancy; Selim, Benlomond
+      (his real name was Bunnion: and he failed, poor fellow, in the public line
+      afterwards). It was done to the tambourine, and dancing between each
+      verse,&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;'Tink-a-tink, tink-a-tink,
+         How the soft music swells,
+       And I hear the soft clink
+         Of the minaret bells!
+
+     &ldquo;'Tink-a&mdash;'&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; here cried Miss Crump, as if in exceeding pain (and whether Mr.
+      Eglantine had twitched, pulled, or hurt any one individual hair of that
+      lovely head I don't know)&mdash;&ldquo;Oh, you are killing me, Mr. Eglantine!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And with this mamma, who was in her attitude, holding up the end of her
+      boa as a visionary tambourine, and Mr. Walker, who was looking at her, and
+      in his amusement at the mother's performances had almost forgotten the
+      charms of the daughter&mdash;both turned round at once, and looked at her
+      with many expressions of sympathy, while Eglantine, in a voice of
+      reproach, said, &ldquo;KILLED you, Morgiana! I kill YOU?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm better now,&rdquo; said the young lady, with a smile&mdash;&ldquo;I'm better, Mr.
+      Archibald, now.&rdquo; And if the truth must be told, no greater coquette than
+      Miss Morgiana existed in all Mayfair&mdash;no, not among the most
+      fashionable mistresses of the fashionable valets who frequented the
+      &ldquo;Bootjack.&rdquo; She believed herself to be the most fascinating creature that
+      the world ever produced; she never saw a stranger but she tried these
+      fascinations upon him; and her charms of manner and person were of that
+      showy sort which is most popular in this world, where people are wont to
+      admire most that which gives them the least trouble to see; and so you
+      will find a tulip of a woman to be in fashion when a little humble violet
+      or daisy of creation is passed over without remark. Morgiana was a tulip
+      among women, and the tulip fanciers all came flocking round her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Well, the said &ldquo;Oh&rdquo; and &ldquo;I'm better now, Mr. Archibald,&rdquo; thereby succeeded
+      in drawing everybody's attention to her lovely self. By the latter words
+      Mr. Eglantine was specially inflamed; he glanced at Mr. Walker, and said,
+      &ldquo;Capting! didn't I tell you she was a CREECHER? See her hair, sir: it's as
+      black and as glossy as satting. It weighs fifteen pound, that hair, sir;
+      and I wouldn't let my apprentice&mdash;that blundering Mossrose, for
+      instance (hang him!)&mdash;I wouldn't let anyone but myself dress that
+      hair for five hundred guineas! Ah, Miss Morgiana, remember that you MAY
+      ALWAYS have Eglantine to dress your hair!&mdash;remember that, that's
+      all.&rdquo; And with this the worthy gentleman began rubbing delicately a little
+      of the Eglantinia into those ambrosial locks, which he loved with all the
+      love of a man and an artist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And as for Morgiana showing her hair, I hope none of my readers will
+      entertain a bad opinion of the poor girl for doing so. Her locks were her
+      pride; she acted at the private theatre &ldquo;hair parts,&rdquo; where she could
+      appear on purpose to show them in a dishevelled state; and that her
+      modesty was real, and not affected may be proved by the fact that when Mr.
+      Walker, stepping up in the midst of Eglantine's last speech, took hold of
+      a lock of her hair very gently with his hand, she cried &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; and started
+      with all her might. And Mr. Eglantine observed very gravely, &ldquo;Capting!
+      Miss Crump's hair is to be seen and not to be touched, if you please.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No more it is, Mr. Eglantine!&rdquo; said her mamma. &ldquo;And now, as it's come to
+      my turn, I beg the gentleman will be so obliging as to go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;MUST I?&rdquo; cried Mr. Walker; and as it was half-past six, and he was
+      engaged to dinner at the &ldquo;Regent Club,&rdquo; and as he did not wish to make
+      Eglantine jealous, who evidently was annoyed by his staying, he took his
+      hat just as Miss Crump's coiffure was completed, and saluting her and her
+      mamma, left the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A tip-top swell, I can assure you,&rdquo; said Eglantine, nodding after him: &ldquo;a
+      regular bang-up chap, and no MISTAKE. Intimate with the Marquess of
+      Billingsgate, and Lord Vauxhall, and that set.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's very genteel,&rdquo; said Mrs. Crump.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Law! I'm sure I think nothing of him,&rdquo; said Morgiana.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And Captain Walker walked towards his club, meditating on the beauties of
+      Morgiana. &ldquo;What hair,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;what eyes the girl has! they're as big as
+      billiard-balls; and five thousand pounds. Eglantine's in luck! five
+      thousand pounds&mdash;she can't have it, it's impossible!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      No sooner was Mrs. Crump's front arranged, during the time of which
+      operation Morgiana sat in perfect contentment looking at the last French
+      fashions in the Courrier des Dames, and thinking how her pink satin slip
+      would dye, and make just such a mantilla as that represented in the
+      engraving&mdash;no sooner was Mrs. Crump's front arranged, than both
+      ladies, taking leave of Mr. Eglantine, tripped back to the &ldquo;Bootjack
+      Hotel&rdquo; in the neighbourhood, where a very neat green fly was already in
+      waiting, the gentleman on the box of which (from a livery-stable in the
+      neighbourhood) gave a knowing touch to his hat, and a salute with his
+      whip, to the two ladies, as they entered the tavern.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. W.'s inside,&rdquo; said the man&mdash;a driver from Mr. Snaffle's
+      establishment; &ldquo;he's been in and out this score of times, and looking down
+      the street for you.&rdquo; And in the house, in fact, was Mr. Woolsey, the
+      tailor, who had hired the fly, and was engaged to conduct the ladies that
+      evening to the play.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was really rather too bad to think that Miss Morgiana, after going to
+      one lover to have her hair dressed, should go with another to the play;
+      but such is the way with lovely woman! Let her have a dozen admirers, and
+      the dear coquette will exercise her power upon them all: and as a lady,
+      when she has a large wardrobe, and a taste for variety in dress, will
+      appear every day in a different costume, so will the young and giddy
+      beauty wear her lovers, encouraging now the black whiskers, now smiling on
+      the brown, now thinking that the gay smiling rattle of an admirer becomes
+      her very well, and now adopting the sad sentimental melancholy one,
+      according as her changeful fancy prompts her. Let us not be too angry with
+      these uncertainties and caprices of beauty; and depend on it that, for the
+      most part, those females who cry out loudest against the flightiness of
+      their sisters, and rebuke their undue encouragement of this man or that,
+      would do as much themselves if they had the chance, and are constant, as I
+      am to my coat just now, because I have no other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you see Doubleyou, 'Gina dear?&rdquo; said her mamma, addressing that young
+      lady. &ldquo;He's in the bar with your Pa, and has his military coat with the
+      king's buttons, and looks like an officer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This was Mr. Woolsey's style, his great aim being to look like an army
+      gent, for many of whom he in his capacity of tailor made those splendid
+      red and blue coats which characterise our military. As for the royal
+      button, had not he made a set of coats for his late Majesty, George IV.?
+      and he would add, when he narrated this circumstance, &ldquo;Sir, Prince Blucher
+      and Prince Swartzenberg's measure's in the house now; and what's more,
+      I've cut for Wellington.&rdquo; I believe he would have gone to St. Helena to
+      make a coat for Napoleon, so great was his ardour. He wore a blue-black
+      wig, and his whiskers were of the same hue. He was brief and stern in
+      conversations; and he always went to masquerades and balls in a
+      field-marshal's uniform.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He looks really quite the thing to-night,&rdquo; continued Mrs. Crump.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said 'Gina; &ldquo;but he's such an odious wig, and the dye of his
+      whiskers always comes off on his white gloves.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Everybody has not their own hair, love,&rdquo; continued Mrs. Crump with a
+      sigh; &ldquo;but Eglantine's is beautiful.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Every hairdresser's is,&rdquo; answered Morgiana, rather contemptuously; &ldquo;but
+      what I can't bear is that their fingers is always so very fat and pudgy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In fact, something had gone wrong with the fair Morgiana. Was it that she
+      had but little liking for the one pretender or the other? Was it that
+      young Glauber, who acted Romeo in the private theatricals, was far younger
+      and more agreeable than either? Or was it, that seeing a REAL GENTLEMAN,
+      such as Mr. Walker, with whom she had had her first interview, she felt
+      more and more the want of refinement in her other declared admirers?
+      Certain, however, it is, that she was very reserved all the evening, in
+      spite of the attentions of Mr. Woolsey; that she repeatedly looked round
+      at the box-door, as if she expected someone to enter; and that she partook
+      of only a very few oysters, indeed, out of the barrel which the gallant
+      tailor had sent down to the &ldquo;Bootjack,&rdquo; and off which the party supped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it?&rdquo; said Mr. Woolsey to his ally, Crump, as they sat together
+      after the retirement of the ladies. &ldquo;She was dumb all night. She never
+      once laughed at the farce, nor cried at the tragedy, and you know she
+      laughs and cries uncommon. She only took half her negus, and not above a
+      quarter of her beer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No more she did!&rdquo; replied Mr. Crump, very calmly. &ldquo;I think it must be the
+      barber as has been captivating her: he dressed her hair for the play.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hang him, I'll shoot him!&rdquo; said Mr. Woolsey. &ldquo;A fat foolish effeminate
+      beast like that marry Miss Morgiana? Never! I WILL shoot him. I'll provoke
+      him next Saturday&mdash;I'll tread on his toe&mdash;I'll pull his nose.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No quarrelling at the 'Kidneys!'&rdquo; answered Crump sternly; &ldquo;there shall be
+      no quarrelling in that room as long as I'm in the chair!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, at any rate you'll stand my friend?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know I will,&rdquo; answered the other. &ldquo;You are honourable, and I like you
+      better than Eglantine. I trust you more than Eglantine, sir. You're more
+      of a man than Eglantine, though you ARE a tailor; and I wish with all my
+      heart you may get Morgiana. Mrs. C. goes the other way, I know: but I tell
+      you what, women will go their own ways, sir, and Morgy's like her mother
+      in this point, and depend upon it, Morgy will decide for herself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Woolsey presently went home, still persisting in his plan for the
+      assassination of Eglantine. Mr. Crump went to bed very quietly, and snored
+      through the night in his usual tone. Mr. Eglantine passed some feverish
+      moments of jealousy, for he had come down to the club in the evening, and
+      had heard that Morgiana was gone to the play with his rival. And Miss
+      Morgiana dreamed, of a man who was&mdash;must we say it?&mdash;exceedingly
+      like Captain Howard Walker. &ldquo;Mrs. Captain So-and-so!&rdquo; thought she. &ldquo;Oh, I
+      do love a gentleman dearly!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And about this time, too, Mr. Walker himself came rolling home from the
+      &ldquo;Regent,&rdquo; hiccupping. &ldquo;Such hair!&mdash;such eyebrows!&mdash;such eyes!
+      like b-b-billiard-balls, by Jove!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0002" id="link2HCH0002">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER II. IN WHICH MR. WALKER MAKES THREE ATTEMPTS TO ASCERTAIN THE
+      DWELLING OF MORGIANA.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The day after the dinner at the &ldquo;Regent Club,&rdquo; Mr. Walker stepped over to
+      the shop of his friend the perfumer, where, as usual, the young man, Mr.
+      Mossrose, was established in the front premises.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For some reason or other, the Captain was particularly good-humoured; and,
+      quite forgetful of the words which had passed between him and Mr.
+      Eglantine's lieutenant the day before, began addressing the latter with
+      extreme cordiality.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A good morning to you, Mr. Mossrose,&rdquo; said Captain Walker. &ldquo;Why, sir, you
+      look as fresh as your namesake&mdash;you do, indeed, now, Mossrose.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You look ash yellow ash a guinea,&rdquo; responded Mr. Mossrose, sulkily. He
+      thought the Captain was hoaxing him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My good sir,&rdquo; replies the other, nothing cast down, &ldquo;I drank rather too
+      freely last night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The more beast you!&rdquo; said Mr. Mossrose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you, Mossrose; the same to you,&rdquo; answered the Captain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you call me a beast, I'll punch your head off!&rdquo; answered the young
+      man, who had much skill in the art which many of his brethren practise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn't, my fine fellow,&rdquo; replied Walker. &ldquo;On the contrary, you&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you mean to give me the lie?&rdquo; broke out the indignant Mossrose, who
+      hated the agent fiercely, and did not in the least care to conceal his
+      hate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In fact, it was his fixed purpose to pick a quarrel with Walker, and to
+      drive him, if possible, from Mr. Eglantine's shop. &ldquo;Do you mean to give me
+      the lie, I say, Mr. Hooker Walker?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For Heaven's sake, Amos, hold your tongue!&rdquo; exclaimed the Captain, to
+      whom the name of Hooker was as poison; but at this moment a customer
+      stepping in, Mr. Amos exchanged his ferocious aspect for a bland grin, and
+      Mr. Walker walked into the studio.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When in Mr. Eglantine's presence, Walker, too, was all smiles in a minute,
+      sank down on a settee, held out his hand to the perfumer, and began
+      confidentially discoursing with him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;SUCH a dinner, Tiny my boy,&rdquo; said he; &ldquo;such prime fellows to eat it, too!
+      Billingsgate, Vauxhall, Cinqbars, Buff of the Blues, and half-a-dozen more
+      of the best fellows in town. And what do you think the dinner cost a head?
+      I'll wager you'll never guess.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Was it two guineas a head?&mdash;In course I mean without wine,&rdquo; said the
+      genteel perfumer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Guess again!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, was it ten guineas a head? I'll guess any sum you please,&rdquo; replied
+      Mr. Eglantine: &ldquo;for I know that when you NOBS are together, you don't
+      spare your money. I myself, at the &ldquo;Star and Garter&rdquo; at Richmond, once
+      paid&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Eighteenpence?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Heighteenpence, sir!&mdash;I paid five-and-thirty shillings per 'ead. I'd
+      have you to know that I can act as a gentleman as well as any other
+      gentleman, sir,&rdquo; answered the perfumer with much dignity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, eighteenpence was what WE paid, and not a rap more, upon my
+      honour.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nonsense, you're joking. The Marquess of Billinsgate dine for
+      eighteenpence! Why, hang it, if I was a marquess, I'd pay a five-pound
+      note for my lunch.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You little know the person, Master Eglantine,&rdquo; replied the Captain, with
+      a smile of contemptuous superiority; &ldquo;you little know the real man of
+      fashion, my good fellow. Simplicity, sir&mdash;simplicity's the
+      characteristic of the real gentleman, and so I'll tell you what we had for
+      dinner.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Turtle and venison, of course:&mdash;no nob dines without THEM.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Psha! we're sick of 'em! We had pea soup and boiled tripe! What do you
+      think of THAT? We had sprats and herrings, a bullock's heart, a baked
+      shoulder of mutton and potatoes, pig's-fry and Irish stew. <i>I</i>
+      ordered the dinner, sir, and got more credit for inventing it than they
+      ever gave to Ude or Soyer. The Marquess was in ecstasies, the Earl
+      devoured half a bushel of sprats, and if the Viscount is not laid up with
+      a surfeit of bullock's heart, my name's not Howard Walker. Billy, as I
+      call him, was in the chair, and gave my health; and what do you think the
+      rascal proposed?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What DID his Lordship propose?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That every man present should subscribe twopence, and pay for my share of
+      the dinner. By Jove! it is true, and the money was handed to me in a
+      pewter-pot, of which they also begged to make me a present. We afterwards
+      went to Tom Spring's, from Tom's to the 'Finish,' from the 'Finish' to the
+      watch-house&mdash;that is, THEY did&mdash;and sent for me, just as I was
+      getting into bed, to bail them all out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They're happy dogs, those young noblemen,&rdquo; said Mr Eglantine; &ldquo;nothing
+      but pleasure from morning till night; no affectation neither&mdash;no
+      HOTURE; but manly downright straightforward good fellows.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Should you like to meet them, Tiny my boy?&rdquo; said the Captain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I did sir, I hope I should show myself to be gentleman,&rdquo; answered Mr.
+      Eglantine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you SHALL meet them, and Lady Billingsgate shall order her perfumes
+      at your shop. We are going to dine, next week, all our set, at Mealy-faced
+      Bob's, and you shall be my guest,&rdquo; cried the Captain, slapping the
+      delighted artist on the back. &ldquo;And now, my boy, tell me how YOU spent the
+      evening.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At my club, sir,&rdquo; answered Mr. Eglantine, blushing rather.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What! not at the play with the lovely black-eyed Miss&mdash;What is her
+      name, Eglantine?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never mind her name, Captain,&rdquo; replied Eglantine, partly from prudence
+      and partly from shame. He had not the heart to own it was Crump, and he
+      did not care that the Captain should know more of his destined bride.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You wish to keep the five thousand to yourself&mdash;eh, you rogue?&rdquo;
+       responded the Captain, with a good-humoured air, although exceedingly
+      mortified; for, to say the truth, he had put himself to the trouble of
+      telling the above long story of the dinner, and of promising to introduce
+      Eglantine to the lords, solely that he might elicit from that gentleman's
+      good-humour some further particulars regarding the young lady with the
+      billiard-ball eyes. It was for the very same reason, too, that he had made
+      the attempt at reconciliation with Mr. Mossrose which had just so signally
+      failed. Nor would the reader, did he know Mr. W. better, at all require to
+      have the above explanation; but as yet we are only at the first chapter of
+      his history, and who is to know what the hero's motives can be unless we
+      take the trouble to explain?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Well, the little dignified answer of the worthy dealer in bergamot, &ldquo;NEVER
+      MIND HER NAME, CAPTAIN!&rdquo; threw the gallant Captain quite aback; and though
+      he sat for a quarter of an hour longer, and was exceedingly kind; and
+      though he threw out some skilful hints, yet the perfumer was quite
+      unconquerable; or, rather, he was too frightened to tell: the poor fat
+      timid easy good-natured gentleman was always the prey of rogues,&mdash;panting
+      and floundering in one rascal's snare or another's. He had the
+      dissimulation, too, which timid men have; and felt the presence of a
+      victimiser as a hare does of a greyhound. Now he would be quite still, now
+      he would double, and now he would run, and then came the end. He knew, by
+      his sure instinct of fear, that the Captain had, in asking these
+      questions, a scheme against him, and so he was cautious, and trembled, and
+      doubted. And oh! how he thanked his stars when Lady Grogmore's chariot
+      drove up, with the Misses Grogmore, who wanted their hair dressed, and
+      were going to a breakfast at three o'clock!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll look in again, Tiny,&rdquo; said the Captain, on hearing the summons.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;DO, Captain,&rdquo; said the other: &ldquo;THANK YOU;&rdquo; and went into the lady's
+      studio with a heavy heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Get out of the way, you infernal villain!&rdquo; roared the Captain, with many
+      oaths, to Lady Grogmore's large footman, with ruby-coloured tights, who
+      was standing inhaling the ten thousand perfumes of the shop; and the
+      latter, moving away in great terror, the gallant agent passed out, quite
+      heedless of the grin of Mr. Mossrose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Walker was in a fury at his want of success, and walked down Bond Street
+      in a fury. &ldquo;I WILL know where the girl lives!&rdquo; swore he. &ldquo;I'll spend a
+      five-pound note, by Jove! rather than not know where she lives!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;THAT YOU WOULD&mdash;I KNOW YOU WOULD!&rdquo; said a little grave low voice,
+      all of a sudden, by his side. &ldquo;Pooh! what's money to you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Walker looked down: it was Tom Dale.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Who in London did not know little Tom Dale? He had cheeks like an apple,
+      and his hair curled every morning, and a little blue stock, and always two
+      new magazines under his arm, and an umbrella and a little brown
+      frock-coat, and big square-toed shoes with which he went PAPPING down the
+      street. He was everywhere at once. Everybody met him every day, and he
+      knew everything that everybody ever did; though nobody ever knew what HE
+      did. He was, they say, a hundred years old, and had never dined at his own
+      charge once in those hundred years. He looked like a figure out of a
+      waxwork, with glassy clear meaningless eyes: he always spoke with a grin;
+      he knew what you had for dinner the day before he met you, and what
+      everybody had had for dinner for a century back almost. He was the
+      receptacle of all the scandal of all the world, from Bond Street to Bread
+      Street; he knew all the authors, all the actors, all the &ldquo;notorieties&rdquo; of
+      the town, and the private histories of each. That is, he never knew
+      anything really, but supplied deficiencies of truth and memory with
+      ready-coined, never-failing lies. He was the most benevolent man in the
+      universe, and never saw you without telling you everything most cruel of
+      your neighbour, and when he left you he went to do the same kind turn by
+      yourself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pooh! what's money to you, my dear boy?&rdquo; said little Tom Dale, who had
+      just come out of Ebers's, where he had been filching an opera-ticket. &ldquo;You
+      make it in bushels in the City, you know you do&mdash;-in thousands. I saw
+      you go into Eglantine's. Fine business that; finest in London.
+      Five-shilling cakes of soap, my dear boy. I can't wash with such.
+      Thousands a year that man has made&mdash;hasn't he?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Upon my word, Tom, I don't know,&rdquo; says the Captain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;YOU not know? Don't tell me. You know everything&mdash;you agents. You
+      KNOW he makes five thousand a year&mdash;ay, and might make ten, but you
+      know why he don't.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Indeed I don't.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nonsense. Don't humbug a poor old fellow like me. Jews&mdash;Amos&mdash;fifty
+      per cent., ay? Why can't he get his money from a good Christian?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I HAVE heard something of that sort,&rdquo; said Walker, laughing. &ldquo;Why, by
+      Jove, Tom, you know everything!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;YOU know everything, my dear boy. You know what a rascally trick that
+      opera creature served him, poor fellow. Cashmere shawls&mdash;Storr and
+      Mortimer's&mdash;'Star and Garter.' Much better dine quiet off pea-soup
+      and sprats&mdash;ay? His betters have, as you know very well.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pea-soup and sprats! What! have you heard of that already?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who bailed Lord Billingsgate, hey, you rogue?&rdquo; and here Tom gave a
+      knowing and almost demoniacal grin. &ldquo;Who wouldn't go to the 'Finish'? Who
+      had the piece of plate presented to him filled with sovereigns? And you
+      deserved it, my dear boy&mdash;you deserved it. They said it was only
+      halfpence, but I know better!&rdquo; and here Tom went off in a cough.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I say, Tom,&rdquo; cried Walker, inspired with a sudden thought, &ldquo;you, who know
+      everything, and are a theatrical man, did you ever know a Miss Delancy, an
+      actress?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At 'Sadler's Wells' in '16? Of course I did. Real name was Budge. Lord
+      Slapper admired her very much, my dear boy. She married a man by the name
+      of Crump, his Lordship's black footman, and brought him five thousand
+      pounds; and they keep the 'Bootjack' public-house in Bunker's Buildings,
+      and they've got fourteen children. Is one of them handsome, eh, you sly
+      rogue&mdash;and is it that which you will give five pounds to know? God
+      bless you, my dear dear boy. Jones, my dear friend, how are you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And now, seizing on Jones, Tom Dale left Mr. Walker alone, and proceeded
+      to pour into Mr. Jones's ear an account of the individual whom he had just
+      quitted; how he was the best fellow in the world, and Jones KNEW it; how
+      he was in a fine way of making his fortune; how he had been in the Fleet
+      many times, and how he was at this moment employed in looking out for a
+      young lady of whom a certain great marquess (whom Jones knew very well,
+      too) had expressed an admiration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But for these observations, which he did not hear, Captain Walker, it may
+      be pronounced, did not care. His eyes brightened up, he marched quickly
+      and gaily away; and turning into his own chambers opposite Eglantine's,
+      shop, saluted that establishment with a grin of triumph. &ldquo;You wouldn't
+      tell me her name, wouldn't you?&rdquo; said Mr. Walker. &ldquo;Well, the luck's with
+      me now, and here goes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Two days after, as Mr. Eglantine, with white gloves and a case of
+      eau-de-Cologne as a present in his pocket, arrived at the &ldquo;Bootjack
+      Hotel,&rdquo; Little Bunker's Buildings, Berkeley Square (for it must out&mdash;that
+      was the place in which Mr. Crump's inn was situated), he paused for a
+      moment at the threshold of the little house of entertainment, and
+      listened, with beating heart, to the sound of delicious music that a
+      well-known voice was uttering within.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The moon was playing in silvery brightness down the gutter of the humble
+      street. A &ldquo;helper,&rdquo; rubbing down one of Lady Smigsmag's carriage-horses,
+      even paused in his whistle to listen to the strain. Mr. Tressle's man, who
+      had been professionally occupied, ceased his tap-tap upon the coffin which
+      he was getting in readiness. The greengrocer (there is always a
+      greengrocer in those narrow streets, and he goes out in white Berlin
+      gloves as a supernumerary footman) was standing charmed at his little
+      green gate; the cobbler (there is always a cobbler too) was drunk, as
+      usual, of evenings, but, with unusual subordination, never sang except
+      when the refrain of the ditty arrived, when he hiccupped it forth with
+      tipsy loyalty; and Eglantine leaned against the chequers painted on the
+      door-side under the name of Crump, and looked at the red illumined curtain
+      of the bar, and the vast well-known shadow of Mrs. Crump's turban within.
+      Now and again the shadow of that worthy matron's hand would be seen to
+      grasp the shadow of a bottle; then the shadow of a cup would rise towards
+      the turban, and still the strain proceeded. Eglantine, I say, took out his
+      yellow bandanna, and brushed the beady drops from his brow, and laid the
+      contents of his white kids on his heart, and sighed with ecstatic
+      sympathy. The song began,&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+         &ldquo;Come to the greenwood tree, <a href="#linknote-1" name="linknoteref-1"
+       id="linknoteref-1">1</a>
+          Come where the dark woods be,
+          Dearest, O come with me!
+     Let us rove&mdash;O my love&mdash;O my love!
+                             O my-y love!
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      (Drunken Cobbler without) O my-y love!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Beast!&rdquo; says Eglantine.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+         &ldquo;Come&mdash;'tis the moonlight hour,
+          Dew is on leaf and flower,
+          Come to the linden bower,
+     Let us rove&mdash;O my love&mdash;O my love!
+   Let us ro-o-ove, lurlurliety; yes, we'll rove, lurlurliety,
+   Through the gro-o-ove, lurlurliety&mdash;lurlurli-e-i-e-i-e-i!
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      (Cobbler, as usual)&mdash; Let us ro-o-ove,&rdquo; etc.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;YOU here?&rdquo; says another individual, coming clinking up the street, in a
+      military-cut dress-coat, the buttons whereof shone very bright in the
+      moonlight. &ldquo;YOU here, Eglantine?&mdash;You're always here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hush, Woolsey,&rdquo; said Mr. Eglantine to his rival the tailor (for he was
+      the individual in question); and Woolsey, accordingly, put his back
+      against the opposite door-post and chequers, so that (with poor
+      Eglantine's bulk) nothing much thicker than a sheet of paper could pass
+      out or in. And thus these two amorous caryatides kept guard as the song
+      continued:&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+          &ldquo;Dark is the wood, and wide,
+           Dangers, they say, betide;
+           But, at my Albert's side,
+     Nought, I fear, O my love&mdash;O my love!
+
+          &ldquo;Welcome the greenwood tree,
+           Welcome the forest tree,
+           Dearest, with thee, with thee,
+     Nought I fear, O my love&mdash;O ma-a-y love!&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      Eglantine's fine eyes were filled with tears as Morgiana passionately
+      uttered the above beautiful words. Little Woolsey's eyes glistened, as he
+      clenched his fist with an oath, and said, &ldquo;Show me any singing that can
+      beat THAT. Cobbler, shut your mouth, or I'll break your head!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But the cobbler, regardless of the threat, continued to perform the
+      &ldquo;Lurlurliety&rdquo; with great accuracy; and when that was ended, both on his
+      part and Morgiana's, a rapturous knocking of glasses was heard in the
+      little bar, then a great clapping of hands, and finally somebody shouted
+      &ldquo;Brava!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Brava!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At that word Eglantine turned deadly pale, then gave a start, then a rush
+      forward, which pinned, or rather cushioned, the tailor against the wall;
+      then twisting himself abruptly round, he sprang to the door of the bar,
+      and bounced into that apartment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;HOW ARE YOU, MY NOSEGAY?&rdquo; exclaimed the same voice which had shouted
+      &ldquo;Brava!&rdquo; It was that of Captain Walker.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At ten o'clock the next morning, a gentleman, with the King's button on
+      his military coat, walked abruptly into Mr. Eglantine's shop, and, turning
+      on Mr. Mossrose, said, &ldquo;Tell your master I want to see him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's in his studio,&rdquo; said Mr. Mossrose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, then, fellow, go and fetch him!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And Mossrose, thinking it must be the Lord Chamberlain, or Doctor
+      Praetorius at least, walked into the studio, where the perfumer was seated
+      in a very glossy old silk dressing-gown, his fair hair hanging over his
+      white face, his double chin over his flaccid whity-brown shirt-collar, his
+      pea-green slippers on the hob, and on the fire the pot of chocolate which
+      was simmering for his breakfast. A lazier fellow than poor Eglantine it
+      would be hard to find; whereas, on the contrary, Woolsey was always up and
+      brushed, spick-and-span, at seven o'clock; and had gone through his books,
+      and given out the work for the journeymen, and eaten a hearty breakfast of
+      rashers of bacon, before Eglantine had put the usual pound of grease to
+      his hair (his fingers were always as damp and shiny as if he had them in a
+      pomatum-pot), and arranged his figure for the day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here's a gent wants you in the shop,&rdquo; says Mr. Mossrose, leaving the door
+      of communication wide open.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say I'm in bed, Mr. Mossrose; I'm out of sperrets, and really can see
+      nobody.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's someone from Vindsor, I think; he's got the royal button,&rdquo; says
+      Mossrose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's me&mdash;Woolsey,&rdquo; shouted the little man from the shop.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Eglantine at this jumped up, made a rush to the door leading to his
+      private apartment, and disappeared in a twinkling. But it must not be
+      imagined that he fled in order to avoid Mr. Woolsey. He only went away for
+      one minute just to put on his belt, for he was ashamed to be seen without
+      it by his rival.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This being assumed, and his toilet somewhat arranged, Mr. Woolsey was
+      admitted into his private room. And Mossrose would have heard every word
+      of the conversation between those two gentlemen, had not Woolsey, opening
+      the door, suddenly pounced on the assistant, taken him by the collar, and
+      told him to disappear altogether into the shop: which Mossrose did; vowing
+      he would have his revenge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The subject on which Woolsey had come to treat was an important one. &ldquo;Mr.
+      Eglantine,&rdquo; says he, &ldquo;there's no use disguising from one another that we
+      are both of us in love with Miss Morgiana, and that our chances up to this
+      time have been pretty equal. But that Captain whom you introduced, like an
+      ass as you were&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;An ass, Mr. Woolsey! I'd have you to know, sir, that I'm no more a hass
+      than you are, sir; and as for introducing the Captain, I did no such
+      thing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, well, he's got a-poaching into our preserves somehow. He's
+      evidently sweet upon the young woman, and is a more fashionable chap than
+      either of us two. We must get him out of the house, sir&mdash;we must
+      circumwent him; and THEN, Mr. Eglantine, will be time enough for you and
+      me to try which is the best man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;HE the best man?&rdquo; thought Eglantine; &ldquo;the little bald unsightly
+      tailor-creature! A man with no more soul than his smoothing-hiron!&rdquo; The
+      perfumer, as may be imagined, did not utter this sentiment aloud, but
+      expressed himself quite willing to enter into any HAMICABLE arrangement by
+      which the new candidate for Miss Crump's favour must be thrown over. It
+      was accordingly agreed between the two gentlemen that they should coalesce
+      against the common enemy; that they should, by reciting many perfectly
+      well-founded stories in the Captain's disfavour, influence the minds of
+      Miss Crump's parents, and of herself, if possible, against this wolf in
+      sheep's clothing; and that, when they were once fairly rid of him, each
+      should be at liberty, as before, to prefer his own claim.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have thought of a subject,&rdquo; said the little tailor, turning very red,
+      and hemming and hawing a great deal. &ldquo;I've thought, I say, of a pint,
+      which may be resorted to with advantage at the present juncture, and in
+      which each of us may be useful to the other. An exchange, Mr. Eglantine:
+      do you take?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you mean an accommodation-bill?&rdquo; said Eglantine, whose mind ran a good
+      deal on that species of exchange.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pooh, nonsense, sir! The name of OUR firm is, I flatter myself, a little
+      more up in the market than some other people's names.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you mean to insult the name of Archibald Eglantine, sir? I'd have you
+      to know that at three months&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nonsense!&rdquo; says Mr. Woolsey, mastering his emotion. &ldquo;There's no use
+      a-quarrelling, Mr. E.: we're not in love with each other, I know that. You
+      wish me hanged, or as good, I know that!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Indeed I don't, sir!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You do, sir; I tell you, you do! and what's more, I wish the same to you&mdash;transported,
+      at any rate! But as two sailors, when a boat's a-sinking, though they hate
+      each other ever so much, will help and bale the boat out; so, sir, let US
+      act: let us be the two sailors.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bail, sir?&rdquo; said Eglantine, as usual mistaking the drift of the argument.
+      &ldquo;I'll bail no man! If you're in difficulties, I think you had better go to
+      your senior partner, Mr Woolsey.&rdquo; And Eglantine's cowardly little soul was
+      filled with a savage satisfaction to think that his enemy was in distress,
+      and actually obliged to come to HIM for succour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're enough to make Job swear, you great fat stupid lazy old barber!&rdquo;
+       roared Mr. Woolsey, in a fury.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Eglantine jumped up and made for the bell-rope. The gallant little tailor
+      laughed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's no need to call in Betsy,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;I'm not a-going to eat you,
+      Eglantine; you're a bigger man than me: if you were just to fall on me,
+      you'd smother me! Just sit still on the sofa and listen to reason.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, sir, pro-ceed,&rdquo; said the barber with a gasp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, listen! What's the darling wish of your heart? I know it, sir!
+      you've told it to Mr. Tressle, sir, and other gents at the club. The
+      darling wish of your heart, sir, is to have a slap-up coat turned out of
+      the ateliers of Messrs. Linsey, Woolsey and Company. You said you'd give
+      twenty guineas for one of our coats, you know you did! Lord Bolsterton's a
+      fatter man than you, and look what a figure we turn HIM out. Can any firm
+      in England dress Lord Bolsterton but us, so as to make his Lordship look
+      decent? I defy 'em, sir! We could have given Daniel Lambert a figure!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I want a coat, sir,&rdquo; said Mr. Eglantine, &ldquo;and I don't deny it, there's
+      some people want a HEAD OF HAIR!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's the very point I was coming to,&rdquo; said the tailor, resuming the
+      violent blush which was mentioned as having suffused his countenance at
+      the beginning of the conversation. &ldquo;Let us have terms of mutual
+      accommodation. Make me a wig, Mr. Eglantine, and though I never yet cut a
+      yard of cloth except for a gentleman, I'll pledge you my word I'll make
+      you a coat.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;WILL you, honour bright?&rdquo; says Eglantine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Honour bright,&rdquo; says the tailor. &ldquo;Look!&rdquo; and in an instant he drew from
+      his pocket one of those slips of parchment which gentlemen of his
+      profession carry, and putting Eglantine into the proper position, began to
+      take the preliminary observations. He felt Eglantine's heart thump with
+      happiness as his measure passed over that soft part of the perfumer's
+      person.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then pulling down the window-blind, and looking that the door was locked,
+      and blushing still more deeply than ever, the tailor seated himself in an
+      arm-chair towards which Mr. Eglantine beckoned him, and, taking off his
+      black wig, exposed his head to the great perruquier's gaze. Mr. Eglantine
+      looked at it, measured it, manipulated it, sat for three minutes with his
+      head in his hand and his elbow on his knee, gazing at the tailor's cranium
+      with all his might, walked round it twice or thrice, and then said, &ldquo;It's
+      enough, Mr. Woolsey. Consider the job as done. And now, sir,&rdquo; said he,
+      with a greatly relieved air&mdash;&ldquo;and now, Woolsey, let us 'ave a glass
+      of curacoa to celebrate this hauspicious meeting.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The tailor, however, stiffly replied that he never drank in a morning, and
+      left the room without offering to shake Mr. Eglantine by the hand: for he
+      despised that gentleman very heartily, and himself, too, for coming to any
+      compromise with him, and for so far demeaning himself as to make a coat
+      for a barber.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Looking from his chambers on the other side of the street, that inevitable
+      Mr. Walker saw the tailor issuing from the perfumer's shop, and was at no
+      loss to guess that something extraordinary must be in progress when two
+      such bitter enemies met together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0003" id="link2HCH0003">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER III. WHAT CAME OF MR WALKER'S DISCOVERY OF THE &ldquo;BOOTJACK.&rdquo;
+     </h2>
+    <p>
+      It is very easy to state how the Captain came to take up that proud
+      position at the &ldquo;Bootjack&rdquo; which we have seen him occupy on the evening
+      when the sound of the fatal &ldquo;Brava!&rdquo; so astonished Mr. Eglantine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The mere entry into the establishment was, of course, not difficult. Any
+      person by simply uttering the words &ldquo;A pint of beer,&rdquo; was free of the
+      &ldquo;Bootjack;&rdquo; and it was some such watchword that Howard Walker employed
+      when he made his first appearance. He requested to be shown into a
+      parlour, where he might repose himself for a while, and was ushered into
+      that very sanctum where the &ldquo;Kidney Club&rdquo; met. Then he stated that the
+      beer was the best he had ever tasted, except in Bavaria, and in some parts
+      of Spain, he added; and professing to be extremely &ldquo;peckish,&rdquo; requested to
+      know if there were any cold meat in the house whereof he could make a
+      dinner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't usually dine at this hour, landlord,&rdquo; said he, flinging down a
+      half-sovereign for payment of the beer; &ldquo;but your parlour looks so
+      comfortable, and the Windsor chairs are so snug, that I'm sure I could not
+      dine better at the first club in London.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;ONE of the first clubs in London is held in this very room,&rdquo; said Mr.
+      Crump, very well pleased; &ldquo;and attended by some of the best gents in town,
+      too. We call it the 'Kidney Club'.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, bless my soul! it is the very club my friend Eglantine has so often
+      talked to me about, and attended by some of the tip-top tradesmen of the
+      metropolis!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's better men here than Mr. Eglantine,&rdquo; replied Mr. Crump, &ldquo;though
+      he's a good man&mdash;I don't say he's not a good man&mdash;but there's
+      better. Mr. Clinker, sir; Mr. Woolsey, of the house of Linsey, Woolsey and
+      Co&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The great army-clothiers!&rdquo; cried Walker; &ldquo;the first house in town!&rdquo; and
+      so continued, with exceeding urbanity, holding conversation with Mr.
+      Crump, until the honest landlord retired delighted, and told Mrs. Crump in
+      the bar that there was a tip-top swell in the &ldquo;Kidney&rdquo; parlour, who was
+      a-going to have his dinner there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fortune favoured the brave Captain in every way. It was just Mr. Crump's
+      own dinner-hour; and on Mrs. Crump stepping into the parlour to ask the
+      guest whether he would like a slice of the joint to which the family were
+      about to sit down, fancy that lady's start of astonishment at recognising
+      Mr. Eglantine's facetious friend of the day before. The Captain at once
+      demanded permission to partake of the joint at the family table; the lady
+      could not with any great reason deny this request; the Captain was
+      inducted into the bar; and Miss Crump, who always came down late for
+      dinner, was even more astonished than her mamma, on beholding the occupier
+      of the fourth place at the table. Had she expected to see the fascinating
+      stranger so soon again? I think she had. Her big eyes said as much, as,
+      furtively looking up at Mr. Walker's face, they caught his looks; and then
+      bouncing down again towards her plate, pretended to be very busy in
+      looking at the boiled beef and carrots there displayed. She blushed far
+      redder than those carrots, but her shining ringlets hid her confusion
+      together with her lovely face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sweet Morgiana! the billiard-ball eyes had a tremendous effect on the
+      Captain. They fell plump, as it were, into the pocket of his heart; and he
+      gallantly proposed to treat the company to a bottle of champagne, which
+      was accepted without much difficulty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Crump, under pretence of going to the cellar (where he said he had
+      some cases of the finest champagne in Europe), called Dick, the boy, to
+      him, and despatched him with all speed to a wine merchant's, where a
+      couple of bottles of the liquor were procured.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bring up two bottles, Mr. C.,&rdquo; Captain Walker gallantly said when Crump
+      made his move, as it were, to the cellar and it may be imagined after the
+      two bottles were drunk (of which Mrs. Crump took at least nine glasses to
+      her share), how happy, merry, and confidential the whole party had become.
+      Crump told his story of the &ldquo;Bootjack,&rdquo; and whose boot it had drawn; the
+      former Miss Delancy expatiated on her past theatrical life, and the
+      pictures hanging round the room. Miss was equally communicative; and, in
+      short, the Captain had all the secrets of the little family in his
+      possession ere sunset. He knew that Miss cared little for either of her
+      suitors, about whom mamma and papa had a little quarrel. He heard Mrs.
+      Crump talk of Morgiana's property, and fell more in love with her than
+      ever. Then came tea, the luscious crumpet, the quiet game at cribbage, and
+      the song&mdash;the song which poor Eglantine heard, and which caused
+      Woolsey's rage and his despair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the close of the evening the tailor was in a greater rage, and the
+      perfumer in greater despair than ever. He had made his little present of
+      eau-de-Cologne. &ldquo;Oh fie!&rdquo; says the Captain, with a horse-laugh, &ldquo;it SMELLS
+      OF THE SHOP!&rdquo; He taunted the tailor about his wig, and the honest fellow
+      had only an oath to give by way of repartee. He told his stories about his
+      club and his lordly friends. What chance had either against the
+      all-accomplished Howard Walker?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Old Crump, with a good innate sense of right and wrong, hated the man;
+      Mrs. Crump did not feel quite at her ease regarding him; but Morgiana
+      thought him the most delightful person the world ever produced.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Eglantine's usual morning costume was a blue satin neck-cloth embroidered
+      with butterflies and ornamented with a brandy-ball brooch, a light shawl
+      waistcoat, and a rhubarb-coloured coat of the sort which, I believe, are
+      called Taglionis, and which have no waist-buttons, and made a pretence, as
+      it were, to have no waists, but are in reality adopted by the fat in order
+      to give them a waist. Nothing easier for an obese man than to have a
+      waist; he has but to pinch his middle part a little, and the very fat on
+      either side pushed violently forward MAKES a waist, as it were, and our
+      worthy perfumer's figure was that of a bolster cut almost in two with a
+      string.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Walker presently saw him at his shop-door grinning in this costume,
+      twiddling his ringlets with his dumpy greasy fingers, glittering with oil
+      and rings, and looking so exceedingly contented and happy that the
+      estate-agent felt assured some very satisfactory conspiracy had been
+      planned between the tailor and him. How was Mr. Walker to learn what the
+      scheme was? Alas! the poor fellow's vanity and delight were such, that he
+      could not keep silent as to the cause of his satisfaction; and rather than
+      not mention it at all, in the fulness of his heart he would have told his
+      secret to Mr. Mossrose himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When I get my coat,&rdquo; thought the Bond Street Alnaschar, &ldquo;I'll hire of
+      Snaffle that easy-going cream-coloured 'oss that he bought from Astley's,
+      and I'll canter through the Park, and WON'T I pass through Little Bunker's
+      Buildings, that's all? I'll wear my grey trousers with the velvet stripe
+      down the side, and get my spurs lacquered up, and a French polish to my
+      boot; and if I don't DO for the Captain, and the tailor too, my name's not
+      Archibald. And I know what I'll do: I'll hire the small clarence, and
+      invite the Crumps to dinner at the 'Gar and Starter'&rdquo; (this was his
+      facetious way of calling the &ldquo;Star and Garter&rdquo;), &ldquo;and I'll ride by them
+      all the way to Richmond. It's rather a long ride, but with Snaffle's soft
+      saddle I can do it pretty easy, I dare say.&rdquo; And so the honest fellow
+      built castles upon castles in the air; and the last most beautiful vision
+      of all was Miss Crump &ldquo;in white satting, with a horange flower in her
+      'air,&rdquo; putting him in possession of &ldquo;her lovely 'and before the haltar of
+      St. George's, 'Anover Square.&rdquo; As for Woolsey, Eglantine determined that
+      he should have the best wig his art could produce; for he had not the
+      least fear of his rival.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These points then being arranged to the poor fellow's satisfaction, what
+      does he do but send out for half a quire of pink note-paper, and in a
+      filagree envelope despatch a note of invitation to the ladies at the
+      &ldquo;Bootjack&rdquo;:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;BOWER OF BLOOM, BOND STREET:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thursday.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;MR. ARCHIBALD EGLANTINE presents his compliments to Mrs. and Miss Crump,
+      and requests the HONOUR AND PLEASURE of their company at the 'Star and
+      Garter' at Richmond to an early dinner on Sunday next.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;IF AGREEABLE, Mr. Eglantine's carriage will be at your door at three
+      o'clock, and I propose to accompany them on horseback, if agreeable
+      likewise.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This note was sealed with yellow wax, and sent to its destination; and of
+      course Mr. Eglantine went himself for the answer in the evening: and of
+      course he told the ladies to look out for a certain new coat he was going
+      to sport on Sunday; and of course Mr. Walker happens to call the next day
+      with spare tickets for Mrs. Crump and her daughter, when the whole secret
+      was laid bare to him&mdash;how the ladies were going to Richmond on Sunday
+      in Mr. Snaffle's clarence, and how Mr. Eglantine was to ride by their
+      side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Walker did not keep horses of his own; his magnificent friends at the
+      &ldquo;Regent&rdquo; had plenty in their stables, and some of these were at livery at
+      the establishment of the Captain's old &ldquo;college&rdquo; companion, Mr. Snaffle.
+      It was easy, therefore, for the Captain to renew his acquaintance with
+      that individual. So, hanging on the arm of my Lord Vauxhall, Captain
+      Walker next day made his appearance at Snaffle's livery-stables, and
+      looked at the various horses there for sale or at bait, and soon managed,
+      by putting some facetious questions to Mr. Snaffle regarding the &ldquo;Kidney
+      Club,&rdquo; etc. to place himself on a friendly footing with that gentleman,
+      and to learn from him what horse Mr. Eglantine was to ride on Sunday.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The monster Walker had fully determined in his mind that Eglantine should
+      FALL off that horse in the course of his Sunday's ride.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That sing'lar hanimal,&rdquo; said Mr. Snaffle, pointing to the old horse, &ldquo;is
+      the celebrated Hemperor that was the wonder of Hastley's some years back,
+      and was parted with by Mr. Ducrow honly because his feelin's wouldn't
+      allow him to keep him no longer after the death of the first Mrs. D., who
+      invariably rode him. I bought him, thinking that p'raps ladies and Cockney
+      bucks might like to ride him (for his haction is wonderful, and he canters
+      like a harm-chair); but he's not safe on any day except Sundays.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And why's that?&rdquo; asked Captain Walker. &ldquo;Why is he safer on Sundays than
+      other days?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;BECAUSE THERE'S NO MUSIC in the streets on Sundays. The first gent that
+      rode him found himself dancing a quadrille in Hupper Brook Street to an
+      'urdy-gurdy that was playing 'Cherry Ripe,' such is the natur of the
+      hanimal. And if you reklect the play of the 'Battle of Hoysterlitz,' in
+      which Mrs. D. hacted 'the female hussar,' you may remember how she and the
+      horse died in the third act to the toon of 'God preserve the Emperor,'
+      from which this horse took his name. Only play that toon to him, and he
+      rears hisself up, beats the hair in time with his forelegs, and then sinks
+      gently to the ground as though he were carried off by a cannon-ball. He
+      served a lady hopposite Hapsley 'Ouse so one day, and since then I've
+      never let him out to a friend except on Sunday, when, in course, there's
+      no danger. Heglantine IS a friend of mine, and of course I wouldn't put
+      the poor fellow on a hanimal I couldn't trust.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      After a little more conversation, my lord and his friend quitted Mr.
+      Snaffle's, and as they walked away towards the &ldquo;Regent,&rdquo; his Lordship
+      might be heard shrieking with laughter, crying, &ldquo;Capital, by jingo!
+      exthlent! Dwive down in the dwag! Take Lungly. Worth a thousand pound, by
+      Jove!&rdquo; and similar ejaculations, indicative of exceeding delight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On Saturday morning, at ten o'clock to a moment, Mr. Woolsey called at Mr.
+      Eglantine's with a yellow handkerchief under his arm. It contained the
+      best and handsomest body-coat that ever gentleman put on. It fitted
+      Eglantine to a nicety&mdash;it did not pinch him in the least, and yet it
+      was of so exquisite a cut that the perfumer found, as he gazed delighted
+      in the glass, that he looked like a manly portly high-bred gentleman&mdash;a
+      lieutenant-colonel in the army, at the very least.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're a full man, Eglantine,&rdquo; said the tailor, delighted, too, with his
+      own work; &ldquo;but that can't be helped. You look more like Hercules than
+      Falstaff now, sir, and if a coat can make a gentleman, a gentleman you
+      are. Let me recommend you to sink the blue cravat, and take the stripes
+      off your trousers. Dress quiet, sir; draw it mild. Plain waistcoat, dark
+      trousers, black neckcloth, black hat, and if there's a better-dressed man
+      in Europe to-morrow, I'm a Dutchman.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you, Woolsey&mdash;thank you, my dear sir,&rdquo; said the charmed
+      perfumer. &ldquo;And now I'll just trouble you to try on this here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The wig had been made with equal skill; it was not in the florid style
+      which Mr. Eglantine loved in his own person, but, as the perfumer said, a
+      simple straightforward head of hair. &ldquo;It seems as if it had grown there
+      all your life, Mr. Woolsey; nobody would tell that it was not your nat'ral
+      colour&rdquo; (Mr. Woolsey blushed)&mdash;&ldquo;it makes you look ten year younger;
+      and as for that scarecrow yonder, you'll never, I think, want to wear that
+      again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Woolsey looked in the glass, and was delighted too. The two rivals shook
+      hands and straightway became friends, and in the overflowing of his heart
+      the perfumer mentioned to the tailor the party which he had arranged for
+      the next day, and offered him a seat in the carriage and at the dinner at
+      the &ldquo;Star and Garter.&rdquo; &ldquo;Would you like to ride?&rdquo; said Eglantine, with
+      rather a consequential air. &ldquo;Snaffle will mount you, and we can go one on
+      each side of the ladies, if you like.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Woolsey humbly said he was not a riding man, and gladly consented to
+      take a place in the clarence carriage, provided he was allowed to bear
+      half the expenses of the entertainment. This proposal was agreed to by Mr.
+      Eglantine, and the two gentlemen parted to meet once more at the &ldquo;Kidneys&rdquo;
+       that night, when everybody was edified by the friendly tone adopted
+      between them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Snaffle, at the club meeting, made the very same proposal to Mr.
+      Woolsey that the perfumer had made; and stated that as Eglantine was going
+      to ride Hemperor, Woolsey, at least, ought to mount too. But he was met by
+      the same modest refusal on the tailor's part, who stated that he had never
+      mounted a horse yet, and preferred greatly the use of a coach.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Eglantine's character as a &ldquo;swell&rdquo; rose greatly with the club that
+      evening.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Two o'clock on Sunday came: the two beaux arrived punctually at the door
+      to receive the two smiling ladies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bless us, Mr. Eglantine!&rdquo; said Miss Crump, quite struck by him, &ldquo;I never
+      saw you look so handsome in your life.&rdquo; He could have flung his arms
+      around her neck at the compliment. &ldquo;And law, Ma! what has happened to Mr.
+      Woolsey? doesn't he look ten years younger than yesterday?&rdquo; Mamma
+      assented, and Woolsey bowed gallantly, and the two gentlemen exchanged a
+      nod of hearty friendship.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The day was delightful. Eglantine pranced along magnificently on his
+      cantering armchair, with his hat on one ear, his left hand on his side,
+      and his head flung over his shoulder, and throwing under-glances at
+      Morgiana whenever the &ldquo;Emperor&rdquo; was in advance of the clarence. The
+      &ldquo;Emperor&rdquo; pricked up his ears a little uneasily passing the Ebenezer
+      chapel in Richmond, where the congregation were singing a hymn, but beyond
+      this no accident occurred; nor was Mr. Eglantine in the least stiff or
+      fatigued by the time the party reached Richmond, where he arrived time
+      enough to give his steed into the charge of an ostler, and to present his
+      elbow to the ladies as they alighted from the clarence carriage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What this jovial party ate for dinner at the &ldquo;Star and Garter&rdquo; need not
+      here be set down. If they did not drink champagne I am very much mistaken.
+      They were as merry as any four people in Christendom; and between the
+      bewildering attentions of the perfumer, and the manly courtesy of the
+      tailor, Morgiana very likely forgot the gallant Captain, or, at least, was
+      very happy in his absence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At eight o'clock they began to drive homewards. &ldquo;WON'T you come into the
+      carriage?&rdquo; said Morgiana to Eglantine, with one of her tenderest looks;
+      &ldquo;Dick can ride the horse.&rdquo; But Archibald was too great a lover of
+      equestrian exercise. &ldquo;I'm afraid to trust anybody on this horse,&rdquo; said he
+      with a knowing look; and so he pranced away by the side of the little
+      carriage. The moon was brilliant, and, with the aid of the gas-lamps,
+      illuminated the whole face of the country in a way inexpressibly lovely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Presently, in the distance, the sweet and plaintive notes of a bugle were
+      heard, and the performer, with great delicacy, executed a religious air.
+      &ldquo;Music, too! heavenly!&rdquo; said Morgiana, throwing up her eyes to the stars.
+      The music came nearer and nearer, and the delight of the company was only
+      more intense. The fly was going at about four miles an hour, and the
+      &ldquo;Emperor&rdquo; began cantering to time at the same rapid pace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This must be some gallantry of yours, Mr. Woolsey,&rdquo; said the romantic
+      Morgiana, turning upon that gentleman. &ldquo;Mr. Eglantine treated us to the
+      dinner, and you have provided us with the music.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Now Woolsey had been a little, a very little, dissatisfied during the
+      course of the evening's entertainment, by fancying that Eglantine, a much
+      more voluble person than himself, had obtained rather an undue share of
+      the ladies' favour; and as he himself paid half of the expenses, he felt
+      very much vexed to think that the perfumer should take all the credit of
+      the business to himself. So when Miss Crump asked if he had provided the
+      music, he foolishly made an evasive reply to her query, and rather wished
+      her to imagine that he HAD performed that piece of gallantry. &ldquo;If it
+      pleases YOU, Miss Morgiana,&rdquo; said this artful Schneider, &ldquo;what more need
+      any man ask? wouldn't I have all Drury Lane orchestra to please you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The bugle had by this time arrived quite close to the clarence carriage,
+      and if Morgiana had looked round she might have seen whence the music
+      came. Behind her came slowly a drag, or private stage-coach, with four
+      horses. Two grooms with cockades and folded arms were behind; and driving
+      on the box, a little gentleman, with a blue bird's-eye neckcloth, and a
+      white coat. A bugleman was by his side, who performed the melodies which
+      so delighted Miss Crump. He played very gently and sweetly, and &ldquo;God save
+      the King&rdquo; trembled so softly out of the brazen orifice of his bugle, that
+      the Crumps, the tailor, and Eglantine himself, who was riding close by the
+      carriage, were quite charmed and subdued.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you, DEAR Mr. Woolsey,&rdquo; said the grateful Morgiana; which made
+      Eglantine stare, and Woolsey was just saying, &ldquo;Really, upon my word, I've
+      nothing to do with it,&rdquo; when the man on the drag-box said to the bugleman,
+      &ldquo;Now!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The bugleman began the tune of&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;Heaven preserve our Emperor Fra-an-cis,
+      Rum tum-ti-tum-ti-titty-ti.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      At the sound, the &ldquo;Emperor&rdquo; reared himself (with a roar from Mr.
+      Eglantine)&mdash;reared and beat the air with his fore-paws. Eglantine
+      flung his arms round the beast's neck; still he kept beating time with his
+      fore-paws. Mrs. Crump screamed: Mr. Woolsey, Dick, the clarence coachman,
+      Lord Vauxhall (for it was he), and his Lordship's two grooms, burst into a
+      shout of laughter; Morgiana cries &ldquo;Mercy! mercy!&rdquo; Eglantine yells &ldquo;Stop!&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;Wo!&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;Oh!&rdquo;
+       and a thousand ejaculations of hideous terror; until, at last, down drops
+      the &ldquo;Emperor&rdquo; stone dead in the middle of the road, as if carried off by a
+      cannon-ball.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fancy the situation, ye callous souls who laugh at the misery of humanity,
+      fancy the situation of poor Eglantine under the &ldquo;Emperor&rdquo;! He had fallen
+      very easy, the animal lay perfectly quiet, and the perfumer was to all
+      intents and purposes as dead as the animal. He had not fainted, but he was
+      immovable with terror; he lay in a puddle, and thought it was his own
+      blood gushing from him; and he would have lain there until Monday morning,
+      if my Lord's grooms, descending, had not dragged him by the coat-collar
+      from under the beast, who still lay quiet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Play 'Charming Judy Callaghan,' will ye?&rdquo; says Mr. Snaffle's man, the
+      fly-driver; on which the bugler performed that lively air, and up started
+      the horse, and the grooms, who were rubbing Mr. Eglantine down against a
+      lamp-post, invited him to remount.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But his heart was too broken for that. The ladies gladly made room for him
+      in the clarence. Dick mounted &ldquo;Emperor&rdquo; and rode homewards. The drag, too,
+      drove away, playing &ldquo;Oh dear, what can the matter be?&rdquo; and with a scowl of
+      furious hate, Mr. Eglantine sat and regarded his rival. His pantaloons
+      were split, and his coat torn up the back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you hurt much, dear Mr. Archibald?&rdquo; said Morgiana, with unaffected
+      compassion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;N-not much,&rdquo; said the poor fellow, ready to burst into tears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Mr. Woolsey,&rdquo; added the good-natured girl, &ldquo;how could you play such a
+      trick?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Upon my word,&rdquo; Woolsey began, intending to plead innocence; but the
+      ludicrousness of the situation was once more too much for him, and he
+      burst out into a roar of laughter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You! you cowardly beast!&rdquo; howled out Eglantine, now driven to fury&mdash;&ldquo;YOU
+      laugh at me, you miserable cretur! Take THAT, sir!&rdquo; and he fell upon him
+      with all his might, and well-nigh throttled the tailor, and pummelling his
+      eyes, his nose, his ears, with inconceivable rapidity, wrenched, finally,
+      his wig off his head, and flung it into the road.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Morgiana saw that Woolsey had red hair. <a href="#linknote-2"
+       name="linknoteref-2" id="linknoteref-2"><small>2</small></a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0004" id="link2HCH0004">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IV. IN WHICH THE HEROINE HAS A NUMBER MORE LOVERS, AND CUTS A VERY
+      DASHING FIGURE IN THE WORLD.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Two years have elapsed since the festival at Richmond, which, begun so
+      peaceably, ended in such general uproar. Morgiana never could be brought
+      to pardon Woolsey's red hair, nor to help laughing at Eglantine's
+      disasters, nor could the two gentlemen be reconciled to one another.
+      Woolsey, indeed, sent a challenge to the perfumer to meet him with
+      pistols, which the latter declined, saying, justly, that tradesmen had no
+      business with such weapons; on this the tailor proposed to meet him with
+      coats off, and have it out like men, in the presence of their friends of
+      the &ldquo;Kidney Club&rdquo;. The perfumer said he would be party to no such vulgar
+      transaction; on which, Woolsey, exasperated, made an oath that he would
+      tweak the perfumer's nose so surely as he ever entered the club-room; and
+      thus ONE member of the &ldquo;Kidneys&rdquo; was compelled to vacate his armchair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Woolsey himself attended every meeting regularly, but he did not evince
+      that gaiety and good-humour which render men's company agreeable in clubs.
+      On arriving, he would order the boy to &ldquo;tell him when that scoundrel
+      Eglantine came;&rdquo; and, hanging up his hat on a peg, would scowl round the
+      room, and tuck up his sleeves very high, and stretch, and shake his
+      fingers and wrists, as if getting them ready for that pull of the nose
+      which he intended to bestow upon his rival. So prepared, he would sit down
+      and smoke his pipe quite silently, glaring at all, and jumping up, and
+      hitching up his coat-sleeves, when anyone entered the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The &ldquo;Kidneys&rdquo; did not like this behaviour. Clinker ceased to come.
+      Bustard, the poulterer, ceased to come. As for Snaffle, he also
+      disappeared, for Woolsey wished to make him answerable for the
+      misbehaviour of Eglantine, and proposed to him the duel which the latter
+      had declined. So Snaffle went. Presently they all went, except the tailor
+      and Tressle, who lived down the street, and these two would sit and pug
+      their tobacco, one on each side of Crump, the landlord, as silent as
+      Indian chiefs in a wigwam. There grew to be more and more room for poor
+      old Crump in his chair and in his clothes; the &ldquo;Kidneys&rdquo; were gone, and
+      why should he remain? One Saturday he did not come down to preside at the
+      club (as he still fondly called it), and the Saturday following Tressle
+      had made a coffin for him; and Woolsey, with the undertaker by his side,
+      followed to the grave the father of the &ldquo;Kidneys.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Crump was now alone in the world. &ldquo;How alone?&rdquo; says some innocent and
+      respected reader. Ah! my dear sir, do you know so little of human nature
+      as not to be aware that, one week after the Richmond affair, Morgiana
+      married Captain Walker? That did she privately, of course; and, after the
+      ceremony, came tripping back to her parents, as young people do in plays,
+      and said, &ldquo;Forgive me, dear Pa and Ma, I'm married, and here is my husband
+      the Captain!&rdquo; Papa and mamma did forgive her, as why shouldn't they? and
+      papa paid over her fortune to her, which she carried home delighted to the
+      Captain. This happened several months before the demise of old Crump; and
+      Mrs. Captain Walker was on the Continent with her Howard when that
+      melancholy event took place; hence Mrs. Crump's loneliness and unprotected
+      condition. Morgiana had not latterly seen much of the old people; how
+      could she, moving in her exalted sphere, receive at her genteel new
+      residence in the Edgware Road the old publican and his wife?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Being, then, alone in the world, Mrs. Crump could not abear, she said, to
+      live in the house where she had been so respected and happy: so she sold
+      the goodwill of the &ldquo;Bootjack,&rdquo; and, with the money arising from this sale
+      and her own private fortune, being able to muster some sixty pounds per
+      annum, retired to the neighbourhood of her dear old &ldquo;Sadler's Wells,&rdquo;
+       where she boarded with one of Mrs. Serle's forty pupils. Her heart was
+      broken, she said; but, nevertheless, about nine months after Mr. Crump's
+      death, the wallflowers, nasturtiums, polyanthuses, and convolvuluses began
+      to blossom under her bonnet as usual; in a year she was dressed quite as
+      fine as ever, and now never missed &ldquo;The Wells,&rdquo; or some other place of
+      entertainment, one single night, but was as regular as the box-keeper.
+      Nay, she was a buxom widow still, and an old flame of hers, Fisk, so
+      celebrated as pantaloon in Grimaldi's time, but now doing the &ldquo;heavy
+      fathers&rdquo; at &ldquo;The Wells,&rdquo; proposed to her to exchange her name for his.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But this proposal the worthy widow declined altogether. To say truth, she
+      was exceedingly proud of her daughter, Mrs. Captain Walker. They did not
+      see each other much at first; but every now and then Mrs. Crump would pay
+      a visit to the folks in Connaught Square; and on the days when &ldquo;the
+      Captain's&rdquo; lady called in the City Road, there was not a single official
+      at &ldquo;The Wells,&rdquo; from the first tragedian down to the call-boy, who was not
+      made aware of the fact.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It has been said that Morgiana carried home her fortune in her own
+      reticule, and, smiling, placed the money in her husband's lap; and hence
+      the reader may imagine, who knows Mr. Walker to be an extremely selfish
+      fellow, that a great scene of anger must have taken place, and many coarse
+      oaths and epithets of abuse must have come from him, when he found that
+      five hundred pounds was all that his wife had, although he had expected
+      five thousand with her. But, to say the truth, Walker was at this time
+      almost in love with his handsome rosy good-humoured simple wife. They had
+      made a fortnight's tour, during which they had been exceedingly happy; and
+      there was something so frank and touching in the way in which the kind
+      creature flung her all into his lap, saluting him with a hearty embrace at
+      the same time, and wishing that it were a thousand billion billion times
+      more, so that her darling Howard might enjoy it, that the man would have
+      been a ruffian indeed could he have found it in his heart to be angry with
+      her; and so he kissed her in return, and patted her on the shining
+      ringlets, and then counted over the notes with rather a disconsolate air,
+      and ended by locking them up in his portfolio. In fact, SHE had never
+      deceived him; Eglantine had, and he in return had out-tricked Eglantine
+      and so warm were his affections for Morgiana at this time that, upon my
+      word and honour, I don't think he repented of his bargain. Besides, five
+      hundred pounds in crisp bank-notes was a sum of money such as the Captain
+      was not in the habit of handling every day; a dashing sanguine fellow, he
+      fancied there was no end to it, and already thought of a dozen ways by
+      which it should increase and multiply into a plum. Woe is me! Has not many
+      a simple soul examined five new hundred-pound notes in this way, and
+      calculated their powers of duration and multiplication?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This subject, however, is too painful to be dwelt on. Let us hear what
+      Walker did with his money. Why, he furnished the house in the Edgware Road
+      before mentioned, he ordered a handsome service of plate, he sported a
+      phaeton and two ponies, he kept a couple of smart maids and a groom
+      foot-boy&mdash;in fact, he mounted just such a neat unpretending
+      gentleman-like establishment as becomes a respectable young couple on
+      their outset in life. &ldquo;I've sown my wild oats,&rdquo; he would say to his
+      acquaintances; &ldquo;a few years since, perhaps, I would have longed to cut a
+      dash, but now prudence is the word; and I've settled every farthing of
+      Mrs. Walker's fifteen thousand on herself.&rdquo; And the best proof that the
+      world had confidence in him is the fact, that for the articles of plate,
+      equipage, and furniture, which have been mentioned as being in his
+      possession, he did not pay one single shilling; and so prudent was he,
+      that but for turnpikes, postage-stamps, and king's taxes, he hardly had
+      occasion to change a five-pound note of his wife's fortune.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To tell the truth, Mr. Walker had determined to make his fortune. And what
+      is easier in London? Is not the share-market open to all? Do not Spanish
+      and Columbian bonds rise and fall? For what are companies invented, but to
+      place thousands in the pockets of shareholders and directors? Into these
+      commercial pursuits the gallant Captain now plunged with great energy, and
+      made some brilliant hits at first starting, and bought and sold so
+      opportunely, that his name began to rise in the City as a capitalist, and
+      might be seen in the printed list of directors of many excellent and
+      philanthropic schemes, of which there is never any lack in London.
+      Business to the amount of thousands was done at his agency; shares of vast
+      value were bought and sold under his management. How poor Mr. Eglantine
+      used to hate him and envy him, as from the door of his emporium (the firm
+      was Eglantine and Mossrose now) he saw the Captain daily arrive in his
+      pony-phaeton, and heard of the start he had taken in life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The only regret Mrs. Walker had was that she did not enjoy enough of her
+      husband's society. His business called him away all day; his business,
+      too, obliged him to leave her of evenings very frequently alone; whilst he
+      (always in pursuit of business) was dining with his great friends at the
+      club, and drinking claret and champagne to the same end.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was a perfectly good-natured and simple soul, never made him a single
+      reproach; but when he could pass an evening at home with her she was
+      delighted, and when he could drive with her in the Park she was happy for
+      a week after. On these occasions, and in the fulness of her heart, she
+      would drive to her mother and tell her story. &ldquo;Howard drove with me in the
+      Park yesterday, Mamma;&rdquo; and &ldquo;Howard has promised to take me to the Opera,&rdquo;
+       and so forth. And that evening the manager, Mr. Gawler, the first
+      tragedian, Mrs. Serle and her forty pupils, all the box-keepers,
+      bonnet-women&mdash;nay, the ginger-beer girls themselves at &ldquo;The Wells,&rdquo;
+       knew that Captain and Mrs. Walker were at Kensington Gardens, or were to
+      have the Marchioness of Billingsgate's box at the Opera. One night&mdash;O
+      joy of joys!&mdash;Mrs. Captain Walker appeared in a private box at &ldquo;The
+      Wells.&rdquo; That's she with the black ringlets and Cashmere shawl,
+      smelling-bottle, and black-velvet gown, and bird of paradise in her hat.
+      Goodness gracious! how they all acted at her, Gawler and all, and how
+      happy Mrs. Crump was! She kissed her daughter between all the acts, she
+      nodded to all her friends on the stage, in the slips, or in the real
+      water; she introduced her daughter, Mrs. Captain Walker, to the
+      box-opener; and Melvil Delamere (the first comic), Canterfield (the
+      tyrant), and Jonesini (the celebrated Fontarabian Statuesque), were all on
+      the steps, and shouted for Mrs. Captain Walker's carriage, and waved their
+      hats, and bowed as the little pony-phaeton drove away. Walker, in his
+      moustaches, had come in at the end of the play, and was not a little
+      gratified by the compliments paid to himself and lady.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Among the other articles of luxury with which the Captain furnished his
+      house we must not omit to mention an extremely grand piano, which occupied
+      four-fifths of Mrs. Walker's little back drawing-room, and at which she
+      was in the habit of practising continually. All day and all night during
+      Walker's absences (and these occurred all night and all day), you might
+      hear&mdash;the whole street might hear&mdash;the voice of the lady at No.
+      23, gurgling, and shaking, and quavering, as ladies do when they practise.
+      The street did not approve of the continuance of the noise; but neighbours
+      are difficult to please, and what would Morgiana have had to do if she had
+      ceased to sing? It would be hard to lock a blackbird in a cage and prevent
+      him from singing too. And so Walker's blackbird, in the snug little cage
+      in the Edgware Road, sang and was not unhappy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After the pair had been married for about a year, the omnibus that passes
+      both by Mrs. Crump's house near &ldquo;The Wells,&rdquo; and by Mrs. Walker's street
+      off the Edgware Road, brought up the former-named lady almost every day to
+      her daughter. She came when the Captain had gone to his business; she
+      stayed to a two-o'clock dinner with Morgiana; she drove with her in the
+      pony-carriage round the Park; but she never stopped later than six. Had
+      she not to go to the play at seven? And, besides, the Captain might come
+      home with some of his great friends, and he always swore and grumbled much
+      if he found his mother-in-law on the premises. As for Morgiana, she was
+      one of those women who encourage despotism in husbands. What the husband
+      says must be right, because he says it; what he orders must be obeyed
+      tremblingly. Mrs. Walker gave up her entire reason to her lord. Why was
+      it? Before marriage she had been an independent little person; she had far
+      more brains than her Howard. I think it must have been his moustaches that
+      frightened her, and caused in her this humility.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Selfish husbands have this advantage in maintaining with easy-minded wives
+      a rigid and inflexible behaviour, viz. that if they DO by any chance grant
+      a little favour, the ladies receive it with such transports of gratitude
+      as they would never think of showing to a lord and master who was
+      accustomed to give them everything they asked for; and hence, when Captain
+      Walker signified his assent to his wife's prayer that she should take a
+      singing-master, she thought his generosity almost divine, and fell upon
+      her mamma's neck, when that lady came the next day, and said what a dear
+      adorable angel her Howard was, and what ought she not to do for a man who
+      had taken her from her humble situation, and raised her to be what she
+      was! What she was, poor soul! She was the wife of a swindling parvenu
+      gentleman. She received visits from six ladies of her husband's
+      acquaintances&mdash;two attorneys' ladies, his bill-broker's lady, and one
+      or two more, of whose characters we had best, if you please, say nothing;
+      and she thought it an honour to be so distinguished: as if Walker had been
+      a Lord Exeter to marry a humble maiden, or a noble prince to fall in love
+      with a humble Cinderella, or a majestic Jove to come down from heaven and
+      woo a Semele. Look through the world, respectable reader, and among your
+      honourable acquaintances, and say if this sort of faith in women is not
+      very frequent? They WILL believe in their husbands, whatever the latter
+      do. Let John be dull, ugly, vulgar, and a humbug, his Mary Ann never finds
+      it out; let him tell his stories ever so many times, there is she always
+      ready with her kind smile; let him be stingy, she says he is prudent; let
+      him quarrel with his best friend, she says he is always in the right; let
+      him be prodigal, she says he is generous, and that his health requires
+      enjoyment; let him be idle, he must have relaxation; and she will pinch
+      herself and her household that he may have a guinea for his club. Yes; and
+      every morning, as she wakes and looks at the face, snoring on the pillow
+      by her side&mdash;every morning, I say, she blesses that dull ugly
+      countenance, and the dull ugly soul reposing there, and thinks both are
+      something divine. I want to know how it is that women do not find out
+      their husbands to be humbugs? Nature has so provided it, and thanks to
+      her. When last year they were acting the &ldquo;Midsummer Night's Dream,&rdquo; and
+      all the boxes began to roar with great coarse heehaws at Titania hugging
+      Bottom's long long ears&mdash;to me, considering these things, it seemed
+      that there were a hundred other male brutes squatted round about, and
+      treated just as reasonably as Bottom was. Their Titanias lulled them to
+      sleep in their laps, summoned a hundred smiling delicate household fairies
+      to tickle their gross intellects and minister to their vulgar pleasures;
+      and (as the above remarks are only supposed to apply to honest women
+      loving their own lawful spouses) a mercy it is that no wicked Puck is in
+      the way to open their eyes, and point out their folly. Cui bono? let them
+      live on in their deceit: I know two lovely ladies who will read this, and
+      will say it is just very likely, and not see in the least, that it has
+      been written regarding THEM.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Another point of sentiment, and one curious to speculate on. Have you not
+      remarked the immense works of art that women get through? The worsted-work
+      sofas, the counterpanes patched or knitted (but these are among the
+      old-fashioned in the country), the bushels of pincushions, the albums they
+      laboriously fill, the tremendous pieces of music they practise, the
+      thousand other fiddle-faddles which occupy the attention of the dear souls&mdash;nay,
+      have we not seen them seated of evenings in a squad or company, Louisa
+      employed at the worsted-work before mentioned, Eliza at the pincushions,
+      Amelia at card-racks or filagree matches, and, in the midst, Theodosia
+      with one of the candles, reading out a novel aloud? Ah! my dear sir,
+      mortal creatures must be very hard put to it for amusement, be sure of
+      that, when they are forced to gather together in a company and hear novels
+      read aloud! They only do it because they can't help it, depend upon it: it
+      is a sad life, a poor pastime. Mr. Dickens, in his American book, tells of
+      the prisoners at the silent prison, how they had ornamented their rooms,
+      some of them with a frightful prettiness and elaboration. Women's
+      fancy-work is of this sort often&mdash;only prison work, done because
+      there was no other exercising-ground for their poor little thoughts and
+      fingers; and hence these wonderful pincushions are executed, these
+      counterpanes woven, these sonatas learned. By everything sentimental, when
+      I see two kind innocent fresh-cheeked young women go to a piano, and sit
+      down opposite to it upon two chairs piled with more or less music-books
+      (according to their convenience), and, so seated, go through a set of
+      double-barrelled variations upon this or that tune by Herz or Kalkbrenner&mdash;I
+      say, far from receiving any satisfaction at the noise made by the
+      performance, my too susceptible heart is given up entirely to bleeding for
+      the performers. What hours, and weeks, nay, preparatory years of study,
+      has that infernal jig cost them! What sums has papa paid, what scoldings
+      has mamma administered (&ldquo;Lady Bullblock does not play herself;&rdquo; Sir Thomas
+      says, &ldquo;but she has naturally the finest ear for music ever known!&rdquo;); what
+      evidences of slavery, in a word, are there! It is the condition of the
+      young lady's existence. She breakfasts at eight, she does &ldquo;Mangnall's
+      Questions&rdquo; with the governess till ten, she practises till one, she walks
+      in the square with bars round her till two, then she practises again, then
+      she sews or hems, or reads French, or Hume's &ldquo;History,&rdquo; then she comes
+      down to play to papa, because he likes music whilst he is asleep after
+      dinner, and then it is bed-time, and the morrow is another day with what
+      are called the same &ldquo;duties&rdquo; to be gone through. A friend of mine went to
+      call at a nobleman's house the other day, and one of the young ladies of
+      the house came into the room with a tray on her head; this tray was to
+      give Lady Maria a graceful carriage. Mon Dieu! and who knows but at that
+      moment Lady Bell was at work with a pair of her dumb namesakes, and Lady
+      Sophy lying flat on a stretching-board? I could write whole articles on
+      this theme but peace! we are keeping Mrs. Walker waiting all the while.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Well, then, if the above disquisitions have anything to do with the story,
+      as no doubt they have, I wish it to be understood that, during her
+      husband's absence, and her own solitary confinement, Mrs. Howard Walker
+      bestowed a prodigious quantity of her time and energy on the cultivation
+      of her musical talent; and having, as before stated, a very fine loud
+      voice, speedily attained no ordinary skill in the use of it. She first had
+      for teacher little Podmore, the fat chorus-master at &ldquo;The Wells,&rdquo; and who
+      had taught her mother the &ldquo;Tink-a-tink&rdquo; song which has been such a
+      favourite since it first appeared. He grounded her well, and bade her
+      eschew the singing of all those &ldquo;Eagle Tavern&rdquo; ballads in which her heart
+      formerly delighted; and when he had brought her to a certain point of
+      skill, the honest little chorus-master said she should have a still better
+      instructor, and wrote a note to Captain Walker (enclosing his own little
+      account), speaking in terms of the most flattering encomium of his lady's
+      progress, and recommending that she should take lessons of the celebrated
+      Baroski. Captain Walker dismissed Podmore then, and engaged Signor
+      Baroski, at a vast expense; as he did not fail to tell his wife. In fact,
+      he owed Baroski no less than two hundred and twenty guineas when he was&mdash;But
+      we are advancing matters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Little Baroski is the author of the opera of &ldquo;Eliogabalo,&rdquo; of the oratorio
+      of &ldquo;Purgatorio,&rdquo; which made such an immense sensation, of songs and
+      ballet-musics innumerable. He is a German by birth, and shows such an
+      outrageous partiality for pork and sausages, and attends at church so
+      constantly, that I am sure there cannot be any foundation in the story
+      that he is a member of the ancient religion. He is a fat little man, with
+      a hooked nose and jetty whiskers, and coal-black shining eyes, and plenty
+      of rings and jewels on his fingers and about his person, and a very
+      considerable portion of his shirtsleeves turned over his coat to take the
+      air. His great hands (which can sprawl over half a piano, and produce
+      those effects on the instrument for which he is celebrated) are encased in
+      lemon-coloured kids, new, or cleaned daily. Parenthetically, let us ask
+      why so many men, with coarse red wrists and big hands, persist in the
+      white kid glove and wristband system? Baroski's gloves alone must cost him
+      a little fortune; only he says with a leer, when asked the question, &ldquo;Get
+      along vid you; don't you know dere is a gloveress that lets me have dem
+      very sheap?&rdquo; He rides in the Park; has splendid lodgings in Dover Street;
+      and is a member of the &ldquo;Regent Club,&rdquo; where he is a great source of
+      amusement to the members, to whom he tells astonishing stories of his
+      successes with the ladies, and for whom he has always play and opera
+      tickets in store. His eye glistens and his little heart beats when a lord
+      speaks to him; and he has been known to spend large sums of money in
+      giving treats to young sprigs of fashion at Richmond and elsewhere. &ldquo;In my
+      bolyticks,&rdquo; he says, &ldquo;I am consarevatiff to de bag-bone.&rdquo; In fine, he is a
+      puppy, and withal a man of considerable genius in his profession.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This gentleman, then, undertook to complete the musical education of Mrs.
+      Walker. He expressed himself at once &ldquo;enshanted vid her gababilities,&rdquo;
+       found that the extent of her voice was &ldquo;brodigious,&rdquo; and guaranteed that
+      she should become a first-rate singer. The pupil was apt, the master was
+      exceedingly skilful; and, accordingly, Mrs. Walker's progress was very
+      remarkable: although, for her part, honest Mrs. Crump, who used to attend
+      her daughter's lessons, would grumble not a little at the new system, and
+      the endless exercises which she, Morgiana, was made to go through. It was
+      very different in HER time, she said. Incledon knew no music, and who
+      could sing so well now? Give her a good English ballad: it was a thousand
+      times sweeter than your &ldquo;Figaros&rdquo; and &ldquo;Semiramides.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In spite of these objections, however, and with amazing perseverance and
+      cheerfulness, Mrs. Walker pursued the method of study pointed out to her
+      by her master. As soon as her husband went to the City in the morning her
+      operations began; if he remained away at dinner, her labours still
+      continued: nor is it necessary for me to particularise her course of
+      study, nor, indeed, possible; for, between ourselves, none of the male
+      Fitz-Boodles ever could sing a note, and the jargon of scales and
+      solfeggios is quite unknown to me. But as no man can have seen persons
+      addicted to music without remarking the prodigious energies they display
+      in the pursuit, as there is no father of daughters, however ignorant, but
+      is aware of the piano-rattling and voice-exercising which go on in his
+      house from morning till night, so let all fancy, without further inquiry,
+      how the heroine of our story was at this stage of her existence occupied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Walker was delighted with her progress, and did everything but pay
+      Baroski, her instructor. We know why he didn't pay. It was his nature not
+      to pay bills, except on extreme compulsion; but why did not Baroski employ
+      that extreme compulsion? Because, if he had received his money, he would
+      have lost his pupil, and because he loved his pupil more than money.
+      Rather than lose her, he would have given her a guinea as well as her
+      cachet. He would sometimes disappoint a great personage, but he never
+      missed his attendance on HER; and the truth must out, that he was in love
+      with her, as Woolsey and Eglantine had been before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By the immortel Chofe!&rdquo; he would say, &ldquo;dat letell ding sents me mad vid
+      her big ice! But only vait avile: in six veeks I can bring any voman in
+      England on her knees to me and you shall see vat I vill do vid my
+      Morgiana.&rdquo; He attended her for six weeks punctually, and yet Morgiana was
+      never brought down on her knees; he exhausted his best stock of
+      &ldquo;gomblimends,&rdquo; and she never seemed disposed to receive them with anything
+      but laughter. And, as a matter of course, he only grew more infatuated
+      with the lovely creature who was so provokingly good-humoured and so
+      laughingly cruel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Benjamin Baroski was one of the chief ornaments of the musical profession
+      in London; he charged a guinea for a lesson of three-quarters of an hour
+      abroad, and he had, furthermore, a school at his own residence, where
+      pupils assembled in considerable numbers, and of that curious mixed kind
+      which those may see who frequent these places of instruction. There were
+      very innocent young ladies with their mammas, who would hurry them off
+      trembling to the farther corner of the room when certain doubtful
+      professional characters made their appearance. There was Miss Grigg, who
+      sang at the &ldquo;Foundling,&rdquo; and Mr. Johnson, who sang at the &ldquo;Eagle Tavern,&rdquo;
+       and Madame Fioravanti (a very doubtful character), who sang nowhere, but
+      was always coming out at the Italian Opera. There was Lumley Limpiter
+      (Lord Tweedledale's son), one of the most accomplished tenors in town, and
+      who, we have heard, sings with the professionals at a hundred concerts;
+      and with him, too, was Captain Guzzard, of the Guards, with his tremendous
+      bass voice, which all the world declared to be as fine as Porto's, and who
+      shared the applause of Baroski's school with Mr. Bulger, the dentist of
+      Sackville Street, who neglected his ivory and gold plates for his voice,
+      as every unfortunate individual will do who is bitten by the music mania.
+      Then among the ladies there were a half-score of dubious pale governesses
+      and professionals with turned frocks and lank damp bandeaux of hair under
+      shabby little bonnets; luckless creatures these, who were parting with
+      their poor little store of half-guineas to be enabled to say they were
+      pupils of Signor Baroski, and so get pupils of their own among the British
+      youths, or employment in the choruses of the theatres.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The prima donna of the little company was Amelia Larkins, Baroski's own
+      articled pupil, on whose future reputation the eminent master staked his
+      own, whose profits he was to share, and whom he had farmed, to this end,
+      from her father, a most respectable sheriff's officer's assistant, and
+      now, by his daughter's exertions, a considerable capitalist. Amelia is
+      blonde and blue-eyed, her complexion is as bright as snow, her ringlets of
+      the colour of straw, her figure&mdash;but why describe her figure? Has not
+      all the world seen her at the Theatres Royal and in America under the name
+      of Miss Ligonier?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Until Mrs. Walker arrived, Miss Larkins was the undisputed princess of the
+      Baroski company&mdash;the Semiramide, the Rosina, the Tamina, the Donna
+      Anna. Baroski vaunted her everywhere as the great rising genius of the
+      day, bade Catalani look to her laurels, and questioned whether Miss
+      Stephens could sing a ballad like his pupil. Mrs. Howard Walker arrived,
+      and created, on the first occasion, no small sensation. She improved, and
+      the little society became speedily divided into Walkerites and
+      Larkinsians; and between these two ladies (as indeed between Guzzard and
+      Bulger before mentioned, between Miss Brunck and Miss Horsman, the two
+      contraltos, and between the chorus-singers, after their kind) a great
+      rivalry arose. Larkins was certainly the better singer; but could her
+      straw-coloured curls and dumpy high-shouldered figure bear any comparison
+      with the jetty ringlets and stately form of Morgiana? Did not Mrs. Walker,
+      too, come to the music-lesson in her carriage, and with a black velvet
+      gown and Cashmere shawl, while poor Larkins meekly stepped from Bell Yard,
+      Temple Bar, in an old print gown and clogs, which she left in the hall?
+      &ldquo;Larkins sing!&rdquo; said Mrs. Crump, sarcastically; &ldquo;I'm sure she ought; her
+      mouth's big enough to sing a duet.&rdquo; Poor Larkins had no one to make
+      epigrams in her behoof; her mother was at home tending the younger ones,
+      her father abroad following the duties of his profession; she had but one
+      protector, as she thought, and that one was Baroski. Mrs. Crump did not
+      fail to tell Lumley Limpiter of her own former triumphs, and to sing him
+      &ldquo;Tink-a-tink,&rdquo; which we have previously heard, and to state how in former
+      days she had been called the Ravenswing. And Lumley, on this hint, made a
+      poem, in which he compared Morgiana's hair to the plumage of the Raven's
+      wing, and Larkinissa's to that of the canary; by which two names the
+      ladies began soon to be known in the school.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ere long the flight of the Ravenswing became evidently stronger, whereas
+      that of the canary was seen evidently to droop. When Morgiana sang, all
+      the room would cry &ldquo;Bravo!&rdquo; when Amelia performed, scarce a hand was
+      raised for applause of her, except Morgiana's own, and that the Larkinses
+      thought was lifted in odious triumph, rather than in sympathy, for Miss L.
+      was of an envious turn, and little understood the generosity of her rival.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last, one day, the crowning victory of the Ravenswing came. In the trio
+      of Baroski's own opera of &ldquo;Eliogabalo,&rdquo; &ldquo;Rosy lips and rosy wine,&rdquo; Miss
+      Larkins, who was evidently unwell, was taking the part of the English
+      captive, which she had sung in public concerts before royal dukes, and
+      with considerable applause, and, from some reason, performed it so ill,
+      that Baroski, slapping down the music on the piano in a fury, cried, &ldquo;Mrs.
+      Howard Walker, as Miss Larkins cannot sing to-day, will you favour us by
+      taking the part of Boadicetta?&rdquo; Mrs. Walker got up smilingly to obey&mdash;the
+      triumph was too great to be withstood; and, as she advanced to the piano,
+      Miss Larkins looked wildly at her, and stood silent for a while, and, at
+      last, shrieked out, &ldquo;BENJAMIN!&rdquo; in a tone of extreme agony, and dropped
+      fainting down on the ground. Benjamin looked extremely red, it must be
+      confessed, at being thus called by what we shall denominate his Christian
+      name, and Limpiter looked round at Guzzard, and Miss Brunck nudged Miss
+      Horsman, and the lesson concluded rather abruptly that day; for Miss
+      Larkins was carried off to the next room, laid on a couch, and sprinkled
+      with water.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Good-natured Morgiana insisted that her mother should take Miss Larkins to
+      Bell Yard in her carriage, and went herself home on foot; but I don't know
+      that this piece of kindness prevented Larkins from hating her. I should
+      doubt if it did.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hearing so much of his wife's skill as a singer, the astute Captain Walker
+      determined to take advantage of it for the purpose of increasing his
+      &ldquo;connection.&rdquo; He had Lumley Limpiter at his house before long, which was,
+      indeed, no great matter, for honest Lum would go anywhere for a good
+      dinner&mdash;and an opportunity to show off his voice afterwards, and
+      Lumley was begged to bring any more clerks in the Treasury of his
+      acquaintance; Captain Guzzard was invited, and any officers of the Guards
+      whom he might choose to bring; Bulger received occasional cards:&mdash;in
+      a word, and after a short time, Mrs. Howard Walker's musical parties began
+      to be considerably suivies. Her husband had the satisfaction to see his
+      rooms filled by many great personages; and once or twice in return
+      (indeed, whenever she was wanted, or when people could not afford to hire
+      the first singers) she was asked to parties elsewhere, and treated with
+      that killing civility which our English aristocracy knows how to bestow on
+      artists. Clever and wise aristocracy! It is sweet to mark your ways, and
+      study your commerce with inferior men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was just going to commence a tirade regarding the aristocracy here, and
+      to rage against that cool assumption of superiority which distinguishes
+      their lordships' commerce with artists of all sorts: that politeness
+      which, if it condescends to receive artists at all, takes care to have
+      them altogether, so that there can be no mistake about their rank&mdash;that
+      august patronage of art which rewards it with a silly flourish of
+      knighthood, to be sure, but takes care to exclude it from any contact with
+      its betters in society&mdash;I was, I say, just going to commence a tirade
+      against the aristocracy for excluding artists from their company, and to
+      be extremely satirical upon them, for instance, for not receiving my
+      friend Morgiana, when it suddenly came into my head to ask, was Mrs.
+      Walker fit to move in the best society?&mdash;to which query it must
+      humbly be replied that she was not. Her education was not such as to make
+      her quite the equal of Baker Street. She was a kind honest and clever
+      creature; but, it must be confessed, not refined. Wherever she went she
+      had, if not the finest, at any rate the most showy gown in the room; her
+      ornaments were the biggest; her hats, toques, berets, marabouts, and other
+      fallals, always the most conspicuous. She drops &ldquo;h's&rdquo; here and there. I
+      have seen her eat peas with a knife (and Walker, scowling on the opposite
+      side of the table, striving in vain to catch her eye); and I shall never
+      forget Lady Smigsmag's horror when she asked for porter at dinner at
+      Richmond, and began to drink it out of the pewter pot. It was a fine
+      sight. She lifted up the tankard with one of the finest arms, covered with
+      the biggest bracelets ever seen; and had a bird of paradise on her head,
+      that curled round the pewter disc of the pot as she raised it, like a
+      halo. These peculiarities she had, and has still. She is best away from
+      the genteel world, that is the fact. When she says that &ldquo;The weather is so
+      'ot that it is quite debiliating;&rdquo; when she laughs, when she hits her
+      neighbour at dinner on the side of the waistcoat (as she will if he should
+      say anything that amuses her), she does what is perfectly natural and
+      unaffected on her part, but what is not customarily done among polite
+      persons, who can sneer at her odd manners and her vanity, but don't know
+      the kindness, honesty, and simplicity which distinguish her. This point
+      being admitted, it follows, of course, that the tirade against the
+      aristocracy would, in the present instance, be out of place&mdash;so it
+      shall be reserved for some other occasion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Ravenswing was a person admirably disposed by nature to be happy. She
+      had a disposition so kindly that any small attention would satisfy it; was
+      pleased when alone; was delighted in a crowd; was charmed with a joke,
+      however old; was always ready to laugh, to sing, to dance, or to be merry;
+      was so tender-hearted that the smallest ballad would make her cry: and
+      hence was supposed, by many persons, to be extremely affected, and by
+      almost all to be a downright coquette. Several competitors for her favour
+      presented themselves besides Baroski. Young dandies used to canter round
+      her phaeton in the park, and might be seen haunting her doors in the
+      mornings. The fashionable artist of the day made a drawing of her, which
+      was engraved and sold in the shops; a copy of it was printed in a song,
+      &ldquo;Black-eyed Maiden of Araby,&rdquo; the words by Desmond Mulligan, Esquire, the
+      music composed and dedicated to MRS. HOWARD WALKER, by her most faithful
+      and obliged servant, Benjamin Baroski; and at night her Opera-box was
+      full. Her Opera-box? Yes, the heiress of the &ldquo;Bootjack&rdquo; actually had an
+      Opera-box, and some of the most fashionable manhood of London attended it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, in fact, was the time of her greatest prosperity; and her husband
+      gathering these fashionable characters about him, extended his &ldquo;agency&rdquo;
+       considerably, and began to thank his stars that he had married a woman who
+      was as good as a fortune to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In extending his agency, however, Mr. Walker increased his expenses
+      proportionably, and multiplied his debts accordingly. More furniture and
+      more plate, more wines and more dinner-parties, became necessary; the
+      little pony-phaeton was exchanged for a brougham of evenings; and we may
+      fancy our old friend Mr. Eglantine's rage and disgust, as he looked from
+      the pit of the Opera, to see Mrs. Walker surrounded by what he called &ldquo;the
+      swell young nobs&rdquo; about London, bowing to my Lord, and laughing with his
+      Grace, and led to carriage by Sir John.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Ravenswing's position at this period was rather an exceptional one.
+      She was an honest woman, visited by that peculiar class of our aristocracy
+      who chiefly associate with ladies who are NOT honest. She laughed with
+      all, but she encouraged none. Old Crump was constantly at her side now
+      when she appeared in public, the most watchful of mammas, always awake at
+      the Opera, though she seemed to be always asleep; but no dandy debauchee
+      could deceive her vigilance, and for this reason Walker, who disliked her
+      (as every man naturally will, must, and should dislike his mother-in-law),
+      was contented to suffer her in his house to act as a chaperon to Morgiana.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      None of the young dandies ever got admission of mornings to the little
+      mansion in the Edgware Road; the blinds were always down; and though you
+      might hear Morgiana's voice half across the Park as she was practising,
+      yet the youthful hall-porter in the sugar-loaf buttons was instructed to
+      deny her, and always declared that his mistress was gone out, with the
+      most admirable assurance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After some two years of her life of splendour, there were, to be sure, a
+      good number of morning visitors, who came with SINGLE knocks, and asked
+      for Captain Walker; but these were no more admitted than the dandies
+      aforesaid, and were referred, generally, to the Captain's office, whither
+      they went or not at their convenience. The only man who obtained admission
+      into the house was Baroski, whose cab transported him thrice a week to the
+      neighbourhood of Connaught Square, and who obtained ready entrance in his
+      professional capacity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But even then, and much to the wicked little music-master's
+      disappointment, the dragon Crump was always at the piano, with her endless
+      worsted work, or else reading her unfailing Sunday Times; and Baroski
+      could only employ &ldquo;de langvitch of de ice,&rdquo; as he called it, with his fair
+      pupil, who used to mimic his manner of rolling his eyes about afterwards,
+      and perform &ldquo;Baroski in love&rdquo; for the amusement of her husband and her
+      mamma. The former had his reasons for overlooking the attentions of the
+      little music-master; and as for the latter, had she not been on the stage,
+      and had not many hundreds of persons, in jest or earnest, made love to
+      her? What else can a pretty woman expect who is much before the public?
+      And so the worthy mother counselled her daughter to bear these attentions
+      with good humour, rather than to make them a subject of perpetual alarm
+      and quarrel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Baroski, then, was allowed to go on being in love, and was never in the
+      least disturbed in his passion; and if he was not successful, at least the
+      little wretch could have the pleasure of HINTING that he was, and looking
+      particularly roguish when the Ravenswing was named, and assuring his
+      friends at the club, that &ldquo;upon his vort dere vas no trut IN DAT REBORT.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At last one day it happened that Mrs. Crump did not arrive in time for her
+      daughter's lesson (perhaps it rained and the omnibus was full&mdash;a
+      smaller circumstance than that has changed a whole life ere now)&mdash;Mrs.
+      Crump did not arrive, and Baroski did, and Morgiana, seeing no great harm,
+      sat down to her lesson as usual, and in the midst of it down went the
+      music-master on his knees, and made a declaration in the most eloquent
+      terms he could muster.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't be a fool, Baroski!&rdquo; said the lady&mdash;(I can't help it if her
+      language was not more choice, and if she did not rise with cold dignity,
+      exclaiming, &ldquo;Unhand me, sir!&rdquo;)&mdash;&ldquo;Don't be a fool!&rdquo; said Mrs. Walker,
+      &ldquo;but get up and let's finish the lesson.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You hard-hearted adorable little greature, vill you not listen to me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I vill not listen to you, Benjamin!&rdquo; concluded the lady. &ldquo;Get up and
+      take a chair, and don't go on in that ridiklous way, don't!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Baroski, having a speech by heart, determined to deliver himself of it
+      in that posture, and begged Morgiana not to turn avay her divine hice, and
+      to listen to de voice of his despair, and so forth; he seized the lady's
+      hand, and was going to press it to his lips, when she said, with more
+      spirit, perhaps, than grace,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Leave go my hand, sir; I'll box your ears if you don't!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Baroski wouldn't release her hand, and was proceeding to imprint a
+      kiss upon it; and Mrs. Crump, who had taken the omnibus at a quarter-past
+      twelve instead of that at twelve, had just opened the drawing-room door
+      and was walking in, when Morgiana, turning as red as a peony, and unable
+      to disengage her left hand, which the musician held, raised up her right
+      hand, and, with all her might and main, gave her lover such a tremendous
+      slap in the face as caused him abruptly to release the hand which he held,
+      and would have laid him prostrate on the carpet but for Mrs. Crump, who
+      rushed forward and prevented him from falling by administering right and
+      left a whole shower of slaps, such as he had never endured since the day
+      he was at school.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What imperence!&rdquo; said that worthy lady; &ldquo;you'll lay hands on my daughter,
+      will you? (one, two). You'll insult a woman in distress, will you, you
+      little coward? (one, two). Take that, and mind your manners, you filthy
+      monster!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Baroski bounced up in a fury. &ldquo;By Chofe, you shall hear of dis!&rdquo; shouted
+      he; &ldquo;you shall pay me dis!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As many more as you please, little Benjamin,&rdquo; cried the widow. &ldquo;Augustus&rdquo;
+       (to the page), &ldquo;was that the Captain's knock?&rdquo; At this Baroski made for
+      his hat. &ldquo;Augustus, show this imperence to the door; and if he tries to
+      come in again, call a policeman: do you hear?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The music-master vanished very rapidly, and the two ladies, instead of
+      being frightened or falling into hysterics, as their betters would have
+      done, laughed at the odious monster's discomfiture, as they called him.
+      &ldquo;Such a man as that set himself up against my Howard!&rdquo; said Morgiana, with
+      becoming pride; but it was agreed between them that Howard should know
+      nothing of what had occurred, for fear of quarrels, or lest he should be
+      annoyed. So when he came home not a word was said; and only that his wife
+      met him with more warmth than usual, you could not have guessed that
+      anything extraordinary had occurred. It is not my fault that my heroine's
+      sensibilities were not more keen, that she had not the least occasion for
+      sal-volatile or symptom of a fainting fit; but so it was, and Mr. Howard
+      Walker knew nothing of the quarrel between his wife and her instructor
+      until&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Until he was arrested next day at the suit of Benjamin Baroski for two
+      hundred and twenty guineas, and, in default of payment, was conducted by
+      Mr. Tobias Larkins to his principal's lock-up house in Chancery Lane.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0005" id="link2HCH0005">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER V. IN WHICH MR. WALKER FALLS INTO DIFFICULTIES, AND MRS. WALKER
+      MAKES MANY FOOLISH ATTEMPTS TO RESCUE HIM.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      I hope the beloved reader is not silly enough to imagine that Mr. Walker,
+      on finding himself inspunged for debt in Chancery Lane, was so foolish as
+      to think of applying to any of his friends (those great personages who
+      have appeared every now and then in the course of this little history, and
+      have served to give it a fashionable air). No, no; he knew the world too
+      well; and that, though Billingsgate would give him as many dozen of claret
+      as he could carry away under his belt, as the phrase is (I can't help it,
+      madam, if the phrase is not more genteel), and though Vauxhall would lend
+      him his carriage, slap him on the back, and dine at his house,&mdash;their
+      lordships would have seen Mr. Walker depending from a beam in front of the
+      Old Bailey rather than have helped him to a hundred pounds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And why, forsooth, should we expect otherwise in the world? I observe that
+      men who complain of its selfishness are quite as selfish as the world is,
+      and no more liberal of money than their neighbours; and I am quite sure
+      with regard to Captain Walker that he would have treated a friend in want
+      exactly as he when in want was treated. There was only his lady who was in
+      the least afflicted by his captivity; and as for the club, that went on,
+      we are bound to say, exactly as it did on the day previous to his
+      disappearance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By the way, about clubs&mdash;could we not, but for fear of detaining the
+      fair reader too long, enter into a wholesome dissertation here on the
+      manner of friendship established in those institutions, and the noble
+      feeling of selfishness which they are likely to encourage in the male
+      race? I put out of the question the stale topics of complaint, such as
+      leaving home, encouraging gormandising and luxurious habits, etc.; but
+      look also at the dealings of club-men with one another. Look at the rush
+      for the evening paper! See how Shiverton orders a fire in the dog-days,
+      and Swettenham opens the windows in February. See how Cramley takes the
+      whole breast of the turkey on his plate, and how many times Jenkins sends
+      away his beggarly half-pint of sherry! Clubbery is organised egotism. Club
+      intimacy is carefully and wonderfully removed from friendship. You meet
+      Smith for twenty years, exchange the day's news with him, laugh with him
+      over the last joke, grow as well acquainted as two men may be together&mdash;and
+      one day, at the end of the list of members of the club, you read in a
+      little paragraph by itself, with all the honours,
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     MEMBER DECEASED.
+     Smith, John, Esq.;
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      or he, on the other hand, has the advantage of reading your own name
+      selected for a similar typographical distinction. There it is, that
+      abominable little exclusive list at the end of every club-catalogue&mdash;you
+      can't avoid it. I belong to eight clubs myself, and know that one year
+      Fitz-Boodle, George Savage, Esq. (unless it should please fate to remove
+      my brother and his six sons, when of course it would be Fitz-Boodle, Sir
+      George Savage, Bart.), will appear in the dismal category. There is that
+      list; down I must go in it:&mdash;the day will come, and I shan't be seen
+      in the bow-window, someone else will be sitting in the vacant armchair:
+      the rubber will begin as usual, and yet somehow Fitz will not be there.
+      &ldquo;Where's Fitz?&rdquo; says Trumpington, just arrived from the Rhine. &ldquo;Don't you
+      know?&rdquo; says Punter, turning down his thumb to the carpet. &ldquo;You led the
+      club, I think?&rdquo; says Ruff to his partner (the OTHER partner!), and the
+      waiter snuffs the candles.
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      I hope in the course of the above little pause, every single member of a
+      club who reads this has profited by the perusal. He may belong, I say, to
+      eight clubs; he will die, and not be missed by any of the five thousand
+      members. Peace be to him; the waiters will forget him, and his name will
+      pass away, and another great-coat will hang on the hook whence his own
+      used to be dependent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And this, I need not say, is the beauty of the club-institutions. If it
+      were otherwise&mdash;if, forsooth, we were to be sorry when our friends
+      died, or to draw out our purses when our friends were in want, we should
+      be insolvent, and life would be miserable. Be it ours to button up our
+      pockets and our hearts; and to make merry&mdash;it is enough to swim down
+      this life-stream for ourselves; if Poverty is clutching hold of our heels,
+      or Friendship would catch an arm, kick them both off. Every man for
+      himself, is the word, and plenty to do too.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My friend Captain Walker had practised the above maxims so long and
+      resolutely as to be quite aware when he came himself to be in distress,
+      that not a single soul in the whole universe would help him, and he took
+      his measures accordingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When carried to Mr. Bendigo's lock-up house, he summoned that gentleman in
+      a very haughty way, took a blank banker's cheque out of his pocket-book,
+      and filling it up for the exact sum of the writ, orders Mr. Bendigo
+      forthwith to open the door and let him go forth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Bendigo, smiling with exceeding archness, and putting a finger covered
+      all over with diamond rings to his extremely aquiline nose, inquired of
+      Mr. Walker whether he saw anything green about his face? intimating by
+      this gay and good-humoured interrogatory his suspicion of the
+      unsatisfactory nature of the document handed over to him by Mr. Walker.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hang it, sir!&rdquo; says Mr. Walker, &ldquo;go and get the cheque cashed, and be
+      quick about it. Send your man in a cab, and here's a half-crown to pay for
+      it.&rdquo; The confident air somewhat staggers the bailiff, who asked him
+      whether he would like any refreshment while his man was absent getting the
+      amount of the cheque, and treated his prisoner with great civility during
+      the time of the messenger's journey.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But as Captain Walker had but a balance of two pounds five and twopence
+      (this sum was afterwards divided among his creditors, the law expenses
+      being previously deducted from it), the bankers of course declined to cash
+      the Captain's draft for two hundred and odd pounds, simply writing the
+      words &ldquo;No effects&rdquo; on the paper; on receiving which reply Walker, far from
+      being cast down, burst out laughing very gaily, produced a real five-pound
+      note, and called upon his host for a bottle of champagne, which the two
+      worthies drank in perfect friendship and good-humour. The bottle was
+      scarcely finished, and the young Israelitish gentleman who acts as waiter
+      in Cursitor Street had only time to remove the flask and the glasses, when
+      poor Morgiana with a flood of tears rushed into her husband's arms, and
+      flung herself on his neck, and calling him her &ldquo;dearest, blessed Howard,&rdquo;
+       would have fainted at his feet; but that he, breaking out in a fury of
+      oaths, asked her how, after getting him into that scrape through her
+      infernal extravagance, she dared to show her face before him? This address
+      speedily frightened the poor thing out of her fainting fit&mdash;there is
+      nothing so good for female hysterics as a little conjugal sternness, nay,
+      brutality, as many husbands can aver who are in the habit of employing the
+      remedy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My extravagance, Howard?&rdquo; said she, in a faint way; and quite put off her
+      purpose of swooning by the sudden attack made upon her&mdash;&ldquo;Surely, my
+      love, you have nothing to complain of&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To complain of, ma'am?&rdquo; roared the excellent Walker. &ldquo;Is two hundred
+      guineas to a music-master nothing to complain of? Did you bring me such a
+      fortune as to authorise your taking guinea lessons? Haven't I raised you
+      out of your sphere of life and introduced you to the best of the land?
+      Haven't I dressed you like a duchess? Haven't I been for you such a
+      husband as very few women in the world ever had, madam?&mdash;answer me
+      that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Indeed, Howard, you were always very kind,&rdquo; sobbed the lady.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Haven't I toiled and slaved for you&mdash;been out all day working for
+      you? Haven't I allowed your vulgar old mother to come to your house&mdash;to
+      my house, I say? Haven't I done all this?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She could not deny it, and Walker, who was in a rage (and when a man is in
+      a rage, for what on earth is a wife made but that he should vent his rage
+      on her?), continued for some time in this strain, and so abused,
+      frightened, and overcame poor Morgiana that she left her husband fully
+      convinced that she was the most guilty of beings, and bemoaning his double
+      bad fortune, that her Howard was ruined and she the cause of his
+      misfortunes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When she was gone, Mr. Walker resumed his equanimity (for he was not one
+      of those men whom a few months of the King's Bench were likely to
+      terrify), and drank several glasses of punch in company with his host;
+      with whom in perfect calmness he talked over his affairs. That he intended
+      to pay his debt and quit the spunging-house next day is a matter of
+      course; no one ever was yet put in a spunging-house that did not pledge
+      his veracity he intended to quit it to-morrow. Mr. Bendigo said he should
+      be heartily glad to open the door to him, and in the meantime sent out
+      diligently to see among his friends if there were any more detainers
+      against the Captain, and to inform the Captain's creditors to come forward
+      against him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Morgiana went home in profound grief, it may be imagined, and could hardly
+      refrain from bursting into tears when the sugar-loaf page asked whether
+      master was coming home early, or whether he had taken his key; she lay
+      awake tossing and wretched the whole night, and very early in the morning
+      rose up, and dressed, and went out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before nine o'clock she was in Cursitor Street, and once more joyfully
+      bounced into her husband's arms; who woke up yawning and swearing
+      somewhat, with a severe headache, occasioned by the jollification of the
+      previous night: for, strange though it may seem, there are perhaps no
+      places in Europe where jollity is more practised than in prisons for debt;
+      and I declare for my own part (I mean, of course, that I went to visit a
+      friend) I have dined at Mr. Aminadab's as sumptuously as at Long's.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But it is necessary to account for Morgiana's joyfulness; which was
+      strange in her husband's perplexity, and after her sorrow of the previous
+      night. Well, then, when Mrs. Walker went out in the morning, she did so
+      with a very large basket under her arm. &ldquo;Shall I carry the basket, ma'am?&rdquo;
+       said the page, seizing it with much alacrity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, thank you,&rdquo; cried his mistress, with equal eagerness: &ldquo;it's only&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course, ma'am,&rdquo; replied the boy, sneering, &ldquo;I knew it was that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Glass,&rdquo; continued Mrs. Walker, turning extremely red. &ldquo;Have the goodness
+      to call a coach, sir, and not to speak till you are questioned.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The young gentleman disappeared upon his errand: the coach was called and
+      came. Mrs. Walker slipped into it with her basket, and the page went
+      downstairs to his companions in the kitchen, and said, &ldquo;It's a-comin'!
+      master's in quod, and missus has gone out to pawn the plate.&rdquo; When the
+      cook went out that day, she somehow had by mistake placed in her basket a
+      dozen of table-knives and a plated egg-stand. When the lady's-maid took a
+      walk in the course of the afternoon, she found she had occasion for eight
+      cambric pocket-handkerchiefs, (marked with her mistress's cipher),
+      half-a-dozen pair of shoes, gloves, long and short, some silk stockings,
+      and a gold-headed scent-bottle. &ldquo;Both the new cashmeres is gone,&rdquo; said
+      she, &ldquo;and there's nothing left in Mrs. Walker's trinket-box but a paper of
+      pins and an old coral bracelet.&rdquo; As for the page, he rushed incontinently
+      to his master's dressing-room and examined every one of the pockets of his
+      clothes; made a parcel of some of them, and opened all the drawers which
+      Walker had not locked before his departure. He only found three-halfpence
+      and a bill stamp, and about forty-five tradesmen's accounts, neatly
+      labelled and tied up with red tape. These three worthies, a groom who was
+      a great admirer of Trimmer the lady's-maid, and a policeman a friend of
+      the cook's, sat down to a comfortable dinner at the usual hour, and it was
+      agreed among them all that Walker's ruin was certain. The cook made the
+      policeman a present of a china punch-bowl which Mrs. Walker had given her;
+      and the lady's-maid gave her friend the &ldquo;Book of Beauty&rdquo; for last year,
+      and the third volume of Byron's poems from the drawing-room table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm dash'd if she ain't taken the little French clock, too,&rdquo; said the
+      page, and so indeed Mrs. Walker had; it slipped in the basket where it lay
+      enveloped in one of her shawls, and then struck madly and unnaturally a
+      great number of times, as Morgiana was lifting her store of treasures out
+      of the hackney-coach. The coachman wagged his head sadly as he saw her
+      walking as quick as she could under her heavy load, and disappearing round
+      the corner of the street at which Mr. Balls's celebrated jewellery
+      establishment is situated. It is a grand shop, with magnificent silver
+      cups and salvers, rare gold-headed canes, flutes, watches, diamond
+      brooches, and a few fine specimens of the old masters in the window, and
+      under the words&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     BALLS, JEWELLER,
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      you read
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+       Money Lent.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      in the very smallest type, on the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The interview with Mr. Balls need not be described; but it must have been
+      a satisfactory one, for at the end of half an hour Morgiana returned and
+      bounded into the coach with sparkling eyes, and told the driver to GALLOP
+      to Cursitor Street; which, smiling, he promised to do, and accordingly set
+      off in that direction at the rate of four miles an hour. &ldquo;I thought so,&rdquo;
+       said the philosophic charioteer. &ldquo;When a man's in quod, a woman don't mind
+      her silver spoons;&rdquo; and he was so delighted with her action, that he
+      forgot to grumble when she came to settle accounts with him, even though
+      she gave him only double his fare.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Take me to him,&rdquo; said she to the young Hebrew who opened the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To whom?&rdquo; says the sarcastic youth; &ldquo;there's twenty HIM'S here. You're
+      precious early.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To Captain Walker, young man,&rdquo; replied Morgiana haughtily; whereupon the
+      youth opening the second door, and seeing Mr. Bendigo in a flowered
+      dressing-gown descending the stairs, exclaimed, &ldquo;Papa, here's a lady for
+      the Captain.&rdquo; &ldquo;I'm come to free him,&rdquo; said she, trembling, and holding out
+      a bundle of bank-notes. &ldquo;Here's the amount of your claim, sir&mdash;two
+      hundred and twenty guineas, as you told me last night.&rdquo; The Jew took the
+      notes, and grinned as he looked at her, and grinned double as he looked at
+      his son, and begged Mrs. Walker to step into his study and take a receipt.
+      When the door of that apartment closed upon the lady and his father, Mr.
+      Bendigo the younger fell back in an agony of laughter, which it is
+      impossible to describe in words, and presently ran out into a court where
+      some of the luckless inmates of the house were already taking the air, and
+      communicated something to them which made those individuals also laugh as
+      uproariously as he had previously done.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Well, after joyfully taking the receipt from Mr. Bendigo (how her cheeks
+      flushed and her heart fluttered as she dried it on the blotting-book!),
+      and after turning very pale again on hearing that the Captain had had a
+      very bad night: &ldquo;And well he might, poor dear!&rdquo; said she (at which Mr.
+      Bendigo, having no person to grin at, grinned at a marble bust of Mr.
+      Pitt, which ornamented his sideboard)&mdash;Morgiana, I say, these
+      preliminaries being concluded, was conducted to her husband's apartment,
+      and once more flinging her arms round her dearest Howard's neck, told him
+      with one of the sweetest smiles in the world, to make haste and get up and
+      come home, for breakfast was waiting and the carriage at the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you mean, love?&rdquo; said the Captain, starting up and looking
+      exceedingly surprised.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I mean that my dearest is free; that the odious little creature is paid&mdash;at
+      least the horrid bailiff is.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you been to Baroski?&rdquo; said Walker, turning very red.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Howard!&rdquo; said his wife, quite indignant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did&mdash;did your mother give you the money?&rdquo; asked the Captain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; I had it by me&rdquo; replies Mrs. Walker, with a very knowing look.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Walker was more surprised than ever. &ldquo;Have you any more by you?&rdquo; said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Walker showed him her purse with two guineas. &ldquo;That is all, love,&rdquo;
+       she said. &ldquo;And I wish,&rdquo; continued she, &ldquo;you would give me a draft to pay a
+      whole list of little bills that have somehow all come in within the last
+      few days.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, well, you shall have the cheque,&rdquo; continued Mr. Walker, and began
+      forthwith to make his toilet, which completed, he rang for Mr. Bendigo,
+      and his bill, and intimated his wish to go home directly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The honoured bailiff brought the bill, but with regard to his being free,
+      said it was impossible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How impossible?&rdquo; said Mrs. Walker, turning very red: and then very pale.
+      &ldquo;Did I not pay just now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So you did, and you've got the reshipt; but there's another detainer
+      against the Captain for a hundred and fifty. Eglantine and Mossrose, of
+      Bond Street;&mdash;perfumery for five years, you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don't mean to say you were such a fool as to pay without asking if
+      there were any more detainers?&rdquo; roared Walker to his wife.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, she was though,&rdquo; chuckled Mr. Bendigo; &ldquo;but she'll know better the
+      next time: and, besides, Captain, what's a hundred and fifty pounds to
+      you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Though Walker desired nothing so much in the world at that moment as the
+      liberty to knock down his wife, his sense of prudence overcame his desire
+      for justice: if that feeling may be called prudence on his part, which
+      consisted in a strong wish to cheat the bailiff into the idea that he
+      (Walker) was an exceedingly respectable and wealthy man. Many worthy
+      persons indulge in this fond notion, that they are imposing upon the
+      world; strive to fancy, for instance, that their bankers consider them men
+      of property because they keep a tolerable balance, pay little tradesmen's
+      bills with ostentatious punctuality, and so forth&mdash;but the world, let
+      us be pretty sure, is as wise as need be, and guesses our real condition
+      with a marvellous instinct, or learns it with curious skill. The London
+      tradesman is one of the keenest judges of human nature extant; and if a
+      tradesman, how much more a bailiff? In reply to the ironic question,
+      &ldquo;What's a hundred and fifty pounds to you?&rdquo; Walker, collecting himself,
+      answers, &ldquo;It is an infamous imposition, and I owe the money no more than
+      you do; but, nevertheless, I shall instruct my lawyers to pay it in the
+      course of the morning: under protest, of course.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, of course,&rdquo; said Mr. Bendigo, bowing and quitting the room, and
+      leaving Mrs. Walker to the pleasure of a tete-a-tete with her husband.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And now being alone with the partner of his bosom, the worthy gentleman
+      began an address to her which cannot be put down on paper here; because
+      the world is exceedingly squeamish, and does not care to hear the whole
+      truth about rascals, and because the fact is that almost every other word
+      of the Captain's speech was a curse, such as would shock the beloved
+      reader were it put in print.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fancy, then, in lieu of the conversation, a scoundrel, disappointed and in
+      a fury, wreaking his brutal revenge upon an amiable woman, who sits
+      trembling and pale, and wondering at this sudden exhibition of wrath.
+      Fancy how he clenches his fists and stands over her, and stamps and
+      screams out curses with a livid face, growing wilder and wilder in his
+      rage; wrenching her hand when she wants to turn away, and only stopping at
+      last when she has fallen off the chair in a fainting fit, with a
+      heart-breaking sob that made the Jew-boy who was listening at the key-hole
+      turn quite pale and walk away. Well, it is best, perhaps, that such a
+      conversation should not be told at length:&mdash;at the end of it, when
+      Mr. Walker had his wife lifeless on the floor, he seized a water-jug and
+      poured it over her; which operation pretty soon brought her to herself,
+      and shaking her black ringlets, she looked up once more again timidly into
+      his face, and took his hand, and began to cry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He spoke now in a somewhat softer voice, and let her keep paddling on with
+      his hand as before; he COULDN'T speak very fiercely to the poor girl in
+      her attitude of defeat, and tenderness, and supplication. &ldquo;Morgiana,&rdquo; said
+      he, &ldquo;your extravagance and carelessness have brought me to ruin, I'm
+      afraid. If you had chosen to have gone to Baroski, a word from you would
+      have made him withdraw the writ, and my property wouldn't have been
+      sacrificed, as it has now been, for nothing. It mayn't be yet too late,
+      however, to retrieve ourselves. This bill of Eglantine's is a regular
+      conspiracy, I am sure, between Mossrose and Bendigo here: you must go to
+      Eglantine&mdash;he's an old&mdash;an old flame of yours, you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She dropped his hand: &ldquo;I can't go to Eglantine after what has passed
+      between us,&rdquo; she said; but Walker's face instantly began to wear a certain
+      look, and she said with a shudder, &ldquo;Well, well, dear, I WILL go.&rdquo; &ldquo;You
+      will go to Eglantine, and ask him to take a bill for the amount of this
+      shameful demand&mdash;at any date, never mind what. Mind, however, to see
+      him alone, and I'm sure if you choose you can settle the business. Make
+      haste; set off directly, and come back, as there may be more detainers
+      in.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Trembling, and in a great flutter, Morgiana put on her bonnet and gloves,
+      and went towards the door. &ldquo;It's a fine morning,&rdquo; said Mr. Walker, looking
+      out: &ldquo;a walk will do you good; and&mdash;Morgiana&mdash;didn't you say you
+      had a couple of guineas in your pocket?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here it is,&rdquo; said she, smiling all at once, and holding up her face to be
+      kissed. She paid the two guineas for the kiss. Was it not a mean act? &ldquo;Is
+      it possible that people can love where they do not respect?&rdquo; says Miss
+      Prim: &ldquo;<i>I</i> never would.&rdquo; Nobody asked you, Miss Prim: but recollect
+      Morgiana was not born with your advantages of education and breeding; and
+      was, in fact, a poor vulgar creature, who loved Mr. Walker, not because
+      her mamma told her, nor because he was an exceedingly eligible and
+      well-brought-up young man, but because she could not help it, and knew no
+      better. Nor is Mrs. Walker set up as a model of virtue: ah, no! when I
+      want a model of virtue I will call in Baker Street, and ask for a sitting
+      of my dear (if I may be permitted to say so) Miss Prim.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We have Mr. Howard Walker safely housed in Mr. Bendigo's establishment in
+      Cursitor Street, Chancery Lane; and it looks like mockery and want of
+      feeling towards the excellent hero of this story (or, as should rather be
+      said, towards the husband of the heroine) to say what he might have been
+      but for the unlucky little circumstance of Baroski's passion for Morgiana.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If Baroski had not fallen in love with Morgiana, he would not have given
+      her two hundred guineas' worth of lessons; he would not have so far
+      presumed as to seize her hand, and attempt to kiss it; if he had not
+      attempted to kiss her, she would not have boxed his ears; he would not
+      have taken out the writ against Walker; Walker would have been free, very
+      possibly rich, and therefore certainly respected: he always said that a
+      month's more liberty would have set him beyond the reach of misfortune.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The assertion is very likely a correct one; for Walker had a flashy
+      enterprising genius, which ends in wealth sometimes; in the King's Bench
+      not seldom; occasionally, alas! in Van Diemen's Land. He might have been
+      rich, could he have kept his credit, and had not his personal expenses and
+      extravagances pulled him down. He had gallantly availed himself of his
+      wife's fortune; nor could any man in London, as he proudly said, have made
+      five hundred pounds go so far. He had, as we have seen, furnished a house,
+      sideboard, and cellar with it: he had a carriage, and horses in his
+      stable, and with the remainder he had purchased shares in four companies&mdash;of
+      three of which he was founder and director, had conducted innumerable
+      bargains in the foreign stocks, had lived and entertained sumptuously, and
+      made himself a very considerable income. He had set up THE CAPITOL Loan
+      and Life Assurance Company, had discovered the Chimborazo gold mines, and
+      the Society for Recovering and Draining the Pontine Marshes; capital ten
+      millions; patron HIS HOLINESS THE POPE. It certainly was stated in an
+      evening paper that His Holiness had made him a Knight of the Spur, and had
+      offered to him the rank of Count; and he was raising a loan for His
+      Highness, the Cacique of Panama, who had sent him (by way of dividend) the
+      grand cordon of His Highness's order of the Castle and Falcon, which might
+      be seen any day at his office in Bond Street, with the parchments signed
+      and sealed by the Grand Master and Falcon King-at-arms of His Highness. In
+      a week more Walker would have raised a hundred thousand pounds on His
+      Highness's twenty per cent. loan; he would have had fifteen thousand
+      pounds commission for himself; his companies would have risen to par, he
+      would have realised his shares; he would have gone into Parliament; he
+      would have been made a baronet, who knows? a peer, probably! &ldquo;And I appeal
+      to you, sir,&rdquo; Walker would say to his friends, &ldquo;could any man have shown
+      better proof of his affection for his wife than by laying out her little
+      miserable money as I did? They call me heartless, sir, because I didn't
+      succeed; sir, my life has been a series of sacrifices for that woman, such
+      as no man ever performed before.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A proof of Walker's dexterity and capability for business may be seen in
+      the fact that he had actually appeased and reconciled one of his bitterest
+      enemies&mdash;our honest friend Eglantine. After Walker's marriage
+      Eglantine, who had now no mercantile dealings with his former agent,
+      became so enraged with him, that, as the only means of revenge in his
+      power, he sent him in his bill for goods supplied to the amount of one
+      hundred and fifty guineas, and sued him for the amount. But Walker stepped
+      boldly over to his enemy, and in the course of half an hour they were
+      friends.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Eglantine promised to forego his claim; and accepted in lieu of it three
+      hundred-pound shares of the ex-Panama stock, bearing twenty-five per
+      cent., payable half-yearly at the house of Hocus Brothers, St. Swithin's
+      Lane; three hundred-pound shares, and the SECOND class of the order of the
+      Castle and Falcon, with the riband and badge. &ldquo;In four years, Eglantine,
+      my boy, I hope to get you the Grand Cordon of the order,&rdquo; said Walker: &ldquo;I
+      hope to see you a KNIGHT GRAND CROSS, with a grant of a hundred thousand
+      acres reclaimed from the Isthmus.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      To do my poor Eglantine justice, he did not care for the hundred thousand
+      acres&mdash;it was the star that delighted him&mdash;ah! how his fat chest
+      heaved with delight as he sewed on the cross and riband to his dress-coat,
+      and lighted up four wax candles and looked at himself in the glass. He was
+      known to wear a great-coat after that&mdash;it was that he might wear the
+      cross under it. That year he went on a trip to Boulogne. He was dreadfully
+      ill during the voyage, but as the vessel entered the port he was seen to
+      emerge from the cabin, his coat open, the star blazing on his chest; the
+      soldiers saluted him as he walked the streets, he was called Monsieur le
+      Chevalier, and when he went home he entered into negotiations with Walker
+      to purchase a commission in His Highness's service. Walker said he would
+      get him the nominal rank of Captain, the fees at the Panama War Office
+      were five-and-twenty pounds, which sum honest Eglantine produced, and had
+      his commission, and a pack of visiting cards printed as Captain Archibald
+      Eglantine, K.C.F. Many a time he looked at them as they lay in his desk,
+      and he kept the cross in his dressing-table, and wore it as he shaved
+      every morning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His Highness the Cacique, it is well known, came to England, and had
+      lodgings in Regent Street, where he held a levee, at which Eglantine
+      appeared in the Panama uniform, and was most graciously received by his
+      Sovereign. His Highness proposed to make Captain Eglantine his
+      aide-de-camp with the rank of Colonel, but the Captain's exchequer was
+      rather low at that moment, and the fees at the &ldquo;War Office&rdquo; were
+      peremptory. Meanwhile His Highness left Regent Street, was said by some to
+      have returned to Panama, by others to be in his native city of Cork, by
+      others to be leading a life of retirement in the New Cut, Lambeth; at any
+      rate was not visible for some time, so that Captain Eglantine's
+      advancement did not take place. Eglantine was somehow ashamed to mention
+      his military and chivalric rank to Mr. Mossrose, when that gentleman came
+      into partnership with him; and kept these facts secret, until they were
+      detected by a very painful circumstance. On the very day when Walker was
+      arrested at the suit of Benjamin Baroski, there appeared in the newspapers
+      an account of the imprisonment of His Highness the Prince of Panama for a
+      bill owing to a licensed victualler in Ratcliff Highway. The magistrate to
+      whom the victualler subsequently came to complain passed many pleasantries
+      on the occasion. He asked whether His Highness did not drink like a swan
+      with two necks; whether he had brought any Belles savages with him from
+      Panama, and so forth; and the whole court, said the report, &ldquo;was convulsed
+      with laughter when Boniface produced a green and yellow riband with a
+      large star of the order of the Castle and Falcon, with which His Highness
+      proposed to gratify him, in lieu of paying his little bill.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was as he was reading the above document with a bleeding heart that Mr.
+      Mossrose came in from his daily walk to the City. &ldquo;Vell, Eglantine,&rdquo; says
+      he, &ldquo;have you heard the newsh?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;About His Highness?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;About your friend Valker; he's arrested for two hundred poundsh!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Eglantine at this could contain no more; but told his story of how he had
+      been induced to accept three hundred pounds of Panama stock for his
+      account against Walker, and cursed his stars for his folly. &ldquo;Vell, you've
+      only to bring in another bill,&rdquo; said the younger perfumer; &ldquo;swear he owes
+      you a hundred and fifty pounds, and we'll have a writ out against him this
+      afternoon.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And so a second writ was taken out against Captain Walker.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'll have his wife here very likely in a day or two,&rdquo; said Mr. Mossrose
+      to his partner; &ldquo;them chaps always sends their wives, and I hope you know
+      how to deal with her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't value her a fig's hend,&rdquo; said Eglantine. &ldquo;I'll treat her like the
+      dust of the hearth. After that woman's conduct to me, I should like to see
+      her have the haudacity to come here; and if she does, you'll see how I'll
+      serve her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The worthy perfumer was, in fact, resolved to be exceedingly hard-hearted
+      in his behaviour towards his old love, and acted over at night in bed the
+      scene which was to occur when the meeting should take place. Oh, thought
+      he, but it will be a grand thing to see the proud Morgiana on her knees to
+      me; and me a-pointing to the door, and saying, &ldquo;Madam, you've steeled this
+      'eart against you, you have;&mdash;bury the recollection of old times, of
+      those old times when I thought my 'eart would have broke, but it didn't&mdash;no:
+      'earts are made of sterner stuff. I didn't die, as I thought I should; I
+      stood it, and live to see the woman I despised at my feet&mdash;ha, ha, at
+      my feet!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In the midst of these thoughts Mr. Eglantine fell asleep; but it was
+      evident that the idea of seeing Morgiana once more agitated him
+      considerably, else why should he have been at the pains of preparing so
+      much heroism? His sleep was exceedingly fitful and troubled; he saw
+      Morgiana in a hundred shapes; he dreamed that he was dressing her hair;
+      that he was riding with her to Richmond; that the horse turned into a
+      dragon, and Morgiana into Woolsey, who took him by the throat and choked
+      him, while the dragon played the key-bugle. And in the morning when
+      Mossrose was gone to his business in the City, and he sat reading the
+      Morning Post in his study, ah! what a thump his heart gave as the lady of
+      his dreams actually stood before him!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Many a lady who purchased brushes at Eglantine's shop would have given ten
+      guineas for such a colour as his when he saw her. His heart beat
+      violently, he was almost choking in his stays: he had been prepared for
+      the visit, but his courage failed him now it had come. They were both
+      silent for some minutes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know what I am come for,&rdquo; at last said Morgiana from under her veil,
+      but she put it aside as she spoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&mdash;that is&mdash;yes&mdash;it's a painful affair, mem,&rdquo; he said,
+      giving one look at her pale face, and then turning away in a flurry. &ldquo;I
+      beg to refer you to Blunt, Hone, and Sharpus, my lawyers, mem,&rdquo; he added,
+      collecting himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn't expect this from YOU, Mr. Eglantine,&rdquo; said the lady, and began
+      to sob.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And after what's 'appened, I didn't expect a visit from YOU, mem. I
+      thought Mrs. Capting Walker was too great a dame to visit poor Harchibald
+      Eglantine (though some of the first men in the country DO visit him). Is
+      there anything in which I can oblige you, mem?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O heavens!&rdquo; cried the poor woman; &ldquo;have I no friend left? I never thought
+      that you, too, would have deserted me, Mr. Archibald.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The &ldquo;Archibald,&rdquo; pronounced in the old way, had evidently an effect on the
+      perfumer; he winced and looked at her very eagerly for a moment. &ldquo;What can
+      I do for you, mem?&rdquo; at last said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is this bill against Mr. Walker, for which he is now in prison?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perfumery supplied for five years; that man used more 'air-brushes than
+      any duke in the land, and as for eau-de-Cologne, he must have bathed
+      himself in it. He hordered me about like a lord. He never paid me one
+      shilling&mdash;he stabbed me in my most vital part&mdash;but ah! ah! never
+      mind THAT: and I said I would be revenged, and I AM.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The perfumer was quite in a rage again by this time, and wiped his fat
+      face with his pocket-handkerchief, and glared upon Mrs. Walker with a most
+      determined air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Revenged on whom? Archibald&mdash;Mr. Eglantine, revenged on me&mdash;on
+      a poor woman whom you made miserable! You would not have done so once.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ha! and a precious way you treated me ONCE,&rdquo; said Eglantine: &ldquo;don't talk
+      to me, mem, of ONCE. Bury the recollection of once for hever! I thought my
+      'eart would have broke once, but no: 'earts are made of sterner stuff. I
+      didn't die, as I thought I should; I stood it&mdash;and I live to see the
+      woman who despised me at my feet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Archibald!&rdquo; was all the lady could say, and she fell to sobbing
+      again: it was perhaps her best argument with the perfumer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Harchibald, indeed!&rdquo; continued he, beginning to swell; &ldquo;don't call me
+      Harchibald, Morgiana. Think what a position you might have held if you'd
+      chose: when, when&mdash;you MIGHT have called me Harchibald. Now it's no
+      use,&rdquo; added he, with harrowing pathos; &ldquo;but, though I've been wronged, I
+      can't bear to see women in tears&mdash;tell me what I can do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear good Mr. Eglantine, send to your lawyers and stop this horrid
+      prosecution&mdash;take Mr. Walker's acknowledgment for the debt. If he is
+      free, he is sure to have a very large sum of money in a few days, and will
+      pay you all. Do not ruin him&mdash;do not ruin me by persisting now. Be
+      the old kind Eglantine you were.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Eglantine took a hand, which Morgiana did not refuse; he thought about old
+      times. He had known her since childhood almost; as a girl he dandled her
+      on his knee at the &ldquo;Kidneys;&rdquo; as a woman he had adored her&mdash;his heart
+      was melted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He did pay me in a sort of way,&rdquo; reasoned the perfumer with himself&mdash;&ldquo;these
+      bonds, though they are not worth much, I took 'em for better or for worse,
+      and I can't bear to see her crying, and to trample on a woman in distress.
+      Morgiana,&rdquo; he added, in a loud cheerful voice, &ldquo;cheer up; I'll give you a
+      release for your husband: I WILL be the old kind Eglantine I was.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Be the old kind jackass you vash!&rdquo; here roared a voice that made Mr.
+      Eglantine start. &ldquo;Vy, vat an old fat fool you are, Eglantine, to give up
+      our just debts because a voman comes snivelling and crying to you&mdash;and
+      such a voman, too!&rdquo; exclaimed Mr. Mossrose, for his was the voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Such a woman, sir?&rdquo; cried the senior partner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; such a woman&mdash;vy, didn't she jilt you herself?&mdash;hasn't she
+      been trying the same game with Baroski; and are you so green as to give up
+      a hundred and fifty pounds because she takes a fancy to come vimpering
+      here? I won't, I can tell you. The money's as much mine as it is yours,
+      and I'll have it or keep Walker's body, that's what I will.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At the presence of his partner, the timid good genius of Eglantine, which
+      had prompted him to mercy and kindness, at once outspread its frightened
+      wings and flew away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You see how it is, Mrs. W.,&rdquo; said he, looking down; &ldquo;it's an affair of
+      business&mdash;in all these here affairs of business Mr. Mossrose is the
+      managing man; ain't you, Mr. Mossrose?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A pretty business it would be if I wasn't,&rdquo; replied Mossrose, doggedly.
+      &ldquo;Come, ma'am,&rdquo; says he, &ldquo;I'll tell you vat I do: I take fifty per shent;
+      not a farthing less&mdash;give me that, and out your husband goes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, sir, Howard will pay you in a week.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Vell, den, let him stop at my uncle Bendigo's for a week, and come out
+      den&mdash;he's very comfortable there,&rdquo; said Shylock with a grin. &ldquo;Hadn't
+      you better go to the shop, Mr. Eglantine,&rdquo; continued he, &ldquo;and look after
+      your business? Mrs. Walker can't want you to listen to her all day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Eglantine was glad of the excuse, and slunk out of the studio; not into
+      the shop, but into his parlour; where he drank off a great glass of
+      maraschino, and sat blushing and exceedingly agitated, until Mossrose came
+      to tell him that Mrs. W. was gone, and wouldn't trouble him any more. But
+      although he drank several more glasses of maraschino, and went to the play
+      that night, and to the Cider-cellars afterwards, neither the liquor, nor
+      the play, nor the delightful comic songs at the cellars, could drive Mrs.
+      Walker out of his head, and the memory of old times, and the image of her
+      pale weeping face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Morgiana tottered out of the shop, scarcely heeding the voice of Mr.
+      Mossrose, who said, &ldquo;I'll take forty per shent&rdquo; (and went back to his duty
+      cursing himself for a soft-hearted fool for giving up so much of his
+      rights to a puling woman). Morgiana, I say, tottered out of the shop, and
+      went up Conduit Street, weeping, weeping with all her eyes. She was quite
+      faint, for she had taken nothing that morning but the glass of water which
+      the pastry-cook in the Strand had given her, and was forced to take hold
+      of the railings of a house for support just as a little gentleman with a
+      yellow handkerchief under his arm was issuing from the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good heavens, Mrs. Walker!&rdquo; said the gentleman. It was no other than Mr.
+      Woolsey, who was going forth to try a body-coat for a customer. &ldquo;Are you
+      ill?&mdash;what's the matter?&mdash;for God's sake come in!&rdquo; and he took
+      her arm under his, and led her into his back-parlour, and seated her, and
+      had some wine and water before her in one minute, before she had said one
+      single word regarding herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As soon as she was somewhat recovered, and with the interruption of a
+      thousand sobs, the poor thing told as well as she could her little story.
+      Mr. Eglantine had arrested Mr. Walker: she had been trying to gain time
+      for him; Eglantine had refused.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The hard-hearted cowardly brute to refuse HER anything!&rdquo; said loyal Mr.
+      Woolsey. &ldquo;My dear,&rdquo; says he, &ldquo;I've no reason to love your husband, and I
+      know too much about him to respect him; but I love and respect YOU, and
+      will spend my last shilling to serve you.&rdquo; At which Morgiana could only
+      take his hand and cry a great deal more than ever. She said Mr. Walker
+      would have a great deal of money in a week, that he was the best of
+      husbands, and she was sure Mr. Woolsey would think better of him when he
+      knew him; that Mr. Eglantine's bill was one hundred and fifty pounds, but
+      that Mr. Mossrose would take forty per cent. if Mr. Woolsey could say how
+      much that was.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll pay a thousand pound to do you good,&rdquo; said Mr. Woolsey, bouncing up;
+      &ldquo;stay here for ten minutes, my dear, until my return, and all shall be
+      right, as you will see.&rdquo; He was back in ten minutes, and had called a cab
+      from the stand opposite (all the coachmen there had seen and commented on
+      Mrs. Walker's woebegone looks), and they were off for Cursitor Street in a
+      moment. &ldquo;They'll settle the whole debt for twenty pounds,&rdquo; said he, and
+      showed an order to that effect from Mr. Mossrose to Mr. Bendigo,
+      empowering the latter to release Walker on receiving Mr. Woolsey's
+      acknowledgment for the above sum.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's no use paying it,&rdquo; said Mr. Walker, doggedly; &ldquo;it would only be
+      robbing you, Mr. Woolsey&mdash;seven more detainers have come in while my
+      wife has been away. I must go through the court now; but,&rdquo; he added in a
+      whisper to the tailor, &ldquo;my good sir, my debts of HONOUR are sacred, and if
+      you will have the goodness to lend ME the twenty pounds, I pledge you my
+      word as a gentleman to return it when I come out of quod.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It is probable that Mr. Woolsey declined this; for, as soon as he was
+      gone, Walker, in a tremendous fury, began cursing his wife for dawdling
+      three hours on the road. &ldquo;Why the deuce, ma'am, didn't you take a cab?&rdquo;
+       roared he, when he heard she had walked to Bond Street. &ldquo;Those writs have
+      only been in half an hour, and I might have been off but for you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Howard,&rdquo; said she, &ldquo;didn't you take&mdash;didn't I give you my&mdash;my
+      last shilling?&rdquo; and fell back and wept again more bitterly than ever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, love,&rdquo; said her amiable husband, turning rather red, &ldquo;never mind,
+      it wasn't your fault. It is but going through the court. It is no great
+      odds. I forgive you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0006" id="link2HCH0006">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VI. IN WHICH MR. WALKER STILL REMAINS IN DIFFICULTIES, BUT SHOWS
+      GREAT RESIGNATION UNDER HIS MISFORTUNES.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The exemplary Walker, seeing that escape from his enemies was hopeless,
+      and that it was his duty as a man to turn on them and face them, now
+      determined to quit the splendid though narrow lodgings which Mr. Bendigo
+      had provided for him, and undergo the martyrdom of the Fleet. Accordingly,
+      in company with that gentleman, he came over to Her Majesty's prison, and
+      gave himself into the custody of the officers there; and did not apply for
+      the accommodation of the Rules (by which in those days the captivity of
+      some debtors was considerably lightened), because he knew perfectly well
+      that there was no person in the wide world who would give a security for
+      the heavy sums for which Walker was answerable. What these sums were is no
+      matter, and on this head we do not think it at all necessary to satisfy
+      the curiosity of the reader. He may have owed hundreds&mdash;thousands,
+      his creditors only can tell; he paid the dividend which has been formerly
+      mentioned, and showed thereby his desire to satisfy all claims upon him to
+      the uttermost farthing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As for the little house in Connaught Square, when, after quitting her
+      husband, Morgiana drove back thither, the door was opened by the page, who
+      instantly thanked her to pay his wages; and in the drawing-room, on a
+      yellow satin sofa, sat a seedy man (with a pot of porter beside him placed
+      on an album for fear of staining the rosewood table), and the seedy man
+      signified that he had taken possession of the furniture in execution for a
+      judgment debt. Another seedy man was in the dining-room, reading a
+      newspaper, and drinking gin; he informed Mrs. Walker that he was the
+      representative of another judgment debt and of another execution:&mdash;&ldquo;There's
+      another on 'em in the kitchen,&rdquo; said the page, &ldquo;taking an inwentory of the
+      furniture; and he swears he'll have you took up for swindling, for pawning
+      the plate.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sir,&rdquo; said Mr. Woolsey, for that worthy man had conducted Morgiana home&mdash;&ldquo;sir,&rdquo;
+       said he, shaking his stick at the young page, &ldquo;if you give any more of
+      your impudence, I'll beat every button off your jacket:&rdquo; and as there were
+      some four hundred of these ornaments, the page was silent. It was a great
+      mercy for Morgiana that the honest and faithful tailor had accompanied
+      her. The good fellow had waited very patiently for her for an hour in the
+      parlour or coffee-room of the lock-up house, knowing full well that she
+      would want a protector on her way homewards; and his kindness will be more
+      appreciated when it is stated that, during the time of his delay in the
+      coffee-room, he had been subject to the entreaties, nay, to the insults,
+      of Cornet Fipkin of the Blues, who was in prison at the suit of Linsey,
+      Woolsey and Co., and who happened to be taking his breakfast in the
+      apartment when his obdurate creditor entered it. The Cornet (a hero of
+      eighteen, who stood at least five feet three in his boots, and owed
+      fifteen thousand pounds) was so enraged at the obduracy of his creditor
+      that he said he would have thrown him out of the window but for the bars
+      which guarded it; and entertained serious thoughts of knocking the
+      tailor's head off, but that the latter, putting his right leg forward and
+      his fists in a proper attitude, told the young officer to &ldquo;come on;&rdquo; on
+      which the Cornet cursed the tailor for a &ldquo;snob,&rdquo; and went back to his
+      breakfast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The execution people having taken charge of Mr. Walker's house, Mrs.
+      Walker was driven to take refuge with her mamma near &ldquo;Sadler's Wells,&rdquo; and
+      the Captain remained comfortably lodged in the Fleet. He had some ready
+      money, and with it managed to make his existence exceedingly comfortable.
+      He lived with the best society of the place, consisting of several
+      distinguished young noblemen and gentlemen. He spent the morning playing
+      at fives and smoking cigars; the evening smoking cigars and dining
+      comfortably. Cards came after dinner; and, as the Captain was an
+      experienced player, and near a score of years older than most of his
+      friends, he was generally pretty successful: indeed, if he had received
+      all the money that was owed to him, he might have come out of prison and
+      paid his creditors twenty shillings in the pound&mdash;that is, if he had
+      been minded to do so. But there is no use in examining into that point too
+      closely, for the fact is, young Fipkin only paid him forty pounds out of
+      seven hundred, for which he gave him I.O.U.'s; Algernon Deuceace not only
+      did not pay him three hundred and twenty which he lost at blind hookey,
+      but actually borrowed seven and sixpence in money from Walker, which has
+      never been repaid to this day; and Lord Doublequits actually lost nineteen
+      thousand pounds to him at heads and tails, which he never paid, pleading
+      drunkenness and his minority. The reader may recollect a paragraph which
+      went the round of the papers entitled&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Affair of honour in the Fleet Prison.&mdash;Yesterday morning (behind the
+      pump in the second court) Lord D-bl-qu-ts and Captain H-w-rd W-lk-r (a
+      near relative, we understand, of his Grace the Duke of N-rf-lk) had a
+      hostile meeting and exchanged two shots. These two young sprigs of
+      nobility were attended to the ground by Major Flush, who, by the way, is
+      FLUSH no longer, and Captain Pam, late of the &mdash;&mdash; Dragoons.
+      Play is said to have been the cause of the quarrel, and the gallant
+      Captain is reported to have handled the noble lord's nose rather roughly
+      at one stage of the transactions.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When Morgiana at &ldquo;Sadler's Wells&rdquo; heard these news, she was ready to faint
+      with terror; and rushed to the Fleet Prison, and embraced her lord and
+      master with her usual expansion and fits of tears: very much to that
+      gentleman's annoyance, who happened to be in company with Pain and Flush
+      at the time, and did not care that his handsome wife should be seen too
+      much in the dubious precincts of the Fleet. He had at least so much shame
+      about him, and had always rejected her entreaties to be allowed to inhabit
+      the prison with him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is enough,&rdquo; would he say, casting his eyes heavenward, and with a most
+      lugubrious countenance&mdash;&ldquo;it is enough, Morgiana, that <i>I</i> should
+      suffer, even though your thoughtlessness has been the cause of my ruin.
+      But enough of THAT! I will not rebuke you for faults for which I know you
+      are now repentant; and I never could bear to see you in the midst of the
+      miseries of this horrible place. Remain at home with your mother, and let
+      me drag on the weary days here alone. If you can get me any more of that
+      pale sherry, my love, do. I require something to cheer me in solitude, and
+      have found my chest very much relieved by that wine. Put more pepper and
+      eggs, my dear, into the next veal-pie you make me. I can't eat the
+      horrible messes in the coffee-room here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was Walker's wish, I can't tell why, except that it is the wish of a
+      great number of other persons in this strange world, to make his wife
+      believe that he was wretched in mind and ill in health; and all assertions
+      to this effect the simple creature received with numberless tears of
+      credulity: she would go home to Mrs. Crump, and say how her darling Howard
+      was pining away, how he was ruined for HER, and with what angelic
+      sweetness he bore his captivity. The fact is, he bore it with so much
+      resignation that no other person in the world could see that he was
+      unhappy. His life was undisturbed by duns; his day was his own from
+      morning till night; his diet was good, his acquaintances jovial, his purse
+      tolerably well supplied, and he had not one single care to annoy him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Crump and Woolsey, perhaps, received Morgiana's account of her
+      husband's miseries with some incredulity. The latter was now a daily
+      visitor to &ldquo;Sadler's Wells.&rdquo; His love for Morgiana had become a warm
+      fatherly generous regard for her; it was out of the honest fellow's cellar
+      that the wine used to come which did so much good to Mr. Walker's chest;
+      and he tried a thousand ways to make Morgiana happy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A very happy day, indeed, it was when, returning from her visit to the
+      Fleet, she found in her mother's sitting-room her dear grand rosewood
+      piano, and every one of her music-books, which the kind-hearted tailor had
+      purchased at the sale of Walker's effects. And I am not ashamed to say
+      that Morgiana herself was so charmed, that when, as usual, Mr. Woolsey
+      came to drink tea in the evening, she actually gave him a kiss; which
+      frightened Mr. Woolsey, and made him blush exceedingly. She sat down, and
+      played him that evening every one of the songs which he liked&mdash;the
+      OLD songs&mdash;none of your Italian stuff. Podmore, the old music-master,
+      was there too, and was delighted and astonished at the progress in singing
+      which Morgiana had made; and when the little party separated, he took Mr.
+      Woolsey by the hand, and said, &ldquo;Give me leave to tell you, sir, that
+      you're a TRUMP.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That he is,&rdquo; said Canterfield, the first tragic; &ldquo;an honour to human
+      nature. A man whose hand is open as day to melting charity, and whose
+      heart ever melts at the tale of woman's distress.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pooh, pooh, stuff and nonsense, sir,&rdquo; said the tailor; but, upon my word,
+      Mr. Canterfield's words were perfectly correct. I wish as much could be
+      said in favour of Woolsey's old rival, Mr. Eglantine, who attended the
+      sale too, but it was with a horrid kind of satisfaction at the thought
+      that Walker was ruined. He bought the yellow satin sofa before mentioned,
+      and transferred it to what he calls his &ldquo;sitting-room,&rdquo; where it is to
+      this day, bearing many marks of the best bear's grease. Woolsey bid
+      against Baroski for the piano, very nearly up to the actual value of the
+      instrument, when the artist withdrew from competition; and when he was
+      sneering at the ruin of Mr. Walker, the tailor sternly interrupted him by
+      saying, &ldquo;What the deuce are YOU sneering at? You did it, sir; and you're
+      paid every shilling of your claim, ain't you?&rdquo; On which Baroski turned
+      round to Miss Larkins, and said, Mr. Woolsey was a &ldquo;snop;&rdquo; the very word,
+      though pronounced somewhat differently, which the gallant Cornet Fipkin
+      had applied to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Well; so he WAS a snob. But, vulgar as he was, I declare, for my part,
+      that I have a greater respect for Mr. Woolsey than for any single nobleman
+      or gentleman mentioned in this true history.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It will be seen from the names of Messrs. Canterfield and Podmore that
+      Morgiana was again in the midst of the widow Crump's favourite theatrical
+      society; and this, indeed, was the case. The widow's little room was hung
+      round with the pictures which were mentioned at the commencement of the
+      story as decorating the bar of the &ldquo;Bootjack;&rdquo; and several times in a week
+      she received her friends from &ldquo;The Wells,&rdquo; and entertained them with such
+      humble refreshments of tea and crumpets as her modest means permitted her
+      to purchase. Among these persons Morgiana lived and sang quite as
+      contentedly as she had ever done among the demireps of her husband's
+      society; and, only she did not dare to own it to herself, was a great deal
+      happier than she had been for many a day. Mrs. Captain Walker was still a
+      great lady amongst them. Even in his ruin, Walker, the director of three
+      companies, and the owner of the splendid pony-chaise, was to these simple
+      persons an awful character; and when mentioned they talked with a great
+      deal of gravity of his being in the country, and hoped Mrs. Captain W. had
+      good news of him. They all knew he was in the Fleet; but had he not in
+      prison fought a duel with a viscount? Montmorency (of the Norfolk Circuit)
+      was in the Fleet too; and when Canterfield went to see poor Montey, the
+      latter had pointed out Walker to his friend, who actually hit Lord George
+      Tennison across the shoulders in play with a racket-bat; which event was
+      soon made known to the whole green-room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They had me up one day,&rdquo; said Montmorency, &ldquo;to sing a comic song, and
+      give my recitations; and we had champagne and lobster-salad: SUCH nobs!&rdquo;
+       added the player. &ldquo;Billingsgate and Vauxhall were there too, and left
+      college at eight o'clock.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When Morgiana was told of the circumstance by her mother, she hoped her
+      dear Howard had enjoyed the evening, and was thankful that for once he
+      could forget his sorrows. Nor, somehow, was she ashamed of herself for
+      being happy afterwards, but gave way to her natural good-humour without
+      repentance or self-rebuke. I believe, indeed (alas! why are we made
+      acquainted with the same fact regarding ourselves long after it is past
+      and gone?)&mdash;I believe these were the happiest days of Morgiana's
+      whole life. She had no cares except the pleasant one of attending on her
+      husband, an easy smiling temperament which made her regardless of
+      to-morrow; and, add to this, a delightful hope relative to a certain
+      interesting event which was about to occur, and which I shall not
+      particularise further than by saying, that she was cautioned against too
+      much singing by Mr. Squills, her medical attendant; and that widow Crump
+      was busy making up a vast number of little caps and diminutive cambric
+      shirts, such as delighted GRANDMOTHERS are in the habit of fashioning. I
+      hope this is as genteel a way of signifying the circumstance which was
+      about to take place in the Walker family as Miss Prim herself could
+      desire. Mrs. Walker's mother was about to become a grandmother. There's a
+      phrase! The Morning Post, which says this story is vulgar, I'm sure cannot
+      quarrel with that. I don't believe the whole Court Guide would convey an
+      intimation more delicately.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Well, Mrs. Crump's little grandchild was born, entirely to the
+      dissatisfaction, I must say, of his father; who, when the infant was
+      brought to him in the Fleet, had him abruptly covered up in his cloak
+      again, from which he had been removed by the jealous prison doorkeepers:
+      why, do you think? Walker had a quarrel with one of them, and the wretch
+      persisted in believing that the bundle Mrs. Crump was bringing to her
+      son-in-law was a bundle of disguised brandy!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The brutes!&rdquo; said the lady; &ldquo;and the father's a brute, too,&rdquo; said she.
+      &ldquo;He takes no more notice of me than if I was a kitchen-maid, and of
+      Woolsey than if he was a leg of mutton&mdash;the dear blessed little
+      cherub!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Crump was a mother-in-law; let us pardon her hatred of her daughter's
+      husband.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Woolsey compared in the above sentence both to a leg of mutton and a
+      cherub, was not the eminent member of the firm of Linsey, Woolsey, and
+      Co., but the little baby, who was christened Howard Woolsey Walker, with
+      the full consent of the father; who said the tailor was a deuced good
+      fellow, and felt really obliged to him for the sherry, for a frock-coat
+      which he let him have in prison, and for his kindness to Morgiana. The
+      tailor loved the little boy with all his soul; he attended his mother to
+      her churching, and the child to the font; and, as a present to his little
+      godson on his christening, he sent two yards of the finest white
+      kerseymere in his shop, to make him a cloak. The Duke had had a pair of
+      inexpressibles off that very piece.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      House-furniture is bought and sold, music-lessons are given, children are
+      born and christened, ladies are confined and churched&mdash;time, in other
+      words, passes&mdash;and yet Captain Walker still remains in prison! Does
+      it not seem strange that he should still languish there between palisaded
+      walls near Fleet Market, and that he should not be restored to that active
+      and fashionable world of which he was an ornament? The fact is, the
+      Captain had been before the court for the examination of his debts; and
+      the Commissioner, with a cruelty quite shameful towards a fallen man, had
+      qualified his ways of getting money in most severe language, and had sent
+      him back to prison again for the space of nine calendar months, an
+      indefinite period, and until his accounts could be made up. This delay
+      Walker bore like a philosopher, and, far from repining, was still the
+      gayest fellow of the tennis-court, and the soul of the midnight carouse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is no use in raking up old stories, and hunting through files of
+      dead newspapers, to know what were the specific acts which made the
+      Commissioner so angry with Captain Walker. Many a rogue has come before
+      the Court, and passed through it since then: and I would lay a wager that
+      Howard Walker was not a bit worse than his neighbours. But as he was not a
+      lord, and as he had no friends on coming out of prison, and had settled no
+      money on his wife, and had, as it must be confessed, an exceedingly bad
+      character, it is not likely that the latter would be forgiven him when
+      once more free in the world. For instance, when Doublequits left the
+      Fleet, he was received with open arms by his family, and had
+      two-and-thirty horses in his stables before a week was over. Pam, of the
+      Dragoons, came out, and instantly got a place as government courier&mdash;a
+      place found so good of late years (and no wonder, it is better pay than
+      that of a colonel), that our noblemen and gentry eagerly press for it.
+      Frank Hurricane was sent out as registrar of Tobago, or Sago, or
+      Ticonderago; in fact, for a younger son of good family it is rather
+      advantageous to get into debt twenty or thirty thousand pounds: you are
+      sure of a good place afterwards in the colonies. Your friends are so
+      anxious to get rid of you, that they will move heaven and earth to serve
+      you. And so all the above companions of misfortune with Walker were
+      speedily made comfortable; but HE had no rich parents; his old father was
+      dead in York jail. How was he to start in the world again? What friendly
+      hand was there to fill his pocket with gold, and his cup with sparkling
+      champagne? He was, in fact, an object of the greatest pity&mdash;for I
+      know of no greater than a gentleman of his habits without the means of
+      gratifying them. He must live well, and he has not the means. Is there a
+      more pathetic case? As for a mere low beggar&mdash;some labourless
+      labourer, or some weaver out of place&mdash;don't let us throw away our
+      compassion upon THEM. Psha! they're accustomed to starve. They CAN sleep
+      upon boards, or dine off a crust; whereas a gentleman would die in the
+      same situation. I think this was poor Morgiana's way of reasoning. For
+      Walker's cash in prison beginning presently to run low, and knowing quite
+      well that the dear fellow could not exist there without the luxuries to
+      which he had been accustomed, she borrowed money from her mother, until
+      the poor old lady was a sec. She even confessed, with tears, to Woolsey,
+      that she was in particular want of twenty pounds, to pay a poor milliner,
+      whose debt she could not bear to put in her husband's schedule. And I need
+      not say she carried the money to her husband, who might have been greatly
+      benefited by it&mdash;only he had a bad run of luck at the cards; and how
+      the deuce can a man help THAT?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Woolsey had repurchased for her one of the Cashmere shawls. She left it
+      behind her one day at the Fleet prison, and some rascal stole it there;
+      having the grace, however, to send Woolsey the ticket, signifying the
+      place where it had been pawned. Who could the scoundrel have been? Woolsey
+      swore a great oath, and fancied he knew; but if it was Walker himself (as
+      Woolsey fancied, and probably as was the case) who made away with the
+      shawl, being pressed thereto by necessity, was it fair to call him a
+      scoundrel for so doing, and should we not rather laud the delicacy of his
+      proceeding? He was poor: who can command the cards? But he did not wish
+      his wife should know HOW poor: he could not bear that she should suppose
+      him arrived at the necessity of pawning a shawl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She who had such beautiful ringlets, of a sudden pleaded cold in the head,
+      and took to wearing caps. One summer evening, as she and the baby and Mrs.
+      Crump and Woolsey (let us say all four babies together) were laughing and
+      playing in Mrs. Crump's drawing-room&mdash;playing the most absurd
+      gambols, fat Mrs. Crump, for instance, hiding behind the sofa, Woolsey
+      chuck-chucking, cock-a-doodle-dooing, and performing those indescribable
+      freaks which gentlemen with philoprogenitive organs will execute in the
+      company of children&mdash;in the midst of their play the baby gave a tug
+      at his mother's cap; off it came&mdash;her hair was cut close to her head!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Morgiana turned as red as sealing-wax, and trembled very much; Mrs. Crump
+      screamed, &ldquo;My child, where is your hair?&rdquo; and Woolsey, bursting out with a
+      most tremendous oath against Walker that would send Miss Prim into
+      convulsions, put his handkerchief to his face, and actually wept. &ldquo;The
+      infernal bubble-ubble-ackguard!&rdquo; said he, roaring and clenching his fists.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he had passed the Bower of Bloom a few days before, he saw Mossrose,
+      who was combing out a jet-black ringlet, and held it up, as if for
+      Woolsey's examination, with a peculiar grin. The tailor did not understand
+      the joke, but he saw now what had happened. Morgiana had sold her hair for
+      five guineas; she would have sold her arm had her husband bidden her. On
+      looking in her drawers it was found she had sold almost all her wearing
+      apparel; the child's clothes were all there, however. It was because her
+      husband talked of disposing of a gilt coral that the child had, that she
+      had parted with the locks which had formed her pride.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll give you twenty guineas for that hair, you infamous fat coward,&rdquo;
+       roared the little tailor to Eglantine that evening. &ldquo;Give it up, or I'll
+      kill you-&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Mossrose! Mr. Mossrose!&rdquo; shouted the perfumer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Vell, vatsh de matter, vatsh de row, fight avay, my boys; two to one on
+      the tailor,&rdquo; said Mr. Mossrose, much enjoying the sport (for Woolsey,
+      striding through the shop without speaking to him, had rushed into the
+      studio, where he plumped upon Eglantine).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell him about that hair, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That hair! Now keep yourself quiet, Mister Timble, and don't tink for to
+      bully ME. You mean Mrs. Valker's 'air? Vy, she sold it me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And the more blackguard you for buying it! Will you take twenty guineas
+      for it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Mossrose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Twenty-five?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can't,&rdquo; said Mossrose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hang it! will you take forty? There!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I vish I'd kep it,&rdquo; said the Hebrew gentleman, with unfeigned regret.
+      &ldquo;Eglantine dressed it this very night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For Countess Baldenstiern, the Swedish Hambassador's lady,&rdquo; says
+      Eglantine (his Hebrew partner was by no means a favourite with the ladies,
+      and only superintended the accounts of the concern). &ldquo;It's this very night
+      at Devonshire 'Ouse, with four hostrich plumes, lappets, and trimmings.
+      And now, Mr. Woolsey, I'll trouble you to apologise.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Woolsey did not answer, but walked up to Mr. Eglantine, and snapped
+      his fingers so close under the perfumer's nose that the latter started
+      back and seized the bell-rope. Mossrose burst out laughing, and the tailor
+      walked majestically from the shop, with both hands stuck between the
+      lappets of his coat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear,&rdquo; said he to Morgiana a short time afterwards, &ldquo;you must not
+      encourage that husband of yours in his extravagance, and sell the clothes
+      off your poor back that he may feast and act the fine gentleman in
+      prison.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is his health, poor dear soul!&rdquo; interposed Mrs. Walker: &ldquo;his chest.
+      Every farthing of the money goes to the doctors, poor fellow!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, now listen: I am a rich man&rdquo; (it was a great fib, for Woolsey's
+      income, as a junior partner of the firm, was but a small one); &ldquo;I can very
+      well afford to make him an allowance while he is in the Fleet, and have
+      written to him to say so. But if you ever give him a penny, or sell a
+      trinket belonging to you, upon my word and honour I will withdraw the
+      allowance, and, though it would go to my heart, I'll never see you again.
+      You wouldn't make me unhappy, would you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'd go on my knees to serve you, and Heaven bless you,&rdquo; said the wife.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, then, you must give me this promise.&rdquo; And she did. &ldquo;And now,&rdquo; said
+      he, &ldquo;your mother, and Podmore, and I have been talking over matters, and
+      we've agreed that you may make a very good income for yourself; though, to
+      be sure, I wish it could have been managed any other way; but needs must,
+      you know. You're the finest singer in the universe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;La!&rdquo; said Morgiana, highly delighted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>I</i> never heard anything like you, though I'm no judge. Podmore says
+      he is sure you will do very well, and has no doubt you might get very good
+      engagements at concerts or on the stage; and as that husband will never do
+      any good, and you have a child to support, sing you must.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! how glad I should be to pay his debts and repay all he has done for
+      me,&rdquo; cried Mrs. Walker. &ldquo;Think of his giving two hundred guineas to Mr.
+      Baroski to have me taught. Was not that kind of him? Do you REALLY think I
+      should succeed?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's Miss Larkins has succeeded.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The little high-shouldered vulgar thing!&rdquo; says Morgiana. &ldquo;I'm sure I
+      ought to succeed if SHE did.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She sing against Morgiana?&rdquo; said Mrs. Crump. &ldquo;I'd like to see her,
+      indeed! She ain't fit to snuff a candle to her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I dare say not,&rdquo; said the tailor, &ldquo;though I don't understand the thing
+      myself: but if Morgiana can make a fortune, why shouldn't she?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Heaven knows we want it, Woolsey,&rdquo; cried Mrs. Crump. &ldquo;And to see her on
+      the stage was always the wish of my heart:&rdquo; and so it had formerly been
+      the wish of Morgiana; and now, with the hope of helping her husband and
+      child, the wish became a duty, and she fell to practising once more from
+      morning till night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One of the most generous of men and tailors who ever lived now promised,
+      if further instruction should be considered necessary (though that he
+      could hardly believe possible), that he would lend Morgiana any sum
+      required for the payment of lessons; and accordingly she once more betook
+      herself, under Podmore's advice, to the singing school. Baroski's academy
+      was, after the passages between them, out of the question, and she placed
+      herself under the instruction of the excellent English composer Sir George
+      Thrum, whose large and awful wife, Lady Thrum, dragon of virtue and
+      propriety, kept watch over the master and the pupils, and was the sternest
+      guardian of female virtue on or off any stage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Morgiana came at a propitious moment. Baroski had launched Miss Larkins
+      under the name of Ligonier. The Ligonier was enjoying considerable
+      success, and was singing classical music to tolerable audiences; whereas
+      Miss Butts, Sir George's last pupil, had turned out a complete failure,
+      and the rival house was only able to make a faint opposition to the new
+      star with Miss M'Whirter, who, though an old favourite, had lost her upper
+      notes and her front teeth, and, the fact was, drew no longer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Directly Sir George heard Mrs. Walker, he tapped Podmore, who accompanied
+      her, on the waistcoat, and said, &ldquo;Poddy, thank you; we'll cut the orange
+      boy's throat with that voice.&rdquo; It was by the familiar title of orange boy
+      that the great Baroski was known among his opponents.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We'll crush him, Podmore,&rdquo; said Lady Thrum, in her deep hollow voice.
+      &ldquo;You may stop and dine.&rdquo; And Podmore stayed to dinner, and ate cold
+      mutton, and drank Marsala with the greatest reverence for the great
+      English composer. The very next day Lady Thrum hired a pair of horses, and
+      paid a visit to Mrs. Crump and her daughter at &ldquo;Sadler's Wells.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      All these things were kept profoundly secret from Walker, who received
+      very magnanimously the allowance of two guineas a week which Woolsey made
+      him, and with the aid of the few shillings his wife could bring him,
+      managed to exist as best he might. He did not dislike gin when he could
+      get no claret, and the former liquor, under the name of &ldquo;tape,&rdquo; used to be
+      measured out pretty liberally in what was formerly Her Majesty's prison of
+      the Fleet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Morgiana pursued her studies under Thrum, and we shall hear in the next
+      chapter how it was she changed her name to RAVENSWING.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0007" id="link2HCH0007">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VII. IN WHICH MORGIANA ADVANCES TOWARDS FAME AND HONOUR, AND IN
+      WHICH SEVERAL GREAT LITERARY CHARACTERS MAKE THEIR APPEARANCE.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We must begin, my dear madam,&rdquo; said Sir George Thrum, &ldquo;by unlearning all
+      that Mr. Baroski (of whom I do not wish to speak with the slightest
+      disrespect) has taught you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Morgiana knew that every professor says as much, and submitted to undergo
+      the study requisite for Sir George's system with perfect good grace. Au
+      fond, as I was given to understand, the methods of the two artists were
+      pretty similar; but as there was rivalry between them, and continual
+      desertion of scholars from one school to another, it was fair for each to
+      take all the credit he could get in the success of any pupil. If a pupil
+      failed, for instance, Thrum would say Baroski had spoiled her
+      irretrievably; while the German would regret &ldquo;Dat dat yong voman, who had
+      a good organ, should have trown away her dime wid dat old Drum.&rdquo; When one
+      of these deserters succeeded, &ldquo;Yes, yes,&rdquo; would either professor cry, &ldquo;I
+      formed her; she owes her fortune to me.&rdquo; Both of them thus, in future
+      days, claimed the education of the famous Ravenswing; and even Sir George
+      Thrum, though he wished to ecraser the Ligonier, pretended that her
+      present success was his work because once she had been brought by her
+      mother, Mrs. Larkins, to sing for Sir George's approval.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the two professors met it was with the most delighted cordiality on
+      the part of both. &ldquo;Mein lieber Herr,&rdquo; Thrum would say (with some malice),
+      &ldquo;your sonata in x flat is divine.&rdquo; &ldquo;Chevalier,&rdquo; Baroski would reply, &ldquo;dat
+      andante movement in w is worthy of Beethoven. I gif you my sacred honour,&rdquo;
+       and so forth. In fact, they loved each other as gentlemen in their
+      profession always do.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The two famous professors conduct their academies on very opposite
+      principles. Baroski writes ballet music; Thrum, on the contrary, says &ldquo;he
+      cannot but deplore the dangerous fascinations of the dance,&rdquo; and writes
+      more for Exeter Hall and Birmingham. While Baroski drives a cab in the
+      Park with a very suspicious Mademoiselle Leocadie, or Amenaide, by his
+      side, you may see Thrum walking to evening church with his lady, and hymns
+      are sung there of his own composition. He belongs to the &ldquo;Athenaeum Club,&rdquo;
+       he goes to the Levee once a year, he does everything that a respectable
+      man should; and if, by the means of this respectability, he manages to
+      make his little trade far more profitable than it otherwise would be, are
+      we to quarrel with him for it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sir George, in fact, had every reason to be respectable. He had been a
+      choir-boy at Windsor, had played to the old King's violoncello, had been
+      intimate with him, and had received knighthood at the hand of his revered
+      sovereign. He had a snuff-box which His Majesty gave him, and portraits of
+      him and the young princes all over the house. He had also a foreign order
+      (no other, indeed, than the Elephant and Castle of
+      Kalbsbraten-Pumpernickel), conferred upon him by the Grand Duke when here
+      with the allied sovereigns in 1814. With this ribbon round his neck, on
+      gala days, and in a white waistcoat, the old gentleman looked splendid as
+      he moved along in a blue coat with the Windsor button, and neat black
+      small-clothes, and silk stockings. He lived in an old tall dingy house,
+      furnished in the reign of George III., his beloved master, and not much
+      more cheerful now than a family vault. They are awfully funereal, those
+      ornaments of the close of the last century&mdash;tall gloomy horse-hair
+      chairs, mouldy Turkey carpets with wretched druggets to guard them, little
+      cracked sticking-plaster miniatures of people in tours and pigtails over
+      high-shouldered mantelpieces, two dismal urns on each side of a lanky
+      sideboard, and in the midst a queer twisted receptacle for worn-out knives
+      with green handles. Under the sideboard stands a cellaret that looks as if
+      it held half a bottle of currant wine, and a shivering plate-warmer that
+      never could get any comfort out of the wretched old cramped grate yonder.
+      Don't you know in such houses the grey gloom that hangs over the stairs,
+      the dull-coloured old carpet that winds its way up the same, growing
+      thinner, duller, and more threadbare as it mounts to the bedroom floors?
+      There is something awful in the bedroom of a respectable old couple of
+      sixty-five. Think of the old feathers, turbans, bugles, petticoats,
+      pomatum-pots, spencers, white satin shoes, false fronts, the old flaccid
+      boneless stays tied up in faded riband, the dusky fans, the old
+      forty-years-old baby linen, the letters of Sir George when he was young,
+      the doll of poor Maria who died in 1803, Frederick's first corduroy
+      breeches, and the newspaper which contains the account of his
+      distinguishing himself at the siege of Seringapatam. All these lie
+      somewhere, damp and squeezed down into glum old presses and wardrobes. At
+      that glass the wife has sat many times these fifty years; in that old
+      morocco bed her children were born. Where are they now? Fred the brave
+      captain, and Charles the saucy colleger: there hangs a drawing of him done
+      by Mr. Beechey, and that sketch by Cosway was the very likeness of Louisa
+      before&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Fitz-Boodle! for Heaven's sake come down. What are you doing in a
+      lady's bedroom?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The fact is, madam, I had no business there in life; but, having had
+      quite enough wine with Sir George, my thoughts had wandered upstairs into
+      the sanctuary of female excellence, where your Ladyship nightly reposes.
+      You do not sleep so well now as in old days, though there is no patter of
+      little steps to wake you overhead.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They call that room the nursery still, and the little wicket still hangs
+      at the upper stairs: it has been there for forty years&mdash;bon Dieu!
+      Can't you see the ghosts of little faces peering over it? I wonder whether
+      they get up in the night as the moonlight shines into the blank vacant old
+      room, and play there solemnly with little ghostly horses, and the spirits
+      of dolls, and tops that turn and turn but don't hum.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Once more, sir, come down to the lower storey&mdash;that is to the
+      Morgiana story&mdash;with which the above sentences have no more to do
+      than this morning's leading article in The Times; only it was at this
+      house of Sir George Thrum's that I met Morgiana. Sir George, in old days,
+      had instructed some of the female members of our family, and I recollect
+      cutting my fingers as a child with one of those attenuated green-handled
+      knives in the queer box yonder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In those days Sir George Thrum was the first great musical teacher of
+      London, and the royal patronage brought him a great number of fashionable
+      pupils, of whom Lady Fitz-Boodle was one. It was a long long time ago: in
+      fact, Sir George Thrum was old enough to remember persons who had been
+      present at Mr. Braham's first appearance, and the old gentleman's days of
+      triumph had been those of Billington and Incledon, Catalani and Madame
+      Storace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was the author of several operas (&ldquo;The Camel Driver,&rdquo; &ldquo;Britons Alarmed;
+      or, the Siege of Bergen-op-Zoom,&rdquo; etc. etc.), and, of course, of songs
+      which had considerable success in their day, but are forgotten now, and
+      are as much faded and out of fashion as those old carpets which we have
+      described in the professor's house, and which were, doubtless, very
+      brilliant once. But such is the fate of carpets, of flowers, of music, of
+      men, and of the most admirable novels&mdash;even this story will not be
+      alive for many centuries. Well, well, why struggle against Fate?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But, though his heyday of fashion was gone, Sir George still held his
+      place among the musicians of the old school, conducted occasionally at the
+      Ancient Concerts and the Philharmonic, and his glees are still favourites
+      after public dinners, and are sung by those old bacchanalians, in chestnut
+      wigs, who attend for the purpose of amusing the guests on such occasions
+      of festivity. The great old people at the gloomy old concerts before
+      mentioned always pay Sir George marked respect; and, indeed, from the old
+      gentleman's peculiar behaviour to his superiors, it is impossible they
+      should not be delighted with him, so he leads at almost every one of the
+      concerts in the old-fashioned houses in town.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Becomingly obsequious to his superiors, he is with the rest of the world
+      properly majestic, and has obtained no small success by his admirable and
+      undeviating respectability. Respectability has been his great card through
+      life; ladies can trust their daughters at Sir George Thrum's academy. &ldquo;A
+      good musician, madam,&rdquo; says he to the mother of a new pupil, &ldquo;should not
+      only have a fine ear, a good voice, and an indomitable industry, but,
+      above all, a faultless character&mdash;faultless, that is, as far as our
+      poor nature will permit. And you will remark that those young persons with
+      whom your lovely daughter, Miss Smith, will pursue her musical studies,
+      are all, in a moral point of view, as spotless as that charming young
+      lady. How should it be otherwise? I have been myself the father of a
+      family; I have been honoured with the intimacy of the wisest and best of
+      kings, my late sovereign George III., and I can proudly show an example of
+      decorum to my pupils in my Sophia. Mrs. Smith, I have the honour of
+      introducing to you my Lady Thrum.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The old lady would rise at this, and make a gigantic curtsey, such a one
+      as had begun the minuet at Ranelagh fifty years ago; and, the introduction
+      ended, Mrs. Smith would retire, after having seen the portraits of the
+      princes, his late Majesty's snuff-box, and a piece of music which he used
+      to play, noted by himself&mdash;Mrs. Smith, I say, would drive back to
+      Baker Street, delighted to think that her Frederica had secured so
+      eligible and respectable a master. I forgot to say that, during the
+      interview between Mrs. Smith and Sir George, the latter would be called
+      out of his study by his black servant, and my Lady Thrum would take that
+      opportunity of mentioning when he was knighted, and how he got his foreign
+      order, and deploring the sad condition of OTHER musical professors, and
+      the dreadful immorality which sometimes arose in consequence of their
+      laxness. Sir George was a good deal engaged to dinners in the season, and
+      if invited to dine with a nobleman, as he might possibly be on the day
+      when Mrs. Smith requested the honour of his company, he would write back
+      &ldquo;that he should have had the sincerest happiness in waiting upon Mrs.
+      Smith in Baker Street, if, previously, my Lord Tweedledale had not been so
+      kind as to engage him.&rdquo; This letter, of course, shown by Mrs. Smith to her
+      friends, was received by them with proper respect; and thus, in spite of
+      age and new fashions, Sir George still reigned pre-eminent for a mile
+      round Cavendish Square. By the young pupils of the academy he was called
+      Sir Charles Grandison; and, indeed, fully deserved this title on account
+      of the indomitable respectability of his whole actions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was under this gentleman that Morgiana made her debut in public life. I
+      do not know what arrangements may have been made between Sir George Thrum
+      and his pupil regarding the profits which were to accrue to the former
+      from engagements procured by him for the latter; but there was, no doubt,
+      an understanding between them. For Sir George, respectable as he was, had
+      the reputation of being extremely clever at a bargain; and Lady Thrum
+      herself, in her great high-tragedy way, could purchase a pair of soles or
+      select a leg of mutton with the best housekeeper in London.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When, however, Morgiana had been for some six months under his tuition, he
+      began, for some reason or other, to be exceedingly hospitable, and invited
+      his friends to numerous entertainments: at one of which, as I have said, I
+      had the pleasure of meeting Mrs. Walker.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Although the worthy musician's dinners were not good, the old knight had
+      some excellent wine in his cellar, and his arrangement of his party
+      deserves to be commended.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For instance, he meets me and Bob Fitz-Urse in Pall Mall, at whose
+      paternal house he was also a visitor. &ldquo;My dear young gentlemen,&rdquo; says he,
+      &ldquo;will you come and dine with a poor musical composer? I have some Comet
+      hock, and, what is more curious to you, perhaps, as men of wit, one or two
+      of the great literary characters of London whom you would like to see&mdash;quite
+      curiosities, my dear young friends.&rdquo; And we agreed to go.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To the literary men he says: &ldquo;I have a little quiet party at home: Lord
+      Roundtowers, the Honourable Mr. Fitz-Urse of the Life Guards, and a few
+      more. Can you tear yourself away from the war of wits, and take a quiet
+      dinner with a few mere men about town?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The literary men instantly purchase new satin stocks and white gloves, and
+      are delighted to fancy themselves members of the world of fashion. Instead
+      of inviting twelve Royal Academicians, or a dozen authors, or a dozen men
+      of science to dinner, as his Grace the Duke of &mdash;&mdash; and the
+      Right Honourable Sir Robert &mdash;&mdash; are in the habit of doing once
+      a year, this plan of fusion is the one they should adopt. Not invite all
+      artists, as they would invite all farmers to a rent dinner; but they
+      should have a proper commingling of artists and men of the world. There is
+      one of the latter whose name is George Savage Fitz-Boodle, who&mdash; But
+      let us return to Sir George Thrum.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fitz-Urse and I arrive at the dismal old house, and are conducted up the
+      staircase by a black servant, who shouts out, &ldquo;Missa Fiss-Boodle&mdash;the
+      HONOURABLE Missa Fiss-Urse!&rdquo; It was evident that Lady Thrum had instructed
+      the swarthy groom of the chambers (for there is nothing particularly
+      honourable in my friend Fitz's face that I know of, unless an abominable
+      squint may be said to be so). Lady Thrum, whose figure is something like
+      that of the shot-tower opposite Waterloo Bridge, makes a majestic
+      inclination and a speech to signify her pleasure at receiving under her
+      roof two of the children of Sir George's best pupils. A lady in black
+      velvet is seated by the old fireplace, with whom a stout gentleman in an
+      exceedingly light coat and ornamental waistcoat is talking very busily.
+      &ldquo;The great star of the night,&rdquo; whispers our host. &ldquo;Mrs. Walker, gentlemen&mdash;the
+      RAVENSWING! She is talking to the famous Mr. Slang, of the &mdash;&mdash;
+      Theatre.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is she a fine singer?&rdquo; says Fitz-Urse. &ldquo;She's a very fine woman.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear young friends, you shall hear to-night! I, who have heard every
+      fine voice in Europe, confidently pledge my respectability that the
+      Ravenswing is equal to them all. She has the graces, sir, of a Venus with
+      the mind of a Muse. She is a siren, sir, without the dangerous qualities
+      of one. She is hallowed, sir, by her misfortunes as by her genius; and I
+      am proud to think that my instructions have been the means of developing
+      the wondrous qualities that were latent within her until now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don't say so!&rdquo; says gobemouche Fitz-Urse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Having thus indoctrinated Mr. Fitz-Urse, Sir George takes another of his
+      guests, and proceeds to work upon him. &ldquo;My dear Mr. Bludyer, how do you
+      do? Mr. Fitz-Boodle, Mr. Bludyer, the brilliant and accomplished wit,
+      whose sallies in the Tomahawk delight us every Saturday. Nay, no blushes,
+      my dear sir; you are very wicked, but oh! SO pleasant. Well, Mr. Bludyer,
+      I am glad to see you, sir, and hope you will have a favourable opinion of
+      our genius, sir. As I was saying to Mr. Fitz-Boodle, she has the graces of
+      a Venus with the mind of a Muse. She is a siren, without the dangerous
+      qualities of one,&rdquo; etc. This little speech was made to half-a-dozen
+      persons in the course of the evening&mdash;persons, for the most part,
+      connected with the public journals or the theatrical world. There was Mr.
+      Squinny, the editor of the Flowers of Fashion; Mr. Desmond Mulligan, the
+      poet, and reporter for a morning paper; and other worthies of their
+      calling. For though Sir George is a respectable man, and as high-minded
+      and moral an old gentleman as ever wore knee-buckles, he does not neglect
+      the little arts of popularity, and can condescend to receive very queer
+      company if need be.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For instance, at the dinner-party at which I had the honour of assisting,
+      and at which, on the right hand of Lady Thrum, sat the oblige nobleman,
+      whom the Thrums were a great deal too wise to omit (the sight of a lord
+      does good to us commoners, or why else should we be so anxious to have
+      one?). In the second place of honour, and on her ladyship's left hand, sat
+      Mr. Slang, the manager of one of the theatres; a gentleman whom my Lady
+      Thrum would scarcely, but for a great necessity's sake, have been induced
+      to invite to her table. He had the honour of leading Mrs. Walker to
+      dinner, who looked splendid in black velvet and turban, full of health and
+      smiles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Roundtowers is an old gentleman who has been at the theatres five
+      times a week for these fifty years, a living dictionary of the stage,
+      recollecting every actor and actress who has appeared upon it for half a
+      century. He perfectly well remembered Miss Delancy in Morgiana; he knew
+      what had become of Ali Baba, and how Cassim had left the stage, and was
+      now the keeper of a public-house. All this store of knowledge he kept
+      quietly to himself, or only delivered in confidence to his next neighbour
+      in the intervals of the banquet, which he enjoys prodigiously. He lives at
+      an hotel: if not invited to dine, eats a mutton-chop very humbly at his
+      club, and finishes his evening after the play at Crockford's, whither he
+      goes not for the sake of the play, but of the supper there. He is
+      described in the Court Guide as of &ldquo;Simmer's Hotel,&rdquo; and of Roundtowers,
+      county Cork. It is said that the round towers really exist. But he has not
+      been in Ireland since the rebellion; and his property is so hampered with
+      ancestral mortgages, and rent-charges, and annuities, that his income is
+      barely sufficient to provide the modest mutton-chop before alluded to. He
+      has, any time these fifty years, lived in the wickedest company in London,
+      and is, withal, as harmless, mild, good-natured, innocent an old gentleman
+      as can readily be seen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Roundy,&rdquo; shouts the elegant Mr. Slang, across the table, with a voice
+      which makes Lady Thrum shudder, &ldquo;Tuff, a glass of wine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      My Lord replies meekly, &ldquo;Mr. Slang, I shall have very much pleasure. What
+      shall it be?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is Madeira near you, my Lord,&rdquo; says my Lady, pointing to a tall
+      thin decanter of the fashion of the year.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Madeira! Marsala, by Jove, your Ladyship means!&rdquo; shouts Mr. Slang. &ldquo;No,
+      no, old birds are not caught with chaff. Thrum, old boy, let's have some
+      of your Comet hock.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My Lady Thrum, I believe that IS Marsala,&rdquo; says the knight, blushing a
+      little, in reply to a question from his Sophia. &ldquo;Ajax, the hock to Mr.
+      Slang.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm in that,&rdquo; yells Bludyer from the end of the table. &ldquo;My Lord, I'll
+      join you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. &mdash;&mdash;, I beg your pardon&mdash;I shall be very happy to take
+      wine with you, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is Mr. Bludyer, the celebrated newspaper writer,&rdquo; whispers Lady Thrum.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bludyer, Bludyer? A very clever man, I dare say. He has a very loud
+      voice, and reminds me of Brett. Does your Ladyship remember Brett, who
+      played the 'Fathers' at the Haymarket in 1802?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What an old stupid Roundtowers is!&rdquo; says Slang, archly, nudging Mrs.
+      Walker in the side. &ldquo;How's Walker, eh?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My husband is in the country,&rdquo; replied Mrs. Walker, hesitatingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gammon! <i>I</i> know where he is! Law bless you!&mdash;don't blush. I've
+      been there myself a dozen times. We were talking about quod, Lady Thrum.
+      Were you ever in college?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was at the Commemoration at Oxford in 1814, when the sovereigns were
+      there, and at Cambridge when Sir George received his degree of Doctor of
+      Music.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Laud, Laud, THAT'S not the college WE mean.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is also the college in Gower Street, where my grandson&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is the college in QUEER STREET, ma'am, haw, haw! Mulligan, you
+      divvle (in an Irish accent), a glass of wine with you. Wine, here, you
+      waiter! What's your name, you black nigger? 'Possum up a gum-tree, eh?
+      Fill him up. Dere he go&rdquo; (imitating the Mandingo manner of speaking
+      English)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In this agreeable way would Mr. Slang rattle on, speedily making himself
+      the centre of the conversation, and addressing graceful familiarities to
+      all the gentlemen and ladies round him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was good to see how the little knight, the most moral and calm of men,
+      was compelled to receive Mr. Slang's stories and the frightened air with
+      which, at the conclusion of one of them, he would venture upon a
+      commendatory grin. His lady, on her part too, had been laboriously civil;
+      and, on the occasion on which I had the honour of meeting this gentleman
+      and Mrs. Walker, it was the latter who gave the signal for withdrawing to
+      the lady of the house, by saying, &ldquo;I think, Lady Thrum, it is quite time
+      for us to retire.&rdquo; Some exquisite joke of Mr. Slang's was the cause of
+      this abrupt disappearance. But, as they went upstairs to the drawing-room,
+      Lady Thrum took occasion to say, &ldquo;My dear, in the course of your
+      profession you will have to submit to many such familiarities on the part
+      of persons of low breeding, such as I fear Mr. Slang is. But let me
+      caution you against giving way to your temper as you did. Did you not
+      perceive that <i>I</i> never allowed him to see my inward dissatisfaction?
+      And I make it a particular point that you should be very civil to him
+      to-night. Your interests&mdash;our interests depend upon it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And are my interests to make me civil to a wretch like that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mrs. Walker, would you wish to give lessons in morality and behaviour to
+      Lady Thrum?&rdquo; said the old lady, drawing herself up with great dignity. It
+      was evident that she had a very strong desire indeed to conciliate Mr.
+      Slang; and hence I have no doubt that Sir George was to have a
+      considerable share of Morgiana's earnings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Bludyer, the famous editor of the Tomahawk, whose jokes Sir George
+      pretended to admire so much (Sir George who never made a joke in his
+      life), was a press bravo of considerable talent and no principle, and who,
+      to use his own words, would &ldquo;back himself for a slashing article against
+      any man in England!&rdquo; He would not only write, but fight on a pinch; was a
+      good scholar, and as savage in his manner as with his pen. Mr. Squinny is
+      of exactly the opposite school, as delicate as milk-and-water, harmless in
+      his habits, fond of the flute when the state of his chest will allow him,
+      a great practiser of waltzing and dancing in general, and in his journal
+      mildly malicious. He never goes beyond the bounds of politeness, but
+      manages to insinuate a great deal that is disagreeable to an author in the
+      course of twenty lines of criticism. Personally he is quite respectable,
+      and lives with two maiden aunts at Brompton. Nobody, on the contrary,
+      knows where Mr. Bludyer lives. He has houses of call, mysterious taverns,
+      where he may be found at particular hours by those who need him, and where
+      panting publishers are in the habit of hunting him up. For a bottle of
+      wine and a guinea he will write a page of praise or abuse of any man
+      living, or on any subject, or on any line of politics. &ldquo;Hang it, sir!&rdquo;
+       says he, &ldquo;pay me enough and I will write down my own father!&rdquo; According to
+      the state of his credit, he is dressed either almost in rags or else in
+      the extremest flush of the fashion. With the latter attire he puts on a
+      haughty and aristocratic air, and would slap a duke on the shoulder. If
+      there is one thing more dangerous than to refuse to lend him a sum of
+      money when he asks for it, it is to lend it to him; for he never pays, and
+      never pardons a man to whom he owes. &ldquo;Walker refused to cash a bill for
+      me,&rdquo; he had been heard to say, &ldquo;and I'll do for his wife when she comes
+      out on the stage!&rdquo; Mrs. Walker and Sir George Thrum were in an agony about
+      the Tomahawk; hence the latter's invitation to Mr. Bludyer. Sir George was
+      in a great tremor about the Flowers of Fashion, hence his invitation to
+      Mr. Squinny. Mr. Squinny was introduced to Lord Roundtowers and Mr.
+      Fitz-Urse as one of the most delightful and talented of our young men of
+      genius; and Fitz, who believes everything anyone tells him, was quite
+      pleased to have the honour of sitting near the live editor of a paper. I
+      have reason to think that Mr. Squinny himself was no less delighted: I saw
+      him giving his card to Fitz-Urse at the end of the second course.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No particular attention was paid to Mr. Desmond Mulligan. Political
+      enthusiasm is his forte. He lives and writes in a rapture. He is, of
+      course, a member of an inn of court, and greatly addicted to after-dinner
+      speaking as a preparation for the bar, where as a young man of genius he
+      hopes one day to shine. He is almost the only man to whom Bludyer is
+      civil; for, if the latter will fight doggedly when there is a necessity
+      for so doing, the former fights like an Irishman, and has a pleasure in
+      it. He has been &ldquo;on the ground&rdquo; I don't know how many times, and quitted
+      his country on account of a quarrel with Government regarding certain
+      articles published by him in the Phoenix newspaper. With the third bottle,
+      he becomes overpoweringly great on the wrongs of Ireland, and at that
+      period generally volunteers a couple or more of Irish melodies, selecting
+      the most melancholy in the collection. At five in the afternoon, you are
+      sure to see him about the House of Commons, and he knows the &ldquo;Reform Club&rdquo;
+       (he calls it the Refawrum) as well as if he were a member. It is curious
+      for the contemplative mind to mark those mysterious hangers-on of Irish
+      members of Parliament&mdash;strange runners and aides-de-camp which all
+      the honourable gentlemen appear to possess. Desmond, in his political
+      capacity, is one of these, and besides his calling as reporter to a
+      newspaper, is &ldquo;our well-informed correspondent&rdquo; of that famous Munster
+      paper, the Green Flag of Skibbereen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With Mr. Mulligan's qualities and history I only became subsequently
+      acquainted. On the present evening he made but a brief stay at the
+      dinner-table, being compelled by his professional duties to attend the
+      House of Commons.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The above formed the party with whom I had the honour to dine. What other
+      repasts Sir George Thrum may have given, what assemblies of men of mere
+      science he may have invited to give their opinion regarding his prodigy,
+      what other editors of papers he may have pacified or rendered favourable,
+      who knows? On the present occasion, we did not quit the dinner-table until
+      Mr. Slang the manager was considerably excited by wine, and music had been
+      heard for some time in the drawing-room overhead during our absence. An
+      addition had been made to the Thrum party by the arrival of several
+      persons to spend the evening,&mdash;a man to play on the violin between
+      the singing, a youth to play on the piano, Miss Horsman to sing with Mrs.
+      Walker, and other scientific characters. In a corner sat a red-faced old
+      lady, of whom the mistress of the mansion took little notice; and a
+      gentleman with a royal button, who blushed and looked exceedingly modest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hang me!&rdquo; says Mr. Bludyer, who had perfectly good reasons for
+      recognising Mr Woolsey, and who on this day chose to assume his
+      aristocratic air; &ldquo;there's a tailor in the room! What do they mean by
+      asking ME to meet tradesmen?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Delancy, my dear,&rdquo; cries Slang, entering the room with a reel, &ldquo;how's
+      your precious health? Give us your hand! When ARE we to be married? Make
+      room for me on the sofa, that's a duck!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Get along, Slang,&rdquo; says Mrs. Crump, addressed by the manager by her
+      maiden name (artists generally drop the title of honour which people adopt
+      in the world, and call each other by their simple surnames)&mdash;&ldquo;get
+      along, Slang, or I'll tell Mrs. S.!&rdquo; The enterprising manager replies by
+      sportively striking Mrs. Crump on the side a blow which causes a great
+      giggle from the lady insulted, and a most good-humoured threat to box
+      Slang's ears. I fear very much that Morgiana's mother thought Mr. Slang an
+      exceedingly gentlemanlike and agreeable person; besides, she was eager to
+      have his good opinion of Mrs. Walker's singing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The manager stretched himself out with much gracefulness on the sofa,
+      supporting two little dumpy legs encased in varnished boots on a chair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ajax, some tea to Mr. Slang,&rdquo; said my Lady, looking towards that
+      gentleman with a countenance expressive of some alarm, I thought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's right, Ajax, my black prince!&rdquo; exclaimed Slang when the negro
+      brought the required refreshment; &ldquo;and now I suppose you'll be wanted in
+      the orchestra yonder. Don't Ajax play the cymbals, Sir George?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ha, ha, ha! very good&mdash;capital!&rdquo; answered the knight, exceedingly
+      frightened; &ldquo;but ours is not a MILITARY band. Miss Horsman, Mr. Craw, my
+      dear Mrs. Ravenswing, shall we begin the trio? Silence, gentlemen, if you
+      please; it is a little piece from my opera of the 'Brigand's Bride.' Miss
+      Horsman takes the Page's part, Mr. Craw is Stiletto the Brigand, my
+      accomplished pupil is the Bride;&rdquo; and the music began.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+          &ldquo;THE BRIDE.
+
+     &ldquo;My heart with joy is beating,
+        My eyes with tears are dim;
+
+          &ldquo;THE PAGE.
+
+     &ldquo;Her heart with joy is beating
+        Her eyes are fixed on him;
+
+          &ldquo;THE BRIGAND.
+
+     &ldquo;My heart with rage is beating,
+        In blood my eye-balls swim!&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      What may have been the merits of the music or the singing, I, of course,
+      cannot guess. Lady Thrum sat opposite the tea-cups, nodding her head and
+      beating time very gravely. Lord Roundtowers, by her side, nodded his head
+      too, for awhile, and then fell asleep. I should have done the same but for
+      the manager, whose actions were worth of remark. He sang with all the
+      three singers, and a great deal louder than any of them; he shouted bravo!
+      or hissed as he thought proper; he criticised all the points of Mrs.
+      Walker's person. &ldquo;She'll do, Crump, she'll do&mdash;a splendid arm&mdash;you'll
+      see her eyes in the shilling gallery! What sort of a foot has she? She's
+      five feet three, if she's an inch! Bravo&mdash;slap up&mdash;capital&mdash;hurrah!&rdquo;
+       And he concluded by saying, with the aid of the Ravenswing, he would put
+      Ligonier's nose out of Joint!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The enthusiasm of Mr. Slang almost reconciled Lady Thrum to the abruptness
+      of his manners, and even caused Sir George to forget that his chorus had
+      been interrupted by the obstreperous familiarity of the manager.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what do YOU think, Mr. Bludyer,&rdquo; said the tailor, delighted that his
+      protegee should be thus winning all hearts: &ldquo;isn't Mrs. Walker a tip-top
+      singer, eh, sir?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think she's a very bad one, Mr. Woolsey,&rdquo; said the illustrious author,
+      wishing to abbreviate all communications with a tailor to whom he owed
+      forty pounds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then, sir,&rdquo; says Mr. Woolsey, fiercely, &ldquo;I'll&mdash;I'll thank you to pay
+      me my little bill!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It is true there was no connection between Mrs. Walker's singing and
+      Woolsey's little bill; that the &ldquo;THEN, sir,&rdquo; was perfectly illogical on
+      Woolsey's part; but it was a very happy hit for the future fortunes of
+      Mrs. Walker. Who knows what would have come of her debut but for that
+      &ldquo;Then, sir,&rdquo; and whether a &ldquo;smashing article&rdquo; from the Tomahawk might not
+      have ruined her for ever?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you a relation of Mrs. Walker's?&rdquo; said Mr. Bludyer, in reply to the
+      angry tailor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's that to you, whether I am or not?&rdquo; replied Woolsey, fiercely. &ldquo;But
+      I'm the friend of Mrs. Walker, sir; proud am I to say so, sir; and, as the
+      poet says, sir, 'a little learning's a dangerous thing,' sir; and I think
+      a man who don't pay his bills may keep his tongue quiet at least, sir, and
+      not abuse a lady, sir, whom everybody else praises, sir. You shan't humbug
+      ME any more, sir; you shall hear from my attorney to-morrow, so mark
+      that!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hush, my dear Mr. Woolsey,&rdquo; cried the literary man, &ldquo;don't make a noise;
+      come into this window: is Mrs. Walker REALLY a friend of yours?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've told you so, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, in that case, I shall do my utmost to serve her and, look you,
+      Woolsey, any article you choose to send about her to the Tomahawk I
+      promise you I'll put in.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;WILL you, though? then we'll say nothing about the little bill.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You may do on that point,&rdquo; answered Bludyer, haughtily, &ldquo;exactly as you
+      please. I am not to be frightened from my duty, mind that; and mind, too,
+      that I can write a slashing article better than any man in England: I
+      could crush her by ten lines.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The tables were now turned, and it was Woolsey's turn to be alarmed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pooh! pooh! I WAS angry,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;because you abuse Mrs. Walker, who's
+      an angel on earth; but I'm very willing to apologise. I say&mdash;come&mdash;let
+      me take your measure for some new clothes, eh! Mr. B.?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll come to your shop,&rdquo; answered the literary man, quite appeased.
+      &ldquo;Silence! they're beginning another song.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The songs, which I don't attempt to describe (and, upon my word and
+      honour, as far as I can understand matters, I believe to this day that
+      Mrs. Walker was only an ordinary singer)&mdash;the songs lasted a great
+      deal longer than I liked; but I was nailed, as it were, to the spot,
+      having agreed to sup at Knightsbridge barracks with Fitz-Urse, whose
+      carriage was ordered at eleven o'clock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear Mr. Fitz-Boodle,&rdquo; said our old host to me, &ldquo;you can do me the
+      greatest service in the world.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Speak, sir!&rdquo; said I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you ask your honourable and gallant friend, the Captain, to drive
+      home Mr. Squinny to Brompton?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can't Mr. Squinny get a cab?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sir George looked particularly arch. &ldquo;Generalship, my dear young friend&mdash;a
+      little harmless generalship. Mr. Squinny will not give much for MY opinion
+      of my pupil, but he will value very highly the opinion of the Honourable
+      Mr. FitzUrse.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For a moral man, was not the little knight a clever fellow? He had bought
+      Mr. Squinny for a dinner worth ten shillings, and for a ride in a carriage
+      with a lord's son. Squinny was carried to Brompton, and set down at his
+      aunts' door, delighted with his new friends, and exceedingly sick with a
+      cigar they had made him smoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0008" id="link2HCH0008">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VIII. IN WHICH MR. WALKER SHOWS GREAT PRUDENCE AND FORBEARANCE.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The describing of all these persons does not advance Morgiana's story
+      much. But, perhaps, some country readers are not acquainted with the class
+      of persons by whose printed opinions they are guided, and are simple
+      enough to imagine that mere merit will make a reputation on the stage or
+      elsewhere. The making of a theatrical success is a much more complicated
+      and curious thing than such persons fancy it to be. Immense are the pains
+      taken to get a good word from Mr. This of the Star, or Mr. That of the
+      Courier, to propitiate the favour of the critic of the day, and get the
+      editors of the metropolis into a good humour,&mdash;above all, to have the
+      name of the person to be puffed perpetually before the public. Artists
+      cannot be advertised like Macassar oil or blacking, and they want it to
+      the full as much; hence endless ingenuity must be practised in order to
+      keep the popular attention awake. Suppose a great actor moves from London
+      to Windsor, the Brentford Champion must state that &ldquo;Yesterday Mr. Blazes
+      and suite passed rapidly through our city; the celebrated comedian is
+      engaged, we hear, at Windsor, to give some of his inimitable readings of
+      our great national bard to the MOST ILLUSTRIOUS AUDIENCE in the realm.&rdquo;
+       This piece of intelligence the Hammersmith Observer will question the next
+      week, as thus:&mdash;&ldquo;A contemporary, the Brentford Champion, says that
+      Blazes is engaged to give Shakspearian readings at Windsor to &ldquo;the most
+      illustrious audience in the realm.&rdquo; We question this fact very much. We
+      would, indeed, that it were true; but the MOST ILLUSTRIOUS AUDIENCE in the
+      realm prefer FOREIGN melodies to THE NATIVE WOOD-NOTES WILD of the sweet
+      song-bird of Avon. Mr. Blazes is simply gone to Eton, where his son,
+      Master Massinger Blazes, is suffering, we regret to hear, under a severe
+      attack of the chicken-pox. This complaint (incident to youth) has raged,
+      we understand, with frightful virulence in Eton School.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And if, after the above paragraphs, some London paper chooses to attack
+      the folly of the provincial press, which talks of Mr. Blazes, and
+      chronicles his movements, as if he were a crowned head, what harm is done?
+      Blazes can write in his own name to the London journal, and say that it is
+      not HIS fault if provincial journals choose to chronicle his movements,
+      and that he was far from wishing that the afflictions of those who are
+      dear to him should form the subject of public comment, and be held up to
+      public ridicule. &ldquo;We had no intention of hurting the feelings of an
+      estimable public servant,&rdquo; writes the editor; &ldquo;and our remarks on the
+      chicken-pox were general, not personal. We sincerely trust that Master
+      Massinger Blazes has recovered from that complaint, and that he may pass
+      through the measles, the whooping-cough, the fourth form, and all other
+      diseases to which youth is subject, with comfort to himself, and credit to
+      his parents and teachers.&rdquo; At his next appearance on the stage after this
+      controversy, a British public calls for Blazes three times after the play;
+      and somehow there is sure to be someone with a laurel-wreath in a
+      stage-box, who flings that chaplet at the inspired artist's feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I don't know how it was, but before the debut of Morgiana, the English
+      press began to heave and throb in a convulsive manner, as if indicative of
+      the near birth of some great thing. For instance, you read in one paper,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Anecdote of Karl Maria Von Weber.&mdash;When the author of 'Oberon' was
+      in England, he was invited by a noble duke to dinner, and some of the most
+      celebrated of our artists were assembled to meet him. The signal being
+      given to descend to the salle-a-manger, the German composer was invited by
+      his noble host (a bachelor) to lead the way. 'Is it not the fashion in
+      your country,' said he, simply, 'for the man of the first eminence to take
+      the first place? Here is one whose genius entitles him to be first
+      ANYWHERE.' And, so saying, he pointed to our admirable English composer,
+      Sir George Thrum. The two musicians were friends to the last, and Sir
+      George has still the identical piece of rosin which the author of the
+      'Freischutz' gave him.&rdquo;&mdash;The Moon (morning paper), June 2.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;George III. a composer.&mdash;Sir George Thrum has in his possession the
+      score of an air, the words from 'Samson Agonistes,' an autograph of the
+      late revered monarch. We hear that that excellent composer has in store
+      for us not only an opera, but a pupil, with whose transcendent merits the
+      elite of our aristocracy are already familiar.&rdquo;&mdash;Ibid., June 5.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Music with a Vengeance.&mdash;The march to the sound of which the 49th
+      and 75th regiments rushed up the breach of Badajoz was the celebrated air
+      from 'Britons Alarmed; or, The Siege of Bergen-op-Zoom,' by our famous
+      English composer, Sir George Thrum. Marshal Davoust said that the French
+      line never stood when that air was performed to the charge of the bayonet.
+      We hear the veteran musician has an opera now about to appear, and have no
+      doubt that Old England will now, as then, show its superiority over ALL
+      foreign opponents.&rdquo;&mdash;Albion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We have been accused of preferring the produit of the etranger to the
+      talent of our own native shores; but those who speak so, little know us.
+      We are fanatici per la musica wherever it be, and welcome merit dans
+      chaque pays du monde. What do we say? Le merite n'a point de pays, as
+      Napoleon said; and Sir George Thrum (Chevalier de l'Ordre de l'Elephant et
+      Chateau de Kalbsbraten-Pumpernickel,) is a maestro whose fame appartient a
+      l'Europe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We have just heard the lovely eleve, whose rare qualities the Cavaliere
+      has brought to perfection,&mdash;we have heard THE RAVENSWING (pourquoi
+      cacher un nom que demain un monde va saluer?), and a creature more
+      beautiful and gifted never bloomed before dans nos climats. She sang the
+      delicious duet of the 'Nabucodonosore,' with Count Pizzicato, with a
+      bellezza, a grandezza, a raggio, that excited in the bosom of the audience
+      a corresponding furore: her scherzando was exquisite, though we confess we
+      thought the concluding fioritura in the passage in Y flat a leetle, a very
+      leetle sforzata. Surely the words,
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     'Giorno d'orrore,
+      Delire, dolore,
+      Nabucodonosore,'
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      should be given andante, and not con strepito: but this is a faute bien
+      legere in the midst of such unrivalled excellence, and only mentioned here
+      that we may have SOMETHING to criticise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We hear that the enterprising impresario of one of the royal theatres has
+      made an engagement with the Diva; and, if we have a regret, it is that she
+      should be compelled to sing in the unfortunate language of our rude
+      northern clime, which does not preter itself near so well to the bocca of
+      the cantatrice as do the mellifluous accents of the Lingua Toscana, the
+      langue par excellence of song.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Ravenswing's voice is a magnificent contra-basso of nine octaves,&rdquo;
+       etc.&mdash;Flowers of Fashion, June 10.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Old Thrum, the composer, is bringing out an opera and a pupil. The opera
+      is good, the pupil first-rate. The opera will do much more than compete
+      with the infernal twaddle and disgusting slip-slop of Donizetti, and the
+      milk-and-water fools who imitate him: it will (and we ask the readers of
+      the Tomahawk, were we EVER mistaken?) surpass all these; it is GOOD, of
+      downright English stuff. The airs are fresh and pleasing, the choruses
+      large and noble, the instrumentation solid and rich, the music is
+      carefully written. We wish old Thrum and his opera well.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;His pupil is a SURE CARD, a splendid woman, and a splendid singer. She is
+      so handsome that she might sing as much out of tune as Miss Ligonier, and
+      the public would forgive her; and sings so well, that were she as ugly as
+      the aforesaid Ligonier, the audience would listen to her. The Ravenswing,
+      that is her fantastical theatrical name (her real name is the same with
+      that of a notorious scoundrel in the Fleet, who invented the Panama
+      swindle, the Pontine Marshes' swindle, the Soap swindle&mdash;HOW ARE YOU
+      OFF FOR SOAP NOW, Mr. W-lk-r?)&mdash;the Ravenswing, we say, will do.
+      Slang has engaged her at thirty guineas per week, and she appears next
+      month in Thrum's opera, of which the words are written by a great ass with
+      some talent&mdash;we mean Mr. Mulligan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is a foreign fool in the Flowers of Fashion who is doing his best
+      to disgust the public by his filthy flattery. It is enough to make one
+      sick. Why is the foreign beast not kicked out of the paper?&rdquo;&mdash;The
+      Tomahawk, June 17.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The first three &ldquo;anecdotes&rdquo; were supplied by Mulligan to his paper, with
+      many others which need not here be repeated: he kept them up with amazing
+      energy and variety. Anecdotes of Sir George Thrum met you unexpectedly in
+      queer corners of country papers: puffs of the English school of music
+      appeared perpetually in &ldquo;Notices to Correspondents&rdquo; in the Sunday prints,
+      some of which Mr. Slang commanded, and in others over which the
+      indefatigable Mulligan had a control. This youth was the soul of the
+      little conspiracy for raising Morgiana into fame: and humble as he is, and
+      great and respectable as is Sir George Thrum, it is my belief that the
+      Ravenswing would never have been the Ravenswing she is but for the
+      ingenuity and energy of the honest Hibernian reporter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is only the business of the great man who writes the leading articles
+      which appear in the large type of the daily papers to compose those
+      astonishing pieces of eloquence; the other parts of the paper are left to
+      the ingenuity of the sub-editor, whose duty it is to select paragraphs,
+      reject or receive horrid accidents, police reports, etc.; with which,
+      occupied as he is in the exercise of his tremendous functions, the editor
+      himself cannot be expected to meddle. The fate of Europe is his province;
+      the rise and fall of empires, and the great questions of State demand the
+      editor's attention: the humble puff, the paragraph about the last murder,
+      or the state of the crops, or the sewers in Chancery Lane, is confided to
+      the care of the sub; and it is curious to see what a prodigious number of
+      Irishmen exist among the sub-editors of London. When the Liberator
+      enumerates the services of his countrymen, how the battle of Fontenoy was
+      won by the Irish Brigade, how the battle of Waterloo would have been lost
+      but for the Irish regiments, and enumerates other acts for which we are
+      indebted to Milesian heroism and genius&mdash;he ought at least to mention
+      the Irish brigade of the press, and the amazing services they do to this
+      country.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The truth is, the Irish reporters and soldiers appear to do their duty
+      right well; and my friend Mr. Mulligan is one of the former. Having the
+      interests of his opera and the Ravenswing strongly at heart, and being
+      amongst his brethren an exceedingly popular fellow, he managed matters so
+      that never a day passed but some paragraph appeared somewhere regarding
+      the new singer, in whom, for their countryman's sake, all his brothers and
+      sub-editors felt an interest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These puffs, destined to make known to all the world the merits of the
+      Ravenswing, of course had an effect upon a gentleman very closely
+      connected with that lady, the respectable prisoner in the Fleet, Captain
+      Walker. As long as he received his weekly two guineas from Mr. Woolsey,
+      and the occasional half-crowns which his wife could spare in her almost
+      daily visits to him, he had never troubled himself to inquire what her
+      pursuits were, and had allowed her (though the worthy woman longed with
+      all her might to betray herself) to keep her secret. He was far from
+      thinking, indeed, that his wife would prove such a treasure to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But when the voice of fame and the columns of the public journals brought
+      him each day some new story regarding the merits, genius, and beauty of
+      the Ravenswing; when rumours reached him that she was the favourite pupil
+      of Sir George Thrum; when she brought him five guineas after singing at
+      the &ldquo;Philharmonic&rdquo; (other five the good soul had spent in purchasing some
+      smart new cockades, hats, cloaks, and laces, for her little son); when,
+      finally, it was said that Slang, the great manager, offered her an
+      engagement at thirty guineas per week, Mr. Walker became exceedingly
+      interested in his wife's proceedings, of which he demanded from her the
+      fullest explanation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Using his marital authority, he absolutely forbade Mrs. Walker's
+      appearance on the public stage; he wrote to Sir George Thrum a letter
+      expressive of his highest indignation that negotiations so important
+      should ever have been commenced without his authorisation; and he wrote to
+      his dear Slang (for these gentlemen were very intimate, and in the course
+      of his transactions as an agent Mr. W. had had many dealings with Mr. S.)
+      asking his dear Slang whether the latter thought his friend Walker would
+      be so green as to allow his wife to appear on the stage, and he remain in
+      prison with all his debts on his head?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And it was a curious thing now to behold how eager those very creditors
+      who but yesterday (and with perfect correctness) had denounced Mr. Walker
+      as a swindler; who had refused to come to any composition with him, and
+      had sworn never to release him; how they on a sudden became quite eager to
+      come to an arrangement with him, and offered, nay, begged and prayed him
+      to go free,&mdash;only giving them his own and Mrs. Walker's
+      acknowledgment of their debt, with a promise that a part of the lady's
+      salary should be devoted to the payment of the claim.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The lady's salary!&rdquo; said Mr. Walker, indignantly, to these gentlemen and
+      their attorneys. &ldquo;Do you suppose I will allow Mrs. Walker to go on the
+      stage?&mdash;do you suppose I am such a fool as to sign bills to the full
+      amount of these claims against me, when in a few months more I can walk
+      out of prison without paying a shilling? Gentlemen, you take Howard Walker
+      for an idiot. I like the Fleet, and rather than pay I'll stay here for
+      these ten years.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In other words, it was the Captain's determination to make some
+      advantageous bargain for himself with his creditors and the gentlemen who
+      were interested in bringing forward Mrs. Walker on the stage. And who can
+      say that in so determining he did not act with laudable prudence and
+      justice?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You do not, surely, consider, my very dear sir, that half the amount of
+      Mrs. Walker's salaries is too much for my immense trouble and pains in
+      teaching her?&rdquo; cried Sir George Thrum (who, in reply to Walker's note,
+      thought it most prudent to wait personally on that gentleman). &ldquo;Remember
+      that I am the first master in England; that I have the best interest in
+      England; that I can bring her out at the Palace, and at every concert and
+      musical festival in England; that I am obliged to teach her every single
+      note that she utters; and that without me she could no more sing a song
+      than her little baby could walk without its nurse.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I believe about half what you say,&rdquo; said Mr. Walker.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear Captain Walker! would you question my integrity? Who was it that
+      made Mrs. Millington's fortune,&mdash;the celebrated Mrs. Millington, who
+      has now got a hundred thousand pounds? Who was it that brought out the
+      finest tenor in Europe, Poppleton? Ask the musical world, ask those great
+      artists themselves, and they will tell you they owe their reputation,
+      their fortune, to Sir George Thrum.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is very likely,&rdquo; replied the Captain, coolly. &ldquo;You ARE a good master,
+      I dare say, Sir George; but I am not going to article Mrs. Walker to you
+      for three years, and sign her articles in the Fleet. Mrs. Walker shan't
+      sing till I'm a free man, that's flat: if I stay here till you're dead she
+      shan't.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gracious powers, sir!&rdquo; exclaimed Sir George, &ldquo;do you expect me to pay
+      your debts?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, old boy,&rdquo; answered the Captain, &ldquo;and to give me something handsome
+      in hand, too; and that's my ultimatum: and so I wish you good morning, for
+      I'm engaged to play a match at tennis below.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This little interview exceedingly frightened the worthy knight, who went
+      home to his lady in a delirious state of alarm occasioned by the audacity
+      of Captain Walker.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Slang's interview with him was scarcely more satisfactory. He owed, he
+      said, four thousand pounds. His creditors might be brought to compound for
+      five shillings in the pound. He would not consent to allow his wife to
+      make a single engagement until the creditors were satisfied, and until he
+      had a handsome sum in hand to begin the world with. &ldquo;Unless my wife comes
+      out, you'll be in the Gazette yourself, you know you will. So you may take
+      her or leave her, as you think fit.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let her sing one night as a trial,&rdquo; said Mr. Slang.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If she sings one night, the creditors will want their money in full,&rdquo;
+       replied the Captain. &ldquo;I shan't let her labour, poor thing, for the profit
+      of those scoundrels!&rdquo; added the prisoner, with much feeling. And Slang
+      left him with a much greater respect for Walker than he had ever before
+      possessed. He was struck with the gallantry of the man who could triumph
+      over misfortunes, nay, make misfortune itself an engine of good luck.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Walker was instructed instantly to have a severe sore throat. The
+      journals in Mr. Slang's interest deplored this illness pathetically; while
+      the papers in the interest of the opposition theatre magnified it with
+      great malice. &ldquo;The new singer,&rdquo; said one, &ldquo;the great wonder which Slang
+      promised us, is as hoarse as a RAVEN!&rdquo; &ldquo;Doctor Thorax pronounces,&rdquo; wrote
+      another paper, &ldquo;that the quinsy, which has suddenly prostrated Mrs.
+      Ravenswing, whose singing at the Philharmonic, previous to her appearance
+      at the 'T.R&mdash;&mdash;,' excited so much applause, has destroyed the
+      lady's voice for ever. We luckily need no other prima donna, when that
+      place, as nightly thousands acknowledge, is held by Miss Ligonier.&rdquo; The
+      Looker-on said, &ldquo;That although some well-informed contemporaries had
+      declared Mrs. W. Ravenswing's complaint to be a quinsy, others, on whose
+      authority they could equally rely, had pronounced it to be a consumption.
+      At all events, she was in an exceedingly dangerous state; from which,
+      though we do not expect, we heartily trust she may recover. Opinions
+      differ as to the merits of this lady, some saying that she was altogether
+      inferior to Miss Ligonier, while other connoisseurs declare the latter
+      lady to be by no means so accomplished a person. This point, we fear,&rdquo;
+       continued the Looker-on, &ldquo;can never now be settled; unless, which we fear
+      is improbable, Mrs. Ravenswing should ever so far recover as to be able to
+      make her debut; and even then, the new singer will not have a fair chance
+      unless her voice and strength shall be fully restored. This information,
+      which we have from exclusive resources, may be relied on,&rdquo; concluded the
+      Looker-on, &ldquo;as authentic.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was Mr. Walker himself, that artful and audacious Fleet prisoner, who
+      concocted those very paragraphs against his wife's health which appeared
+      in the journals of the Ligonier party. The partisans of that lady were
+      delighted, the creditors of Mr. Walker astounded, at reading them. Even
+      Sir George Thrum was taken in, and came to the Fleet prison in
+      considerable alarm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mum's the word, my good sir!&rdquo; said Mr. Walker. &ldquo;Now is the time to make
+      arrangements with the creditors.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Well, these arrangements were finally made. It does not matter how many
+      shillings in the pound satisfied the rapacious creditors of Morgiana's
+      husband. But it is certain that her voice returned to her all of a sudden
+      upon the Captain's release. The papers of the Mulligan faction again
+      trumpeted her perfections; the agreement with Mr. Slang was concluded;
+      that with Sir George Thrum the great composer satisfactorily arranged; and
+      the new opera underlined in immense capitals in the bills, and put in
+      rehearsal with immense expenditure on the part of the scene-painter and
+      costumier.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Need we tell with what triumphant success the &ldquo;Brigand's Bride&rdquo; was
+      received? All the Irish sub-editors the next morning took care to have
+      such an account of it as made Miss Ligonier and Baroski die with envy. All
+      the reporters who could spare time were in the boxes to support their
+      friend's work. All the journeymen tailors of the establishment of Linsey,
+      Woolsey, and Co. had pit tickets given to them, and applauded with all
+      their might. All Mr. Walker's friends of the &ldquo;Regent Club&rdquo; lined the
+      side-boxes with white kid gloves; and in a little box by themselves sat
+      Mrs. Crump and Mr. Woolsey, a great deal too much agitated to applaud&mdash;so
+      agitated, that Woolsey even forgot to fling down the bouquet he had
+      brought for the Ravenswing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But there was no lack of those horticultural ornaments. The theatre
+      servants wheeled away a wheelbarrow-full (which were flung on the stage
+      the next night over again); and Morgiana, blushing, panting, weeping, was
+      led off by Mr. Poppleton, the eminent tenor, who had crowned her with one
+      of the most conspicuous of the chaplets.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here she flew to her husband, and flung her arms round his neck. He was
+      flirting behind the side-scenes with Mademoiselle Flicflac, who had been
+      dancing in the divertissement; and was probably the only man in the
+      theatre of those who witnessed the embrace that did not care for it. Even
+      Slang was affected, and said with perfect sincerity that he wished he had
+      been in Walker's place. The manager's fortune was made, at least for the
+      season. He acknowledged so much to Walker, who took a week's salary for
+      his wife in advance that very night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was, as usual, a grand supper in the green-room. The terrible Mr.
+      Bludyer appeared in a new coat of the well-known Woolsey cut, and the
+      little tailor himself and Mrs. Crump were not the least happy of the
+      party. But when the Ravenswing took Woolsey's hand, and said she never
+      would have been there but for him, Mr. Walker looked very grave, and
+      hinted to her that she must not, in her position, encourage the attentions
+      of persons in that rank of life. &ldquo;I shall pay,&rdquo; said he, proudly, &ldquo;every
+      farthing that is owing to Mr. Woolsey, and shall employ him for the
+      future. But you understand, my love, that one cannot at one's own table
+      receive one's own tailor.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Slang proposed Morgiana's health in a tremendous speech, which elicited
+      cheers, and laughter, and sobs, such as only managers have the art of
+      drawing from the theatrical gentlemen and ladies in their employ. It was
+      observed, especially among the chorus-singers at the bottom of the table,
+      that their emotion was intense. They had a meeting the next day and voted
+      a piece of plate to Adolphus Slang, Esquire, for his eminent services in
+      the cause of the drama.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Walker returned thanks for his lady. That was, he said, the proudest
+      moment of his life. He was proud to think that he had educated her for the
+      stage, happy to think that his sufferings had not been in vain, and that
+      his exertions in her behalf were crowned with full success. In her name
+      and his own he thanked the company, and sat down, and was once more
+      particularly attentive to Mademoiselle Flicflac.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then came an oration from Sir George Thrum, in reply to Slang's toast to
+      HIM. It was very much to the same effect as the speech by Walker, the two
+      gentlemen attributing to themselves individually the merit of bringing out
+      Mrs. Walker. He concluded by stating that he should always hold Mrs.
+      Walker as the daughter of his heart, and to the last moment of his life
+      should love and cherish her. It is certain that Sir George was exceedingly
+      elated that night, and would have been scolded by his lady on his return
+      home, but for the triumph of the evening.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mulligan's speech of thanks, as author of the &ldquo;Brigand's Bride,&rdquo; was, it
+      must be confessed, extremely tedious. It seemed there would be no end to
+      it; when he got upon the subject of Ireland especially, which somehow was
+      found to be intimately connected with the interests of music and the
+      theatre. Even the choristers pooh-poohed this speech, coming though it did
+      from the successful author, whose songs of wine, love, and battle, they
+      had been repeating that night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The &ldquo;Brigand's Bride&rdquo; ran for many nights. Its choruses were tuned on the
+      organs of the day. Morgiana's airs, &ldquo;The Rose upon my Balcony&rdquo; and the
+      &ldquo;Lightning on the Cataract&rdquo; (recitative and scena) were on everybody's
+      lips, and brought so many guineas to Sir George Thrum that he was
+      encouraged to have his portrait engraved, which still may be seen in the
+      music-shops. Not many persons, I believe, bought proof impressions of the
+      plate, price two guineas; whereas, on the contrary, all the young clerks
+      in banks, and all the FAST young men of the universities, had pictures of
+      the Ravenswing in their apartments&mdash;as Biondetta (the brigand's
+      bride), as Zelyma (in the &ldquo;Nuptials of Benares&rdquo;), as Barbareska (in the
+      &ldquo;Mine of Tobolsk&rdquo;), and in all her famous characters. In the latter she
+      disguises herself as a Uhlan, in order to save her father, who is in
+      prison; and the Ravenswing looked so fascinating in this costume in
+      pantaloons and yellow boots, that Slang was for having her instantly in
+      Captain Macheath, whence arose their quarrel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was replaced at Slang's theatre by Snooks, the rhinoceros-tamer, with
+      his breed of wild buffaloes. Their success was immense. Slang gave a
+      supper, at which all the company burst into tears; and assembling in the
+      green-room next day, they, as usual, voted a piece of plate to Adolphus
+      Slang, Esquire, for his eminent services to the drama.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the Captain Macheath dispute Mr. Walker would have had his wife yield;
+      but on this point, and for once, she disobeyed her husband and left the
+      theatre. And when Walker cursed her (according to his wont) for her
+      abominable selfishness and disregard of his property, she burst into tears
+      and said she had spent but twenty guineas on herself and baby during the
+      year, that her theatrical dressmaker's bills were yet unpaid, and that she
+      had never asked him how much he spent on that odious French figurante.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All this was true, except about the French figurante. Walker, as the lord
+      and master, received all Morgiana's earnings, and spent them as a
+      gentleman should. He gave very neat dinners at a cottage in Regent's Park
+      (Mr. and Mrs. Walker lived at Green Street, Grosvenor Square), he played a
+      good deal at the &ldquo;Regent;&rdquo; but as to the French figurante, it must be
+      confessed, that Mrs. Walker was in a sad error: THAT lady and the Captain
+      had parted long ago; it was Madame Dolores de Tras-os-Montes who inhabited
+      the cottage in St. John's Wood now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But if some little errors of this kind might be attributable to the
+      Captain, on the other hand, when his wife was in the provinces, he was the
+      most attentive of husbands; made all her bargains, and received every
+      shilling before he would permit her to sing a note. Thus he prevented her
+      from being cheated, as a person of her easy temper doubtless would have
+      been, by designing managers and needy concert-givers. They always
+      travelled with four horses; and Walker was adored in every one of the
+      principal hotels in England. The waiters flew at his bell. The
+      chambermaids were afraid he was a sad naughty man, and thought his wife no
+      such great beauty; the landlords preferred him to any duke. HE never
+      looked at their bills, not he! In fact his income was at least four
+      thousand a year for some years of his life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Master Woolsey Walker was put to Doctor Wapshot's seminary, whence, after
+      many disputes on the Doctor's part as to getting his half-year's accounts
+      paid, and after much complaint of ill-treatment on the little boy's side,
+      he was withdrawn, and placed under the care of the Reverend Mr. Swishtail,
+      at Turnham Green; where all his bills are paid by his godfather, now the
+      head of the firm of Woolsey and Co.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As a gentleman, Mr. Walker still declines to see him; but he has not, as
+      far as I have heard, paid the sums of money which he threatened to refund;
+      and, as he is seldom at home the worthy tailor can come to Green Street at
+      his leisure. He and Mrs. Crump, and Mrs. Walker often take the omnibus to
+      Brentford, and a cake with them to little Woolsey at school; to whom the
+      tailor says he will leave every shilling of his property.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Walkers have no other children; but when she takes her airing in the
+      Park she always turns away at the sight of a low phaeton, in which sits a
+      woman with rouged cheeks, and a great number of overdressed children and a
+      French bonne, whose name, I am given to understand, is Madame Dolores de
+      Tras-os-Montes. Madame de Tras-os-Montes always puts a great gold glass to
+      her eye as the Ravenswing's carriage passes, and looks into it with a
+      sneer. The two coachmen used always to exchange queer winks at each other
+      in the ring, until Madame de Tras-os-Montes lately adopted a tremendous
+      chasseur, with huge whiskers and a green and gold livery; since which time
+      the formerly named gentlemen do not recognise each other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Ravenswing's life is one of perpetual triumph on the stage; and, as
+      every one of the fashionable men about town have been in love with her,
+      you may fancy what a pretty character she has. Lady Thrum would die sooner
+      than speak to that unhappy young woman; and, in fact, the Thrums have a
+      new pupil, who is a siren without the dangerous qualities of one, who has
+      the person of Venus, and the mind of a Muse, and who is coming out at one
+      of the theatres immediately. Baroski says, &ldquo;De liddle Rafenschwing is just
+      as font of me as effer!&rdquo; People are very shy about receiving her in
+      society; and when she goes to sing at a concert, Miss Prim starts up and
+      skurries off in a state of the greatest alarm, lest &ldquo;that person&rdquo; should
+      speak to her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Walker is voted a good, easy, rattling, gentlemanly fellow, and nobody's
+      enemy but his own. His wife, they say, is dreadfully extravagant: and,
+      indeed, since his marriage, and in spite of his wife's large income, he
+      has been in the Bench several times; but she signs some bills and he comes
+      out again, and is as gay and genial as ever. All mercantile speculations
+      he has wisely long since given up; he likes to throw a main of an evening,
+      as I have said, and to take his couple of bottles at dinner. On Friday he
+      attends at the theatre for his wife's salary, and transacts no other
+      business during the week. He grows exceedingly stout, dyes his hair, and
+      has a bloated purple look about the nose and cheeks, very different from
+      that which first charmed the heart of Morgiana.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By the way, Eglantine has been turned out of the Bower of Bloom, and now
+      keeps a shop at Tunbridge Wells. Going down thither last year without a
+      razor, I asked a fat seedy man lolling in a faded nankeen jacket at the
+      door of a tawdry little shop in the Pantiles, to shave me. He said in
+      reply, &ldquo;Sir, I do not practise in that branch of the profession!&rdquo; and
+      turned back into the little shop. It was Archibald Eglantine. But in the
+      wreck of his fortunes he still has his captain's uniform, and his grand
+      cross of the order of the Castle and Falcon of Panama.
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      POSTSCRIPT.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      G. Fitz-Boodle, Esq., to O. Yorke, Esq.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZUM TRIERISCHEN HOP, COBLENZ: July 10, 1843.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MY DEAR YORKE,&mdash;The story of the Ravenswing was written a long time
+      since, and I never could account for the bad taste of the publishers of
+      the metropolis who refused it an insertion in their various magazines.
+      This fact would never have been alluded to but for the following
+      circumstance:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Only yesterday, as I was dining at this excellent hotel, I remarked a
+      bald-headed gentleman in a blue coat and brass buttons, who looked like a
+      colonel on half-pay, and by his side a lady and a little boy of twelve,
+      whom the gentleman was cramming with an amazing quantity of cherries and
+      cakes. A stout old dame in a wonderful cap and ribands was seated by the
+      lady's side, and it was easy to see they were English, and I thought I had
+      already made their acquaintance elsewhere.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The younger of the ladies at last made a bow with an accompanying blush.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Surely,&rdquo; said I, &ldquo;I have the honour of speaking to Mrs. Ravenswing?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mrs. Woolsey, sir,&rdquo; said the gentleman; &ldquo;my wife has long since left the
+      stage:&rdquo; and at this the old lady in the wonderful cap trod on my toes very
+      severely, and nodded her head and all her ribands in a most mysterious
+      way. Presently the two ladies rose and left the table, the elder declaring
+      that she heard the baby crying.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Woolsey, my dear, go with your mamma,&rdquo; said Mr. Woolsey, patting the boy
+      on the head. The young gentleman obeyed the command, carrying off a plate
+      of macaroons with him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your son is a fine boy, sir,&rdquo; said I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My step-son, sir,&rdquo; answered Mr. Woolsey; and added, in a louder voice, &ldquo;I
+      knew you, Mr. Fitz-Boodle, at once, but did not mention your name for fear
+      of agitating my wife. She don't like to have the memory of old times
+      renewed, sir; her former husband, whom you know, Captain Walker, made her
+      very unhappy. He died in America, sir, of this, I fear&rdquo; (pointing to the
+      bottle), &ldquo;and Mrs. W. quitted the stage a year before I quitted business.
+      Are you going on to Wiesbaden?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They went off in their carriage that evening, the boy on the box making
+      great efforts to blow out of the postilion's tasselled horn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I am glad that poor Morgiana is happy at last, and hasten to inform you of
+      the fact. I am going to visit the old haunts of my youth at Pumpernickel.
+      Adieu.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yours,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      G. F.-B. <a name="link2H_4_0011" id="link2H_4_0011">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      MR. AND MRS. FRANK BERRY.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0009" id="link2HCH0009">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER I. THE FIGHT AT SLAUGHTER HOUSE.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      I am very fond of reading about battles, and have most of Marlborough's
+      and Wellington's at my fingers' ends; but the most tremendous combat I
+      ever saw, and one that interests me to think of more than Malplaquet or
+      Waterloo (which, by the way, has grown to be a downright nuisance, so much
+      do men talk of it after dinner, prating most disgustingly about &ldquo;the
+      Prussians coming up,&rdquo; and what not)&mdash;I say the most tremendous combat
+      ever known was that between Berry and Biggs the gown-boy, which commenced
+      in a certain place called Middle Briars, situated in the midst of the
+      cloisters that run along the side of the playground of Slaughter House
+      School, near Smithfield, London. It was there, madam, that your humble
+      servant had the honour of acquiring, after six years' labour, that immense
+      fund of classical knowledge which in after life has been so exceedingly
+      useful to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The circumstances of the quarrel were these:&mdash;Biggs, the gown-boy (a
+      man who, in those days, I thought was at least seven feet high, and was
+      quite thunderstruck to find in after life that he measured no more than
+      five feet four), was what we called &ldquo;second cock&rdquo; of the school; the first
+      cock was a great big, good-humoured, lazy, fair-haired fellow, Old Hawkins
+      by name, who, because he was large and good-humoured, hurt nobody. Biggs,
+      on the contrary, was a sad bully; he had half-a-dozen fags, and beat them
+      all unmercifully. Moreover, he had a little brother, a boarder in Potky's
+      house, whom, as a matter of course, he hated and maltreated worse than
+      anyone else.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Well, one day, because young Biggs had not brought his brother his hoops,
+      or had not caught a ball at cricket, or for some other equally good
+      reason, Biggs the elder so belaboured the poor little fellow, that Berry,
+      who was sauntering by, and saw the dreadful blows which the elder brother
+      was dealing to the younger with his hockey-stick, felt a compassion for
+      the little fellow (perhaps he had a jealousy against Biggs, and wanted to
+      try a few rounds with him, but that I can't vouch for); however, Berry
+      passing by, stopped and said, &ldquo;Don't you think you have thrashed the boy
+      enough, Biggs?&rdquo; He spoke this in a very civil tone, for he never would
+      have thought of interfering rudely with the sacred privilege that an upper
+      boy at a public school always has of beating a junior, especially when
+      they happen to be brothers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The reply of Biggs, as might be expected, was to hit young Biggs with the
+      hockey-stick twice as hard as before, until the little wretch howled with
+      pain. &ldquo;I suppose it's no business of yours, Berry,&rdquo; said Biggs, thumping
+      away all the while, and laid on worse and worse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Until Berry (and, indeed, little Biggs) could bear it no longer, and the
+      former, bouncing forward, wrenched the stick out of old Biggs's hands, and
+      sent it whirling out of the cloister window, to the great wonder of a
+      crowd of us small boys, who were looking on. Little boys always like to
+      see a little companion of their own soundly beaten.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There!&rdquo; said Berry, looking into Biggs's face, as much as to say, &ldquo;I've
+      gone and done it;&rdquo; and he added to the brother, &ldquo;Scud away, you little
+      thief; I've saved you this time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stop, young Biggs!&rdquo; roared out his brother after a pause; &ldquo;or I'll break
+      every bone in your infernal scoundrelly skin!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Young Biggs looked at Berry, then at his brother, then came at his
+      brother's order, as if back to be beaten again; but lost heart, and ran
+      away as fast as his little legs could carry him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll do for him another time,&rdquo; said Biggs. &ldquo;Here, under-boy, take my
+      coat;&rdquo; and we all began to gather round and formed a ring.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We had better wait till after school, Biggs,&rdquo; cried Berry, quite cool,
+      but looking a little pale. &ldquo;There are only five minutes now, and it will
+      take you more than that to thrash me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Biggs upon this committed a great error; for he struck Berry slightly
+      across the face with the back of his hand, saying, &ldquo;You are in a funk.&rdquo;
+       But this was a feeling which Frank Berry did not in the least entertain;
+      for, in reply to Biggs's back-hander, and as quick as thought, and with
+      all his might and main&mdash;pong! he delivered a blow upon old Biggs's
+      nose that made the claret spirt, and sent the second cock down to the
+      ground as if he had been shot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was up again, however, in a minute, his face white and gashed with
+      blood, his eyes glaring, a ghastly spectacle; and Berry, meanwhile, had
+      taken his coat off, and by this time there were gathered in the cloisters,
+      on all the windows, and upon each other's shoulders, one hundred and
+      twenty young gentlemen at the very least, for the news had gone out
+      through the playground of &ldquo;a fight between Berry and Biggs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Berry was quite right in his remark about the propriety of deferring
+      the business, for at this minute Mr. Chip, the second master, came down
+      the cloisters going into school, and grinned in his queer way as he saw
+      the state of Biggs's face. &ldquo;Holloa, Mr. Biggs,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;I suppose you
+      have run against a finger-post.&rdquo; That was the regular joke with us at
+      school, and you may be sure we all laughed heartily: as we always did when
+      Mr. Chip made a joke, or anything like a joke. &ldquo;You had better go to the
+      pump, sir, and get yourself washed, and not let Doctor Buckle see you in
+      that condition.&rdquo; So saying, Mr. Chip disappeared to his duties in the
+      under-school, whither all we little boys followed him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was Wednesday, a half-holiday, as everybody knows, and boiled-beef day
+      at Slaughter House. I was in the same boarding-house with Berry, and we
+      all looked to see whether he ate a good dinner, just as one would examine
+      a man who was going to be hanged. I recollected, in after-life, in
+      Germany, seeing a friend who was going to fight a duel eat five larks for
+      his breakfast, and thought I had seldom witnessed greater courage. Berry
+      ate moderately of the boiled beef&mdash;BOILED CHILD we used to call it at
+      school, in our elegant jocular way; he knew a great deal better than to
+      load his stomach upon the eve of such a contest as was going to take
+      place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dinner was very soon over, and Mr. Chip, who had been all the while joking
+      Berry, and pressing him to eat, called him up into his study, to the great
+      disappointment of us all, for we thought he was going to prevent the
+      fight; but no such thing. The Reverend Edward Chip took Berry into his
+      study, and poured him out two glasses of port-wine, which he made him take
+      with a biscuit, and patted him on the back, and went off. I have no doubt
+      he was longing, like all of us, to see the battle; but etiquette, you
+      know, forbade.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When we went out into the green, Old Hawkins was there&mdash;the great
+      Hawkins, the cock of the school. I have never seen the man since, but
+      still think of him as of something awful, gigantic, mysterious: he who
+      could thrash everybody, who could beat all the masters; how we longed for
+      him to put in his hand and lick Buckle! He was a dull boy, not very high
+      in the school, and had all his exercises written for him. Buckle knew
+      this, but respected him; never called him up to read Greek plays; passed
+      over all his blunders, which were many; let him go out of half-holidays
+      into the town as he pleased: how should any man dare to stop him&mdash;the
+      great calm magnanimous silent Strength! They say he licked a
+      Life-Guardsman: I wonder whether it was Shaw, who killed all those
+      Frenchmen? No, it could not be Shaw, for he was dead au champ d'honneur;
+      but he WOULD have licked Shaw if he had been alive. A bargeman I know he
+      licked, at Jack Randall's in Slaughter House Lane. Old Hawkins was too
+      lazy to play at cricket; he sauntered all day in the sunshine about the
+      green, accompanied by little Tippins, who was in the sixth form, laughed
+      and joked at Hawkins eternally, and was the person who wrote all his
+      exercises.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Instead of going into town this afternoon, Hawkins remained at Slaughter
+      House, to see the great fight between the second and third cocks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The different masters of the school kept boarding-houses (such as Potky's,
+      Chip's, Wickens's, Pinney's, and so on), and the playground, or &ldquo;green&rdquo; as
+      it was called, although the only thing green about the place was the
+      broken glass on the walls that separate Slaughter House from Wilderness
+      Row and Goswell Street&mdash;(many a time have I seen Mr. Pickwick look
+      out of his window in that street, though we did not know him then)&mdash;the
+      playground, or green, was common to all. But if any stray boy from Potky's
+      was found, for instance, in, or entering into, Chip's house, the most
+      dreadful tortures were practised upon him: as I can answer in my own case.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fancy, then, our astonishment at seeing a little three-foot wretch, of the
+      name of Wills, one of Hawkins's fags (they were both in Potky's), walk
+      undismayed amongst us lions at Chip's house, as the &ldquo;rich and rare&rdquo; young
+      lady did in Ireland. We were going to set upon him and devour or otherwise
+      maltreat him, when he cried out in a little shrill impertinent voice,
+      &ldquo;TELL BERRY I WANT HIM!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      We all roared with laughter. Berry was in the sixth form, and Wills or any
+      under-boy would as soon have thought of &ldquo;wanting&rdquo; him, as I should of
+      wanting the Duke of Wellington.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Little Wills looked round in an imperious kind of way. &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; says he,
+      stamping his foot, &ldquo;do you hear? TELL BERRY THAT HAWKINS WANTS HIM!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As for resisting the law of Hawkins, you might as soon think of resisting
+      immortal Jove. Berry and Tolmash, who was to be his bottle-holder, made
+      their appearance immediately, and walked out into the green where Hawkins
+      was waiting, and, with an irresistible audacity that only belonged to
+      himself, in the face of nature and all the regulations of the place, was
+      smoking a cigar. When Berry and Tolmash found him, the three began slowly
+      pacing up and down in the sunshine, and we little boys watched them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hawkins moved his arms and hands every now and then, and was evidently
+      laying down the law about boxing. We saw his fists darting out every now
+      and then with mysterious swiftness, hitting one, two, quick as thought, as
+      if in the face of an adversary; now his left hand went up, as if guarding
+      his own head, now his immense right fist dreadfully flapped the air, as if
+      punishing his imaginary opponent's miserable ribs. The conversation lasted
+      for some ten minutes, about which time gown-boys' dinner was over, and we
+      saw these youths, in their black horned-button jackets and knee-breeches,
+      issuing from their door in the cloisters. There were no hoops, no
+      cricket-bats, as usual on a half-holiday. Who would have thought of play
+      in expectation of such tremendous sport as was in store for us?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Towering among the gown-boys, of whom he was the head and the tyrant,
+      leaning upon Bushby's arm, and followed at a little distance by many
+      curious pale awe-stricken boys, dressed in his black silk stockings, which
+      he always sported, and with a crimson bandanna tied round his waist, came
+      BIGGS. His nose was swollen with the blow given before school, but his
+      eyes flashed fire. He was laughing and sneering with Bushby, and evidently
+      intended to make minced meat of Berry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The betting began pretty freely: the bets were against poor Berry. Five to
+      three were offered&mdash;in ginger-beer. I took six to four in raspberry
+      open tarts. The upper boys carried the thing farther still: and I know for
+      a fact, that Swang's book amounted to four pound three (but he hedged a
+      good deal), and Tittery lost seventeen shillings in a single bet to Pitts,
+      who took the odds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As Biggs and his party arrived, I heard Hawkins say to Berry, &ldquo;For
+      heaven's sake, my boy, fib with your right, and MIND HIS LEFT HAND!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Middle Briars was voted to be too confined a space for the combat, and it
+      was agreed that it should take place behind the under-school in the shade,
+      whither we all went. Hawkins, with his immense silver hunting-watch, kept
+      the time; and water was brought from the pump close to Notley's the
+      pastrycook's, who did not admire fisticuffs at all on half-holidays, for
+      the fights kept the boys away from his shop. Gutley was the only fellow in
+      the school who remained faithful to him, and he sat on the counter&mdash;the
+      great gormandising brute!&mdash;eating tarts the whole day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This famous fight, as every Slaughter House man knows, lasted for two
+      hours and twenty-nine minutes, by Hawkins's immense watch. All this time
+      the air resounded with cries of &ldquo;Go it, Berry!&rdquo; &ldquo;Go it, Biggs!&rdquo; &ldquo;Pitch
+      into him!&rdquo; &ldquo;Give it him!&rdquo; and so on. Shall I describe the hundred and two
+      rounds of the combat?&mdash;No!&mdash;It would occupy too much space, and
+      the taste for such descriptions has passed away. <a href="#linknote-3"
+       name="linknoteref-3" id="linknoteref-3"><small>3</small></a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      1st round. Both the combatants fresh, and in prime order. The weight and
+      inches somewhat on the gown-boy's side. Berry goes gallantly in, and
+      delivers a clinker on the gown-boy's jaw. Biggs makes play with his left.
+      Berry down.
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      4th round. Claret drawn in profusion from the gown-boy's grogshop. (He
+      went down, and had his front tooth knocked out, but the blow cut Berry's
+      knuckles a great deal.)
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      15th round. Chancery. Fibbing. Biggs makes dreadful work with his left.
+      Break away. Rally. Biggs down. Betting still six to four on the gown-boy.
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      20th round. The men both dreadfully punished. Berry somewhat shy of his
+      adversary's left hand.
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      29th to 42nd round. The Chipsite all this while breaks away from the
+      gown-boy's left, and goes down on a knee. Six to four on the gown-boy,
+      until the fortieth round, when the bets became equal.
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      102nd and last round. For half-an-hour the men had stood up to each other,
+      but were almost too weary to strike. The gown-boy's face hardly to be
+      recognised, swollen and streaming with blood. The Chipsite in a similar
+      condition, and still more punished about his side from his enemy's left
+      hand. Berry gives a blow at his adversary's face, and falls over him as he
+      falls.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The gown-boy can't come up to time. And thus ended the great fight of
+      Berry and Biggs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And what, pray, has this horrid description of a battle and parcel of
+      schoolboys to do with Men's Wives?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What has it to do with Men's Wives?&mdash;A great deal more, madam, than
+      you think for. Only read Chapter II., and you shall hear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0010" id="link2HCH0010">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER II. THE COMBAT AT VERSAILLES.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      I afterwards came to be Berry's fag, and, though beaten by him daily, he
+      allowed, of course, no one else to lay a hand upon me, and I got no more
+      thrashing than was good for me. Thus an intimacy grew up between us, and
+      after he left Slaughter House and went into the dragoons, the honest
+      fellow did not forget his old friend, but actually made his appearance one
+      day in the playground in moustaches and a braided coat, and gave me a gold
+      pencil-case and a couple of sovereigns. I blushed when I took them, but
+      take them I did; and I think the thing I almost best recollect in my life,
+      is the sight of Berry getting behind an immense bay cab-horse, which was
+      held by a correct little groom, and was waiting near the school in
+      Slaughter House Square. He proposed, too, to have me to &ldquo;Long's,&rdquo; where he
+      was lodging for the time; but this invitation was refused on my behalf by
+      Doctor Buckle, who said, and possibly with correctness, that I should get
+      little good by spending my holiday with such a scapegrace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Once afterwards he came to see me at Christ Church, and we made a show of
+      writing to one another, and didn't, and always had a hearty mutual
+      goodwill; and though we did not quite burst into tears on parting, were
+      yet quite happy when occasion threw us together, and so almost lost sight
+      of each other. I heard lately that Berry was married, and am rather
+      ashamed to say, that I was not so curious as even to ask the maiden name
+      of his lady.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Last summer I was at Paris, and had gone over to Versailles to meet a
+      party, one of which was a young lady to whom I was tenderly&mdash;But,
+      never mind. The day was rainy, and the party did not keep its appointment;
+      and after yawning through the interminable Palace picture-galleries, and
+      then making an attempt to smoke a cigar in the Palace garden&mdash;for
+      which crime I was nearly run through the body by a rascally sentinel&mdash;I
+      was driven, perforce, into the great bleak lonely place before the Palace,
+      with its roads branching off to all the towns in the world, which Louis
+      and Napoleon once intended to conquer, and there enjoyed my favourite
+      pursuit at leisure, and was meditating whether I should go back to
+      &ldquo;Vefour's&rdquo; for dinner, or patronise my friend M. Duboux of the &ldquo;Hotel des
+      Reservoirs&rdquo; who gives not only a good dinner, but as dear a one as heart
+      can desire. I was, I say, meditating these things, when a carriage passed
+      by. It was a smart low calash, with a pair of bay horses and a postilion
+      in a drab jacket that twinkled with innumerable buttons, and I was too
+      much occupied in admiring the build of the machine, and the extreme
+      tightness of the fellow's inexpressibles, to look at the personages within
+      the carriage, when the gentleman roared out &ldquo;Fitz!&rdquo; and the postilion
+      pulled up, and the lady gave a shrill scream, and a little black-muzzled
+      spaniel began barking and yelling with all his might, and a man with
+      moustaches jumped out of the vehicle, and began shaking me by the hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Drive home, John,&rdquo; said the gentleman: &ldquo;I'll be with you, my love, in an
+      instant&mdash;it's an old friend. Fitz, let me present you to Mrs. Berry.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The lady made an exceedingly gentle inclination of her black-velvet
+      bonnet, and said, &ldquo;Pray, my love, remember that it is just dinner-time.
+      However, never mind ME.&rdquo; And with another slight toss and a nod to the
+      postilion, that individual's white leather breeches began to jump up and
+      down again in the saddle, and the carriage disappeared, leaving me shaking
+      my old friend Berry by the hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had long quitted the army, but still wore his military beard, which
+      gave to his fair pink face a fierce and lion-like look. He was
+      extraordinarily glad to see me, as only men are glad who live in a small
+      town, or in dull company. There is no destroyer of friendships like
+      London, where a man has no time to think of his neighbour, and has far too
+      many friends to care for them. He told me in a breath of his marriage, and
+      how happy he was, and straight insisted that I must come home to dinner,
+      and see more of Angelica, who had invited me herself&mdash;didn't I hear
+      her?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mrs. Berry asked YOU, Frank; but I certainly did not hear her ask ME!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She would not have mentioned the dinner but that she meant me to ask you.
+      I know she did,&rdquo; cried Frank Berry. &ldquo;And, besides&mdash;hang it&mdash;I'm
+      master of the house. So come you shall. No ceremony, old boy&mdash;one or
+      two friends&mdash;snug family party&mdash;and we'll talk of old times over
+      a bottle of claret.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There did not seem to me to be the slightest objection to this
+      arrangement, except that my boots were muddy, and my coat of the morning
+      sort. But as it was quite impossible to go to Paris and back again in a
+      quarter of an hour, and as a man may dine with perfect comfort to himself
+      in a frock-coat, it did not occur to me to be particularly squeamish, or
+      to decline an old friend's invitation upon a pretext so trivial.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Accordingly we walked to a small house in the Avenue de Paris, and were
+      admitted first into a small garden ornamented by a grotto, a fountain, and
+      several nymphs in plaster-of-Paris, then up a mouldy old steep stair into
+      a hall, where a statue of Cupid and another of Venus welcomed us with
+      their eternal simper; then through a salle-a-manger where covers were laid
+      for six; and finally to a little saloon, where Fido the dog began to howl
+      furiously according to his wont.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was one of the old pavilions that had been built for a pleasure-house
+      in the gay days of Versailles, ornamented with abundance of damp Cupids
+      and cracked gilt cornices, and old mirrors let into the walls, and gilded
+      once, but now painted a dingy French white. The long low windows looked
+      into the court, where the fountain played its ceaseless dribble,
+      surrounded by numerous rank creepers and weedy flowers, but in the midst
+      of which the statues stood with their bases quite moist and green.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I hate fountains and statues in dark confined places: that cheerless,
+      endless plashing of water is the most inhospitable sound ever heard. The
+      stiff grin of those French statues, or ogling Canova Graces, is by no
+      means more happy, I think, than the smile of a skeleton, and not so
+      natural. Those little pavilions in which the old roues sported were never
+      meant to be seen by daylight, depend on't. They were lighted up with a
+      hundred wax-candles, and the little fountain yonder was meant only to cool
+      their claret. And so, my first impression of Berry's place of abode was
+      rather a dismal one. However, I heard him in the salle-a-manger drawing
+      the corks, which went off with a CLOOP, and that consoled me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As for the furniture of the rooms appertaining to the Berrys, there was a
+      harp in a leather case, and a piano, and a flute-box, and a huge tambour
+      with a Saracen's nose just begun, and likewise on the table a multiplicity
+      of those little gilt books, half sentimental and half religious, which the
+      wants of the age and of our young ladies have produced in such numbers of
+      late. I quarrel with no lady's taste in that way; but heigho! I had rather
+      that Mrs. Fitz-Boodle should read &ldquo;Humphry Clinker!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Besides these works, there was a &ldquo;Peerage,&rdquo; of course. What genteel family
+      was ever without one?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was making for the door to see Frank drawing the corks, and was bounced
+      at by the amiable little black-muzzled spaniel, who fastened his teeth in
+      my pantaloons, and received a polite kick in consequence, which sent him
+      howling to the other end of the room, and the animal was just in the act
+      of performing that feat of agility, when the door opened and madame made
+      her appearance. Frank came behind her, peering over her shoulder with
+      rather an anxious look.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Berry is an exceedingly white and lean person. She has thick
+      eyebrows, which meet rather dangerously over her nose, which is Grecian,
+      and a small mouth with no lips&mdash;a sort of feeble pucker in the face
+      as it were. Under her eyebrows are a pair of enormous eyes, which she is
+      in the habit of turning constantly ceiling-wards. Her hair is rather
+      scarce, and worn in bandeaux, and she commonly mounts a sprig of laurel,
+      or a dark flower or two, which with the sham tour&mdash;I believe that is
+      the name of the knob of artificial hair that many ladies sport&mdash;gives
+      her a rigid and classical look. She is dressed in black, and has
+      invariably the neatest of silk stockings and shoes: for forsooth her foot
+      is a fine one, and she always sits with it before her, looking at it,
+      stamping it, and admiring it a great deal. &ldquo;Fido,&rdquo; she says to her
+      spaniel, &ldquo;you have almost crushed my poor foot;&rdquo; or, &ldquo;Frank,&rdquo; to her
+      husband, &ldquo;bring me a footstool:&rdquo; or, &ldquo;I suffer so from cold in the feet,&rdquo;
+       and so forth; but be the conversation what it will, she is always sure to
+      put HER FOOT into it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She invariably wears on her neck the miniature of her late father, Sir
+      George Catacomb, apothecary to George III.; and she thinks those two men
+      the greatest the world ever saw. She was born in Baker Street, Portman
+      Square, and that is saying almost enough of her. She is as long, as
+      genteel, and as dreary, as that deadly-lively place, and sports, by way of
+      ornament, her papa's hatchment, as it were, as every tenth Baker Street
+      house has taught her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What induced such a jolly fellow as Frank Berry to marry Miss Angelica
+      Catacomb no one can tell. He met her, he says, at a ball at Hampton Court,
+      where his regiment was quartered, and where, to this day, lives &ldquo;her aunt
+      Lady Pash.&rdquo; She alludes perpetually in conversation to that celebrated
+      lady; and if you look in the &ldquo;Baronetage&rdquo; to the pedigree of the Pash
+      family, you may see manuscript notes by Mrs. Frank Berry, relative to them
+      and herself. Thus, when you see in print that Sir John Pash married
+      Angelica, daughter of Graves Catacomb, Esquire, in a neat hand you find
+      written, AND SISTER OF THE LATE SIR GEORGE CATACOMB, OF BAKER STREET,
+      PORTMAN SQUARE: &ldquo;A.B.&rdquo; follows of course. It is a wonder how fond ladies
+      are of writing in books, and signing their charming initials! Mrs. Berry's
+      before-mentioned little gilt books are scored with pencil-marks, or
+      occasionally at the margin with a!&mdash;note of interjection, or the
+      words &ldquo;TOO TRUE, A.B.&rdquo; and so on. Much may be learned with regard to
+      lovely woman by a look at the books she reads in; and I had gained no
+      inconsiderable knowledge of Mrs. Berry by the ten minutes spent in the
+      drawing-room, while she was at her toilet in the adjoining bedchamber.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have often heard me talk of George Fitz,&rdquo; says Berry, with an
+      appealing look to madame.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very often,&rdquo; answered his lady, in a tone which clearly meant &ldquo;a great
+      deal too much.&rdquo; &ldquo;Pray, sir,&rdquo; continued she, looking at my boots with all
+      her might, &ldquo;are we to have your company at dinner?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course you are, my dear; what else do you think he came for? You would
+      not have the man go back to Paris to get his evening coat, would you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At least, my love, I hope you will go and put on YOURS, and change those
+      muddy boots. Lady Pash will be here in five minutes, and you know Dobus is
+      as punctual as clockwork.&rdquo; Then turning to me with a sort of apology that
+      was as consoling as a box on the ear, &ldquo;We have some friends at dinner,
+      sir, who are rather particular persons; but I am sure when they hear that
+      you only came on a sudden invitation, they will excuse your morning dress.&mdash;Bah!
+      what a smell of smoke!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With this speech madame placed herself majestically on a sofa, put out her
+      foot, called Fido, and relapsed into an icy silence. Frank had long since
+      evacuated the premises, with a rueful look at his wife, but never daring
+      to cast a glance at me. I saw the whole business at once: here was this
+      lion of a fellow tamed down by a she Van Amburgh, and fetching and
+      carrying at her orders a great deal more obediently than her little
+      yowling black-muzzled darling of a Fido.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I am not, however, to be tamed so easily, and was determined in this
+      instance not to be in the least disconcerted, or to show the smallest sign
+      of ill-humour: so to renouer the conversation, I began about Lady Pash.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I heard you mention the name of Pash, I think?&rdquo; said I. &ldquo;I know a lady of
+      that name, and a very ugly one it is too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is most probably not the same person,&rdquo; answered Mrs. Berry, with a
+      look which intimated that a fellow like me could never have had the honour
+      to know so exalted a person.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I mean old Lady Pash of Hampton Court. Fat woman&mdash;fair, ain't she?&mdash;and
+      wears an amethyst in her forehead, has one eye, a blond wig, and dresses
+      in light green?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lady Pash, sir, is MY AUNT,&rdquo; answered Mrs. Berry (not altogether
+      displeased, although she expected money from the old lady; but you know we
+      love to hear our friends abused when it can be safely done).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, indeed! she was a daughter of old Catacomb's of Windsor, I remember,
+      the undertaker. They called her husband Callipash, and her ladyship
+      Pishpash. So you see, madam, that I know the whole family!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Fitz-Simons!&rdquo; exclaimed Mrs. Berry, rising, &ldquo;I am not accustomed to
+      hear nicknames applied to myself and my family; and must beg you, when you
+      honour us with your company, to spare our feelings as much as possible.
+      Mr. Catacomb had the confidence of his SOVEREIGN, sir, and Sir John Pash
+      was of Charles II.'s creation. The one was my uncle, sir; the other my
+      grandfather!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear madam, I am extremely sorry, and most sincerely apologise for my
+      inadvertence. But you owe me an apology too: my name is not Fitz-Simons,
+      but Fitz-Boodle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What! of Boodle Hall&mdash;my husband's old friend; of Charles I.'s
+      creation? My dear sir, I beg you a thousand pardons, and am delighted to
+      welcome a person of whom I have heard Frank say so much. Frank!&rdquo; (to
+      Berry, who soon entered in very glossy boots and a white waistcoat), &ldquo;do
+      you know, darling, I mistook Mr. Fitz-Boodle for Mr. Fitz-Simons&mdash;that
+      horrid Irish horse-dealing person; and I never, never, never can pardon
+      myself for being so rude to him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The big eyes here assumed an expression that was intended to kill me
+      outright with kindness: from being calm, still, reserved, Angelica
+      suddenly became gay, smiling, confidential, and folatre. She told me she
+      had heard I was a sad creature, and that she intended to reform me, and
+      that I must come and see Frank a great deal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, although Mr. Fitz-Simons, for whom I was mistaken, is as low a fellow
+      as ever came out of Dublin, and having been a captain in somebody's army,
+      is now a blackleg and horse-dealer by profession; yet, if I had brought
+      him home to Mrs. Fitz-Boodle to dinner, I should have liked far better
+      that that imaginary lady should have received him with decent civility,
+      and not insulted the stranger within her husband's gates. And, although it
+      was delightful to be received so cordially when the mistake was
+      discovered, yet I found that ALL Berry's old acquaintances were by no
+      means so warmly welcomed; for another old school-chum presently made his
+      appearance, who was treated in a very different manner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was no other than poor Jack Butts, who is a sort of small artist and
+      picture-dealer by profession, and was a dayboy at Slaughter House when we
+      were there, and very serviceable in bringing in sausages, pots of pickles,
+      and other articles of merchandise, which we could not otherwise procure.
+      The poor fellow has been employed, seemingly, in the same office of
+      fetcher and carrier ever since; and occupied that post for Mrs. Berry. It
+      was, &ldquo;Mr. Butts, have you finished that drawing for Lady Pash's album?&rdquo;
+       and Butts produced it; and, &ldquo;Did you match the silk for me at Delille's?&rdquo;
+       and there was the silk, bought, no doubt, with the poor fellow's last five
+      francs; and, &ldquo;Did you go to the furniture-man in the Rue St. Jacques; and
+      bring the canary-seed, and call about my shawl at that odious dawdling
+      Madame Fichet's; and have you brought the guitar-strings?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Butts hadn't brought the guitar-strings; and thereupon Mrs. Berry's
+      countenance assumed the same terrible expression which I had formerly
+      remarked in it, and which made me tremble for Berry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear Angelica,&rdquo; though said he with some spirit, &ldquo;Jack Butts isn't a
+      baggage-waggon, nor a Jack-of-all-trades; you make him paint pictures for
+      your women's albums, and look after your upholsterer, and your
+      canary-bird, and your milliners, and turn rusty because he forgets your
+      last message.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I did not turn RUSTY, Frank, as you call it elegantly. I'm very much
+      obliged to Mr. Butts for performing my commissions&mdash;very much
+      obliged. And as for not paying for the pictures to which you so kindly
+      allude, Frank, <i>I</i> should never have thought of offering payment for
+      so paltry a service; but I'm sure I shall be happy to pay if Mr. Butts
+      will send me in his bill.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By Jove, Angelica, this is too much!&rdquo; bounced out Berry; but the little
+      matrimonial squabble was abruptly ended, by Berry's French man flinging
+      open the door and announcing MILADI PASH and Doctor Dobus, which two
+      personages made their appearance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The person of old Pash has been already parenthetically described. But
+      quite different from her dismal niece in temperament, she is as jolly an
+      old widow as ever wore weeds. She was attached somehow to the Court, and
+      has a multiplicity of stories about the princesses and the old King, to
+      which Mrs. Berry never fails to call your attention in her grave,
+      important way. Lady Pash has ridden many a time to the Windsor hounds; she
+      made her husband become a member of the Four-in-hand Club, and has
+      numberless stories about Sir Godfrey Webster, Sir John Lade, and the old
+      heroes of those times. She has lent a rouleau to Dick Sheridan, and
+      remembers Lord Byron when he was a sulky slim young lad. She says Charles
+      Fox was the pleasantest fellow she ever met with, and has not the
+      slightest objection to inform you that one of the princes was very much in
+      love with her. Yet somehow she is only fifty-two years old, and I have
+      never been able to understand her calculation. One day or other before her
+      eye went out, and before those pearly teeth of hers were stuck to her gums
+      by gold, she must have been a pretty-looking body enough. Yet, in spite of
+      the latter inconvenience, she eats and drinks too much every day, and
+      tosses off a glass of maraschino with a trembling pudgy hand, every finger
+      of which twinkles with a dozen, at least, of old rings. She has a story
+      about every one of those rings, and a stupid one too. But there is always
+      something pleasant, I think, in stupid family stories: they are
+      good-hearted people who tell them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As for Mrs. Muchit, nothing need be said of her; she is Pash's companion;
+      she has lived with Lady Pash since the peace. Nor does my Lady take any
+      more notice of her than of the dust of the earth. She calls her &ldquo;poor
+      Muchit,&rdquo; and considers her a half-witted creature. Mrs. Berry hates her
+      cordially, and thinks she is a designing toad-eater, who has formed a
+      conspiracy to rob her of her aunt's fortune. She never spoke a word to
+      poor Muchit during the whole of dinner, or offered to help her to anything
+      on the table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In respect to Dobus, he is an old Peninsular man, as you are made to know
+      before you have been very long in his company; and, like most army
+      surgeons, is a great deal more military in his looks and conversation,
+      than the combatant part of the forces. He has adopted the
+      sham-Duke-of-Wellington air, which is by no means uncommon in veterans;
+      and, though one of the easiest and softest fellows in existence, speaks
+      slowly and briefly, and raps out an oath or two occasionally, as it is
+      said a certain great captain does. Besides the above, we sat down to table
+      with Captain Goff, late of the &mdash;&mdash; Highlanders; the Reverend
+      Lemuel Whey, who preaches at St. Germains; little Cutler, and the
+      Frenchman, who always WILL be at English parties on the Continent, and
+      who, after making some frightful efforts to speak English, subsides and is
+      heard no more. Young married ladies and heads of families generally have
+      him for the purpose of waltzing, and in return he informs his friends of
+      the club or the cafe that he has made the conquest of a charmante
+      Anglaise. Listen to me, all family men who read this! and never LET AN
+      UNMARRIED FRENCHMAN INTO YOUR DOORS. This lecture alone is worth the price
+      of the book. It is not that they do any harm in one case out of a
+      thousand, Heaven forbid! but they mean harm. They look on our Susannas
+      with unholy dishonest eyes. Hearken to two of the grinning rogues
+      chattering together as they clink over the asphalte of the Boulevard with
+      lacquered boots, and plastered hair, and waxed moustaches, and turned-down
+      shirt-collars, and stays and goggling eyes, and hear how they talk of a
+      good simple giddy vain dull Baker Street creature, and canvass her points,
+      and show her letters, and insinuate&mdash;never mind, but I tell you my
+      soul grows angry when I think of the same; and I can't hear of an
+      Englishwoman marrying a Frenchman without feeling a sort of shame and pity
+      for her. <a href="#linknote-4" name="linknoteref-4" id="linknoteref-4"><small>4</small></a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To return to the guests. The Reverend Lemuel Whey is a tea-party man, with
+      a curl on his forehead and a scented pocket-handkerchief. He ties his
+      white neckcloth to a wonder, and I believe sleeps in it. He brings his
+      flute with him; and prefers Handel, of course; but has one or two pet
+      profane songs of the sentimental kind, and will occasionally lift up his
+      little pipe in a glee. He does not dance, but the honest fellow would give
+      the world to do it; and he leaves his clogs in the passage, though it is a
+      wonder he wears them, for in the muddiest weather he never has a speck on
+      his foot. He was at St. John's College, Cambridge, and was rather gay for
+      a term or two, he says. He is, in a word, full of the milk-and-water of
+      human kindness, and his family lives near Hackney.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As for Goff, he has a huge shining bald forehead, and immense bristling
+      Indian-red whiskers. He wears white wash-leather gloves, drinks fairly,
+      likes a rubber, and has a story for after dinner, beginning, &ldquo;Doctor, ye
+      racklackt Sandy M'Lellan, who joined us in the West Indies. Wal, sir,&rdquo;
+       etc. These and little Cutler made up the party.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now it may not have struck all readers, but any sharp fellow conversant
+      with writing must have found out long ago, that if there had been
+      something exceedingly interesting to narrate with regard to this dinner at
+      Frank Berry's, I should have come out with it a couple of pages since, nor
+      have kept the public looking for so long a time at the dish-covers and
+      ornaments of the table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the simple fact must now be told, that there was nothing of the
+      slightest importance occurred at this repast, except that it gave me an
+      opportunity of studying Mrs. Berry in many different ways; and, in spite
+      of the extreme complaisance which she now showed me, of forming, I am
+      sorry to say, a most unfavourable opinion of that fair lady. Truth to
+      tell, I would much rather she should have been civil to Mrs. Muchit, than
+      outrageously complimentary to your humble servant; and as she professed
+      not to know what on earth there was for dinner, would it not have been
+      much more natural for her not to frown, and bob, and wink, and point, and
+      pinch her lips as often as Monsieur Anatole, her French domestic, not
+      knowing the ways of English dinner-tables, placed anything out of its due
+      order? The allusions to Boodle Hall were innumerable, and I don't know any
+      greater bore than to be obliged to talk of a place which belongs to one's
+      elder brother. Many questions were likewise asked about the dowager and
+      her Scotch relatives, the Plumduffs, about whom Lady Pash knew a great
+      deal, having seen them at Court and at Lord Melville's. Of course she had
+      seen them at Court and at Lord Melville's, as she might have seen
+      thousands of Scotchmen besides; but what mattered it to me, who care not a
+      jot for old Lady Fitz-Boodle? &ldquo;When you write, you'll say you met an old
+      friend of her Ladyship's,&rdquo; says Mrs. Berry, and I faithfully promised I
+      would when I wrote; but if the New Post Office paid us for writing letters
+      (as very possibly it will soon), I could not be bribed to send a line to
+      old Lady Fitz.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In a word, I found that Berry, like many simple fellows before him, had
+      made choice of an imperious, ill-humoured, and underbred female for a
+      wife, and could see with half an eye that he was a great deal too much her
+      slave.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The struggle was not over yet, however. Witness that little encounter
+      before dinner; and once or twice the honest fellow replied rather smartly
+      during the repast, taking especial care to atone as much as possible for
+      his wife's inattention to Jack and Mrs. Muchit, by particular attention to
+      those personages, whom he helped to everything round about and pressed
+      perpetually to champagne; he drank but little himself, for his amiable
+      wife's eye was constantly fixed on him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Just at the conclusion of the dessert, madame, who had bouded Berry during
+      dinner-time, became particularly gracious to her lord and master, and
+      tenderly asked me if I did not think the French custom was a good one, of
+      men leaving table with the ladies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Upon my word, ma'am,&rdquo; says I, &ldquo;I think it's a most abominable practice.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And so do I,&rdquo; says Cutler.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A most abominable practice! Do you hear THAT?&rdquo; cries Berry, laughing, and
+      filling his glass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm sure, Frank, when we are alone you always come to the drawing-room,&rdquo;
+       replies the lady, sharply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, yes! when we're alone, darling,&rdquo; says Berry, blushing; &ldquo;but now we're
+      NOT alone&mdash;ha, ha! Anatole, du Bordeaux!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm sure they sat after the ladies at Carlton House; didn't they, Lady
+      Pash?&rdquo; says Dobus, who likes his glass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;THAT they did!&rdquo; says my Lady, giving him a jolly nod.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I racklackt,&rdquo; exclaims Captain Goff, &ldquo;when I was in the Mauritius, that
+      Mestress MacWhirter, who commanded the Saxty-Sackond, used to say, 'Mac,
+      if ye want to get lively, ye'll not stop for more than two hours after the
+      leddies have laft ye: if ye want to get drunk, ye'll just dine at the
+      mass.' So ye see, Mestress Barry, what was Mac's allowance&mdash;haw, haw!
+      Mester Whey, I'll trouble ye for the o-lives.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But although we were in a clear majority, that indomitable woman, Mrs.
+      Berry, determined to make us all as uneasy as possible, and would take the
+      votes all round. Poor Jack, of course, sided with her, and Whey said he
+      loved a cup of tea and a little music better than all the wine of
+      Bordeaux. As for the Frenchman, when Mrs. Berry said, &ldquo;And what do you
+      think, M. le Vicomte?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Vat you speak?&rdquo; said M. de Blagueval, breaking silence for the first time
+      during two hours. &ldquo;Yase&mdash;eh? to me you speak?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Apry deeny, aimy-voo ally avec les dam?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Comment avec les dames?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ally avec les dam com a Parry, ou resty avec les Messew com on
+      Onglyterre?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, madame! vous me le demandez?&rdquo; cries the little wretch, starting up in
+      a theatrical way, and putting out his hand, which Mrs. Berry took, and
+      with this the ladies left the room. Old Lady Pash trotted after her niece
+      with her hand in Whey's, very much wondering at such practices, which were
+      not in the least in vogue in the reign of George III.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Berry cast a glance of triumph at her husband, at the defection; and
+      Berry was evidently annoyed that three-eighths of his male forces had left
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But fancy our delight and astonishment, when in a minute they all three
+      came back again; the Frenchman looking entirely astonished, and the parson
+      and the painter both very queer. The fact is, old downright Lady Pash, who
+      had never been in Paris in her life before, and had no notion of being
+      deprived of her usual hour's respite and nap, said at once to Mrs. Berry,
+      &ldquo;My dear Angelica, you're surely not going to keep these three men here?
+      Send them back to the dining-room, for I've a thousand things to say to
+      you.&rdquo; And Angelica, who expects to inherit her aunt's property, of course
+      did as she was bid; on which the old lady fell into an easy chair, and
+      fell asleep immediately,&mdash;so soon, that is, as the shout caused by
+      the reappearance of the three gentlemen in the dining-room had subsided.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I had meanwhile had some private conversation with little Cutler regarding
+      the character of Mrs. Berry. &ldquo;She's a regular screw,&rdquo; whispered he; &ldquo;a
+      regular Tartar. Berry shows fight, though, sometimes, and I've known him
+      have his own way for a week together. After dinner he is his own master,
+      and hers when he has had his share of wine; and that's why she will never
+      allow him to drink any.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Was it a wicked, or was it a noble and honourable thought which came to us
+      both at the same minute, to rescue Berry from his captivity? The ladies,
+      of course, will give their verdict according to their gentle natures; but
+      I know what men of courage will think, and by their jovial judgment will
+      abide.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We received, then, the three lost sheep back into our innocent fold again
+      with the most joyous shouting and cheering. We made Berry (who was, in
+      truth, nothing loth) order up I don't know how much more claret. We
+      obliged the Frenchman to drink malgre lui, and in the course of a short
+      time we had poor Whey in such a state of excitement, that he actually
+      volunteered to sing a song, which he said he had heard at some very gay
+      supper-party at Cambridge, and which begins:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;A pye sat on a pear-tree,
+      A pye sat on a pear-tree,
+      A pye sat on a pear-tree,
+        Heigh-ho, heigh-ho, heigh-ho!&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      Fancy Mrs. Berry's face as she looked in, in the midst of that
+      Bacchanalian ditty, when she saw no less a person than the Reverend Lemuel
+      Whey carolling it!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it you, my dear?&rdquo; cries Berry, as brave now as any Petruchio. &ldquo;Come
+      in, and sit down, and hear Whey's song.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lady Pash is asleep, Frank,&rdquo; said she.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, darling! that's the very reason. Give Mrs. Berry a glass, Jack,
+      will you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Would you wake your aunt, sir?&rdquo; hissed out madame.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;NEVER MIND ME, LOVE! I'M AWAKE, AND LIKE IT!&rdquo; cried the venerable Lady
+      Pash from the salon. &ldquo;Sing away, gentlemen!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At which we all set up an audacious cheer; and Mrs. Berry flounced back to
+      the drawing-room, but did not leave the door open, that her aunt might
+      hear our melodies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Berry had by this time arrived at that confidential state to which a third
+      bottle always brings the well-regulated mind; and he made a clean
+      confession to Cutler and myself of his numerous matrimonial annoyances. He
+      was not allowed to dine out, he said, and but seldom to ask his friends to
+      meet him at home. He never dared smoke a cigar for the life of him, not
+      even in the stables. He spent the mornings dawdling in eternal shops, the
+      evenings at endless tea-parties, or in reading poems or missionary tracts
+      to his wife. He was compelled to take physic whenever she thought he
+      looked a little pale, to change his shoes and stockings whenever he came
+      in from a walk. &ldquo;Look here,&rdquo; said he, opening his chest, and shaking his
+      fist at Dobus; &ldquo;look what Angelica and that infernal Dobus have brought me
+      to.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I thought it might be a flannel waistcoat into which madame had forced
+      him; but it was worse: I give you my word of honour it was a
+      PITCH-PLASTER!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We all roared at this, and the doctor as loud as anyone; but he vowed that
+      he had no hand in the pitch-plaster. It was a favourite family remedy of
+      the late apothecary Sir George Catacomb, and had been put on by Mrs.
+      Berry's own fair hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Anatole came in with coffee, Berry was in such high courage, that he
+      told him to go to the deuce with it; and we never caught sight of Lady
+      Pash more, except when, muffled up to the nose, she passed through the
+      salle-a-manger to go to her carriage, in which Dobus and the parson were
+      likewise to be transported to Paris. &ldquo;Be a man, Frank,&rdquo; says she, &ldquo;and
+      hold your own&rdquo;&mdash;for the good old lady had taken her nephew's part in
+      the matrimonial business&mdash;&ldquo;and you, Mr. Fitz-Boodle, come and see him
+      often. You're a good fellow, take old one-eyed Callipash's word for it.
+      Shall I take you to Paris?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dear kind Angelica, she had told her aunt all I said!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't go, George,&rdquo; says Berry, squeezing me by the hand. So I said I was
+      going to sleep at Versailles that night; but if she would give a convoy to
+      Jack Butts, it would be conferring a great obligation on him; with which
+      favour the old lady accordingly complied, saying to him, with great
+      coolness, &ldquo;Get up and sit with John in the rumble, Mr.
+      What-d'ye-call-'im.&rdquo; The fact is, the good old soul despises an artist as
+      much as she does a tailor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jack tripped to his place very meekly; and &ldquo;Remember Saturday,&rdquo; cried the
+      Doctor; and &ldquo;Don't forget Thursday!&rdquo; exclaimed the divine,&mdash;&ldquo;a
+      bachelor's party, you know.&rdquo; And so the cavalcade drove thundering down
+      the gloomy old Avenue de Paris.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Frenchman, I forgot to say, had gone away exceedingly ill long before;
+      and the reminiscences of &ldquo;Thursday&rdquo; and &ldquo;Saturday&rdquo; evoked by Dobus and
+      Whey, were, to tell the truth, parts of our conspiracy; for in the heat of
+      Berry's courage, we had made him promise to dine with us all round en
+      garcon; with all except Captain Goff, who &ldquo;racklacted&rdquo; that he was engaged
+      every day for the next three weeks: as indeed he is, to a thirty-sous
+      ordinary which the gallant officer frequents, when not invited elsewhere.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cutler and I then were the last on the field; and though we were for
+      moving away, Berry, whose vigour had, if possible, been excited by the
+      bustle and colloquy in the night air, insisted upon dragging us back
+      again, and actually proposed a grill for supper!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We found in the salle-a-manger a strong smell of an extinguished lamp, and
+      Mrs. Berry was snuffing out the candles on the sideboard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hullo, my dear!&rdquo; shouts Berry: &ldquo;easy, if you please; we've not done yet!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not done yet, Mr. Berry!&rdquo; groans the lady, in a hollow sepulchral tone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, Mrs. B., not done yet. We are going to have some supper, ain't we,
+      George?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think it's quite time to go home,&rdquo; said Mr. Fitz-Boodle (who, to say
+      the truth, began to tremble himself).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think it is, sir; you are quite right, sir; you will pardon me,
+      gentlemen, I have a bad headache, and will retire.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-night, my dear!&rdquo; said that audacious Berry. &ldquo;Anatole, tell the cook
+      to broil a fowl and bring some wine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      If the loving couple had been alone, or if Cutler had not been an attache
+      to the embassy, before whom she was afraid of making herself ridiculous, I
+      am confident that Mrs. Berry would have fainted away on the spot; and that
+      all Berry's courage would have tumbled down lifeless by the side of her.
+      So she only gave a martyrised look, and left the room; and while we
+      partook of the very unnecessary repast, was good enough to sing some
+      hymn-tunes to an exceedingly slow movement in the next room, intimating
+      that she was awake, and that, though suffering, she found her consolations
+      in religion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These melodies did not in the least add to our friend's courage. The
+      devilled fowl had, somehow, no devil in it. The champagne in the glasses
+      looked exceedingly flat and blue. The fact is, that Cutler and I were now
+      both in a state of dire consternation, and soon made a move for our hats,
+      and lighting each a cigar in the hall, made across the little green where
+      the Cupids and nymphs were listening to the dribbling fountain in the
+      dark.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm hanged if I don't have a cigar too!&rdquo; says Berry, rushing after us;
+      and accordingly putting in his pocket a key about the size of a shovel,
+      which hung by the little handle of the outer grille, forth he sallied, and
+      joined us in our fumigation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He stayed with us a couple of hours, and returned homewards in perfect
+      good spirits, having given me his word of honour he would dine with us the
+      next day. He put his immense key into the grille, and unlocked it; but the
+      gate would not open: IT WAS BOLTED WITHIN.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He began to make a furious jangling and ringing at the bell; and in oaths,
+      both French and English, called upon the recalcitrant Anatole.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After much tolling of the bell, a light came cutting across the crevices
+      of the inner door; it was thrown open, and a figure appeared with a lamp,&mdash;a
+      tall slim figure of a woman, clothed in white from head to foot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was Mrs. Berry, and when Cutler and I saw her, we both ran away as fast
+      as our legs could carry us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Berry, at this, shrieked with a wild laughter. &ldquo;Remember to-morrow, old
+      boys,&rdquo; shouted he,&mdash;&ldquo;six o'clock;&rdquo; and we were a quarter of a mile
+      off when the gate closed, and the little mansion of the Avenue de Paris
+      was once more quiet and dark.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next afternoon, as we were playing at billiards, Cutler saw Mrs. Berry
+      drive by in her carriage; and as soon as rather a long rubber was over, I
+      thought I would go and look for our poor friend, and so went down to the
+      Pavilion. Every door was open, as the wont is in France, and I walked in
+      unannounced, and saw this:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was playing a duet with her on the flute. She had been out but for
+      half-an-hour, after not speaking all the morning; and having seen Cutler
+      at the billiard-room window, and suspecting we might take advantage of her
+      absence, she had suddenly returned home again, and had flung herself,
+      weeping, into her Frank's arms, and said she could not bear to leave him
+      in anger. And so, after sitting for a little while sobbing on his knee,
+      she had forgotten and forgiven every thing!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The dear angel! I met poor Frank in Bond Street only yesterday; but he
+      crossed over to the other side of the way. He had on goloshes, and is
+      grown very fat and pale. He has shaved off his moustaches, and, instead,
+      wears a respirator. He has taken his name off all his clubs, and lives
+      very grimly in Baker Street. Well, ladies, no doubt you say he is right:
+      and what are the odds, so long as YOU are happy?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0014" id="link2H_4_0014">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      DENNIS HAGGARTY'S WIFE.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      There was an odious Irishwoman who with her daughter used to frequent the
+      &ldquo;Royal Hotel&rdquo; at Leamington some years ago, and who went by the name of
+      Mrs. Major Gam. Gam had been a distinguished officer in His Majesty's
+      service, whom nothing but death and his own amiable wife could overcome.
+      The widow mourned her husband in the most becoming bombazeen she could
+      muster, and had at least half an inch of lampblack round the immense
+      visiting tickets which she left at the houses of the nobility and gentry
+      her friends.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some of us, I am sorry to say, used to call her Mrs. Major Gammon; for if
+      the worthy widow had a propensity, it was to talk largely of herself and
+      family (of her own family, for she held her husband's very cheap), and of
+      the wonders of her paternal mansion, Molloyville, county of Mayo. She was
+      of the Molloys of that county; and though I never heard of the family
+      before, I have little doubt, from what Mrs. Major Gam stated, that they
+      were the most ancient and illustrious family of that part of Ireland. I
+      remember there came down to see his aunt a young fellow with huge red
+      whiskers and tight nankeens, a green coat, and an awful breastpin, who,
+      after two days' stay at the Spa, proposed marriage to Miss S&mdash;&mdash;,
+      or, in default, a duel with her father; and who drove a flash curricle
+      with a bay and a grey, and who was presented with much pride by Mrs. Gam
+      as Castlereagh Molloy of Molloyville. We all agreed that he was the most
+      insufferable snob of the whole season, and were delighted when a bailiff
+      came down in search of him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Well, this is all I know personally of the Molloyville family; but at the
+      house if you met the widow Gam, and talked on any subject in life, you
+      were sure to hear of it. If you asked her to have peas at dinner, she
+      would say, &ldquo;Oh, sir, after the peas at Molloyville, I really don't care
+      for any others,&mdash;do I, dearest Jemima? We always had a dish in the
+      month of June, when my father gave his head gardener a guinea (we had
+      three at Molloyville), and sent him with his compliments and a quart of
+      peas to our neighbour, dear Lord Marrowfat. What a sweet place Marrowfat
+      Park is! isn't it, Jemima?&rdquo; If a carriage passed by the window, Mrs. Major
+      Gammon would be sure to tell you that there were three carriages at
+      Molloyville, &ldquo;the barouche, the chawiot, and the covered cyar.&rdquo; In the
+      same manner she would favour you with the number and names of the footmen
+      of the establishment; and on a visit to Warwick Castle (for this bustling
+      woman made one in every party of pleasure that was formed from the hotel),
+      she gave us to understand that the great walk by the river was altogether
+      inferior to the principal avenue of Molloyville Park. I should not have
+      been able to tell so much about Mrs. Gam and her daughter, but that,
+      between ourselves, I was particularly sweet upon a young lady at the time,
+      whose papa lived at the &ldquo;Royal,&rdquo; and was under the care of Doctor Jephson.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Jemima appealed to by Mrs. Gam in the above sentence was, of course,
+      her daughter, apostrophised by her mother, &ldquo;Jemima, my soul's darling?&rdquo;
+       or, &ldquo;Jemima, my blessed child!&rdquo; or, &ldquo;Jemima, my own love!&rdquo; The sacrifices
+      that Mrs. Gam had made for that daughter were, she said, astonishing. The
+      money she had spent in masters upon her, the illnesses through which she
+      had nursed her, the ineffable love the mother bore her, were only known to
+      Heaven, Mrs. Gam said. They used to come into the room with their arms
+      round each other's waists: at dinner between the courses the mother would
+      sit with one hand locked in her daughter's; and if only two or three young
+      men were present at the time, would be pretty sure to kiss her Jemima more
+      than once during the time whilst the bohea was poured out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As for Miss Gam, if she was not handsome, candour forbids me to say she
+      was ugly. She was neither one nor t'other. She was a person who wore
+      ringlets and a band round her forehead; she knew four songs, which became
+      rather tedious at the end of a couple of months' acquaintance; she had
+      excessively bare shoulders; she inclined to wear numbers of cheap
+      ornaments, rings, brooches, ferronnieres, smelling-bottles, and was
+      always, we thought, very smartly dressed: though old Mrs. Lynx hinted that
+      her gowns and her mother's were turned over and over again, and that her
+      eyes were almost put out by darning stockings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These eyes Miss Gam had very large, though rather red and weak, and used
+      to roll them about at every eligible unmarried man in the place. But
+      though the widow subscribed to all the balls, though she hired a fly to go
+      to the meet of the hounds, though she was constant at church, and Jemima
+      sang louder than any person there except the clerk, and though, probably,
+      any person who made her a happy husband would be invited down to enjoy the
+      three footmen, gardeners, and carriages at Molloyville, yet no English
+      gentleman was found sufficiently audacious to propose. Old Lynx used to
+      say that the pair had been at Tunbridge, Harrogate, Brighton, Ramsgate,
+      Cheltenham, for this eight years past; where they had met, it seemed, with
+      no better fortune. Indeed, the widow looked rather high for her blessed
+      child: and as she looked with the contempt which no small number of Irish
+      people feel upon all persons who get their bread by labour or commerce;
+      and as she was a person whose energetic manners, costume, and brogue were
+      not much to the taste of quiet English country gentlemen, Jemima&mdash;sweet,
+      spotless flower&mdash;still remained on her hands, a thought withered,
+      perhaps, and seedy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, at this time, the 120th Regiment was quartered at Weedon Barracks,
+      and with the corps was a certain Assistant-Surgeon Haggarty, a large,
+      lean, tough, raw-boned man, with big hands, knock-knees, and carroty
+      whiskers, and, withal, as honest a creature as ever handled a lancet.
+      Haggarty, as his name imports, was of the very same nation as Mrs. Gam,
+      and, what is more, the honest fellow had some of the peculiarities which
+      belonged to the widow, and bragged about his family almost as much as she
+      did. I do not know of what particular part of Ireland they were kings; but
+      monarchs they must have been, as have been the ancestors of so many
+      thousand Hibernian families; but they had been men of no small
+      consideration in Dublin, &ldquo;where my father,&rdquo; Haggarty said, &ldquo;is as well
+      known as King William's statue, and where he 'rowls his carriage, too,'
+      let me tell ye.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hence, Haggarty was called by the wags &ldquo;Rowl the carriage,&rdquo; and several of
+      them made inquiries of Mrs. Gam regarding him: &ldquo;Mrs. Gam, when you used to
+      go up from Molloyville to the Lord Lieutenant's balls, and had your
+      townhouse in Fitzwilliam Square, used you to meet the famous Doctor
+      Haggarty in society?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it Surgeon Haggarty of Gloucester Street ye mean? The black Papist!
+      D'ye suppose that the Molloys would sit down to table with a creature of
+      that sort?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, isn't he the most famous physician in Dublin, and doesn't he rowl
+      his carriage there?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The horrid wretch! He keeps a shop, I tell ye, and sends his sons out
+      with the medicine. He's got four of them off into the army, Ulick and
+      Phil, and Terence and Denny, and now it's Charles that takes out the
+      physic. But how should I know about these odious creatures? Their mother
+      was a Burke, of Burke's Town, county Cavan, and brought Surgeon Haggarty
+      two thousand pounds. She was a Protestant; and I am surprised how she
+      could have taken up with a horrid odious Popish apothecary!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      From the extent of the widow's information, I am led to suppose that the
+      inhabitants of Dublin are not less anxious about their neighbours than are
+      the natives of English cities; and I think it is very probable that Mrs.
+      Gam's account of the young Haggartys who carried out the medicine is
+      perfectly correct, for a lad in the 120th made a caricature of Haggarty
+      coming out of a chemist's shop with an oilcloth basket under his arm,
+      which set the worthy surgeon in such a fury that there would have been a
+      duel between him and the ensign, could the fiery doctor have had his way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, Dionysius Haggarty was of an exceedingly inflammable temperament, and
+      it chanced that of all the invalids, the visitors, the young squires of
+      Warwickshire, the young manufacturers from Birmingham, the young officers
+      from the barracks&mdash;it chanced, unluckily for Miss Gam and himself,
+      that he was the only individual who was in the least smitten by her
+      personal charms. He was very tender and modest about his love, however,
+      for it must be owned that he respected Mrs. Gam hugely, and fully
+      admitted, like a good simple fellow as he was, the superiority of that
+      lady's birth and breeding to his own. How could he hope that he, a humble
+      assistant-surgeon, with a thousand pounds his Aunt Kitty left him for all
+      his fortune&mdash;how could he hope that one of the race of Molloyville
+      would ever condescend to marry him?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Inflamed, however, by love, and inspired by wine, one day at a picnic at
+      Kenilworth, Haggarty, whose love and raptures were the talk of the whole
+      regiment, was induced by his waggish comrades to make a proposal in form.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you aware, Mr. Haggarty, that you are speaking to a Molloy?&rdquo; was all
+      the reply majestic Mrs. Gam made when, according to the usual formula, the
+      fluttering Jemima referred her suitor to &ldquo;Mamma.&rdquo; She left him with a look
+      which was meant to crush the poor fellow to earth; she gathered up her
+      cloak and bonnet, and precipitately called for her fly. She took care to
+      tell every single soul in Leamington that the son of the odious Papist
+      apothecary had had the audacity to propose for her daughter (indeed a
+      proposal, coming from whatever quarter it may, does no harm), and left
+      Haggarty in a state of extreme depression and despair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His down-heartedness, indeed, surprised most of his acquaintances in and
+      out of the regiment, for the young lady was no beauty, and a doubtful
+      fortune, and Dennis was a man outwardly of an unromantic turn, who seemed
+      to have a great deal more liking for beefsteak and whisky-punch than for
+      women, however fascinating.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But there is no doubt this shy uncouth rough fellow had a warmer and more
+      faithful heart hid within him than many a dandy who is as handsome as
+      Apollo. I, for my part, never can understand why a man falls in love, and
+      heartily give him credit for so doing, never mind with what or whom. THAT
+      I take to be a point quite as much beyond an individual's own control as
+      the catching of the small-pox or the colour of his hair. To the surprise
+      of all, Assistant-Surgeon Dionysius Haggarty was deeply and seriously in
+      love; and I am told that one day he very nearly killed the
+      before-mentioned young ensign with a carving-knife, for venturing to make
+      a second caricature, representing Lady Gammon and Jemima in a fantastical
+      park, surrounded by three gardeners, three carriages, three footmen, and
+      the covered cyar. He would have no joking concerning them. He became moody
+      and quarrelsome of habit. He was for some time much more in the surgery
+      and hospital than in the mess. He gave up the eating, for the most part,
+      of those vast quantities of beef and pudding, for which his stomach used
+      to afford such ample and swift accommodation; and when the cloth was
+      drawn, instead of taking twelve tumblers, and singing Irish melodies, as
+      he used to do, in a horrible cracked yelling voice, he would retire to his
+      own apartment, or gloomily pace the barrack-yard, or madly whip and spur a
+      grey mare he had on the road to Leamington, where his Jemima (although
+      invisible for him) still dwelt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The season at Leamington coming to a conclusion by the withdrawal of the
+      young fellows who frequented that watering-place, the widow Gam retired to
+      her usual quarters for the other months of the year. Where these quarters
+      were, I think we have no right to ask, for I believe she had quarrelled
+      with her brother at Molloyville, and besides, was a great deal too proud
+      to be a burden on anybody.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Not only did the widow quit Leamington, but very soon afterwards the 120th
+      received its marching orders, and left Weedon and Warwickshire. Haggarty's
+      appetite was by this time partially restored, but his love was not
+      altered, and his humour was still morose and gloomy. I am informed that at
+      this period of his life he wrote some poems relative to his unhappy
+      passion; a wild set of verses of several lengths, and in his handwriting,
+      being discovered upon a sheet of paper in which a pitch-plaster was
+      wrapped up, which Lieutenant and Adjutant Wheezer was compelled to put on
+      for a cold.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fancy then, three years afterwards, the surprise of all Haggarty's
+      acquaintances on reading in the public papers the following announcement:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Married, at Monkstown on the 12th instant, Dionysius Haggarty, Esq., of
+      H.M. 120th Foot, to Jemima Amelia Wilhelmina Molloy, daughter of the late
+      Major Lancelot Gam, R.M., and granddaughter of the late, and niece of the
+      present Burke Bodkin Blake Molloy, Esq., Molloyville, county Mayo.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Has the course of true love at last begun to run smooth?&rdquo; thought I, as I
+      laid down the paper; and the old times, and the old leering bragging
+      widow, and the high shoulders of her daughter, and the jolly days with the
+      120th, and Doctor Jephson's one-horse chaise, and the Warwickshire hunt,
+      and&mdash;and Louisa S&mdash;&mdash;, but never mind HER,&mdash;came back
+      to my mind. Has that good-natured simple fellow at last met with his
+      reward? Well, if he has not to marry the mother-in-law too, he may get on
+      well enough.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Another year announced the retirement of Assistant-Surgeon Haggarty from
+      the 120th, where he was replaced by Assistant-Surgeon Angus Rothsay Leech,
+      a Scotchman, probably; with whom I have not the least acquaintance, and
+      who has nothing whatever to do with this little history.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Still more years passed on, during which time I will not say that I kept a
+      constant watch upon the fortunes of Mr. Haggarty and his lady; for,
+      perhaps, if the truth were known, I never thought for a moment about them;
+      until one day, being at Kingstown, near Dublin, dawdling on the beach, and
+      staring at the Hill of Howth, as most people at that watering-place do, I
+      saw coming towards me a tall gaunt man, with a pair of bushy red whiskers,
+      of which I thought I had seen the like in former years, and a face which
+      could be no other than Haggarty's. It was Haggarty, ten years older than
+      when we last met, and greatly more grim and thin. He had on one shoulder a
+      young gentleman in a dirty tartan costume, and a face exceedingly like his
+      own peeping from under a battered plume of black feathers, while with his
+      other hand he was dragging a light green go-cart, in which reposed a
+      female infant of some two years old. Both were roaring with great power of
+      lungs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As soon as Dennis saw me, his face lost the dull puzzled expression which
+      had seemed to characterise it; he dropped the pole of the go-cart from one
+      hand, and his son from the other, and came jumping forward to greet me
+      with all his might, leaving his progeny roaring in the road.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bless my sowl,&rdquo; says he, &ldquo;sure it's Fitz-Boodle? Fitz, don't you remember
+      me? Dennis Haggarty of the 120th? Leamington, you know? Molloy, my boy,
+      hould your tongue, and stop your screeching, and Jemima's too; d'ye hear?
+      Well, it does good to sore eyes to see an old face. How fat you're grown,
+      Fitz; and were ye ever in Ireland before? and a'n't ye delighted with it?
+      Confess, now, isn't it beautiful?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This question regarding the merits of their country, which I have remarked
+      is put by most Irish persons, being answered in a satisfactory manner, and
+      the shouts of the infants appeased from an apple-stall hard by, Dennis and
+      I talked of old times; I congratulated him on his marriage with the lovely
+      girl whom we all admired, and hoped he had a fortune with her, and so
+      forth. His appearance, however, did not bespeak a great fortune: he had an
+      old grey hat, short old trousers, an old waistcoat with regimental
+      buttons, and patched Blucher boots, such as are not usually sported by
+      persons in easy life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; says he, with a sigh, in reply to my queries, &ldquo;times are changed
+      since them days, Fitz-Boodle. My wife's not what she was&mdash;the
+      beautiful creature you knew her. Molloy, my boy, run off in a hurry to
+      your mamma, and tell her an English gentleman is coming home to dine; for
+      you'll dine with me, Fitz, in course?&rdquo; And I agreed to partake of that
+      meal; though Master Molloy altogether declined to obey his papa's orders
+      with respect to announcing the stranger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I must announce you myself,&rdquo; said Haggarty, with a smile. &ldquo;Come,
+      it's just dinner-time, and my little cottage is not a hundred yards off.&rdquo;
+       Accordingly, we all marched in procession to Dennis's little cottage,
+      which was one of a row and a half of one-storied houses, with little
+      courtyards before them, and mostly with very fine names on the doorposts
+      of each. &ldquo;Surgeon Haggarty&rdquo; was emblazoned on Dennis's gate, on a stained
+      green copper-plate; and, not content with this, on the door-post above the
+      bell was an oval with the inscription of &ldquo;New Molloyville.&rdquo; The bell was
+      broken, of course; the court, or garden-path, was mouldy, weedy, seedy;
+      there were some dirty rocks, by way of ornament, round a faded glass-plat
+      in the centre, some clothes and rags hanging out of most part of the
+      windows of New Molloyville, the immediate entrance to which was by a
+      battered scraper, under a broken trellis-work, up which a withered creeper
+      declined any longer to climb.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Small, but snug,&rdquo; says Haggarty: &ldquo;I'll lead the way, Fitz; put your hat
+      on the flower-pot there, and turn to the left into the drawing-room.&rdquo; A
+      fog of onions and turf-smoke filled the whole of the house, and gave signs
+      that dinner was not far off. Far off? You could hear it frizzling in the
+      kitchen, where the maid was also endeavouring to hush the crying of a
+      third refractory child. But as we entered, all three of Haggarty's
+      darlings were in full roar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it you, Dennis?&rdquo; cried a sharp raw voice, from a dark corner in the
+      drawing-room to which we were introduced, and in which a dirty tablecloth
+      was laid for dinner, some bottles of porter and a cold mutton-bone being
+      laid out on a rickety grand piano hard by. &ldquo;Ye're always late, Mr.
+      Haggarty. Have you brought the whisky from Nowlan's? I'll go bail ye've
+      not, now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear, I've brought an old friend of yours and mine to take pot-luck
+      with us to-day,&rdquo; said Dennis.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When is he to come?&rdquo; said the lady. At which speech I was rather
+      surprised, for I stood before her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here he is, Jemima my love,&rdquo; answered Dennis, looking at me. &ldquo;Mr.
+      Fitz-Boodle: don't you remember him in Warwickshire, darling?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Fitz-Boodle! I am very glad to see him,&rdquo; said the lady, rising and
+      curtseying with much cordiality.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Haggarty was blind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Haggarty was not only blind, but it was evident that smallpox had
+      been the cause of her loss of vision. Her eyes were bound with a bandage,
+      her features were entirely swollen, scarred and distorted by the horrible
+      effects of the malady. She had been knitting in a corner when we entered,
+      and was wrapped in a very dirty bedgown. Her voice to me was quite
+      different to that in which she addressed her husband. She spoke to
+      Haggarty in broad Irish: she addressed me in that most odious of all
+      languages&mdash;Irish-English, endeavouring to the utmost to disguise her
+      brogue, and to speak with the true dawdling distingue English air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you long in I-a-land?&rdquo; said the poor creature in this accent. &ldquo;You
+      must faind it a sad ba'ba'ous place, Mr Fitz-Boodle, I'm shu-ah! It was
+      vary kaind of you to come upon us en famille, and accept a dinner sans
+      ceremonie. Mr. Haggarty, I hope you'll put the waine into aice, Mr.
+      Fitz-Boodle must be melted with this hot weathah.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For some time she conducted the conversation in this polite strain, and I
+      was obliged to say, in reply to a query of hers, that I did not find her
+      the least altered, though I should never have recognised her but for this
+      rencontre. She told Haggarty with a significant air to get the wine from
+      the cellah, and whispered to me that he was his own butlah; and the poor
+      fellow, taking the hint, scudded away into the town for a pound of
+      beefsteak and a couple of bottles of wine from the tavern.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will the childhren get their potatoes and butther here?&rdquo; said a barefoot
+      girl, with long black hair flowing over her face, which she thrust in at
+      the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let them sup in the nursery, Elizabeth, and send&mdash;ah! Edwards to
+      me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it cook you mane, ma'am?&rdquo; said the girl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Send her at once!&rdquo; shrieked the unfortunate woman; and the noise of
+      frying presently ceasing, a hot woman made her appearance, wiping her
+      brows with her apron, and asking, with an accent decidedly Hibernian, what
+      the misthress wanted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lead me up to my dressing-room, Edwards: I really am not fit to be seen
+      in this dishabille by Mr. Fitz-Boodle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fait' I can't!&rdquo; says Edwards; &ldquo;sure the masther's at the butcher's, and
+      can't look to the kitchen-fire!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nonsense, I must go!&rdquo; cried Mrs. Haggarty; and Edwards, putting on a
+      resigned air, and giving her arm and face a further rub with her apron,
+      held out her arm to Mrs. Dennis, and the pair went upstairs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She left me to indulge my reflections for half-an-hour, at the end of
+      which period she came downstairs dressed in an old yellow satin, with the
+      poor shoulders exposed just as much as ever. She had mounted a tawdry cap,
+      which Haggarty himself must have selected for her. She had all sorts of
+      necklaces, bracelets, and earrings in gold, in garnets, in
+      mother-of-pearl, in ormolu. She brought in a furious savour of musk, which
+      drove the odours of onions and turf-smoke before it; and she waved across
+      her wretched angular mean scarred features an old cambric handkerchief
+      with a yellow lace-border.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And so you would have known me anywhere, Mr. Fitz-Boodle?&rdquo; said she, with
+      a grin that was meant to be most fascinating. &ldquo;I was sure you would; for
+      though my dreadful illness deprived me of my sight, it is a mercy that it
+      did not change my features or complexion at all!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This mortification had been spared the unhappy woman; but I don't know
+      whether, with all her vanity, her infernal pride, folly, and selfishness,
+      it was charitable to leave her in her error.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet why correct her? There is a quality in certain people which is above
+      all advice, exposure, or correction. Only let a man or woman have DULNESS
+      sufficient, and they need bow to no extant authority. A dullard recognises
+      no betters; a dullard can't see that he is in the wrong; a dullard has no
+      scruples of conscience, no doubts of pleasing, or succeeding, or doing
+      right; no qualms for other people's feelings, no respect but for the fool
+      himself. How can you make a fool perceive he is a fool? Such a personage
+      can no more see his own folly than he can see his own ears. And the great
+      quality of Dulness is to be unalterably contented with itself. What
+      myriads of souls are there of this admirable sort,&mdash;selfish, stingy,
+      ignorant, passionate, brutal; bad sons, mothers, fathers, never known to
+      do kind actions!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To pause, however, in this disquisition, which was carrying us far off
+      Kingstown, New Molloyville, Ireland&mdash;nay, into the wide world
+      wherever Dulness inhabits&mdash;let it be stated that Mrs. Haggarty, from
+      my brief acquaintance with her and her mother, was of the order of persons
+      just mentioned. There was an air of conscious merit about her, very hard
+      to swallow along with the infamous dinner poor Dennis managed, after much
+      delay, to get on the table. She did not fail to invite me to Molloyville,
+      where she said her cousin would be charmed to see me; and she told me
+      almost as many anecdotes about that place as her mother used to impart in
+      former days. I observed, moreover, that Dennis cut her the favourite
+      pieces of the beefsteak, that she ate thereof with great gusto, and that
+      she drank with similar eagerness of the various strong liquors at table.
+      &ldquo;We Irish ladies are all fond of a leetle glass of punch,&rdquo; she said, with
+      a playful air, and Dennis mixed her a powerful tumbler of such violent
+      grog as I myself could swallow only with some difficulty. She talked of
+      her suffering a great deal, of her sacrifices, of the luxuries to which
+      she had been accustomed before marriage,&mdash;in a word, of a hundred of
+      those themes on which some ladies are in the custom of enlarging when they
+      wish to plague some husbands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But honest Dennis, far from being angry at this perpetual, wearisome,
+      impudent recurrence to her own superiority, rather encouraged the
+      conversation than otherwise. It pleased him to hear his wife discourse
+      about her merits and family splendours. He was so thoroughly beaten down
+      and henpecked, that he, as it were, gloried in his servitude, and fancied
+      that his wife's magnificence reflected credit on himself. He looked
+      towards me, who was half sick of the woman and her egotism, as if
+      expecting me to exhibit the deepest sympathy, and flung me glances across
+      the table as much as to say, &ldquo;What a gifted creature my Jemima is, and
+      what a fine fellow I am to be in possession of her!&rdquo; When the children
+      came down she scolded them, of course, and dismissed them abruptly (for
+      which circumstance, perhaps, the writer of these pages was not in his
+      heart very sorry), and, after having sat a preposterously long time, left
+      us, asking whether we would have coffee there or in her boudoir.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! here, of course,&rdquo; said Dennis, with rather a troubled air, and in
+      about ten minutes the lovely creature was led back to us again by
+      &ldquo;Edwards,&rdquo; and the coffee made its appearance. After coffee her husband
+      begged her to let Mr. Fitz-Boodle hear her voice: &ldquo;He longs for some of
+      his old favourites.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No! DO you?&rdquo; said she; and was led in triumph to the jingling old piano,
+      and with a screechy wiry voice, sang those very abominable old ditties
+      which I had heard her sing at Leamington ten years back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Haggarty, as she sang, flung himself back in the chair delighted. Husbands
+      always are, and with the same song, one that they have heard when they
+      were nineteen years old probably; most Englishmen's tunes have that date,
+      and it is rather affecting, I think, to hear an old gentleman of sixty or
+      seventy quavering the old ditty that was fresh when HE was fresh and in
+      his prime. If he has a musical wife, depend on it he thinks her old songs
+      of 1788 are better than any he has heard since: in fact he has heard NONE
+      since. When the old couple are in high good-humour the old gentleman will
+      take the old lady round the waist, and say, &ldquo;My dear, do sing me one of
+      your own songs,&rdquo; and she sits down and sings with her old voice, and, as
+      she sings, the roses of her youth bloom again for a moment. Ranelagh
+      resuscitates, and she is dancing a minuet in powder and a train.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This is another digression. It was occasioned by looking at poor Dennis's
+      face while his wife was screeching (and, believe me, the former was the
+      more pleasant occupation). Bottom tickled by the fairies could not have
+      been in greater ecstasies. He thought the music was divine; and had
+      further reason for exulting in it, which was, that his wife was always in
+      a good humour after singing, and never would sing but in that happy frame
+      of mind. Dennis had hinted so much in our little colloquy during the ten
+      minutes of his lady's absence in the &ldquo;boudoir;&rdquo; so, at the conclusion of
+      each piece, we shouted &ldquo;Bravo!&rdquo; and clapped our hands like mad.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such was my insight into the life of Surgeon Dionysius Haggarty and his
+      wife; and I must have come upon him at a favourable moment too, for poor
+      Dennis has spoken, subsequently, of our delightful evening at Kingstown,
+      and evidently thinks to this day that his friend was fascinated by the
+      entertainment there. His inward economy was as follows: he had his
+      half-pay, a thousand pounds, about a hundred a year that his father left,
+      and his wife had sixty pounds a year from the mother; which the mother, of
+      course, never paid. He had no practice, for he was absorbed in attention
+      to his Jemima and the children, whom he used to wash, to dress, to carry
+      out, to walk, or to ride, as we have seen, and who could not have a
+      servant, as their dear blind mother could never be left alone. Mrs.
+      Haggarty, a great invalid, used to lie in bed till one, and have breakfast
+      and hot luncheon there. A fifth part of his income was spent in having her
+      wheeled about in a chair, by which it was his duty to walk daily for an
+      allotted number of hours. Dinner would ensue, and the amateur clergy, who
+      abound in Ireland, and of whom Mrs. Haggarty was a great admirer, lauded
+      her everywhere as a model of resignation and virtue, and praised beyond
+      measure the admirable piety with which she bore her sufferings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Well, every man to his taste. It did not certainly appear to me that SHE
+      was the martyr of the family.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The circumstances of my marriage with Jemima,&rdquo; Dennis said to me, in some
+      after conversations we had on this interesting subject, &ldquo;were the most
+      romantic and touching you can conceive. You saw what an impression the
+      dear girl had made upon me when we were at Weedon; for from the first day
+      I set eyes on her, and heard her sing her delightful song of 'Dark-eyed
+      Maiden of Araby,' I felt, and said to Turniquet of ours, that very night,
+      that SHE was the dark-eyed maid of Araby for ME&mdash;not that she was,
+      you know, for she was born in Shropshire. But I felt that I had seen the
+      woman who was to make me happy or miserable for life. You know how I
+      proposed for her at Kenilworth, and how I was rejected, and how I almost
+      shot myself in consequence&mdash;no, you don't know that, for I said
+      nothing about it to anyone, but I can tell you it was a very near thing;
+      and a very lucky thing for me I didn't do it: for,&mdash;would you believe
+      it?&mdash;the dear girl was in love with me all the time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Was she really?&rdquo; said I, who recollected that Miss Gam's love of those
+      days showed itself in a very singular manner; but the fact is, when women
+      are most in love they most disguise it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Over head and ears in love with poor Dennis,&rdquo; resumed that worthy fellow,
+      &ldquo;who'd ever have thought it? But I have it from the best authority, from
+      her own mother, with whom I'm not over and above good friends now; but of
+      this fact she assured me, and I'll tell you when and how.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We were quartered at Cork three years after we were at Weedon, and it was
+      our last year at home; and a great mercy that my dear girl spoke in time,
+      or where should we have been now? Well, one day, marching home from
+      parade, I saw a lady seated at an open window, by another who seemed an
+      invalid, and the lady at the window, who was dressed in the profoundest
+      mourning, cried out, with a scream, 'Gracious, heavens! it's Mr. Haggarty
+      of the 120th.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Sure I know that voice,' says I to Whiskerton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'It's a great mercy you don't know it a deal too well,' says he: 'it's
+      Lady Gammon. She's on some husband-hunting scheme, depend on it, for that
+      daughter of hers. She was at Bath last year on the same errand, and at
+      Cheltenham the year before, where, Heaven bless you! she's as well known
+      as the &ldquo;Hen and Chickens.&rdquo;'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'I'll thank you not to speak disrespectfully of Miss Jemima Gam,' said I
+      to Whiskerton; 'she's of one of the first families in Ireland, and whoever
+      says a word against a woman I once proposed for, insults me,&mdash;do you
+      understand?'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Well, marry her, if you like,' says Whiskerton, quite peevish: 'marry
+      her, and be hanged!'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Marry her! the very idea of it set my brain a-whirling, and made me a
+      thousand times more mad than I am by nature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You may be sure I walked up the hill to the parade-ground that afternoon,
+      and with a beating heart too. I came to the widow's house. It was called
+      'New Molloyville,' as this is. Wherever she takes a house for six months
+      she calls it 'New Molloyville;' and has had one in Mallow, in Bandon, in
+      Sligo, in Castlebar, in Fermoy, in Drogheda, and the deuce knows where
+      besides: but the blinds were down, and though I thought I saw somebody
+      behind 'em, no notice was taken of poor Denny Haggarty, and I paced up and
+      down all mess-time in hopes of catching a glimpse of Jemima, but in vain.
+      The next day I was on the ground again; I was just as much in love as
+      ever, that's the fact. I'd never been in that way before, look you; and
+      when once caught, I knew it was for life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's no use in telling you how long I beat about the bush, but when I
+      DID get admittance to the house (it was through the means of young
+      Castlereagh Molloy, whom you may remember at Leamington, and who was at
+      Cork for the regatta, and used to dine at our mess, and had taken a mighty
+      fancy to me)&mdash;when I DID get into the house, I say, I rushed in
+      medias res at once; I couldn't keep myself quiet, my heart was too full.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Fitz! I shall never forget the day,&mdash;the moment I was
+      inthrojuiced into the dthrawing-room&rdquo; (as he began to be agitated,
+      Dennis's brogue broke out with greater richness than ever; but though a
+      stranger may catch, and repeat from memory, a few words, it is next to
+      impossible for him to KEEP UP A CONVERSATION in Irish, so that we had best
+      give up all attempts to imitate Dennis). &ldquo;When I saw old mother Gam,&rdquo; said
+      he, &ldquo;my feelings overcame me all at once. I rowled down on the ground,
+      sir, as if I'd been hit by a musket-ball. 'Dearest madam,' says I, 'I'll
+      die if you don't give me Jemima.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Heavens, Mr. Haggarty!' says she, 'how you seize me with surprise!
+      Castlereagh, my dear nephew, had you not better leave us?' and away he
+      went, lighting a cigar, and leaving me still on the floor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Rise, Mr. Haggarty,' continued the widow. 'I will not attempt to deny
+      that this constancy towards my daughter is extremely affecting, however
+      sudden your present appeal may be. I will not attempt to deny that,
+      perhaps, Jemima may have a similar feeling; but, as I said, I never could
+      give my daughter to a Catholic.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'I'm as good a Protestant as yourself, ma'am,' says I; 'my mother was an
+      heiress, and we were all brought up her way.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'That makes the matter very different,' says she, turning up the whites
+      of her eyes. 'How could I ever have reconciled it to my conscience to see
+      my blessed child married to a Papist? How could I ever have taken him to
+      Molloyville? Well, this obstacle being removed, <i>I</i> must put myself
+      no longer in the way between two young people. <i>I</i> must sacrifice
+      myself; as I always have when my darling girl was in question. YOU shall
+      see her, the poor dear lovely gentle sufferer, and learn your fate from
+      her own lips.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'The sufferer, ma'am,' says I; 'has Miss Gam been ill?'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'What! haven't you heard?' cried the widow. 'Haven't you heard of the
+      dreadful illness which so nearly carried her from me? For nine weeks, Mr.
+      Haggarty, I watched her day and night, without taking a wink of sleep,&mdash;for
+      nine weeks she lay trembling between death and life; and I paid the doctor
+      eighty-three guineas. She is restored now; but she is the wreck of the
+      beautiful creature she was. Suffering, and, perhaps, ANOTHER
+      DISAPPOINTMENT&mdash;but we won't mention that NOW&mdash;have so pulled
+      her down. But I will leave you, and prepare my sweet girl for this
+      strange, this entirely unexpected visit.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I won't tell you what took place between me and Jemima, to whom I was
+      introduced as she sat in the darkened room, poor sufferer! nor describe to
+      you with what a thrill of joy I seized (after groping about for it) her
+      poor emaciated hand. She did not withdraw it; I came out of that room an
+      engaged man, sir; and NOW I was enabled to show her that I had always
+      loved her sincerely, for there was my will, made three years back, in her
+      favour: that night she refused me, as I told ye. I would have shot myself,
+      but they'd have brought me in non compos; and my brother Mick would have
+      contested the will, and so I determined to live, in order that she might
+      benefit by my dying. I had but a thousand pounds then: since that my
+      father has left me two more. I willed every shilling to her, as you may
+      fancy, and settled it upon her when we married, as we did soon after. It
+      was not for some time that I was allowed to see the poor girl's face, or,
+      indeed, was aware of the horrid loss she had sustained. Fancy my agony, my
+      dear fellow, when I saw that beautiful wreck!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was something not a little affecting to think, in the conduct of
+      this brave fellow, that he never once, as he told his story, seemed to
+      allude to the possibility of his declining to marry a woman who was not
+      the same as the woman he loved; but that he was quite as faithful to her
+      now, as he had been when captivated by the poor tawdry charms of the silly
+      Miss of Leamington. It was hard that such a noble heart as this should be
+      flung away upon yonder foul mass of greedy vanity. Was it hard, or not,
+      that he should remain deceived in his obstinate humility, and continue to
+      admire the selfish silly being whom he had chosen to worship?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should have been appointed surgeon of the regiment,&rdquo; continued Dennis,
+      &ldquo;soon after, when it was ordered abroad to Jamaica, where it now is. But
+      my wife would not hear of going, and said she would break her heart if she
+      left her mother. So I retired on half-pay, and took this cottage; and in
+      case any practice should fall in my way&mdash;why, there is my name on the
+      brass plate, and I'm ready for anything that comes. But the only case that
+      ever DID come was one day when I was driving my wife in the chaise; and
+      another, one night, of a beggar with a broken head. My wife makes me a
+      present of a baby every year, and we've no debts; and between you and me
+      and the post, as long as my mother-in-law is out of the house, I'm as
+      happy as I need be.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What! you and the old lady don't get on well?&rdquo; said I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can't say we do; it's not in nature, you know,&rdquo; said Dennis, with a
+      faint grin. &ldquo;She comes into the house, and turns it topsy-turvy. When
+      she's here I'm obliged to sleep in the scullery. She's never paid her
+      daughter's income since the first year, though she brags about her
+      sacrifices as if she had ruined herself for Jemima; and besides, when
+      she's here, there's a whole clan of the Molloys, horse, foot, and
+      dragoons, that are quartered upon us, and eat me out of house and home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And is Molloyville such a fine place as the widow described it?&rdquo; asked I,
+      laughing, and not a little curious.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, a mighty fine place entirely!&rdquo; said Dennis. &ldquo;There's the oak park of
+      two hundred acres, the finest land ye ever saw, only they've cut all the
+      wood down. The garden in the old Molloys' time, they say, was the finest
+      ever seen in the West of Ireland; but they've taken all the glass to mend
+      the house windows: and small blame to them either. There's a clear
+      rent-roll of thirty-five hundred a year, only it's in the hand of
+      receivers; besides other debts, for which there is no land security.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your cousin-in-law, Castlereagh Molloy, won't come into a large fortune?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, he'll do very well,&rdquo; said Dennis. &ldquo;As long as he can get credit, he's
+      not the fellow to stint himself. Faith, I was fool enough to put my name
+      to a bit of paper for him, and as they could not catch him in Mayo, they
+      laid hold of me at Kingstown here. And there was a pretty to do. Didn't
+      Mrs. Gam say I was ruining her family, that's all? I paid it by
+      instalments (for all my money is settled on Jemima); and Castlereagh,
+      who's an honourable fellow, offered me any satisfaction in life. Anyhow,
+      he couldn't do more than THAT.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course not: and now you're friends?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, and he and his aunt have had a tiff, too; and he abuses her
+      properly, I warrant ye. He says that she carried about Jemima from place
+      to place, and flung her at the head of every unmarried man in England
+      a'most&mdash;my poor Jemima, and she all the while dying in love with me!
+      As soon as she got over the small-pox&mdash;she took it at Fermoy&mdash;God
+      bless her, I wish I'd been by to be her nurse-tender&mdash;as soon as she
+      was rid of it, the old lady said to Castlereagh, 'Castlereagh, go to the
+      bar'cks, and find out in the Army List where the 120th is.' Off she came
+      to Cork hot foot. It appears that while she was ill, Jemima's love for me
+      showed itself in such a violent way that her mother was overcome, and
+      promised that, should the dear child recover, she would try and bring us
+      together. Castlereagh says she would have gone after us to Jamaica.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have no doubt she would,&rdquo; said I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Could you have a stronger proof of love than that?&rdquo; cried Dennis. &ldquo;My
+      dear girl's illness and frightful blindness have, of course, injured her
+      health and her temper. She cannot in her position look to the children,
+      you know, and so they come under my charge for the most part; and her
+      temper is unequal, certainly. But you see what a sensitive, refined,
+      elegant creature she is, and may fancy that she's often put out by a rough
+      fellow like me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Here Dennis left me, saying it was time to go and walk out the children;
+      and I think his story has matter of some wholesome reflection in it for
+      bachelors who are about to change their condition, or may console some who
+      are mourning their celibacy. Marry, gentlemen, if you like; leave your
+      comfortable dinner at the club for cold-mutton and curl-papers at your
+      home; give up your books or pleasures, and take to yourselves wives and
+      children; but think well on what you do first, as I have no doubt you will
+      after this advice and example. Advice is always useful in matters of love;
+      men always take it; they always follow other people's opinions, not their
+      own: they always profit by example. When they see a pretty woman, and feel
+      the delicious madness of love coming over them, they always stop to
+      calculate her temper, her money, their own money, or suitableness for the
+      married life.... Ha, ha, ha! Let us fool in this way no more. I have been
+      in love forty-three times with all ranks and conditions of women, and
+      would have married every time if they would have let me. How many wives
+      had King Solomon, the wisest of men? And is not that story a warning to us
+      that Love is master of the wisest? It is only fools who defy him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I must come, however, to the last, and perhaps the saddest, part of poor
+      Denny Haggarty's history. I met him once more, and in such a condition as
+      made me determine to write this history.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the month of June last I happened to be at Richmond, a delightful
+      little place of retreat; and there, sunning himself upon the terrace, was
+      my old friend of the 120th: he looked older, thinner, poorer, and more
+      wretched than I had ever seen him. &ldquo;What! you have given up Kingstown?&rdquo;
+       said I, shaking him by the hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; says he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And is my lady and your family here at Richmond?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; says he, with a sad shake of the head; and the poor fellow's hollow
+      eyes filled with tears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good heavens, Denny! what's the matter?&rdquo; said I. He was squeezing my hand
+      like a vice as I spoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They've LEFT me!&rdquo; he burst out with a dreadful shout of passionate grief&mdash;a
+      horrible scream which seemed to be wrenched out of his heart. &ldquo;Left me!&rdquo;
+       said he, sinking down on a seat, and clenching his great fists, and
+      shaking his lean arms wildly. &ldquo;I'm a wise man now, Mr. Fitz-Boodle. Jemima
+      has gone away from me, and yet you know how I loved her, and how happy we
+      were! I've got nobody now; but I'll die soon, that's one comfort: and to
+      think it's she that'll kill me after all!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The story, which he told with a wild and furious lamentation such as is
+      not known among men of our cooler country, and such as I don't like now to
+      recall, was a very simple one. The mother-in-law had taken possession of
+      the house, and had driven him from it. His property at his marriage was
+      settled on his wife. She had never loved him, and told him this secret at
+      last, and drove him out of doors with her selfish scorn and ill-temper.
+      The boy had died; the girls were better, he said, brought up among the
+      Molloys than they could be with him; and so he was quite alone in the
+      world, and was living, or rather dying, on forty pounds a year.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His troubles are very likely over by this time. The two fools who caused
+      his misery will never read this history of him; THEY never read godless
+      stories in magazines: and I wish, honest reader, that you and I went to
+      church as much as they do. These people are not wicked BECAUSE of their
+      religious observances, but IN SPITE of them. They are too dull to
+      understand humility, too blind to see a tender and simple heart under a
+      rough ungainly bosom. They are sure that all their conduct towards my poor
+      friend here has been perfectly righteous, and that they have given proofs
+      of the most Christian virtue. Haggarty's wife is considered by her friends
+      as a martyr to a savage husband, and her mother is the angel that has come
+      to rescue her. All they did was to cheat him and desert him. And safe in
+      that wonderful self-complacency with which the fools of this earth are
+      endowed, they have not a single pang of conscience for their villany
+      towards him, consider their heartlessness as a proof and consequence of
+      their spotless piety and virtue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_FOOT" id="link2H_FOOT">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      FOOTNOTES
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linknote-1" id="linknote-1">
+      <!-- Note --></a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="foot">
+      1 (<a href="#linknoteref-1">return</a>)<br /> [ The words of this song are
+      copyright, nor will the copyright be sold for less than
+      twopence-halfpenny.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linknote-2" id="linknote-2">
+      <!-- Note --></a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="foot">
+      2 (<a href="#linknoteref-2">return</a>)<br /> [ A French proverbe furnished
+      the author with the notion of the rivalry between the Barber and the
+      Tailor.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linknote-3" id="linknote-3">
+      <!-- Note --></a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="foot">
+      3 (<a href="#linknoteref-3">return</a>)<br /> [ As it is very probable that
+      many fair readers may not approve of the extremely forcible language in
+      which the combat is depicted, I beg them to skip it and pass on to the
+      next chapter, and to remember that it has been modelled on the style of
+      the very best writers of the sporting papers.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linknote-4" id="linknote-4">
+      <!-- Note --></a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="foot">
+      4 (<a href="#linknoteref-4">return</a>)<br /> [ Every person who has lived
+      abroad can, of course, point out a score of honourable exceptions to the
+      case above hinted at, and knows many such unions in which it is the
+      Frenchman who honours the English lady by marrying her. But it must be
+      remembered that marrying in France means commonly fortune-hunting: and as
+      for the respect in which marriage is held in France, let all the French
+      novels in M. Rolandi's library be perused by those who wish to come to a
+      decision upon the question.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Men's Wives, by William Makepeace Thackeray
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+</pre>
+  </body>
+</html>
diff --git a/1985.txt b/1985.txt
new file mode 100644
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--- /dev/null
+++ b/1985.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,7057 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Men's Wives, by William Makepeace Thackeray
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Men's Wives
+
+Author: William Makepeace Thackeray
+
+Posting Date: October 23, 2008 [EBook #1985]
+Release Date: December, 1999
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MEN'S WIVES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Les Bowler
+
+
+
+
+
+MEN'S WIVES
+
+By William Makepeace Thackeray
+
+
+
+Contents.
+
+The Ravenswing.
+
+I. Which is entirely introductory--contains an account of Miss Crump,
+her suitors, and her family circle.
+
+II. In which Mr. Walker makes three attempts to ascertain the dwelling
+of Morgiana.
+
+III. What came of Mr. Walker's discovery of the "Bootjack."
+
+IV. In which the heroine has a number more lovers, and cuts a very
+dashing figure in the world.
+
+V. In which Mr. Walker falls into difficulties, and Mrs. Walker makes
+many foolish attempts to rescue him.
+
+VI. In which Mr. Walker still remains in difficulties, but shows great
+resignation under his misfortunes.
+
+VII. In which Morgiana advances towards fame and honour, and in which
+several great literary characters make their appearance.
+
+VIII. In which Mr. Walker shows great prudence and forbearance.
+
+
+Mr. and Mrs. Frank Berry.
+
+I. The fight at Slaughter House.
+
+II. The combat at Versailles.
+
+
+Dennis Haggarty's wife.
+
+
+
+
+MEN'S WIVES, BY G. FITZ-BOODLE
+
+
+
+
+THE RAVENSWING
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I. WHICH IS ENTIRELY INTRODUCTORY--CONTAINS AN ACCOUNT OF MISS
+CRUMP, HER SUITORS, AND HER FAMILY CIRCLE.
+
+In a certain quiet and sequestered nook of the retired village of
+London--perhaps in the neighbourhood of Berkeley Square, or at any
+rate somewhere near Burlington Gardens--there was once a house of
+entertainment called the "Bootjack Hotel." Mr. Crump, the landlord, had,
+in the outset of life, performed the duties of Boots in some inn even
+more frequented than his own, and, far from being ashamed of his origin,
+as many persons are in the days of their prosperity, had thus solemnly
+recorded it over the hospitable gate of his hotel.
+
+Crump married Miss Budge, so well known to the admirers of the festive
+dance on the other side of the water as Miss Delancy; and they had
+one daughter, named Morgiana, after that celebrated part in the "Forty
+Thieves" which Miss Budge performed with unbounded applause both at
+the "Surrey" and "The Wells." Mrs. Crump sat in a little bar, profusely
+ornamented with pictures of the dancers of all ages, from Hillisberg,
+Rose, Parisot, who plied the light fantastic toe in 1805, down to the
+Sylphides of our day. There was in the collection a charming portrait of
+herself, done by De Wilde; she was in the dress of Morgiana, and in the
+act of pouring, to very slow music, a quantity of boiling oil into one
+of the forty jars. In this sanctuary she sat, with black eyes, black
+hair, a purple face and a turban, and morning, noon, or night, as you
+went into the parlour of the hotel, there was Mrs. Crump taking tea
+(with a little something in it), looking at the fashions, or reading
+Cumberland's "British Theatre." The Sunday Times was her paper, for she
+voted the Dispatch, that journal which is taken in by most ladies of her
+profession, to be vulgar and Radical, and loved the theatrical gossip in
+which the other mentioned journal abounds.
+
+The fact is, that the "Royal Bootjack," though a humble, was a very
+genteel house; and a very little persuasion would induce Mr. Crump, as
+he looked at his own door in the sun, to tell you that he had himself
+once drawn off with that very bootjack the top-boots of His Royal
+Highness the Prince of Wales and the first gentleman in Europe. While,
+then, the houses of entertainment in the neighbourhood were loud in
+their pretended Liberal politics, the "Bootjack" stuck to the good old
+Conservative line, and was only frequented by such persons as were of
+that way of thinking. There were two parlours, much accustomed, one for
+the gentlemen of the shoulder-knot, who came from the houses of their
+employers hard by; another for some "gents who used the 'ouse," as Mrs.
+Crump would say (Heaven bless her!) in her simple Cockniac dialect, and
+who formed a little club there.
+
+I forgot to say that while Mrs. C. was sipping her eternal tea or
+washing up her endless blue china, you might often hear Miss Morgiana
+employed at the little red-silk cottage piano, singing, "Come where the
+haspens quiver," or "Bonny lad, march over hill and furrow," or "My art
+and lute," or any other popular piece of the day. And the dear girl sang
+with very considerable skill, too, for she had a fine loud voice, which,
+if not always in tune, made up for that defect by its great energy and
+activity; and Morgiana was not content with singing the mere tune, but
+gave every one of the roulades, flourishes, and ornaments as she heard
+them at the theatres by Mrs. Humby, Mrs. Waylett, or Madame Vestris.
+The girl had a fine black eye like her mamma, a grand enthusiasm for
+the stage, as every actor's child will have, and, if the truth must be
+known, had appeared many and many a time at the theatre in Catherine
+Street, in minor parts first, and then in Little Pickle, in Desdemona,
+in Rosina, and in Miss Foote's part where she used to dance: I have not
+the name to my hand, but think it is Davidson. Four times in the week,
+at least, her mother and she used to sail off at night to some place of
+public amusement, for Mrs. Crump had a mysterious acquaintance with
+all sorts of theatrical personages; and the gates of her old haunt "The
+Wells," of the "Cobourg" (by the kind permission of Mrs. Davidge), nay,
+of the "Lane" and the "Market" themselves, flew open before her
+"Open sesame," as the robbers' door did to her colleague, Ali Baba
+(Hornbuckle), in the operatic piece in which she was so famous.
+
+Beer was Mr. Crump's beverage, diversified by a little gin, in the
+evenings; and little need be said of this gentleman, except that he
+discharged his duties honourably, and filled the president's chair at
+the club as completely as it could possibly be filled; for he could not
+even sit in it in his greatcoat, so accurately was the seat adapted to
+him. His wife and daughter, perhaps, thought somewhat slightingly of
+him, for he had no literary tastes, and had never been at a theatre
+since he took his bride from one. He was valet to Lord Slapper at the
+time, and certain it is that his lordship set him up in the "Bootjack,"
+and that stories HAD been told. But what are such to you or me? Let
+bygones be bygones; Mrs. Crump was quite as honest as her neighbours,
+and Miss had five hundred pounds to be paid down on the day of her
+wedding.
+
+Those who know the habits of the British tradesman are aware that he has
+gregarious propensities like any lord in the land; that he loves a joke,
+that he is not averse to a glass; that after the day's toil he is happy
+to consort with men of his degree; and that as society is not so far
+advanced among us as to allow him to enjoy the comforts of splendid
+club-houses, which are open to many persons with not a tenth part of his
+pecuniary means, he meets his friends in the cosy tavern parlour, where
+a neat sanded floor, a large Windsor chair, and a glass of hot something
+and water, make him as happy as any of the clubmen in their magnificent
+saloons.
+
+At the "Bootjack" was, as we have said, a very genteel and select
+society, called the "Kidney Club," from the fact that on Saturday
+evenings a little graceful supper of broiled kidneys was usually
+discussed by the members of the club. Saturday was their grand night;
+not but that they met on all other nights in the week when inclined for
+festivity: and indeed some of them could not come on Saturdays in the
+summer having elegant villas in the suburbs, where they passed the
+six-and-thirty hours of recreation that are happily to be found at the
+end of every week.
+
+There was Mr. Balls, the great grocer of South Audley Street, a warm
+man, who, they say, had his twenty thousand pounds; Jack Snaffle, of the
+mews hard by, a capital fellow for a song; Clinker, the ironmonger:
+all married gentlemen, and in the best line of business; Tressle, the
+undertaker, etc. No liveries were admitted into the room, as may be
+imagined, but one or two select butlers and major-domos joined the
+circle; for the persons composing it knew very well how important it
+was to be on good terms with these gentlemen and many a time my lord's
+account would never have been paid, and my lady's large order never have
+been given, but for the conversation which took place at the "Bootjack,"
+and the friendly intercourse subsisting between all the members of the
+society.
+
+The tiptop men of the society were two bachelors, and two as fashionable
+tradesmen as any in the town: Mr. Woolsey, from Stultz's, of the famous
+house of Linsey, Woolsey and Co. of Conduit Street, Tailors; and Mr.
+Eglantine, the celebrated perruquier and perfumer of Bond Street, whose
+soaps, razors, and patent ventilating scalps are know throughout Europe.
+Linsey, the senior partner of the tailors' firm had his handsome mansion
+in Regent's Park, drove his buggy, and did little more than lend his
+name to the house. Woolsey lived in it, was the working man of the firm,
+and it was said that his cut was as magnificent as that of any man in
+the profession. Woolsey and Eglantine were rivals in many ways--rivals
+in fashion, rivals in wit, and, above all, rivals for the hand of
+an amiable young lady whom we have already mentioned, the dark-eyed
+songstress Morgiana Crump. They were both desperately in love with her,
+that was the truth; and each, in the absence of the other, abused his
+rival heartily. Of the hairdresser Woolsey said, that as for Eglantine
+being his real name, it was all his (Mr. Woolsey's) eye; that he was in
+the hands of the Jews, and his stock and grand shop eaten up by usury.
+And with regard to Woolsey, Eglantine remarked, that his pretence
+of being descended from the Cardinal was all nonsense; that he was a
+partner, certainly, in the firm, but had only a sixteenth share; and
+that the firm could never get their moneys in, and had an immense number
+of bad debts in their books. As is usual, there was a great deal of
+truth and a great deal of malice in these tales; however, the gentlemen
+were, take them all in all, in a very fashionable way of business, and
+had their claims to Miss Morgiana's hand backed by the parents. Mr.
+Crump was a partisan of the tailor; while Mrs. C. was a strong advocate
+for the claims of the enticing perfumer.
+
+Now, it was a curious fact, that these two gentlemen were each in
+need of the other's services--Woolsey being afflicted with premature
+baldness, or some other necessity for a wig still more fatal--Eglantine
+being a very fat man, who required much art to make his figure at all
+decent. He wore a brown frock-coat and frogs, and attempted by all sorts
+of contrivances to hide his obesity; but Woolsey's remark, that, dress
+as he would, he would always look like a snob, and that there was
+only one man in England who could make a gentleman of him, went to the
+perfumer's soul; and if there was one thing on earth he longed for (not
+including the hand of Miss Crump) it was to have a coat from Linsey's,
+in which costume he was sure that Morgiana would not resist him.
+
+If Eglantine was uneasy about the coat, on the other hand he attacked
+Woolsey atrociously on the score of his wig; for though the latter went
+to the best makers, he never could get a peruke to sit naturally upon
+him and the unhappy epithet of Mr. Wiggins, applied to him on one
+occasion by the barber, stuck to him ever after in the club, and
+made him writhe when it was uttered. Each man would have quitted the
+"Kidneys" in disgust long since, but for the other--for each had an
+attraction in the place, and dared not leave the field in possession of
+his rival.
+
+To do Miss Morgiana justice, it must be said, that she did not encourage
+one more than another; but as far as accepting eau-de-Cologne and
+hair-combs from the perfumer--some opera tickets, a treat to Greenwich,
+and a piece of real Genoa velvet for a bonnet (it had originally been
+intended for a waistcoat), from the admiring tailor, she had been
+equally kind to each, and in return had made each a present of a lock
+of her beautiful glossy hair. It was all she had to give, poor girl!
+and what could she do but gratify her admirers by this cheap and artless
+testimony of her regard? A pretty scene and quarrel took place between
+the rivals on the day when they discovered that each was in possession
+of one of Morgiana's ringlets.
+
+Such, then, were the owners and inmates of the little "Bootjack,"
+from whom and which, as this chapter is exceedingly discursive and
+descriptive, we must separate the reader for a while, and carry him--it
+is only into Bond Street, so no gentleman need be afraid--carry him into
+Bond Street, where some other personages are awaiting his consideration.
+
+Not far from Mr. Eglantine's shop in Bond Street, stand, as is very well
+known, the Windsor Chambers. The West Diddlesex Association (Western
+Branch), the British and Foreign Soap Company, the celebrated attorneys
+Kite and Levison, have their respective offices here; and as the names
+of the other inhabitants of the chambers are not only painted on the
+walls, but also registered in Mr. Boyle's "Court Guide," it is quite
+unnecessary that they should be repeated here. Among them, on the
+entresol (between the splendid saloons of the Soap Company on the first
+floor, with their statue of Britannia presenting a packet of the soap to
+Europe, Asia, Africa, and America, and the West Diddlesex Western Branch
+on the basement)--lives a gentleman by the name of Mr. Howard Walker.
+The brass plate on the door of that gentleman's chambers had the word
+"Agency" inscribed beneath his name; and we are therefore at liberty
+to imagine that he followed that mysterious occupation. In person Mr.
+Walker was very genteel; he had large whiskers, dark eyes (with a slight
+cast in them), a cane, and a velvet waistcoat. He was a member of a
+club; had an admission to the opera, and knew every face behind the
+scenes; and was in the habit of using a number of French phrases in his
+conversation, having picked up a smattering of that language during a
+residence "on the Continent;" in fact, he had found it very convenient
+at various times of his life to dwell in the city of Boulogne, where
+he acquired a knowledge of smoking, ecarte, and billiards, which was
+afterwards of great service to him. He knew all the best tables in
+town, and the marker at Hunt's could only give him ten. He had some
+fashionable acquaintances too, and you might see him walking arm-in-arm
+with such gentlemen as my Lord Vauxhall, the Marquess of Billingsgate,
+or Captain Buff; and at the same time nodding to young Moses, the
+dandy bailiff; or Loder, the gambling-house keeper; or Aminadab, the
+cigar-seller in the Quadrant. Sometimes he wore a pair of moustaches,
+and was called Captain Walker; grounding his claim to that title upon
+the fact of having once held a commission in the service of Her Majesty
+the Queen of Portugal. It scarcely need be said that he had been through
+the Insolvent Court many times. But to those who did not know his
+history intimately there was some difficulty in identifying him with the
+individual who had so taken the benefit of the law, inasmuch as in
+his schedule his name appeared as Hooker Walker, wine-merchant,
+commission-agent, music-seller, or what not. The fact is, that though he
+preferred to call himself Howard, Hooker was his Christian name, and it
+had been bestowed on him by his worthy old father, who was a clergyman,
+and had intended his son for that profession. But as the old gentleman
+died in York gaol, where he was a prisoner for debt, he was never able
+to put his pious intentions with regard to his son into execution; and
+the young fellow (as he was wont with many oaths to assert) was thrown
+on his own resources, and became a man of the world at a very early age.
+
+What Mr. Howard Walker's age was at the time of the commencement of this
+history, and, indeed, for an indefinite period before or afterwards, it
+is impossible to determine. If he were eight-and-twenty, as he asserted
+himself, Time had dealt hardly with him: his hair was thin, there were
+many crows'-feet about his eyes, and other signs in his countenance
+of the progress of decay. If, on the contrary, he were forty, as Sam
+Snaffle declared, who himself had misfortunes in early life, and vowed
+he knew Mr. Walker in Whitecross Street Prison in 1820, he was a very
+young-looking person considering his age. His figure was active and
+slim, his leg neat, and he had not in his whiskers a single white hair.
+
+It must, however, be owned that he used Mr. Eglantine's Regenerative
+Unction (which will make your whiskers as black as your boot), and, in
+fact, he was a pretty constant visitor at that gentleman's emporium;
+dealing with him largely for soaps and articles of perfumery, which he
+had at an exceedingly low rate. Indeed, he was never known to pay Mr.
+Eglantine one single shilling for those objects of luxury, and, having
+them on such moderate terms, was enabled to indulge in them pretty
+copiously. Thus Mr. Walker was almost as great a nosegay as Mr.
+Eglantine himself: his handkerchief was scented with verbena, his hair
+with jessamine, and his coat had usually a fine perfume of cigars, which
+rendered his presence in a small room almost instantaneously remarkable.
+I have described Mr. Walker thus accurately, because, in truth, it
+is more with characters than with astounding events that this little
+history deals, and Mr. Walker is one of the principal of our dramatis
+personae.
+
+And so, having introduced Mr. W., we will walk over with him to Mr.
+Eglantine's emporium, where that gentleman is in waiting, too, to have
+his likeness taken.
+
+There is about an acre of plate glass under the Royal arms on Mr.
+Eglantine's shop-window; and at night, when the gas is lighted, and the
+washballs are illuminated, and the lambent flame plays fitfully over
+numberless bottles of vari-coloured perfumes--now flashes on a case
+of razors, and now lightens up a crystal vase, containing a hundred
+thousand of his patent tooth-brushes--the effect of the sight may be
+imagined. You don't suppose that he is a creature who has those odious,
+simpering wax figures in his window, that are called by the vulgar
+dummies? He is above such a wretched artifice; and it is my belief
+that he would as soon have his own head chopped off, and placed as a
+trunkless decoration to his shop-window, as allow a dummy to figure
+there. On one pane you read in elegant gold letters "Eglantinia"--'tis
+his essence for the handkerchief; on the other is written "Regenerative
+Unction"--'tis his invaluable pomatum for the hair.
+
+There is no doubt about it: Eglantine's knowledge of his profession
+amounts to genius. He sells a cake of soap for seven shillings, for
+which another man would not get a shilling, and his tooth-brushes go off
+like wildfire at half-a-guinea apiece. If he has to administer rouge or
+pearl-powder to ladies, he does it with a mystery and fascination which
+there is no resisting, and the ladies believe there are no cosmetics
+like his. He gives his wares unheard-of names, and obtains for them sums
+equally prodigious. He CAN dress hair--that is a fact--as few men in
+this age can; and has been known to take twenty pounds in a single
+night from as many of the first ladies of England when ringlets were in
+fashion. The introduction of bands, he says, made a difference of two
+thousand pounds a year in his income; and if there is one thing in the
+world he hates and despises, it is a Madonna. "I'm not," says he, "a
+tradesman--I'm a HARTIST" (Mr. Eglantine was born in London)--"I'm a
+hartist; and show me a fine 'ead of air, and I'll dress it for nothink."
+He vows that it was his way of dressing Mademoiselle Sontag's hair, that
+caused the count her husband to fall in love with her; and he has a lock
+of it in a brooch, and says it was the finest head he ever saw, except
+one, and that was Morgiana Crump's.
+
+With his genius and his position in the profession, how comes it, then,
+that Mr. Eglantine was not a man of fortune, as many a less clever has
+been? If the truth must be told, he loved pleasure, and was in the hands
+of the Jews. He had been in business twenty years: he had borrowed a
+thousand pounds to purchase his stock and shop; and he calculated that
+he had paid upwards of twenty thousand pounds for the use of the one
+thousand, which was still as much due as on the first day when he
+entered business. He could show that he had received a thousand dozen
+of champagne from the disinterested money-dealers with whom he usually
+negotiated his paper. He had pictures all over his "studios," which had
+been purchased in the same bargains. If he sold his goods at an enormous
+price, he paid for them at a rate almost equally exorbitant. There
+was not an article in his shop but came to him through his Israelite
+providers; and in the very front shop itself sat a gentleman who was the
+nominee of one of them, and who was called Mr. Mossrose. He was there to
+superintend the cash account, and to see that certain instalments were
+paid to his principals, according to certain agreements entered into
+between Mr. Eglantine and them.
+
+Having that sort of opinion of Mr. Mossrose which Damocles may have had
+of the sword which hung over his head, of course Mr. Eglantine hated his
+foreman profoundly. "HE an artist," would the former gentleman exclaim;
+"why, he's only a disguised bailiff! Mossrose indeed! The chap's name's
+Amos, and he sold oranges before he came here." Mr. Mossrose, on his
+side, utterly despised Mr. Eglantine, and looked forward to the day when
+he would become the proprietor of the shop, and take Eglantine for a
+foreman; and then it would HIS turn to sneer and bully, and ride the
+high horse.
+
+Thus it will be seen that there was a skeleton in the great perfumer's
+house, as the saying is: a worm in his heart's core, and though to all
+appearance prosperous, he was really in an awkward position.
+
+What Mr. Eglantine's relations were with Mr. Walker may be imagined from
+the following dialogue which took place between the two gentlemen at
+five o'clock one summer's afternoon, when Mr. Walker, issuing from his
+chambers, came across to the perfumer's shop:--
+
+"Is Eglantine at home, Mr. Mossrose?" said Walker to the foreman, who
+sat in the front shop.
+
+"Don't know--go and look" (meaning go and be hanged); for Mossrose also
+hated Mr. Walker.
+
+"If you're uncivil I'll break your bones, Mr. AMOS," says Mr. Walker,
+sternly.
+
+"I should like to see you try, Mr. HOOKER Walker," replies the undaunted
+shopman; on which the Captain, looking several tremendous canings at
+him, walked into the back room or "studio."
+
+"How are you, Tiny my buck?" says the Captain. "Much doing?"
+
+"Not a soul in town. I 'aven't touched the hirons all day," replied Mr.
+Eglantine, in rather a desponding way.
+
+"Well, just get them ready now, and give my whiskers a turn. I'm going
+to dine with Billingsgate and some out-and-out fellows at the 'Regent,'
+and so, my lad, just do your best."
+
+"I can't," says Mr. Eglantine. "I expect ladies, Captain, every minute."
+
+"Very good; I don't want to trouble such a great man, I'm sure.
+Good-bye, and let me hear from you THIS DAY WEEK, Mr. Eglantine."
+"This day week" meant that at seven days from that time a certain bill
+accepted by Mr. Eglantine would be due, and presented for payment.
+
+"Don't be in such a hurry, Captain--do sit down. I'll curl you in one
+minute. And, I say, won't the party renew?"
+
+"Impossible--it's the third renewal."
+
+"But I'll make the thing handsome to you;--indeed I will."
+
+"How much?"
+
+"Will ten pounds do the business?"
+
+"What! offer my principal ten pounds? Are you mad, Eglantine?--A little
+more of the iron to the left whisker."
+
+"No, I meant for commission."
+
+"Well, I'll see if that will do. The party I deal with, Eglantine, has
+power, I know, and can defer the matter no doubt. As for me, you know,
+I'VE nothing to do in the affair, and only act as a friend between you
+and him. I give you my honour and soul, I do."
+
+"I know you do, my dear sir." The last two speeches were lies. The
+perfumer knew perfectly well that Mr. Walker would pocket the ten
+pounds; but he was too easy to care for paying it, and too timid to
+quarrel with such a powerful friend. And he had on three different
+occasions already paid ten pounds' fine for the renewal of the bill in
+question, all of which bonuses he knew went to his friend Mr. Walker.
+
+Here, too, the reader will perceive what was, in part, the meaning of
+the word "Agency" on Mr. Walker's door. He was a go-between between
+money-lenders and borrowers in this world, and certain small sums always
+remained with him in the course of the transaction. He was an agent for
+wine, too; an agent for places to be had through the influence of
+great men; he was an agent for half-a-dozen theatrical people, male and
+female, and had the interests of the latter especially, it was said,
+at heart. Such were a few of the means by which this worthy gentleman
+contrived to support himself, and if, as he was fond of high living,
+gambling, and pleasures of all kinds, his revenue was not large enough
+for his expenditure--why, he got into debt, and settled his bills that
+way. He was as much at home in the Fleet as in Pall Mall, and quite as
+happy in the one place as in the other. "That's the way I take things,"
+would this philosopher say. "If I've money, I spend; if I've credit,
+I borrow; if I'm dunned, I whitewash; and so you can't beat me down."
+Happy elasticity of temperament! I do believe that, in spite of his
+misfortunes and precarious position, there was no man in England whose
+conscience was more calm, and whose slumbers were more tranquil, than
+those of Captain Howard Walker.
+
+As he was sitting under the hands of Mr. Eglantine, he reverted to "the
+ladies," whom the latter gentleman professed to expect; said he was a
+sly dog, a lucky ditto, and asked him if the ladies were handsome.
+
+Eglantine thought there could be no harm in telling a bouncer to a
+gentleman with whom he was engaged in money transactions; and so, to
+give the Captain an idea of his solvency and the brilliancy of his
+future prospects, "Captain," said he, "I've got a hundred and eighty
+pounds out with you, which you were obliging enough to negotiate for me.
+Have I, or have I not, two bills out to that amount?"
+
+"Well, my good fellow, you certainly have; and what then?"
+
+"What then? Why, I bet you five pounds to one, that in three months
+those bills are paid."
+
+"Done! five pounds to one. I take it."
+
+This sudden closing with him made the perfumer rather uneasy; but he was
+not to pay for three months, and so he said, "Done!" too, and went on:
+"What would you say if your bills were paid?"
+
+"Not mine; Pike's."
+
+"Well, if Pike's were paid; and the Minories' man paid, and every single
+liability I have cleared off; and that Mossrose flung out of winder, and
+me and my emporium as free as hair?"
+
+"You don't say so? Is Queen Anne dead? and has she left you a fortune?
+or what's the luck in the wind now?"
+
+"It's better than Queen Anne, or anybody dying. What should you say to
+seeing in that very place where Mossrose now sits (hang him!)--seeing
+the FINEST HEAD OF 'AIR NOW IN EUROPE? A woman, I tell you--a
+slap-up lovely woman, who, I'm proud to say, will soon be called Mrs.
+Heglantine, and will bring me five thousand pounds to her fortune."
+
+"Well, Tiny, this IS good luck indeed. I say, you'll be able to do a
+bill or two for ME then, hay? You won't forget an old friend?"
+
+"That I won't. I shall have a place at my board for you, Capting; and
+many's the time I shall 'ope to see you under that ma'ogany."
+
+"What will the French milliner say? She'll hang herself for despair,
+Eglantine."
+
+"Hush! not a word about 'ER. I've sown all my wild oats, I tell you.
+Eglantine is no longer the gay young bachelor, but the sober married
+man. I want a heart to share the feelings of mine. I want repose. I'm
+not so young as I was: I feel it."
+
+"Pooh! pooh! you are--you are--"
+
+"Well, but I sigh for an 'appy fireside; and I'll have it."
+
+"And give up that club which you belong to, hay?"
+
+"'The Kidneys?' Oh! of course, no married man should belong to such
+places: at least, I'LL not; and I'll have my kidneys broiled at home.
+But be quiet, Captain, if you please; the ladies appointed to--"
+
+"And is it THE lady you expect? eh, you rogue!"
+
+"Well, get along. It's her and her Ma."
+
+But Mr. Walker determined he wouldn't get along, and would see these
+lovely ladies before he stirred.
+
+The operation on Mr. Walker's whiskers being concluded, he was arranging
+his toilet before the glass in an agreeable attitude: his neck out,
+his enormous pin settled in his stock to his satisfaction, his eyes
+complacently directed towards the reflection of his left and favourite
+whisker. Eglantine was laid on a settee, in an easy, though melancholy
+posture; he was twiddling the tongs with which he had just operated on
+Walker with one hand, and his right-hand ringlet with the other, and he
+was thinking--thinking of Morgiana; and then of the bill which was to
+become due on the 16th; and then of a light-blue velvet waistcoat with
+gold sprigs, in which he looked very killing, and so was trudging round
+in his little circle of loves, fears, and vanities. "Hang it!" Mr.
+Walker was thinking, "I AM a handsome man. A pair of whiskers like mine
+are not met with every day. If anybody can see that my tuft is dyed, may
+I be--" When the door was flung open, and a large lady with a curl
+on her forehead, yellow shawl, a green-velvet bonnet with feathers,
+half-boots, and a drab gown with tulips and other large exotics painted
+on it--when, in a word, Mrs. Crump and her daughter bounced into the
+room.
+
+"Here we are, Mr. E," cries Mrs. Crump, in a gay folatre confidential
+air. "But law! there's a gent in the room!"
+
+"Don't mind me, ladies," said the gent alluded to, in his fascinating
+way. "I'm a friend of Eglantine's; ain't I, Egg? a chip of the old
+block, hay?"
+
+"THAT you are," said the perfumer, starting up.
+
+"An 'air-dresser?" asked Mrs. Crump. "Well, I thought he was; there's
+something, Mr. E., in gentlemen of your profession so exceeding, so
+uncommon distangy."
+
+"Madam, you do me proud," replied the gentleman so complimented, with
+great presence of mind. "Will you allow me to try my skill upon you, or
+upon Miss, your lovely daughter? I'm not so clever as Eglantine, but no
+bad hand, I assure you."
+
+"Nonsense, Captain," interrupted the perfumer, who was uncomfortable
+somehow at the rencontre between the Captain and the object of his
+affection. "HE'S not in the profession, Mrs. C. This is my friend
+Captain Walker, and proud I am to call him my friend." And then aside to
+Mrs. C., "One of the first swells on town, ma'am--a regular tiptopper."
+
+Humouring the mistake which Mrs. Crump had just made, Mr. Walker thrust
+the curling-irons into the fire in a minute, and looked round at the
+ladies with such a fascinating grace, that both, now made acquainted
+with his quality, blushed and giggled, and were quite pleased. Mamma
+looked at 'Gina, and 'Gina looked at mamma; and then mamma gave 'Gina a
+little blow in the region of her little waist, and then both burst out
+laughing, as ladies will laugh, and as, let us trust, they may laugh
+for ever and ever. Why need there be a reason for laughing? Let us laugh
+when we are laughy, as we sleep when we are sleepy. And so Mrs. Crump
+and her demoiselle laughed to their hearts' content; and both fixed
+their large shining black eyes repeatedly on Mr. Walker.
+
+"I won't leave the room," said he, coming forward with the heated iron
+in his hand, and smoothing it on the brown paper with all the dexterity
+of a professor (for the fact is, Mr. W. every morning curled his own
+immense whiskers with the greatest skill and care)--"I won't leave the
+room, Eglantine my boy. My lady here took me for a hairdresser, and so,
+you know, I've a right to stay."
+
+"He can't stay," said Mrs. Crump, all of a sudden, blushing as red as a
+peony.
+
+"I shall have on my peignoir, Mamma," said Miss, looking at the
+gentleman, and then dropping down her eyes and blushing too.
+
+"But he can't stay, 'Gina, I tell you: do you think that I would, before
+a gentleman, take off my--"
+
+"Mamma means her FRONT!" said Miss, jumping up, and beginning to laugh
+with all her might; at which the honest landlady of the "Bootjack," who
+loved a joke, although at her own expense, laughed too, and said that no
+one, except Mr. Crump and Mr. Eglantine, had ever seen her without the
+ornament in question.
+
+"DO go now, you provoking thing, you!" continued Miss C. to Mr. Walker;
+"I wish to hear the hoverture, and it's six o'clock now, and we shall
+never be done against then:" but the way in which Morgiana said "DO go,"
+clearly indicated "don't" to the perspicacious mind of Mr. Walker.
+
+"Perhaps you 'ad better go," continued Mr. Eglantine, joining in this
+sentiment, and being, in truth, somewhat uneasy at the admiration which
+his "swell friend" excited.
+
+"I'll see you hanged first, Eggy my boy! Go I won't, until these ladies
+have had their hair dressed: didn't you yourself tell me that Miss
+Crump's was the most beautiful hair in Europe? And do you think that
+I'll go away without seeing it? No, here I stay."
+
+"You naughty wicked odious provoking man!" said Miss Crump. But, at the
+same time, she took off her bonnet, and placed it on one of the side
+candlesticks of Mr. Eglantine's glass (it was a black-velvet bonnet,
+trimmed with sham lace, and with a wreath of nasturtiums, convolvuluses,
+and wallflowers within), and then said, "Give me the peignoir, Mr.
+Archibald, if you please;" and Eglantine, who would do anything for her
+when she called him Archibald, immediately produced that garment, and
+wrapped round the delicate shoulders of the lady, who, removing a sham
+gold chain which she wore on her forehead, two brass hair-combs set with
+glass rubies, and the comb which kept her back hair together--removing
+them, I say, and turning her great eyes towards the stranger, and giving
+her head a shake, down let tumble such a flood of shining waving heavy
+glossy jetty hair, as would have done Mr. Rowland's heart good to see.
+It tumbled down Miss Morgiana's back, and it tumbled over her shoulders,
+it tumbled over the chair on which she sat, and from the midst of it her
+jolly bright-eyed rosy face beamed out with a triumphant smile, which
+said, "A'n't I now the most angelic being you ever saw?"
+
+"By Heaven! it's the most beautiful thing I ever saw!" cried Mr. Walker,
+with undisguised admiration.
+
+"ISN'T it?" said Mrs. Crump, who made her daughter's triumph her own.
+"Heigho! when I acted at 'The Wells' in 1820, before that dear girl was
+born, _I_ had such a head of hair as that, to a shade, sir, to a shade.
+They called me Ravenswing on account of it. I lost my head of hair when
+that dear child was born, and I often say to her, 'Morgiana, you came
+into the world to rob your mother of her 'air.' Were you ever at 'The
+Wells,' sir, in 1820? Perhaps you recollect Miss Delancy? I am that Miss
+Delancy. Perhaps you recollect,--
+
+     "'Tink-a-tink, tink-a-tink,
+         By the light of the star,
+       On the blue river's brink,
+         I heard a guitar.
+
+     "'I heard a guitar,
+         On the blue waters clear,
+       And knew by its mu-u-sic,
+         That Selim was near!'
+
+You remember that in the 'Bagdad Bells'? Fatima, Delancy; Selim,
+Benlomond (his real name was Bunnion: and he failed, poor fellow, in
+the public line afterwards). It was done to the tambourine, and dancing
+between each verse,--
+
+     "'Tink-a-tink, tink-a-tink,
+         How the soft music swells,
+       And I hear the soft clink
+         Of the minaret bells!
+
+     "'Tink-a--'"
+
+"Oh!" here cried Miss Crump, as if in exceeding pain (and whether Mr.
+Eglantine had twitched, pulled, or hurt any one individual hair of that
+lovely head I don't know)--"Oh, you are killing me, Mr. Eglantine!"
+
+And with this mamma, who was in her attitude, holding up the end of her
+boa as a visionary tambourine, and Mr. Walker, who was looking at her,
+and in his amusement at the mother's performances had almost forgotten
+the charms of the daughter--both turned round at once, and looked at
+her with many expressions of sympathy, while Eglantine, in a voice of
+reproach, said, "KILLED you, Morgiana! I kill YOU?"
+
+"I'm better now," said the young lady, with a smile--"I'm better, Mr.
+Archibald, now." And if the truth must be told, no greater coquette than
+Miss Morgiana existed in all Mayfair--no, not among the most fashionable
+mistresses of the fashionable valets who frequented the "Bootjack." She
+believed herself to be the most fascinating creature that the world ever
+produced; she never saw a stranger but she tried these fascinations upon
+him; and her charms of manner and person were of that showy sort which
+is most popular in this world, where people are wont to admire most that
+which gives them the least trouble to see; and so you will find a tulip
+of a woman to be in fashion when a little humble violet or daisy of
+creation is passed over without remark. Morgiana was a tulip among
+women, and the tulip fanciers all came flocking round her.
+
+Well, the said "Oh" and "I'm better now, Mr. Archibald," thereby
+succeeded in drawing everybody's attention to her lovely self. By the
+latter words Mr. Eglantine was specially inflamed; he glanced at Mr.
+Walker, and said, "Capting! didn't I tell you she was a CREECHER? See
+her hair, sir: it's as black and as glossy as satting. It weighs fifteen
+pound, that hair, sir; and I wouldn't let my apprentice--that blundering
+Mossrose, for instance (hang him!)--I wouldn't let anyone but myself
+dress that hair for five hundred guineas! Ah, Miss Morgiana, remember
+that you MAY ALWAYS have Eglantine to dress your hair!--remember that,
+that's all." And with this the worthy gentleman began rubbing delicately
+a little of the Eglantinia into those ambrosial locks, which he loved
+with all the love of a man and an artist.
+
+And as for Morgiana showing her hair, I hope none of my readers will
+entertain a bad opinion of the poor girl for doing so. Her locks were
+her pride; she acted at the private theatre "hair parts," where she
+could appear on purpose to show them in a dishevelled state; and that
+her modesty was real, and not affected may be proved by the fact that
+when Mr. Walker, stepping up in the midst of Eglantine's last speech,
+took hold of a lock of her hair very gently with his hand, she cried
+"Oh!" and started with all her might. And Mr. Eglantine observed
+very gravely, "Capting! Miss Crump's hair is to be seen and not to be
+touched, if you please."
+
+"No more it is, Mr. Eglantine!" said her mamma. "And now, as it's come
+to my turn, I beg the gentleman will be so obliging as to go."
+
+"MUST I?" cried Mr. Walker; and as it was half-past six, and he was
+engaged to dinner at the "Regent Club," and as he did not wish to make
+Eglantine jealous, who evidently was annoyed by his staying, he took his
+hat just as Miss Crump's coiffure was completed, and saluting her and
+her mamma, left the room.
+
+"A tip-top swell, I can assure you," said Eglantine, nodding after him:
+"a regular bang-up chap, and no MISTAKE. Intimate with the Marquess of
+Billingsgate, and Lord Vauxhall, and that set."
+
+"He's very genteel," said Mrs. Crump.
+
+"Law! I'm sure I think nothing of him," said Morgiana.
+
+And Captain Walker walked towards his club, meditating on the beauties
+of Morgiana. "What hair," said he, "what eyes the girl has! they're as
+big as billiard-balls; and five thousand pounds. Eglantine's in luck!
+five thousand pounds--she can't have it, it's impossible!"
+
+No sooner was Mrs. Crump's front arranged, during the time of which
+operation Morgiana sat in perfect contentment looking at the last French
+fashions in the Courrier des Dames, and thinking how her pink satin
+slip would dye, and make just such a mantilla as that represented in the
+engraving--no sooner was Mrs. Crump's front arranged, than both ladies,
+taking leave of Mr. Eglantine, tripped back to the "Bootjack Hotel" in
+the neighbourhood, where a very neat green fly was already in waiting,
+the gentleman on the box of which (from a livery-stable in the
+neighbourhood) gave a knowing touch to his hat, and a salute with his
+whip, to the two ladies, as they entered the tavern.
+
+"Mr. W.'s inside," said the man--a driver from Mr. Snaffle's
+establishment; "he's been in and out this score of times, and looking
+down the street for you." And in the house, in fact, was Mr. Woolsey,
+the tailor, who had hired the fly, and was engaged to conduct the ladies
+that evening to the play.
+
+It was really rather too bad to think that Miss Morgiana, after going to
+one lover to have her hair dressed, should go with another to the play;
+but such is the way with lovely woman! Let her have a dozen admirers,
+and the dear coquette will exercise her power upon them all: and as a
+lady, when she has a large wardrobe, and a taste for variety in dress,
+will appear every day in a different costume, so will the young and
+giddy beauty wear her lovers, encouraging now the black whiskers, now
+smiling on the brown, now thinking that the gay smiling rattle of an
+admirer becomes her very well, and now adopting the sad sentimental
+melancholy one, according as her changeful fancy prompts her. Let us not
+be too angry with these uncertainties and caprices of beauty; and depend
+on it that, for the most part, those females who cry out loudest against
+the flightiness of their sisters, and rebuke their undue encouragement
+of this man or that, would do as much themselves if they had the chance,
+and are constant, as I am to my coat just now, because I have no other.
+
+"Did you see Doubleyou, 'Gina dear?" said her mamma, addressing that
+young lady. "He's in the bar with your Pa, and has his military coat
+with the king's buttons, and looks like an officer."
+
+This was Mr. Woolsey's style, his great aim being to look like an army
+gent, for many of whom he in his capacity of tailor made those splendid
+red and blue coats which characterise our military. As for the royal
+button, had not he made a set of coats for his late Majesty, George
+IV.? and he would add, when he narrated this circumstance, "Sir, Prince
+Blucher and Prince Swartzenberg's measure's in the house now; and what's
+more, I've cut for Wellington." I believe he would have gone to St.
+Helena to make a coat for Napoleon, so great was his ardour. He wore a
+blue-black wig, and his whiskers were of the same hue. He was brief and
+stern in conversations; and he always went to masquerades and balls in a
+field-marshal's uniform.
+
+"He looks really quite the thing to-night," continued Mrs. Crump.
+
+"Yes," said 'Gina; "but he's such an odious wig, and the dye of his
+whiskers always comes off on his white gloves."
+
+"Everybody has not their own hair, love," continued Mrs. Crump with a
+sigh; "but Eglantine's is beautiful."
+
+"Every hairdresser's is," answered Morgiana, rather contemptuously;
+"but what I can't bear is that their fingers is always so very fat and
+pudgy."
+
+In fact, something had gone wrong with the fair Morgiana. Was it that
+she had but little liking for the one pretender or the other? Was it
+that young Glauber, who acted Romeo in the private theatricals, was far
+younger and more agreeable than either? Or was it, that seeing a
+REAL GENTLEMAN, such as Mr. Walker, with whom she had had her first
+interview, she felt more and more the want of refinement in her other
+declared admirers? Certain, however, it is, that she was very reserved
+all the evening, in spite of the attentions of Mr. Woolsey; that she
+repeatedly looked round at the box-door, as if she expected someone to
+enter; and that she partook of only a very few oysters, indeed, out of
+the barrel which the gallant tailor had sent down to the "Bootjack," and
+off which the party supped.
+
+"What is it?" said Mr. Woolsey to his ally, Crump, as they sat together
+after the retirement of the ladies. "She was dumb all night. She never
+once laughed at the farce, nor cried at the tragedy, and you know she
+laughs and cries uncommon. She only took half her negus, and not above a
+quarter of her beer."
+
+"No more she did!" replied Mr. Crump, very calmly. "I think it must
+be the barber as has been captivating her: he dressed her hair for the
+play."
+
+"Hang him, I'll shoot him!" said Mr. Woolsey. "A fat foolish effeminate
+beast like that marry Miss Morgiana? Never! I WILL shoot him. I'll
+provoke him next Saturday--I'll tread on his toe--I'll pull his nose."
+
+"No quarrelling at the 'Kidneys!'" answered Crump sternly; "there shall
+be no quarrelling in that room as long as I'm in the chair!"
+
+
+"Well, at any rate you'll stand my friend?"
+
+"You know I will," answered the other. "You are honourable, and I like
+you better than Eglantine. I trust you more than Eglantine, sir. You're
+more of a man than Eglantine, though you ARE a tailor; and I wish with
+all my heart you may get Morgiana. Mrs. C. goes the other way, I know:
+but I tell you what, women will go their own ways, sir, and Morgy's
+like her mother in this point, and depend upon it, Morgy will decide for
+herself."
+
+Mr. Woolsey presently went home, still persisting in his plan for the
+assassination of Eglantine. Mr. Crump went to bed very quietly, and
+snored through the night in his usual tone. Mr. Eglantine passed some
+feverish moments of jealousy, for he had come down to the club in the
+evening, and had heard that Morgiana was gone to the play with his
+rival. And Miss Morgiana dreamed, of a man who was--must we say
+it?--exceedingly like Captain Howard Walker. "Mrs. Captain So-and-so!"
+thought she. "Oh, I do love a gentleman dearly!"
+
+And about this time, too, Mr. Walker himself came rolling home from
+the "Regent," hiccupping. "Such hair!--such eyebrows!--such eyes! like
+b-b-billiard-balls, by Jove!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II. IN WHICH MR. WALKER MAKES THREE ATTEMPTS TO ASCERTAIN THE
+DWELLING OF MORGIANA.
+
+The day after the dinner at the "Regent Club," Mr. Walker stepped over
+to the shop of his friend the perfumer, where, as usual, the young man,
+Mr. Mossrose, was established in the front premises.
+
+For some reason or other, the Captain was particularly good-humoured;
+and, quite forgetful of the words which had passed between him and Mr.
+Eglantine's lieutenant the day before, began addressing the latter with
+extreme cordiality.
+
+"A good morning to you, Mr. Mossrose," said Captain Walker. "Why, sir,
+you look as fresh as your namesake--you do, indeed, now, Mossrose."
+
+"You look ash yellow ash a guinea," responded Mr. Mossrose, sulkily. He
+thought the Captain was hoaxing him.
+
+"My good sir," replies the other, nothing cast down, "I drank rather too
+freely last night."
+
+"The more beast you!" said Mr. Mossrose.
+
+"Thank you, Mossrose; the same to you," answered the Captain.
+
+"If you call me a beast, I'll punch your head off!" answered the young
+man, who had much skill in the art which many of his brethren practise.
+
+"I didn't, my fine fellow," replied Walker. "On the contrary, you--"
+
+"Do you mean to give me the lie?" broke out the indignant Mossrose, who
+hated the agent fiercely, and did not in the least care to conceal his
+hate.
+
+In fact, it was his fixed purpose to pick a quarrel with Walker, and to
+drive him, if possible, from Mr. Eglantine's shop. "Do you mean to give
+me the lie, I say, Mr. Hooker Walker?"
+
+"For Heaven's sake, Amos, hold your tongue!" exclaimed the Captain, to
+whom the name of Hooker was as poison; but at this moment a customer
+stepping in, Mr. Amos exchanged his ferocious aspect for a bland grin,
+and Mr. Walker walked into the studio.
+
+When in Mr. Eglantine's presence, Walker, too, was all smiles in a
+minute, sank down on a settee, held out his hand to the perfumer, and
+began confidentially discoursing with him.
+
+"SUCH a dinner, Tiny my boy," said he; "such prime fellows to eat
+it, too! Billingsgate, Vauxhall, Cinqbars, Buff of the Blues, and
+half-a-dozen more of the best fellows in town. And what do you think the
+dinner cost a head? I'll wager you'll never guess."
+
+"Was it two guineas a head?--In course I mean without wine," said the
+genteel perfumer.
+
+"Guess again!"
+
+"Well, was it ten guineas a head? I'll guess any sum you please,"
+replied Mr. Eglantine: "for I know that when you NOBS are together, you
+don't spare your money. I myself, at the "Star and Garter" at Richmond,
+once paid--"
+
+"Eighteenpence?"
+
+"Heighteenpence, sir!--I paid five-and-thirty shillings per 'ead. I'd
+have you to know that I can act as a gentleman as well as any other
+gentleman, sir," answered the perfumer with much dignity.
+
+"Well, eighteenpence was what WE paid, and not a rap more, upon my
+honour."
+
+"Nonsense, you're joking. The Marquess of Billinsgate dine for
+eighteenpence! Why, hang it, if I was a marquess, I'd pay a five-pound
+note for my lunch."
+
+"You little know the person, Master Eglantine," replied the Captain,
+with a smile of contemptuous superiority; "you little know the real
+man of fashion, my good fellow. Simplicity, sir--simplicity's the
+characteristic of the real gentleman, and so I'll tell you what we had
+for dinner."
+
+"Turtle and venison, of course:--no nob dines without THEM."
+
+"Psha! we're sick of 'em! We had pea soup and boiled tripe! What do you
+think of THAT? We had sprats and herrings, a bullock's heart, a baked
+shoulder of mutton and potatoes, pig's-fry and Irish stew. _I_ ordered
+the dinner, sir, and got more credit for inventing it than they ever
+gave to Ude or Soyer. The Marquess was in ecstasies, the Earl devoured
+half a bushel of sprats, and if the Viscount is not laid up with a
+surfeit of bullock's heart, my name's not Howard Walker. Billy, as I
+call him, was in the chair, and gave my health; and what do you think
+the rascal proposed?"
+
+"What DID his Lordship propose?"
+
+"That every man present should subscribe twopence, and pay for my share
+of the dinner. By Jove! it is true, and the money was handed to me in
+a pewter-pot, of which they also begged to make me a present. We
+afterwards went to Tom Spring's, from Tom's to the 'Finish,' from the
+'Finish' to the watch-house--that is, THEY did--and sent for me, just as
+I was getting into bed, to bail them all out."
+
+"They're happy dogs, those young noblemen," said Mr Eglantine; "nothing
+but pleasure from morning till night; no affectation neither--no HOTURE;
+but manly downright straightforward good fellows."
+
+"Should you like to meet them, Tiny my boy?" said the Captain.
+
+"If I did sir, I hope I should show myself to be gentleman," answered
+Mr. Eglantine.
+
+"Well, you SHALL meet them, and Lady Billingsgate shall order her
+perfumes at your shop. We are going to dine, next week, all our set,
+at Mealy-faced Bob's, and you shall be my guest," cried the Captain,
+slapping the delighted artist on the back. "And now, my boy, tell me how
+YOU spent the evening."
+
+"At my club, sir," answered Mr. Eglantine, blushing rather.
+
+"What! not at the play with the lovely black-eyed Miss--What is her
+name, Eglantine?
+
+"Never mind her name, Captain," replied Eglantine, partly from prudence
+and partly from shame. He had not the heart to own it was Crump, and he
+did not care that the Captain should know more of his destined bride.
+
+"You wish to keep the five thousand to yourself--eh, you rogue?"
+responded the Captain, with a good-humoured air, although exceedingly
+mortified; for, to say the truth, he had put himself to the trouble
+of telling the above long story of the dinner, and of promising to
+introduce Eglantine to the lords, solely that he might elicit from that
+gentleman's good-humour some further particulars regarding the young
+lady with the billiard-ball eyes. It was for the very same reason, too,
+that he had made the attempt at reconciliation with Mr. Mossrose which
+had just so signally failed. Nor would the reader, did he know Mr. W.
+better, at all require to have the above explanation; but as yet we are
+only at the first chapter of his history, and who is to know what the
+hero's motives can be unless we take the trouble to explain?
+
+Well, the little dignified answer of the worthy dealer in bergamot,
+"NEVER MIND HER NAME, CAPTAIN!" threw the gallant Captain quite aback;
+and though he sat for a quarter of an hour longer, and was exceedingly
+kind; and though he threw out some skilful hints, yet the perfumer was
+quite unconquerable; or, rather, he was too frightened to tell: the
+poor fat timid easy good-natured gentleman was always the prey of
+rogues,--panting and floundering in one rascal's snare or another's. He
+had the dissimulation, too, which timid men have; and felt the presence
+of a victimiser as a hare does of a greyhound. Now he would be quite
+still, now he would double, and now he would run, and then came the end.
+He knew, by his sure instinct of fear, that the Captain had, in asking
+these questions, a scheme against him, and so he was cautious, and
+trembled, and doubted. And oh! how he thanked his stars when Lady
+Grogmore's chariot drove up, with the Misses Grogmore, who wanted their
+hair dressed, and were going to a breakfast at three o'clock!
+
+"I'll look in again, Tiny," said the Captain, on hearing the summons.
+
+"DO, Captain," said the other: "THANK YOU;" and went into the lady's
+studio with a heavy heart.
+
+"Get out of the way, you infernal villain!" roared the Captain, with
+many oaths, to Lady Grogmore's large footman, with ruby-coloured tights,
+who was standing inhaling the ten thousand perfumes of the shop; and the
+latter, moving away in great terror, the gallant agent passed out, quite
+heedless of the grin of Mr. Mossrose.
+
+Walker was in a fury at his want of success, and walked down Bond Street
+in a fury. "I WILL know where the girl lives!" swore he. "I'll spend a
+five-pound note, by Jove! rather than not know where she lives!"
+
+"THAT YOU WOULD--I KNOW YOU WOULD!" said a little grave low voice, all
+of a sudden, by his side. "Pooh! what's money to you?"
+
+Walker looked down: it was Tom Dale.
+
+Who in London did not know little Tom Dale? He had cheeks like an apple,
+and his hair curled every morning, and a little blue stock, and always
+two new magazines under his arm, and an umbrella and a little brown
+frock-coat, and big square-toed shoes with which he went PAPPING down
+the street. He was everywhere at once. Everybody met him every day, and
+he knew everything that everybody ever did; though nobody ever knew what
+HE did. He was, they say, a hundred years old, and had never dined at
+his own charge once in those hundred years. He looked like a figure out
+of a waxwork, with glassy clear meaningless eyes: he always spoke with
+a grin; he knew what you had for dinner the day before he met you, and
+what everybody had had for dinner for a century back almost. He was
+the receptacle of all the scandal of all the world, from Bond Street
+to Bread Street; he knew all the authors, all the actors, all the
+"notorieties" of the town, and the private histories of each. That is,
+he never knew anything really, but supplied deficiencies of truth and
+memory with ready-coined, never-failing lies. He was the most benevolent
+man in the universe, and never saw you without telling you everything
+most cruel of your neighbour, and when he left you he went to do the
+same kind turn by yourself.
+
+"Pooh! what's money to you, my dear boy?" said little Tom Dale, who had
+just come out of Ebers's, where he had been filching an opera-ticket.
+"You make it in bushels in the City, you know you do---in thousands.
+I saw you go into Eglantine's. Fine business that; finest in London.
+Five-shilling cakes of soap, my dear boy. I can't wash with such.
+Thousands a year that man has made--hasn't he?"
+
+"Upon my word, Tom, I don't know," says the Captain.
+
+"YOU not know? Don't tell me. You know everything--you agents. You KNOW
+he makes five thousand a year--ay, and might make ten, but you know why
+he don't."
+
+"Indeed I don't."
+
+"Nonsense. Don't humbug a poor old fellow like me. Jews--Amos--fifty per
+cent., ay? Why can't he get his money from a good Christian?"
+
+"I HAVE heard something of that sort," said Walker, laughing. "Why, by
+Jove, Tom, you know everything!"
+
+"YOU know everything, my dear boy. You know what a rascally trick that
+opera creature served him, poor fellow. Cashmere shawls--Storr and
+Mortimer's--'Star and Garter.' Much better dine quiet off pea-soup and
+sprats--ay? His betters have, as you know very well."
+
+"Pea-soup and sprats! What! have you heard of that already?"
+
+"Who bailed Lord Billingsgate, hey, you rogue?" and here Tom gave a
+knowing and almost demoniacal grin. "Who wouldn't go to the 'Finish'?
+Who had the piece of plate presented to him filled with sovereigns? And
+you deserved it, my dear boy--you deserved it. They said it was only
+halfpence, but I know better!" and here Tom went off in a cough.
+
+"I say, Tom," cried Walker, inspired with a sudden thought, "you, who
+know everything, and are a theatrical man, did you ever know a Miss
+Delancy, an actress?"
+
+"At 'Sadler's Wells' in '16? Of course I did. Real name was Budge. Lord
+Slapper admired her very much, my dear boy. She married a man by the
+name of Crump, his Lordship's black footman, and brought him five
+thousand pounds; and they keep the 'Bootjack' public-house in Bunker's
+Buildings, and they've got fourteen children. Is one of them handsome,
+eh, you sly rogue--and is it that which you will give five pounds to
+know? God bless you, my dear dear boy. Jones, my dear friend, how are
+you?"
+
+And now, seizing on Jones, Tom Dale left Mr. Walker alone, and proceeded
+to pour into Mr. Jones's ear an account of the individual whom he had
+just quitted; how he was the best fellow in the world, and Jones KNEW
+it; how he was in a fine way of making his fortune; how he had been in
+the Fleet many times, and how he was at this moment employed in looking
+out for a young lady of whom a certain great marquess (whom Jones knew
+very well, too) had expressed an admiration.
+
+But for these observations, which he did not hear, Captain Walker, it
+may be pronounced, did not care. His eyes brightened up, he marched
+quickly and gaily away; and turning into his own chambers opposite
+Eglantine's, shop, saluted that establishment with a grin of triumph.
+"You wouldn't tell me her name, wouldn't you?" said Mr. Walker. "Well,
+the luck's with me now, and here goes."
+
+Two days after, as Mr. Eglantine, with white gloves and a case of
+eau-de-Cologne as a present in his pocket, arrived at the "Bootjack
+Hotel," Little Bunker's Buildings, Berkeley Square (for it must
+out--that was the place in which Mr. Crump's inn was situated),
+he paused for a moment at the threshold of the little house of
+entertainment, and listened, with beating heart, to the sound of
+delicious music that a well-known voice was uttering within.
+
+The moon was playing in silvery brightness down the gutter of the humble
+street. A "helper," rubbing down one of Lady Smigsmag's carriage-horses,
+even paused in his whistle to listen to the strain. Mr. Tressle's man,
+who had been professionally occupied, ceased his tap-tap upon the coffin
+which he was getting in readiness. The greengrocer (there is always a
+greengrocer in those narrow streets, and he goes out in white Berlin
+gloves as a supernumerary footman) was standing charmed at his little
+green gate; the cobbler (there is always a cobbler too) was drunk, as
+usual, of evenings, but, with unusual subordination, never sang except
+when the refrain of the ditty arrived, when he hiccupped it forth with
+tipsy loyalty; and Eglantine leaned against the chequers painted on
+the door-side under the name of Crump, and looked at the red illumined
+curtain of the bar, and the vast well-known shadow of Mrs. Crump's
+turban within. Now and again the shadow of that worthy matron's hand
+would be seen to grasp the shadow of a bottle; then the shadow of a
+cup would rise towards the turban, and still the strain proceeded.
+Eglantine, I say, took out his yellow bandanna, and brushed the beady
+drops from his brow, and laid the contents of his white kids on his
+heart, and sighed with ecstatic sympathy. The song began,--
+
+         "Come to the greenwood tree, [1]
+          Come where the dark woods be,
+          Dearest, O come with me!
+     Let us rove--O my love--O my love!
+                             O my-y love!
+
+(Drunken Cobbler without)
+                             O my-y love!"
+
+"Beast!" says Eglantine.
+
+         "Come--'tis the moonlight hour,
+          Dew is on leaf and flower,
+          Come to the linden bower,
+     Let us rove--O my love--O my love!
+   Let us ro-o-ove, lurlurliety; yes, we'll rove, lurlurliety,
+   Through the gro-o-ove, lurlurliety--lurlurli-e-i-e-i-e-i!
+
+(Cobbler, as usual)--
+                             Let us ro-o-ove," etc.
+
+"YOU here?" says another individual, coming clinking up the street, in
+a military-cut dress-coat, the buttons whereof shone very bright in the
+moonlight. "YOU here, Eglantine?--You're always here."
+
+"Hush, Woolsey," said Mr. Eglantine to his rival the tailor (for he
+was the individual in question); and Woolsey, accordingly, put his
+back against the opposite door-post and chequers, so that (with poor
+Eglantine's bulk) nothing much thicker than a sheet of paper could pass
+out or in. And thus these two amorous caryatides kept guard as the song
+continued:--
+
+          "Dark is the wood, and wide,
+           Dangers, they say, betide;
+           But, at my Albert's side,
+     Nought, I fear, O my love--O my love!
+
+          "Welcome the greenwood tree,
+           Welcome the forest tree,
+           Dearest, with thee, with thee,
+     Nought I fear, O my love--O ma-a-y love!"
+
+Eglantine's fine eyes were filled with tears as Morgiana passionately
+uttered the above beautiful words. Little Woolsey's eyes glistened, as
+he clenched his fist with an oath, and said, "Show me any singing that
+can beat THAT. Cobbler, shut your mouth, or I'll break your head!"
+
+But the cobbler, regardless of the threat, continued to perform the
+"Lurlurliety" with great accuracy; and when that was ended, both on his
+part and Morgiana's, a rapturous knocking of glasses was heard in the
+little bar, then a great clapping of hands, and finally somebody shouted
+"Brava!"
+
+"Brava!"
+
+At that word Eglantine turned deadly pale, then gave a start, then a
+rush forward, which pinned, or rather cushioned, the tailor against the
+wall; then twisting himself abruptly round, he sprang to the door of the
+bar, and bounced into that apartment.
+
+"HOW ARE YOU, MY NOSEGAY?" exclaimed the same voice which had shouted
+"Brava!" It was that of Captain Walker.
+
+At ten o'clock the next morning, a gentleman, with the King's button
+on his military coat, walked abruptly into Mr. Eglantine's shop, and,
+turning on Mr. Mossrose, said, "Tell your master I want to see him."
+
+"He's in his studio," said Mr. Mossrose.
+
+"Well, then, fellow, go and fetch him!"
+
+And Mossrose, thinking it must be the Lord Chamberlain, or Doctor
+Praetorius at least, walked into the studio, where the perfumer was
+seated in a very glossy old silk dressing-gown, his fair hair hanging
+over his white face, his double chin over his flaccid whity-brown
+shirt-collar, his pea-green slippers on the hob, and on the fire the pot
+of chocolate which was simmering for his breakfast. A lazier fellow
+than poor Eglantine it would be hard to find; whereas, on the contrary,
+Woolsey was always up and brushed, spick-and-span, at seven o'clock; and
+had gone through his books, and given out the work for the journeymen,
+and eaten a hearty breakfast of rashers of bacon, before Eglantine had
+put the usual pound of grease to his hair (his fingers were always as
+damp and shiny as if he had them in a pomatum-pot), and arranged his
+figure for the day.
+
+"Here's a gent wants you in the shop," says Mr. Mossrose, leaving the
+door of communication wide open.
+
+"Say I'm in bed, Mr. Mossrose; I'm out of sperrets, and really can see
+nobody."
+
+"It's someone from Vindsor, I think; he's got the royal button," says
+Mossrose.
+
+"It's me--Woolsey," shouted the little man from the shop.
+
+Mr. Eglantine at this jumped up, made a rush to the door leading to his
+private apartment, and disappeared in a twinkling. But it must not be
+imagined that he fled in order to avoid Mr. Woolsey. He only went away
+for one minute just to put on his belt, for he was ashamed to be seen
+without it by his rival.
+
+This being assumed, and his toilet somewhat arranged, Mr. Woolsey was
+admitted into his private room. And Mossrose would have heard every
+word of the conversation between those two gentlemen, had not Woolsey,
+opening the door, suddenly pounced on the assistant, taken him by
+the collar, and told him to disappear altogether into the shop: which
+Mossrose did; vowing he would have his revenge.
+
+The subject on which Woolsey had come to treat was an important one.
+"Mr. Eglantine," says he, "there's no use disguising from one another
+that we are both of us in love with Miss Morgiana, and that our chances
+up to this time have been pretty equal. But that Captain whom you
+introduced, like an ass as you were--"
+
+"An ass, Mr. Woolsey! I'd have you to know, sir, that I'm no more a hass
+than you are, sir; and as for introducing the Captain, I did no such
+thing."
+
+"Well, well, he's got a-poaching into our preserves somehow. He's
+evidently sweet upon the young woman, and is a more fashionable chap
+than either of us two. We must get him out of the house, sir--we must
+circumwent him; and THEN, Mr. Eglantine, will be time enough for you and
+me to try which is the best man."
+
+"HE the best man?" thought Eglantine; "the little bald unsightly
+tailor-creature! A man with no more soul than his smoothing-hiron!" The
+perfumer, as may be imagined, did not utter this sentiment aloud, but
+expressed himself quite willing to enter into any HAMICABLE arrangement
+by which the new candidate for Miss Crump's favour must be thrown over.
+It was accordingly agreed between the two gentlemen that they should
+coalesce against the common enemy; that they should, by reciting many
+perfectly well-founded stories in the Captain's disfavour, influence the
+minds of Miss Crump's parents, and of herself, if possible, against this
+wolf in sheep's clothing; and that, when they were once fairly rid of
+him, each should be at liberty, as before, to prefer his own claim.
+
+"I have thought of a subject," said the little tailor, turning very red,
+and hemming and hawing a great deal. "I've thought, I say, of a pint,
+which may be resorted to with advantage at the present juncture, and in
+which each of us may be useful to the other. An exchange, Mr. Eglantine:
+do you take?"
+
+"Do you mean an accommodation-bill?" said Eglantine, whose mind ran a
+good deal on that species of exchange.
+
+"Pooh, nonsense, sir! The name of OUR firm is, I flatter myself, a
+little more up in the market than some other people's names."
+
+"Do you mean to insult the name of Archibald Eglantine, sir? I'd have
+you to know that at three months--"
+
+"Nonsense!" says Mr. Woolsey, mastering his emotion. "There's no use
+a-quarrelling, Mr. E.: we're not in love with each other, I know that.
+You wish me hanged, or as good, I know that!"
+
+"Indeed I don't, sir!"
+
+"You do, sir; I tell you, you do! and what's more, I wish the same
+to you--transported, at any rate! But as two sailors, when a boat's
+a-sinking, though they hate each other ever so much, will help and bale
+the boat out; so, sir, let US act: let us be the two sailors."
+
+"Bail, sir?" said Eglantine, as usual mistaking the drift of the
+argument. "I'll bail no man! If you're in difficulties, I think you had
+better go to your senior partner, Mr Woolsey." And Eglantine's cowardly
+little soul was filled with a savage satisfaction to think that his
+enemy was in distress, and actually obliged to come to HIM for succour.
+
+"You're enough to make Job swear, you great fat stupid lazy old barber!"
+roared Mr. Woolsey, in a fury.
+
+Eglantine jumped up and made for the bell-rope. The gallant little
+tailor laughed.
+
+"There's no need to call in Betsy," said he. "I'm not a-going to eat
+you, Eglantine; you're a bigger man than me: if you were just to fall on
+me, you'd smother me! Just sit still on the sofa and listen to reason."
+
+"Well, sir, pro-ceed," said the barber with a gasp.
+
+"Now, listen! What's the darling wish of your heart? I know it, sir!
+you've told it to Mr. Tressle, sir, and other gents at the club. The
+darling wish of your heart, sir, is to have a slap-up coat turned out of
+the ateliers of Messrs. Linsey, Woolsey and Company. You said you'd give
+twenty guineas for one of our coats, you know you did! Lord Bolsterton's
+a fatter man than you, and look what a figure we turn HIM out. Can any
+firm in England dress Lord Bolsterton but us, so as to make his Lordship
+look decent? I defy 'em, sir! We could have given Daniel Lambert a
+figure!"
+
+"If I want a coat, sir," said Mr. Eglantine, "and I don't deny it,
+there's some people want a HEAD OF HAIR!"
+
+"That's the very point I was coming to," said the tailor, resuming the
+violent blush which was mentioned as having suffused his countenance
+at the beginning of the conversation. "Let us have terms of mutual
+accommodation. Make me a wig, Mr. Eglantine, and though I never yet cut
+a yard of cloth except for a gentleman, I'll pledge you my word I'll
+make you a coat."
+
+"WILL you, honour bright?" says Eglantine.
+
+"Honour bright," says the tailor. "Look!" and in an instant he drew
+from his pocket one of those slips of parchment which gentlemen of his
+profession carry, and putting Eglantine into the proper position, began
+to take the preliminary observations. He felt Eglantine's heart
+thump with happiness as his measure passed over that soft part of the
+perfumer's person.
+
+Then pulling down the window-blind, and looking that the door was
+locked, and blushing still more deeply than ever, the tailor seated
+himself in an arm-chair towards which Mr. Eglantine beckoned him, and,
+taking off his black wig, exposed his head to the great perruquier's
+gaze. Mr. Eglantine looked at it, measured it, manipulated it, sat
+for three minutes with his head in his hand and his elbow on his knee,
+gazing at the tailor's cranium with all his might, walked round it twice
+or thrice, and then said, "It's enough, Mr. Woolsey. Consider the job
+as done. And now, sir," said he, with a greatly relieved air--"and now,
+Woolsey, let us 'ave a glass of curacoa to celebrate this hauspicious
+meeting."
+
+The tailor, however, stiffly replied that he never drank in a morning,
+and left the room without offering to shake Mr. Eglantine by the hand:
+for he despised that gentleman very heartily, and himself, too, for
+coming to any compromise with him, and for so far demeaning himself as
+to make a coat for a barber.
+
+Looking from his chambers on the other side of the street, that
+inevitable Mr. Walker saw the tailor issuing from the perfumer's shop,
+and was at no loss to guess that something extraordinary must be in
+progress when two such bitter enemies met together.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III. WHAT CAME OF MR WALKER'S DISCOVERY OF THE "BOOTJACK."
+
+It is very easy to state how the Captain came to take up that proud
+position at the "Bootjack" which we have seen him occupy on the evening
+when the sound of the fatal "Brava!" so astonished Mr. Eglantine.
+
+The mere entry into the establishment was, of course, not difficult. Any
+person by simply uttering the words "A pint of beer," was free of the
+"Bootjack;" and it was some such watchword that Howard Walker employed
+when he made his first appearance. He requested to be shown into a
+parlour, where he might repose himself for a while, and was ushered into
+that very sanctum where the "Kidney Club" met. Then he stated that the
+beer was the best he had ever tasted, except in Bavaria, and in some
+parts of Spain, he added; and professing to be extremely "peckish,"
+requested to know if there were any cold meat in the house whereof he
+could make a dinner.
+
+"I don't usually dine at this hour, landlord," said he, flinging down
+a half-sovereign for payment of the beer; "but your parlour looks so
+comfortable, and the Windsor chairs are so snug, that I'm sure I could
+not dine better at the first club in London."
+
+"ONE of the first clubs in London is held in this very room," said Mr.
+Crump, very well pleased; "and attended by some of the best gents in
+town, too. We call it the 'Kidney Club'."
+
+"Why, bless my soul! it is the very club my friend Eglantine has so
+often talked to me about, and attended by some of the tip-top tradesmen
+of the metropolis!"
+
+"There's better men here than Mr. Eglantine," replied Mr. Crump, "though
+he's a good man--I don't say he's not a good man--but there's better.
+Mr. Clinker, sir; Mr. Woolsey, of the house of Linsey, Woolsey and Co--"
+
+"The great army-clothiers!" cried Walker; "the first house in town!"
+and so continued, with exceeding urbanity, holding conversation with Mr.
+Crump, until the honest landlord retired delighted, and told Mrs. Crump
+in the bar that there was a tip-top swell in the "Kidney" parlour, who
+was a-going to have his dinner there.
+
+Fortune favoured the brave Captain in every way. It was just Mr. Crump's
+own dinner-hour; and on Mrs. Crump stepping into the parlour to ask the
+guest whether he would like a slice of the joint to which the family
+were about to sit down, fancy that lady's start of astonishment at
+recognising Mr. Eglantine's facetious friend of the day before. The
+Captain at once demanded permission to partake of the joint at the
+family table; the lady could not with any great reason deny this
+request; the Captain was inducted into the bar; and Miss Crump, who
+always came down late for dinner, was even more astonished than her
+mamma, on beholding the occupier of the fourth place at the table. Had
+she expected to see the fascinating stranger so soon again? I think she
+had. Her big eyes said as much, as, furtively looking up at Mr. Walker's
+face, they caught his looks; and then bouncing down again towards her
+plate, pretended to be very busy in looking at the boiled beef and
+carrots there displayed. She blushed far redder than those carrots, but
+her shining ringlets hid her confusion together with her lovely face.
+
+Sweet Morgiana! the billiard-ball eyes had a tremendous effect on the
+Captain. They fell plump, as it were, into the pocket of his heart; and
+he gallantly proposed to treat the company to a bottle of champagne,
+which was accepted without much difficulty.
+
+Mr. Crump, under pretence of going to the cellar (where he said he had
+some cases of the finest champagne in Europe), called Dick, the boy,
+to him, and despatched him with all speed to a wine merchant's, where a
+couple of bottles of the liquor were procured.
+
+"Bring up two bottles, Mr. C.," Captain Walker gallantly said when Crump
+made his move, as it were, to the cellar and it may be imagined after
+the two bottles were drunk (of which Mrs. Crump took at least nine
+glasses to her share), how happy, merry, and confidential the whole
+party had become. Crump told his story of the "Bootjack," and whose boot
+it had drawn; the former Miss Delancy expatiated on her past theatrical
+life, and the pictures hanging round the room. Miss was equally
+communicative; and, in short, the Captain had all the secrets of the
+little family in his possession ere sunset. He knew that Miss cared
+little for either of her suitors, about whom mamma and papa had a little
+quarrel. He heard Mrs. Crump talk of Morgiana's property, and fell more
+in love with her than ever. Then came tea, the luscious crumpet, the
+quiet game at cribbage, and the song--the song which poor Eglantine
+heard, and which caused Woolsey's rage and his despair.
+
+At the close of the evening the tailor was in a greater rage, and the
+perfumer in greater despair than ever. He had made his little present
+of eau-de-Cologne. "Oh fie!" says the Captain, with a horse-laugh, "it
+SMELLS OF THE SHOP!" He taunted the tailor about his wig, and the honest
+fellow had only an oath to give by way of repartee. He told his stories
+about his club and his lordly friends. What chance had either against
+the all-accomplished Howard Walker?
+
+Old Crump, with a good innate sense of right and wrong, hated the man;
+Mrs. Crump did not feel quite at her ease regarding him; but Morgiana
+thought him the most delightful person the world ever produced.
+
+Eglantine's usual morning costume was a blue satin neck-cloth
+embroidered with butterflies and ornamented with a brandy-ball brooch, a
+light shawl waistcoat, and a rhubarb-coloured coat of the sort which, I
+believe, are called Taglionis, and which have no waist-buttons, and made
+a pretence, as it were, to have no waists, but are in reality adopted by
+the fat in order to give them a waist. Nothing easier for an obese man
+than to have a waist; he has but to pinch his middle part a little, and
+the very fat on either side pushed violently forward MAKES a waist,
+as it were, and our worthy perfumer's figure was that of a bolster cut
+almost in two with a string.
+
+Walker presently saw him at his shop-door grinning in this costume,
+twiddling his ringlets with his dumpy greasy fingers, glittering with
+oil and rings, and looking so exceedingly contented and happy that the
+estate-agent felt assured some very satisfactory conspiracy had been
+planned between the tailor and him. How was Mr. Walker to learn what the
+scheme was? Alas! the poor fellow's vanity and delight were such, that
+he could not keep silent as to the cause of his satisfaction; and rather
+than not mention it at all, in the fulness of his heart he would have
+told his secret to Mr. Mossrose himself.
+
+"When I get my coat," thought the Bond Street Alnaschar, "I'll hire
+of Snaffle that easy-going cream-coloured 'oss that he bought from
+Astley's, and I'll canter through the Park, and WON'T I pass through
+Little Bunker's Buildings, that's all? I'll wear my grey trousers with
+the velvet stripe down the side, and get my spurs lacquered up, and a
+French polish to my boot; and if I don't DO for the Captain, and the
+tailor too, my name's not Archibald. And I know what I'll do: I'll hire
+the small clarence, and invite the Crumps to dinner at the 'Gar and
+Starter'" (this was his facetious way of calling the "Star and Garter"),
+"and I'll ride by them all the way to Richmond. It's rather a long ride,
+but with Snaffle's soft saddle I can do it pretty easy, I dare say." And
+so the honest fellow built castles upon castles in the air; and the last
+most beautiful vision of all was Miss Crump "in white satting, with a
+horange flower in her 'air," putting him in possession of "her lovely
+'and before the haltar of St. George's, 'Anover Square." As for Woolsey,
+Eglantine determined that he should have the best wig his art could
+produce; for he had not the least fear of his rival.
+
+These points then being arranged to the poor fellow's satisfaction, what
+does he do but send out for half a quire of pink note-paper, and in a
+filagree envelope despatch a note of invitation to the ladies at the
+"Bootjack":--
+
+
+"BOWER OF BLOOM, BOND STREET:
+
+"Thursday.
+
+"MR. ARCHIBALD EGLANTINE presents his compliments to Mrs. and Miss
+Crump, and requests the HONOUR AND PLEASURE of their company at the
+'Star and Garter' at Richmond to an early dinner on Sunday next.
+
+"IF AGREEABLE, Mr. Eglantine's carriage will be at your door at three
+o'clock, and I propose to accompany them on horseback, if agreeable
+likewise."
+
+
+This note was sealed with yellow wax, and sent to its destination; and
+of course Mr. Eglantine went himself for the answer in the evening: and
+of course he told the ladies to look out for a certain new coat he was
+going to sport on Sunday; and of course Mr. Walker happens to call the
+next day with spare tickets for Mrs. Crump and her daughter, when the
+whole secret was laid bare to him--how the ladies were going to Richmond
+on Sunday in Mr. Snaffle's clarence, and how Mr. Eglantine was to ride
+by their side.
+
+Mr. Walker did not keep horses of his own; his magnificent friends at
+the "Regent" had plenty in their stables, and some of these were at
+livery at the establishment of the Captain's old "college" companion,
+Mr. Snaffle. It was easy, therefore, for the Captain to renew his
+acquaintance with that individual. So, hanging on the arm of my Lord
+Vauxhall, Captain Walker next day made his appearance at Snaffle's
+livery-stables, and looked at the various horses there for sale or
+at bait, and soon managed, by putting some facetious questions to Mr.
+Snaffle regarding the "Kidney Club," etc. to place himself on a friendly
+footing with that gentleman, and to learn from him what horse Mr.
+Eglantine was to ride on Sunday.
+
+The monster Walker had fully determined in his mind that Eglantine
+should FALL off that horse in the course of his Sunday's ride.
+
+"That sing'lar hanimal," said Mr. Snaffle, pointing to the old horse,
+"is the celebrated Hemperor that was the wonder of Hastley's some years
+back, and was parted with by Mr. Ducrow honly because his feelin's
+wouldn't allow him to keep him no longer after the death of the first
+Mrs. D., who invariably rode him. I bought him, thinking that p'raps
+ladies and Cockney bucks might like to ride him (for his haction is
+wonderful, and he canters like a harm-chair); but he's not safe on any
+day except Sundays."
+
+"And why's that?" asked Captain Walker. "Why is he safer on Sundays than
+other days?"
+
+"BECAUSE THERE'S NO MUSIC in the streets on Sundays. The first gent that
+rode him found himself dancing a quadrille in Hupper Brook Street to
+an 'urdy-gurdy that was playing 'Cherry Ripe,' such is the natur of the
+hanimal. And if you reklect the play of the 'Battle of Hoysterlitz,' in
+which Mrs. D. hacted 'the female hussar,' you may remember how she
+and the horse died in the third act to the toon of 'God preserve the
+Emperor,' from which this horse took his name. Only play that toon to
+him, and he rears hisself up, beats the hair in time with his forelegs,
+and then sinks gently to the ground as though he were carried off by a
+cannon-ball. He served a lady hopposite Hapsley 'Ouse so one day, and
+since then I've never let him out to a friend except on Sunday, when, in
+course, there's no danger. Heglantine IS a friend of mine, and of course
+I wouldn't put the poor fellow on a hanimal I couldn't trust."
+
+After a little more conversation, my lord and his friend quitted Mr.
+Snaffle's, and as they walked away towards the "Regent," his Lordship
+might be heard shrieking with laughter, crying, "Capital, by jingo!
+exthlent! Dwive down in the dwag! Take Lungly. Worth a thousand pound,
+by Jove!" and similar ejaculations, indicative of exceeding delight.
+
+On Saturday morning, at ten o'clock to a moment, Mr. Woolsey called at
+Mr. Eglantine's with a yellow handkerchief under his arm. It contained
+the best and handsomest body-coat that ever gentleman put on. It fitted
+Eglantine to a nicety--it did not pinch him in the least, and yet it was
+of so exquisite a cut that the perfumer found, as he gazed delighted
+in the glass, that he looked like a manly portly high-bred gentleman--a
+lieutenant-colonel in the army, at the very least.
+
+"You're a full man, Eglantine," said the tailor, delighted, too, with
+his own work; "but that can't be helped. You look more like Hercules
+than Falstaff now, sir, and if a coat can make a gentleman, a gentleman
+you are. Let me recommend you to sink the blue cravat, and take the
+stripes off your trousers. Dress quiet, sir; draw it mild. Plain
+waistcoat, dark trousers, black neckcloth, black hat, and if there's a
+better-dressed man in Europe to-morrow, I'm a Dutchman."
+
+"Thank you, Woolsey--thank you, my dear sir," said the charmed perfumer.
+"And now I'll just trouble you to try on this here."
+
+The wig had been made with equal skill; it was not in the florid style
+which Mr. Eglantine loved in his own person, but, as the perfumer said,
+a simple straightforward head of hair. "It seems as if it had grown
+there all your life, Mr. Woolsey; nobody would tell that it was not
+your nat'ral colour" (Mr. Woolsey blushed)--"it makes you look ten year
+younger; and as for that scarecrow yonder, you'll never, I think, want
+to wear that again."
+
+Woolsey looked in the glass, and was delighted too. The two rivals shook
+hands and straightway became friends, and in the overflowing of his
+heart the perfumer mentioned to the tailor the party which he had
+arranged for the next day, and offered him a seat in the carriage and
+at the dinner at the "Star and Garter." "Would you like to ride?" said
+Eglantine, with rather a consequential air. "Snaffle will mount you, and
+we can go one on each side of the ladies, if you like."
+
+But Woolsey humbly said he was not a riding man, and gladly consented to
+take a place in the clarence carriage, provided he was allowed to bear
+half the expenses of the entertainment. This proposal was agreed to by
+Mr. Eglantine, and the two gentlemen parted to meet once more at the
+"Kidneys" that night, when everybody was edified by the friendly tone
+adopted between them.
+
+Mr. Snaffle, at the club meeting, made the very same proposal to Mr.
+Woolsey that the perfumer had made; and stated that as Eglantine was
+going to ride Hemperor, Woolsey, at least, ought to mount too. But he
+was met by the same modest refusal on the tailor's part, who stated that
+he had never mounted a horse yet, and preferred greatly the use of a
+coach.
+
+Eglantine's character as a "swell" rose greatly with the club that
+evening.
+
+Two o'clock on Sunday came: the two beaux arrived punctually at the door
+to receive the two smiling ladies.
+
+"Bless us, Mr. Eglantine!" said Miss Crump, quite struck by him, "I
+never saw you look so handsome in your life." He could have flung his
+arms around her neck at the compliment. "And law, Ma! what has happened
+to Mr. Woolsey? doesn't he look ten years younger than yesterday?" Mamma
+assented, and Woolsey bowed gallantly, and the two gentlemen exchanged a
+nod of hearty friendship.
+
+The day was delightful. Eglantine pranced along magnificently on his
+cantering armchair, with his hat on one ear, his left hand on his side,
+and his head flung over his shoulder, and throwing under-glances at
+Morgiana whenever the "Emperor" was in advance of the clarence. The
+"Emperor" pricked up his ears a little uneasily passing the Ebenezer
+chapel in Richmond, where the congregation were singing a hymn, but
+beyond this no accident occurred; nor was Mr. Eglantine in the least
+stiff or fatigued by the time the party reached Richmond, where he
+arrived time enough to give his steed into the charge of an ostler, and
+to present his elbow to the ladies as they alighted from the clarence
+carriage.
+
+What this jovial party ate for dinner at the "Star and Garter" need
+not here be set down. If they did not drink champagne I am very much
+mistaken. They were as merry as any four people in Christendom; and
+between the bewildering attentions of the perfumer, and the manly
+courtesy of the tailor, Morgiana very likely forgot the gallant Captain,
+or, at least, was very happy in his absence.
+
+At eight o'clock they began to drive homewards. "WON'T you come into the
+carriage?" said Morgiana to Eglantine, with one of her tenderest looks;
+"Dick can ride the horse." But Archibald was too great a lover of
+equestrian exercise. "I'm afraid to trust anybody on this horse," said
+he with a knowing look; and so he pranced away by the side of the little
+carriage. The moon was brilliant, and, with the aid of the gas-lamps,
+illuminated the whole face of the country in a way inexpressibly lovely.
+
+Presently, in the distance, the sweet and plaintive notes of a bugle
+were heard, and the performer, with great delicacy, executed a religious
+air. "Music, too! heavenly!" said Morgiana, throwing up her eyes to the
+stars. The music came nearer and nearer, and the delight of the company
+was only more intense. The fly was going at about four miles an hour,
+and the "Emperor" began cantering to time at the same rapid pace.
+
+"This must be some gallantry of yours, Mr. Woolsey," said the romantic
+Morgiana, turning upon that gentleman. "Mr. Eglantine treated us to the
+dinner, and you have provided us with the music."
+
+Now Woolsey had been a little, a very little, dissatisfied during the
+course of the evening's entertainment, by fancying that Eglantine, a
+much more voluble person than himself, had obtained rather an undue
+share of the ladies' favour; and as he himself paid half of the
+expenses, he felt very much vexed to think that the perfumer should take
+all the credit of the business to himself. So when Miss Crump asked if
+he had provided the music, he foolishly made an evasive reply to her
+query, and rather wished her to imagine that he HAD performed that
+piece of gallantry. "If it pleases YOU, Miss Morgiana," said this artful
+Schneider, "what more need any man ask? wouldn't I have all Drury Lane
+orchestra to please you?"
+
+The bugle had by this time arrived quite close to the clarence carriage,
+and if Morgiana had looked round she might have seen whence the music
+came. Behind her came slowly a drag, or private stage-coach, with
+four horses. Two grooms with cockades and folded arms were behind;
+and driving on the box, a little gentleman, with a blue bird's-eye
+neckcloth, and a white coat. A bugleman was by his side, who performed
+the melodies which so delighted Miss Crump. He played very gently and
+sweetly, and "God save the King" trembled so softly out of the brazen
+orifice of his bugle, that the Crumps, the tailor, and Eglantine
+himself, who was riding close by the carriage, were quite charmed and
+subdued.
+
+"Thank you, DEAR Mr. Woolsey," said the grateful Morgiana; which made
+Eglantine stare, and Woolsey was just saying, "Really, upon my word,
+I've nothing to do with it," when the man on the drag-box said to the
+bugleman, "Now!"
+
+The bugleman began the tune of--
+
+     "Heaven preserve our Emperor Fra-an-cis,
+      Rum tum-ti-tum-ti-titty-ti."
+
+At the sound, the "Emperor" reared himself (with a roar from Mr.
+Eglantine)--reared and beat the air with his fore-paws. Eglantine flung
+his arms round the beast's neck; still he kept beating time with
+his fore-paws. Mrs. Crump screamed: Mr. Woolsey, Dick, the clarence
+coachman, Lord Vauxhall (for it was he), and his Lordship's two grooms,
+burst into a shout of laughter; Morgiana cries "Mercy! mercy!" Eglantine
+yells "Stop!"--"Wo!"--"Oh!" and a thousand ejaculations of hideous
+terror; until, at last, down drops the "Emperor" stone dead in the
+middle of the road, as if carried off by a cannon-ball.
+
+Fancy the situation, ye callous souls who laugh at the misery of
+humanity, fancy the situation of poor Eglantine under the "Emperor"! He
+had fallen very easy, the animal lay perfectly quiet, and the perfumer
+was to all intents and purposes as dead as the animal. He had not
+fainted, but he was immovable with terror; he lay in a puddle, and
+thought it was his own blood gushing from him; and he would have lain
+there until Monday morning, if my Lord's grooms, descending, had not
+dragged him by the coat-collar from under the beast, who still lay
+quiet.
+
+"Play 'Charming Judy Callaghan,' will ye?" says Mr. Snaffle's man,
+the fly-driver; on which the bugler performed that lively air, and up
+started the horse, and the grooms, who were rubbing Mr. Eglantine down
+against a lamp-post, invited him to remount.
+
+But his heart was too broken for that. The ladies gladly made room for
+him in the clarence. Dick mounted "Emperor" and rode homewards. The
+drag, too, drove away, playing "Oh dear, what can the matter be?" and
+with a scowl of furious hate, Mr. Eglantine sat and regarded his rival.
+His pantaloons were split, and his coat torn up the back.
+
+"Are you hurt much, dear Mr. Archibald?" said Morgiana, with unaffected
+compassion.
+
+"N-not much," said the poor fellow, ready to burst into tears.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Woolsey," added the good-natured girl, "how could you play such
+a trick?"
+
+"Upon my word," Woolsey began, intending to plead innocence; but the
+ludicrousness of the situation was once more too much for him, and he
+burst out into a roar of laughter.
+
+"You! you cowardly beast!" howled out Eglantine, now driven to
+fury--"YOU laugh at me, you miserable cretur! Take THAT, sir!" and he
+fell upon him with all his might, and well-nigh throttled the tailor,
+and pummelling his eyes, his nose, his ears, with inconceivable
+rapidity, wrenched, finally, his wig off his head, and flung it into the
+road.
+
+Morgiana saw that Woolsey had red hair. [2]
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV. IN WHICH THE HEROINE HAS A NUMBER MORE LOVERS, AND CUTS A
+VERY DASHING FIGURE IN THE WORLD.
+
+Two years have elapsed since the festival at Richmond, which, begun so
+peaceably, ended in such general uproar. Morgiana never could be brought
+to pardon Woolsey's red hair, nor to help laughing at Eglantine's
+disasters, nor could the two gentlemen be reconciled to one another.
+Woolsey, indeed, sent a challenge to the perfumer to meet him with
+pistols, which the latter declined, saying, justly, that tradesmen had
+no business with such weapons; on this the tailor proposed to meet
+him with coats off, and have it out like men, in the presence of their
+friends of the "Kidney Club". The perfumer said he would be party to no
+such vulgar transaction; on which, Woolsey, exasperated, made an oath
+that he would tweak the perfumer's nose so surely as he ever entered the
+club-room; and thus ONE member of the "Kidneys" was compelled to vacate
+his armchair.
+
+Woolsey himself attended every meeting regularly, but he did not evince
+that gaiety and good-humour which render men's company agreeable in
+clubs. On arriving, he would order the boy to "tell him when that
+scoundrel Eglantine came;" and, hanging up his hat on a peg, would scowl
+round the room, and tuck up his sleeves very high, and stretch, and
+shake his fingers and wrists, as if getting them ready for that pull
+of the nose which he intended to bestow upon his rival. So prepared, he
+would sit down and smoke his pipe quite silently, glaring at all, and
+jumping up, and hitching up his coat-sleeves, when anyone entered the
+room.
+
+The "Kidneys" did not like this behaviour. Clinker ceased to come.
+Bustard, the poulterer, ceased to come. As for Snaffle, he also
+disappeared, for Woolsey wished to make him answerable for the
+misbehaviour of Eglantine, and proposed to him the duel which the latter
+had declined. So Snaffle went. Presently they all went, except the
+tailor and Tressle, who lived down the street, and these two would
+sit and pug their tobacco, one on each side of Crump, the landlord, as
+silent as Indian chiefs in a wigwam. There grew to be more and more room
+for poor old Crump in his chair and in his clothes; the "Kidneys" were
+gone, and why should he remain? One Saturday he did not come down to
+preside at the club (as he still fondly called it), and the Saturday
+following Tressle had made a coffin for him; and Woolsey, with the
+undertaker by his side, followed to the grave the father of the
+"Kidneys."
+
+Mrs. Crump was now alone in the world. "How alone?" says some innocent
+and respected reader. Ah! my dear sir, do you know so little of human
+nature as not to be aware that, one week after the Richmond affair,
+Morgiana married Captain Walker? That did she privately, of course; and,
+after the ceremony, came tripping back to her parents, as young people
+do in plays, and said, "Forgive me, dear Pa and Ma, I'm married, and
+here is my husband the Captain!" Papa and mamma did forgive her, as why
+shouldn't they? and papa paid over her fortune to her, which she carried
+home delighted to the Captain. This happened several months before the
+demise of old Crump; and Mrs. Captain Walker was on the Continent with
+her Howard when that melancholy event took place; hence Mrs. Crump's
+loneliness and unprotected condition. Morgiana had not latterly seen
+much of the old people; how could she, moving in her exalted sphere,
+receive at her genteel new residence in the Edgware Road the old
+publican and his wife?
+
+Being, then, alone in the world, Mrs. Crump could not abear, she said,
+to live in the house where she had been so respected and happy: so she
+sold the goodwill of the "Bootjack," and, with the money arising from
+this sale and her own private fortune, being able to muster some sixty
+pounds per annum, retired to the neighbourhood of her dear old "Sadler's
+Wells," where she boarded with one of Mrs. Serle's forty pupils. Her
+heart was broken, she said; but, nevertheless, about nine months after
+Mr. Crump's death, the wallflowers, nasturtiums, polyanthuses, and
+convolvuluses began to blossom under her bonnet as usual; in a year she
+was dressed quite as fine as ever, and now never missed "The Wells," or
+some other place of entertainment, one single night, but was as regular
+as the box-keeper. Nay, she was a buxom widow still, and an old flame of
+hers, Fisk, so celebrated as pantaloon in Grimaldi's time, but now doing
+the "heavy fathers" at "The Wells," proposed to her to exchange her name
+for his.
+
+But this proposal the worthy widow declined altogether. To say truth,
+she was exceedingly proud of her daughter, Mrs. Captain Walker. They
+did not see each other much at first; but every now and then Mrs. Crump
+would pay a visit to the folks in Connaught Square; and on the days when
+"the Captain's" lady called in the City Road, there was not a single
+official at "The Wells," from the first tragedian down to the call-boy,
+who was not made aware of the fact.
+
+It has been said that Morgiana carried home her fortune in her own
+reticule, and, smiling, placed the money in her husband's lap; and hence
+the reader may imagine, who knows Mr. Walker to be an extremely selfish
+fellow, that a great scene of anger must have taken place, and many
+coarse oaths and epithets of abuse must have come from him, when he
+found that five hundred pounds was all that his wife had, although he
+had expected five thousand with her. But, to say the truth, Walker was
+at this time almost in love with his handsome rosy good-humoured simple
+wife. They had made a fortnight's tour, during which they had been
+exceedingly happy; and there was something so frank and touching in the
+way in which the kind creature flung her all into his lap, saluting
+him with a hearty embrace at the same time, and wishing that it were a
+thousand billion billion times more, so that her darling Howard might
+enjoy it, that the man would have been a ruffian indeed could he have
+found it in his heart to be angry with her; and so he kissed her in
+return, and patted her on the shining ringlets, and then counted over
+the notes with rather a disconsolate air, and ended by locking them up
+in his portfolio. In fact, SHE had never deceived him; Eglantine
+had, and he in return had out-tricked Eglantine and so warm were his
+affections for Morgiana at this time that, upon my word and honour, I
+don't think he repented of his bargain. Besides, five hundred pounds in
+crisp bank-notes was a sum of money such as the Captain was not in the
+habit of handling every day; a dashing sanguine fellow, he fancied there
+was no end to it, and already thought of a dozen ways by which it should
+increase and multiply into a plum. Woe is me! Has not many a simple soul
+examined five new hundred-pound notes in this way, and calculated their
+powers of duration and multiplication?
+
+This subject, however, is too painful to be dwelt on. Let us hear what
+Walker did with his money. Why, he furnished the house in the Edgware
+Road before mentioned, he ordered a handsome service of plate, he
+sported a phaeton and two ponies, he kept a couple of smart maids and
+a groom foot-boy--in fact, he mounted just such a neat unpretending
+gentleman-like establishment as becomes a respectable young couple on
+their outset in life. "I've sown my wild oats," he would say to his
+acquaintances; "a few years since, perhaps, I would have longed to cut
+a dash, but now prudence is the word; and I've settled every farthing of
+Mrs. Walker's fifteen thousand on herself." And the best proof that the
+world had confidence in him is the fact, that for the articles of plate,
+equipage, and furniture, which have been mentioned as being in his
+possession, he did not pay one single shilling; and so prudent was he,
+that but for turnpikes, postage-stamps, and king's taxes, he hardly had
+occasion to change a five-pound note of his wife's fortune.
+
+To tell the truth, Mr. Walker had determined to make his fortune. And
+what is easier in London? Is not the share-market open to all? Do
+not Spanish and Columbian bonds rise and fall? For what are companies
+invented, but to place thousands in the pockets of shareholders and
+directors? Into these commercial pursuits the gallant Captain now
+plunged with great energy, and made some brilliant hits at first
+starting, and bought and sold so opportunely, that his name began to
+rise in the City as a capitalist, and might be seen in the printed list
+of directors of many excellent and philanthropic schemes, of which there
+is never any lack in London. Business to the amount of thousands was
+done at his agency; shares of vast value were bought and sold under his
+management. How poor Mr. Eglantine used to hate him and envy him, as
+from the door of his emporium (the firm was Eglantine and Mossrose now)
+he saw the Captain daily arrive in his pony-phaeton, and heard of the
+start he had taken in life.
+
+The only regret Mrs. Walker had was that she did not enjoy enough of her
+husband's society. His business called him away all day; his business,
+too, obliged him to leave her of evenings very frequently alone; whilst
+he (always in pursuit of business) was dining with his great friends at
+the club, and drinking claret and champagne to the same end.
+
+She was a perfectly good-natured and simple soul, never made him a
+single reproach; but when he could pass an evening at home with her
+she was delighted, and when he could drive with her in the Park she was
+happy for a week after. On these occasions, and in the fulness of her
+heart, she would drive to her mother and tell her story. "Howard drove
+with me in the Park yesterday, Mamma;" and "Howard has promised to
+take me to the Opera," and so forth. And that evening the manager, Mr.
+Gawler, the first tragedian, Mrs. Serle and her forty pupils, all the
+box-keepers, bonnet-women--nay, the ginger-beer girls themselves at "The
+Wells," knew that Captain and Mrs. Walker were at Kensington Gardens,
+or were to have the Marchioness of Billingsgate's box at the Opera. One
+night--O joy of joys!--Mrs. Captain Walker appeared in a private box
+at "The Wells." That's she with the black ringlets and Cashmere shawl,
+smelling-bottle, and black-velvet gown, and bird of paradise in her hat.
+Goodness gracious! how they all acted at her, Gawler and all, and how
+happy Mrs. Crump was! She kissed her daughter between all the acts, she
+nodded to all her friends on the stage, in the slips, or in the
+real water; she introduced her daughter, Mrs. Captain Walker, to the
+box-opener; and Melvil Delamere (the first comic), Canterfield (the
+tyrant), and Jonesini (the celebrated Fontarabian Statuesque), were all
+on the steps, and shouted for Mrs. Captain Walker's carriage, and waved
+their hats, and bowed as the little pony-phaeton drove away. Walker, in
+his moustaches, had come in at the end of the play, and was not a little
+gratified by the compliments paid to himself and lady.
+
+Among the other articles of luxury with which the Captain furnished
+his house we must not omit to mention an extremely grand piano, which
+occupied four-fifths of Mrs. Walker's little back drawing-room, and at
+which she was in the habit of practising continually. All day and all
+night during Walker's absences (and these occurred all night and all
+day), you might hear--the whole street might hear--the voice of the lady
+at No. 23, gurgling, and shaking, and quavering, as ladies do when they
+practise. The street did not approve of the continuance of the noise;
+but neighbours are difficult to please, and what would Morgiana have had
+to do if she had ceased to sing? It would be hard to lock a blackbird in
+a cage and prevent him from singing too. And so Walker's blackbird, in
+the snug little cage in the Edgware Road, sang and was not unhappy.
+
+After the pair had been married for about a year, the omnibus that
+passes both by Mrs. Crump's house near "The Wells," and by Mrs. Walker's
+street off the Edgware Road, brought up the former-named lady almost
+every day to her daughter. She came when the Captain had gone to his
+business; she stayed to a two-o'clock dinner with Morgiana; she drove
+with her in the pony-carriage round the Park; but she never stopped
+later than six. Had she not to go to the play at seven? And, besides,
+the Captain might come home with some of his great friends, and he
+always swore and grumbled much if he found his mother-in-law on the
+premises. As for Morgiana, she was one of those women who encourage
+despotism in husbands. What the husband says must be right, because he
+says it; what he orders must be obeyed tremblingly. Mrs. Walker gave up
+her entire reason to her lord. Why was it? Before marriage she had been
+an independent little person; she had far more brains than her Howard.
+I think it must have been his moustaches that frightened her, and caused
+in her this humility.
+
+Selfish husbands have this advantage in maintaining with easy-minded
+wives a rigid and inflexible behaviour, viz. that if they DO by any
+chance grant a little favour, the ladies receive it with such transports
+of gratitude as they would never think of showing to a lord and master
+who was accustomed to give them everything they asked for; and hence,
+when Captain Walker signified his assent to his wife's prayer that she
+should take a singing-master, she thought his generosity almost divine,
+and fell upon her mamma's neck, when that lady came the next day, and
+said what a dear adorable angel her Howard was, and what ought she not
+to do for a man who had taken her from her humble situation, and raised
+her to be what she was! What she was, poor soul! She was the wife of a
+swindling parvenu gentleman. She received visits from six ladies of her
+husband's acquaintances--two attorneys' ladies, his bill-broker's lady,
+and one or two more, of whose characters we had best, if you please,
+say nothing; and she thought it an honour to be so distinguished: as
+if Walker had been a Lord Exeter to marry a humble maiden, or a noble
+prince to fall in love with a humble Cinderella, or a majestic Jove
+to come down from heaven and woo a Semele. Look through the world,
+respectable reader, and among your honourable acquaintances, and say if
+this sort of faith in women is not very frequent? They WILL believe in
+their husbands, whatever the latter do. Let John be dull, ugly, vulgar,
+and a humbug, his Mary Ann never finds it out; let him tell his stories
+ever so many times, there is she always ready with her kind smile; let
+him be stingy, she says he is prudent; let him quarrel with his best
+friend, she says he is always in the right; let him be prodigal, she
+says he is generous, and that his health requires enjoyment; let him
+be idle, he must have relaxation; and she will pinch herself and
+her household that he may have a guinea for his club. Yes; and every
+morning, as she wakes and looks at the face, snoring on the pillow by
+her side--every morning, I say, she blesses that dull ugly countenance,
+and the dull ugly soul reposing there, and thinks both are something
+divine. I want to know how it is that women do not find out their
+husbands to be humbugs? Nature has so provided it, and thanks to her.
+When last year they were acting the "Midsummer Night's Dream," and all
+the boxes began to roar with great coarse heehaws at Titania hugging
+Bottom's long long ears--to me, considering these things, it seemed that
+there were a hundred other male brutes squatted round about, and treated
+just as reasonably as Bottom was. Their Titanias lulled them to sleep
+in their laps, summoned a hundred smiling delicate household fairies to
+tickle their gross intellects and minister to their vulgar pleasures;
+and (as the above remarks are only supposed to apply to honest women
+loving their own lawful spouses) a mercy it is that no wicked Puck is
+in the way to open their eyes, and point out their folly. Cui bono? let
+them live on in their deceit: I know two lovely ladies who will read
+this, and will say it is just very likely, and not see in the least,
+that it has been written regarding THEM.
+
+Another point of sentiment, and one curious to speculate on. Have
+you not remarked the immense works of art that women get through? The
+worsted-work sofas, the counterpanes patched or knitted (but these are
+among the old-fashioned in the country), the bushels of pincushions,
+the albums they laboriously fill, the tremendous pieces of music they
+practise, the thousand other fiddle-faddles which occupy the attention
+of the dear souls--nay, have we not seen them seated of evenings in a
+squad or company, Louisa employed at the worsted-work before mentioned,
+Eliza at the pincushions, Amelia at card-racks or filagree matches, and,
+in the midst, Theodosia with one of the candles, reading out a novel
+aloud? Ah! my dear sir, mortal creatures must be very hard put to it for
+amusement, be sure of that, when they are forced to gather together in
+a company and hear novels read aloud! They only do it because they can't
+help it, depend upon it: it is a sad life, a poor pastime. Mr. Dickens,
+in his American book, tells of the prisoners at the silent prison,
+how they had ornamented their rooms, some of them with a frightful
+prettiness and elaboration. Women's fancy-work is of this
+sort often--only prison work, done because there was no other
+exercising-ground for their poor little thoughts and fingers; and hence
+these wonderful pincushions are executed, these counterpanes woven,
+these sonatas learned. By everything sentimental, when I see two kind
+innocent fresh-cheeked young women go to a piano, and sit down opposite
+to it upon two chairs piled with more or less music-books (according to
+their convenience), and, so seated, go through a set of double-barrelled
+variations upon this or that tune by Herz or Kalkbrenner--I say, far
+from receiving any satisfaction at the noise made by the performance,
+my too susceptible heart is given up entirely to bleeding for the
+performers. What hours, and weeks, nay, preparatory years of study, has
+that infernal jig cost them! What sums has papa paid, what scoldings has
+mamma administered ("Lady Bullblock does not play herself;" Sir Thomas
+says, "but she has naturally the finest ear for music ever known!");
+what evidences of slavery, in a word, are there! It is the condition
+of the young lady's existence. She breakfasts at eight, she does
+"Mangnall's Questions" with the governess till ten, she practises till
+one, she walks in the square with bars round her till two, then she
+practises again, then she sews or hems, or reads French, or Hume's
+"History," then she comes down to play to papa, because he likes music
+whilst he is asleep after dinner, and then it is bed-time, and the
+morrow is another day with what are called the same "duties" to be gone
+through. A friend of mine went to call at a nobleman's house the other
+day, and one of the young ladies of the house came into the room with a
+tray on her head; this tray was to give Lady Maria a graceful carriage.
+Mon Dieu! and who knows but at that moment Lady Bell was at work with
+a pair of her dumb namesakes, and Lady Sophy lying flat on a
+stretching-board? I could write whole articles on this theme but peace!
+we are keeping Mrs. Walker waiting all the while.
+
+Well, then, if the above disquisitions have anything to do with the
+story, as no doubt they have, I wish it to be understood that, during
+her husband's absence, and her own solitary confinement, Mrs. Howard
+Walker bestowed a prodigious quantity of her time and energy on the
+cultivation of her musical talent; and having, as before stated, a very
+fine loud voice, speedily attained no ordinary skill in the use of it.
+She first had for teacher little Podmore, the fat chorus-master at "The
+Wells," and who had taught her mother the "Tink-a-tink" song which has
+been such a favourite since it first appeared. He grounded her well, and
+bade her eschew the singing of all those "Eagle Tavern" ballads in which
+her heart formerly delighted; and when he had brought her to a certain
+point of skill, the honest little chorus-master said she should have a
+still better instructor, and wrote a note to Captain Walker (enclosing
+his own little account), speaking in terms of the most flattering
+encomium of his lady's progress, and recommending that she should take
+lessons of the celebrated Baroski. Captain Walker dismissed Podmore
+then, and engaged Signor Baroski, at a vast expense; as he did not fail
+to tell his wife. In fact, he owed Baroski no less than two hundred and
+twenty guineas when he was--But we are advancing matters.
+
+Little Baroski is the author of the opera of "Eliogabalo," of the
+oratorio of "Purgatorio," which made such an immense sensation, of songs
+and ballet-musics innumerable. He is a German by birth, and shows such
+an outrageous partiality for pork and sausages, and attends at church so
+constantly, that I am sure there cannot be any foundation in the story
+that he is a member of the ancient religion. He is a fat little man,
+with a hooked nose and jetty whiskers, and coal-black shining eyes, and
+plenty of rings and jewels on his fingers and about his person, and a
+very considerable portion of his shirtsleeves turned over his coat to
+take the air. His great hands (which can sprawl over half a piano, and
+produce those effects on the instrument for which he is celebrated) are
+encased in lemon-coloured kids, new, or cleaned daily. Parenthetically,
+let us ask why so many men, with coarse red wrists and big hands,
+persist in the white kid glove and wristband system? Baroski's gloves
+alone must cost him a little fortune; only he says with a leer, when
+asked the question, "Get along vid you; don't you know dere is a
+gloveress that lets me have dem very sheap?" He rides in the Park; has
+splendid lodgings in Dover Street; and is a member of the "Regent Club,"
+where he is a great source of amusement to the members, to whom he tells
+astonishing stories of his successes with the ladies, and for whom he
+has always play and opera tickets in store. His eye glistens and his
+little heart beats when a lord speaks to him; and he has been known to
+spend large sums of money in giving treats to young sprigs of fashion at
+Richmond and elsewhere. "In my bolyticks," he says, "I am consarevatiff
+to de bag-bone." In fine, he is a puppy, and withal a man of
+considerable genius in his profession.
+
+This gentleman, then, undertook to complete the musical education
+of Mrs. Walker. He expressed himself at once "enshanted vid her
+gababilities," found that the extent of her voice was "brodigious," and
+guaranteed that she should become a first-rate singer. The pupil was
+apt, the master was exceedingly skilful; and, accordingly, Mrs. Walker's
+progress was very remarkable: although, for her part, honest Mrs. Crump,
+who used to attend her daughter's lessons, would grumble not a little at
+the new system, and the endless exercises which she, Morgiana, was made
+to go through. It was very different in HER time, she said. Incledon
+knew no music, and who could sing so well now? Give her a good English
+ballad: it was a thousand times sweeter than your "Figaros" and
+"Semiramides."
+
+In spite of these objections, however, and with amazing perseverance and
+cheerfulness, Mrs. Walker pursued the method of study pointed out to her
+by her master. As soon as her husband went to the City in the morning
+her operations began; if he remained away at dinner, her labours still
+continued: nor is it necessary for me to particularise her course of
+study, nor, indeed, possible; for, between ourselves, none of the
+male Fitz-Boodles ever could sing a note, and the jargon of scales and
+solfeggios is quite unknown to me. But as no man can have seen persons
+addicted to music without remarking the prodigious energies they display
+in the pursuit, as there is no father of daughters, however ignorant,
+but is aware of the piano-rattling and voice-exercising which go on in
+his house from morning till night, so let all fancy, without further
+inquiry, how the heroine of our story was at this stage of her existence
+occupied.
+
+Walker was delighted with her progress, and did everything but pay
+Baroski, her instructor. We know why he didn't pay. It was his nature
+not to pay bills, except on extreme compulsion; but why did not Baroski
+employ that extreme compulsion? Because, if he had received his money,
+he would have lost his pupil, and because he loved his pupil more than
+money. Rather than lose her, he would have given her a guinea as well
+as her cachet. He would sometimes disappoint a great personage, but he
+never missed his attendance on HER; and the truth must out, that he was
+in love with her, as Woolsey and Eglantine had been before.
+
+"By the immortel Chofe!" he would say, "dat letell ding sents me mad vid
+her big ice! But only vait avile: in six veeks I can bring any voman
+in England on her knees to me and you shall see vat I vill do vid my
+Morgiana." He attended her for six weeks punctually, and yet Morgiana
+was never brought down on her knees; he exhausted his best stock of
+"gomblimends," and she never seemed disposed to receive them with
+anything but laughter. And, as a matter of course, he only grew more
+infatuated with the lovely creature who was so provokingly good-humoured
+and so laughingly cruel.
+
+Benjamin Baroski was one of the chief ornaments of the musical
+profession in London; he charged a guinea for a lesson of three-quarters
+of an hour abroad, and he had, furthermore, a school at his own
+residence, where pupils assembled in considerable numbers, and of that
+curious mixed kind which those may see who frequent these places of
+instruction. There were very innocent young ladies with their mammas,
+who would hurry them off trembling to the farther corner of the room
+when certain doubtful professional characters made their appearance.
+There was Miss Grigg, who sang at the "Foundling," and Mr. Johnson,
+who sang at the "Eagle Tavern," and Madame Fioravanti (a very doubtful
+character), who sang nowhere, but was always coming out at the Italian
+Opera. There was Lumley Limpiter (Lord Tweedledale's son), one of the
+most accomplished tenors in town, and who, we have heard, sings with
+the professionals at a hundred concerts; and with him, too, was Captain
+Guzzard, of the Guards, with his tremendous bass voice, which all the
+world declared to be as fine as Porto's, and who shared the applause of
+Baroski's school with Mr. Bulger, the dentist of Sackville Street, who
+neglected his ivory and gold plates for his voice, as every unfortunate
+individual will do who is bitten by the music mania. Then among
+the ladies there were a half-score of dubious pale governesses and
+professionals with turned frocks and lank damp bandeaux of hair under
+shabby little bonnets; luckless creatures these, who were parting with
+their poor little store of half-guineas to be enabled to say they were
+pupils of Signor Baroski, and so get pupils of their own among the
+British youths, or employment in the choruses of the theatres.
+
+The prima donna of the little company was Amelia Larkins, Baroski's own
+articled pupil, on whose future reputation the eminent master staked his
+own, whose profits he was to share, and whom he had farmed, to this end,
+from her father, a most respectable sheriff's officer's assistant, and
+now, by his daughter's exertions, a considerable capitalist. Amelia is
+blonde and blue-eyed, her complexion is as bright as snow, her ringlets
+of the colour of straw, her figure--but why describe her figure? Has not
+all the world seen her at the Theatres Royal and in America under the
+name of Miss Ligonier?
+
+Until Mrs. Walker arrived, Miss Larkins was the undisputed princess of
+the Baroski company--the Semiramide, the Rosina, the Tamina, the Donna
+Anna. Baroski vaunted her everywhere as the great rising genius of the
+day, bade Catalani look to her laurels, and questioned whether Miss
+Stephens could sing a ballad like his pupil. Mrs. Howard Walker arrived,
+and created, on the first occasion, no small sensation. She improved,
+and the little society became speedily divided into Walkerites and
+Larkinsians; and between these two ladies (as indeed between Guzzard and
+Bulger before mentioned, between Miss Brunck and Miss Horsman, the two
+contraltos, and between the chorus-singers, after their kind) a great
+rivalry arose. Larkins was certainly the better singer; but could
+her straw-coloured curls and dumpy high-shouldered figure bear any
+comparison with the jetty ringlets and stately form of Morgiana? Did not
+Mrs. Walker, too, come to the music-lesson in her carriage, and with a
+black velvet gown and Cashmere shawl, while poor Larkins meekly stepped
+from Bell Yard, Temple Bar, in an old print gown and clogs, which she
+left in the hall? "Larkins sing!" said Mrs. Crump, sarcastically; "I'm
+sure she ought; her mouth's big enough to sing a duet." Poor Larkins had
+no one to make epigrams in her behoof; her mother was at home tending
+the younger ones, her father abroad following the duties of his
+profession; she had but one protector, as she thought, and that one
+was Baroski. Mrs. Crump did not fail to tell Lumley Limpiter of her own
+former triumphs, and to sing him "Tink-a-tink," which we have previously
+heard, and to state how in former days she had been called the
+Ravenswing. And Lumley, on this hint, made a poem, in which he compared
+Morgiana's hair to the plumage of the Raven's wing, and Larkinissa's to
+that of the canary; by which two names the ladies began soon to be known
+in the school.
+
+Ere long the flight of the Ravenswing became evidently stronger, whereas
+that of the canary was seen evidently to droop. When Morgiana sang, all
+the room would cry "Bravo!" when Amelia performed, scarce a hand
+was raised for applause of her, except Morgiana's own, and that the
+Larkinses thought was lifted in odious triumph, rather than in sympathy,
+for Miss L. was of an envious turn, and little understood the generosity
+of her rival.
+
+At last, one day, the crowning victory of the Ravenswing came. In the
+trio of Baroski's own opera of "Eliogabalo," "Rosy lips and rosy wine,"
+Miss Larkins, who was evidently unwell, was taking the part of the
+English captive, which she had sung in public concerts before royal
+dukes, and with considerable applause, and, from some reason, performed
+it so ill, that Baroski, slapping down the music on the piano in a fury,
+cried, "Mrs. Howard Walker, as Miss Larkins cannot sing to-day, will
+you favour us by taking the part of Boadicetta?" Mrs. Walker got up
+smilingly to obey--the triumph was too great to be withstood; and, as
+she advanced to the piano, Miss Larkins looked wildly at her, and stood
+silent for a while, and, at last, shrieked out, "BENJAMIN!" in a tone of
+extreme agony, and dropped fainting down on the ground. Benjamin looked
+extremely red, it must be confessed, at being thus called by what
+we shall denominate his Christian name, and Limpiter looked round at
+Guzzard, and Miss Brunck nudged Miss Horsman, and the lesson concluded
+rather abruptly that day; for Miss Larkins was carried off to the next
+room, laid on a couch, and sprinkled with water.
+
+Good-natured Morgiana insisted that her mother should take Miss Larkins
+to Bell Yard in her carriage, and went herself home on foot; but I don't
+know that this piece of kindness prevented Larkins from hating her. I
+should doubt if it did.
+
+Hearing so much of his wife's skill as a singer, the astute Captain
+Walker determined to take advantage of it for the purpose of increasing
+his "connection." He had Lumley Limpiter at his house before long, which
+was, indeed, no great matter, for honest Lum would go anywhere for a
+good dinner--and an opportunity to show off his voice afterwards,
+and Lumley was begged to bring any more clerks in the Treasury of his
+acquaintance; Captain Guzzard was invited, and any officers of the
+Guards whom he might choose to bring; Bulger received occasional
+cards:--in a word, and after a short time, Mrs. Howard Walker's
+musical parties began to be considerably suivies. Her husband had the
+satisfaction to see his rooms filled by many great personages; and once
+or twice in return (indeed, whenever she was wanted, or when people
+could not afford to hire the first singers) she was asked to parties
+elsewhere, and treated with that killing civility which our English
+aristocracy knows how to bestow on artists. Clever and wise aristocracy!
+It is sweet to mark your ways, and study your commerce with inferior
+men.
+
+I was just going to commence a tirade regarding the aristocracy
+here, and to rage against that cool assumption of superiority which
+distinguishes their lordships' commerce with artists of all sorts: that
+politeness which, if it condescends to receive artists at all, takes
+care to have them altogether, so that there can be no mistake about
+their rank--that august patronage of art which rewards it with a silly
+flourish of knighthood, to be sure, but takes care to exclude it from
+any contact with its betters in society--I was, I say, just going to
+commence a tirade against the aristocracy for excluding artists from
+their company, and to be extremely satirical upon them, for instance,
+for not receiving my friend Morgiana, when it suddenly came into my head
+to ask, was Mrs. Walker fit to move in the best society?--to which query
+it must humbly be replied that she was not. Her education was not such
+as to make her quite the equal of Baker Street. She was a kind honest
+and clever creature; but, it must be confessed, not refined. Wherever
+she went she had, if not the finest, at any rate the most showy gown
+in the room; her ornaments were the biggest; her hats, toques, berets,
+marabouts, and other fallals, always the most conspicuous. She drops
+"h's" here and there. I have seen her eat peas with a knife (and Walker,
+scowling on the opposite side of the table, striving in vain to catch
+her eye); and I shall never forget Lady Smigsmag's horror when she
+asked for porter at dinner at Richmond, and began to drink it out of the
+pewter pot. It was a fine sight. She lifted up the tankard with one of
+the finest arms, covered with the biggest bracelets ever seen; and had
+a bird of paradise on her head, that curled round the pewter disc of the
+pot as she raised it, like a halo. These peculiarities she had, and has
+still. She is best away from the genteel world, that is the fact. When
+she says that "The weather is so 'ot that it is quite debiliating;" when
+she laughs, when she hits her neighbour at dinner on the side of the
+waistcoat (as she will if he should say anything that amuses her), she
+does what is perfectly natural and unaffected on her part, but what
+is not customarily done among polite persons, who can sneer at her
+odd manners and her vanity, but don't know the kindness, honesty, and
+simplicity which distinguish her. This point being admitted, it follows,
+of course, that the tirade against the aristocracy would, in the present
+instance, be out of place--so it shall be reserved for some other
+occasion.
+
+The Ravenswing was a person admirably disposed by nature to be happy.
+She had a disposition so kindly that any small attention would satisfy
+it; was pleased when alone; was delighted in a crowd; was charmed with
+a joke, however old; was always ready to laugh, to sing, to dance, or to
+be merry; was so tender-hearted that the smallest ballad would make her
+cry: and hence was supposed, by many persons, to be extremely affected,
+and by almost all to be a downright coquette. Several competitors for
+her favour presented themselves besides Baroski. Young dandies used to
+canter round her phaeton in the park, and might be seen haunting her
+doors in the mornings. The fashionable artist of the day made a drawing
+of her, which was engraved and sold in the shops; a copy of it was
+printed in a song, "Black-eyed Maiden of Araby," the words by Desmond
+Mulligan, Esquire, the music composed and dedicated to MRS. HOWARD
+WALKER, by her most faithful and obliged servant, Benjamin Baroski; and
+at night her Opera-box was full. Her Opera-box? Yes, the heiress of the
+"Bootjack" actually had an Opera-box, and some of the most fashionable
+manhood of London attended it.
+
+Now, in fact, was the time of her greatest prosperity; and her husband
+gathering these fashionable characters about him, extended his "agency"
+considerably, and began to thank his stars that he had married a woman
+who was as good as a fortune to him.
+
+In extending his agency, however, Mr. Walker increased his expenses
+proportionably, and multiplied his debts accordingly. More furniture and
+more plate, more wines and more dinner-parties, became necessary; the
+little pony-phaeton was exchanged for a brougham of evenings; and we may
+fancy our old friend Mr. Eglantine's rage and disgust, as he looked from
+the pit of the Opera, to see Mrs. Walker surrounded by what he called
+"the swell young nobs" about London, bowing to my Lord, and laughing
+with his Grace, and led to carriage by Sir John.
+
+The Ravenswing's position at this period was rather an exceptional
+one. She was an honest woman, visited by that peculiar class of our
+aristocracy who chiefly associate with ladies who are NOT honest. She
+laughed with all, but she encouraged none. Old Crump was constantly at
+her side now when she appeared in public, the most watchful of mammas,
+always awake at the Opera, though she seemed to be always asleep; but no
+dandy debauchee could deceive her vigilance, and for this reason Walker,
+who disliked her (as every man naturally will, must, and should dislike
+his mother-in-law), was contented to suffer her in his house to act as a
+chaperon to Morgiana.
+
+None of the young dandies ever got admission of mornings to the little
+mansion in the Edgware Road; the blinds were always down; and though you
+might hear Morgiana's voice half across the Park as she was practising,
+yet the youthful hall-porter in the sugar-loaf buttons was instructed to
+deny her, and always declared that his mistress was gone out, with the
+most admirable assurance.
+
+After some two years of her life of splendour, there were, to be sure, a
+good number of morning visitors, who came with SINGLE knocks, and asked
+for Captain Walker; but these were no more admitted than the dandies
+aforesaid, and were referred, generally, to the Captain's office,
+whither they went or not at their convenience. The only man who obtained
+admission into the house was Baroski, whose cab transported him thrice
+a week to the neighbourhood of Connaught Square, and who obtained ready
+entrance in his professional capacity.
+
+But even then, and much to the wicked little music-master's
+disappointment, the dragon Crump was always at the piano, with her
+endless worsted work, or else reading her unfailing Sunday Times; and
+Baroski could only employ "de langvitch of de ice," as he called it,
+with his fair pupil, who used to mimic his manner of rolling his eyes
+about afterwards, and perform "Baroski in love" for the amusement of her
+husband and her mamma. The former had his reasons for overlooking the
+attentions of the little music-master; and as for the latter, had she
+not been on the stage, and had not many hundreds of persons, in jest or
+earnest, made love to her? What else can a pretty woman expect who is
+much before the public? And so the worthy mother counselled her daughter
+to bear these attentions with good humour, rather than to make them a
+subject of perpetual alarm and quarrel.
+
+Baroski, then, was allowed to go on being in love, and was never in the
+least disturbed in his passion; and if he was not successful, at least
+the little wretch could have the pleasure of HINTING that he was, and
+looking particularly roguish when the Ravenswing was named, and assuring
+his friends at the club, that "upon his vort dere vas no trut IN DAT
+REBORT."
+
+At last one day it happened that Mrs. Crump did not arrive in time for
+her daughter's lesson (perhaps it rained and the omnibus was full--a
+smaller circumstance than that has changed a whole life ere now)--Mrs.
+Crump did not arrive, and Baroski did, and Morgiana, seeing no great
+harm, sat down to her lesson as usual, and in the midst of it down
+went the music-master on his knees, and made a declaration in the most
+eloquent terms he could muster.
+
+"Don't be a fool, Baroski!" said the lady--(I can't help it if her
+language was not more choice, and if she did not rise with cold dignity,
+exclaiming, "Unhand me, sir!")--"Don't be a fool!" said Mrs. Walker,
+"but get up and let's finish the lesson."
+
+"You hard-hearted adorable little greature, vill you not listen to me?"
+
+"No, I vill not listen to you, Benjamin!" concluded the lady. "Get up
+and take a chair, and don't go on in that ridiklous way, don't!"
+
+But Baroski, having a speech by heart, determined to deliver himself
+of it in that posture, and begged Morgiana not to turn avay her divine
+hice, and to listen to de voice of his despair, and so forth; he seized
+the lady's hand, and was going to press it to his lips, when she said,
+with more spirit, perhaps, than grace,--
+
+"Leave go my hand, sir; I'll box your ears if you don't!"
+
+But Baroski wouldn't release her hand, and was proceeding to imprint
+a kiss upon it; and Mrs. Crump, who had taken the omnibus at a
+quarter-past twelve instead of that at twelve, had just opened the
+drawing-room door and was walking in, when Morgiana, turning as red as
+a peony, and unable to disengage her left hand, which the musician held,
+raised up her right hand, and, with all her might and main, gave her
+lover such a tremendous slap in the face as caused him abruptly to
+release the hand which he held, and would have laid him prostrate on
+the carpet but for Mrs. Crump, who rushed forward and prevented him from
+falling by administering right and left a whole shower of slaps, such as
+he had never endured since the day he was at school.
+
+"What imperence!" said that worthy lady; "you'll lay hands on my
+daughter, will you? (one, two). You'll insult a woman in distress, will
+you, you little coward? (one, two). Take that, and mind your manners,
+you filthy monster!"
+
+Baroski bounced up in a fury. "By Chofe, you shall hear of dis!" shouted
+he; "you shall pay me dis!"
+
+"As many more as you please, little Benjamin," cried the widow.
+"Augustus" (to the page), "was that the Captain's knock?" At this
+Baroski made for his hat. "Augustus, show this imperence to the door;
+and if he tries to come in again, call a policeman: do you hear?"
+
+The music-master vanished very rapidly, and the two ladies, instead of
+being frightened or falling into hysterics, as their betters would have
+done, laughed at the odious monster's discomfiture, as they called him.
+"Such a man as that set himself up against my Howard!" said Morgiana,
+with becoming pride; but it was agreed between them that Howard should
+know nothing of what had occurred, for fear of quarrels, or lest he
+should be annoyed. So when he came home not a word was said; and only
+that his wife met him with more warmth than usual, you could not have
+guessed that anything extraordinary had occurred. It is not my fault
+that my heroine's sensibilities were not more keen, that she had not the
+least occasion for sal-volatile or symptom of a fainting fit; but so it
+was, and Mr. Howard Walker knew nothing of the quarrel between his wife
+and her instructor until--
+
+Until he was arrested next day at the suit of Benjamin Baroski for two
+hundred and twenty guineas, and, in default of payment, was conducted by
+Mr. Tobias Larkins to his principal's lock-up house in Chancery Lane.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V. IN WHICH MR. WALKER FALLS INTO DIFFICULTIES, AND MRS. WALKER
+MAKES MANY FOOLISH ATTEMPTS TO RESCUE HIM.
+
+I hope the beloved reader is not silly enough to imagine that Mr.
+Walker, on finding himself inspunged for debt in Chancery Lane, was
+so foolish as to think of applying to any of his friends (those great
+personages who have appeared every now and then in the course of this
+little history, and have served to give it a fashionable air). No, no;
+he knew the world too well; and that, though Billingsgate would give him
+as many dozen of claret as he could carry away under his belt, as the
+phrase is (I can't help it, madam, if the phrase is not more genteel),
+and though Vauxhall would lend him his carriage, slap him on the back,
+and dine at his house,--their lordships would have seen Mr. Walker
+depending from a beam in front of the Old Bailey rather than have helped
+him to a hundred pounds.
+
+And why, forsooth, should we expect otherwise in the world? I observe
+that men who complain of its selfishness are quite as selfish as the
+world is, and no more liberal of money than their neighbours; and I am
+quite sure with regard to Captain Walker that he would have treated a
+friend in want exactly as he when in want was treated. There was only
+his lady who was in the least afflicted by his captivity; and as for the
+club, that went on, we are bound to say, exactly as it did on the day
+previous to his disappearance.
+
+By the way, about clubs--could we not, but for fear of detaining the
+fair reader too long, enter into a wholesome dissertation here on the
+manner of friendship established in those institutions, and the noble
+feeling of selfishness which they are likely to encourage in the male
+race? I put out of the question the stale topics of complaint, such as
+leaving home, encouraging gormandising and luxurious habits, etc.; but
+look also at the dealings of club-men with one another. Look at the rush
+for the evening paper! See how Shiverton orders a fire in the dog-days,
+and Swettenham opens the windows in February. See how Cramley takes
+the whole breast of the turkey on his plate, and how many times Jenkins
+sends away his beggarly half-pint of sherry! Clubbery is organised
+egotism. Club intimacy is carefully and wonderfully removed from
+friendship. You meet Smith for twenty years, exchange the day's news
+with him, laugh with him over the last joke, grow as well acquainted as
+two men may be together--and one day, at the end of the list of members
+of the club, you read in a little paragraph by itself, with all the
+honours,
+
+     MEMBER DECEASED.
+     Smith, John, Esq.;
+
+or he, on the other hand, has the advantage of reading your own name
+selected for a similar typographical distinction. There it is, that
+abominable little exclusive list at the end of every club-catalogue--you
+can't avoid it. I belong to eight clubs myself, and know that one year
+Fitz-Boodle, George Savage, Esq. (unless it should please fate to remove
+my brother and his six sons, when of course it would be Fitz-Boodle, Sir
+George Savage, Bart.), will appear in the dismal category. There is that
+list; down I must go in it:--the day will come, and I shan't be seen in
+the bow-window, someone else will be sitting in the vacant armchair:
+the rubber will begin as usual, and yet somehow Fitz will not be there.
+"Where's Fitz?" says Trumpington, just arrived from the Rhine. "Don't
+you know?" says Punter, turning down his thumb to the carpet. "You led
+the club, I think?" says Ruff to his partner (the OTHER partner!), and
+the waiter snuffs the candles.
+
+                    *****
+
+I hope in the course of the above little pause, every single member of
+a club who reads this has profited by the perusal. He may belong, I
+say, to eight clubs; he will die, and not be missed by any of the five
+thousand members. Peace be to him; the waiters will forget him, and his
+name will pass away, and another great-coat will hang on the hook whence
+his own used to be dependent.
+
+And this, I need not say, is the beauty of the club-institutions. If it
+were otherwise--if, forsooth, we were to be sorry when our friends died,
+or to draw out our purses when our friends were in want, we should be
+insolvent, and life would be miserable. Be it ours to button up our
+pockets and our hearts; and to make merry--it is enough to swim down
+this life-stream for ourselves; if Poverty is clutching hold of our
+heels, or Friendship would catch an arm, kick them both off. Every man
+for himself, is the word, and plenty to do too.
+
+My friend Captain Walker had practised the above maxims so long and
+resolutely as to be quite aware when he came himself to be in distress,
+that not a single soul in the whole universe would help him, and he took
+his measures accordingly.
+
+When carried to Mr. Bendigo's lock-up house, he summoned that gentleman
+in a very haughty way, took a blank banker's cheque out of his
+pocket-book, and filling it up for the exact sum of the writ, orders Mr.
+Bendigo forthwith to open the door and let him go forth.
+
+Mr. Bendigo, smiling with exceeding archness, and putting a finger
+covered all over with diamond rings to his extremely aquiline nose,
+inquired of Mr. Walker whether he saw anything green about his face?
+intimating by this gay and good-humoured interrogatory his suspicion
+of the unsatisfactory nature of the document handed over to him by Mr.
+Walker.
+
+"Hang it, sir!" says Mr. Walker, "go and get the cheque cashed, and be
+quick about it. Send your man in a cab, and here's a half-crown to pay
+for it." The confident air somewhat staggers the bailiff, who asked him
+whether he would like any refreshment while his man was absent getting
+the amount of the cheque, and treated his prisoner with great civility
+during the time of the messenger's journey.
+
+But as Captain Walker had but a balance of two pounds five and twopence
+(this sum was afterwards divided among his creditors, the law expenses
+being previously deducted from it), the bankers of course declined to
+cash the Captain's draft for two hundred and odd pounds, simply writing
+the words "No effects" on the paper; on receiving which reply Walker,
+far from being cast down, burst out laughing very gaily, produced a real
+five-pound note, and called upon his host for a bottle of champagne,
+which the two worthies drank in perfect friendship and good-humour. The
+bottle was scarcely finished, and the young Israelitish gentleman who
+acts as waiter in Cursitor Street had only time to remove the flask and
+the glasses, when poor Morgiana with a flood of tears rushed into her
+husband's arms, and flung herself on his neck, and calling him her
+"dearest, blessed Howard," would have fainted at his feet; but that he,
+breaking out in a fury of oaths, asked her how, after getting him into
+that scrape through her infernal extravagance, she dared to show her
+face before him? This address speedily frightened the poor thing out
+of her fainting fit--there is nothing so good for female hysterics as a
+little conjugal sternness, nay, brutality, as many husbands can aver who
+are in the habit of employing the remedy.
+
+"My extravagance, Howard?" said she, in a faint way; and quite put off
+her purpose of swooning by the sudden attack made upon her--"Surely, my
+love, you have nothing to complain of--"
+
+"To complain of, ma'am?" roared the excellent Walker. "Is two hundred
+guineas to a music-master nothing to complain of? Did you bring me such
+a fortune as to authorise your taking guinea lessons? Haven't I raised
+you out of your sphere of life and introduced you to the best of the
+land? Haven't I dressed you like a duchess? Haven't I been for you such
+a husband as very few women in the world ever had, madam?--answer me
+that."
+
+"Indeed, Howard, you were always very kind," sobbed the lady.
+
+"Haven't I toiled and slaved for you--been out all day working for you?
+Haven't I allowed your vulgar old mother to come to your house--to my
+house, I say? Haven't I done all this?"
+
+She could not deny it, and Walker, who was in a rage (and when a man is
+in a rage, for what on earth is a wife made but that he should vent his
+rage on her?), continued for some time in this strain, and so abused,
+frightened, and overcame poor Morgiana that she left her husband fully
+convinced that she was the most guilty of beings, and bemoaning his
+double bad fortune, that her Howard was ruined and she the cause of his
+misfortunes.
+
+When she was gone, Mr. Walker resumed his equanimity (for he was not
+one of those men whom a few months of the King's Bench were likely to
+terrify), and drank several glasses of punch in company with his host;
+with whom in perfect calmness he talked over his affairs. That he
+intended to pay his debt and quit the spunging-house next day is a
+matter of course; no one ever was yet put in a spunging-house that did
+not pledge his veracity he intended to quit it to-morrow. Mr. Bendigo
+said he should be heartily glad to open the door to him, and in the
+meantime sent out diligently to see among his friends if there were
+any more detainers against the Captain, and to inform the Captain's
+creditors to come forward against him.
+
+Morgiana went home in profound grief, it may be imagined, and could
+hardly refrain from bursting into tears when the sugar-loaf page asked
+whether master was coming home early, or whether he had taken his key;
+she lay awake tossing and wretched the whole night, and very early in
+the morning rose up, and dressed, and went out.
+
+Before nine o'clock she was in Cursitor Street, and once more joyfully
+bounced into her husband's arms; who woke up yawning and swearing
+somewhat, with a severe headache, occasioned by the jollification of the
+previous night: for, strange though it may seem, there are perhaps no
+places in Europe where jollity is more practised than in prisons for
+debt; and I declare for my own part (I mean, of course, that I went
+to visit a friend) I have dined at Mr. Aminadab's as sumptuously as at
+Long's.
+
+But it is necessary to account for Morgiana's joyfulness; which was
+strange in her husband's perplexity, and after her sorrow of the
+previous night. Well, then, when Mrs. Walker went out in the morning,
+she did so with a very large basket under her arm. "Shall I carry the
+basket, ma'am?" said the page, seizing it with much alacrity.
+
+"No, thank you," cried his mistress, with equal eagerness: "it's only--"
+
+"Of course, ma'am," replied the boy, sneering, "I knew it was that."
+
+"Glass," continued Mrs. Walker, turning extremely red. "Have
+the goodness to call a coach, sir, and not to speak till you are
+questioned."
+
+The young gentleman disappeared upon his errand: the coach was called
+and came. Mrs. Walker slipped into it with her basket, and the page went
+downstairs to his companions in the kitchen, and said, "It's a-comin'!
+master's in quod, and missus has gone out to pawn the plate." When the
+cook went out that day, she somehow had by mistake placed in her basket
+a dozen of table-knives and a plated egg-stand. When the lady's-maid
+took a walk in the course of the afternoon, she found she had occasion
+for eight cambric pocket-handkerchiefs, (marked with her mistress's
+cipher), half-a-dozen pair of shoes, gloves, long and short, some silk
+stockings, and a gold-headed scent-bottle. "Both the new cashmeres is
+gone," said she, "and there's nothing left in Mrs. Walker's trinket-box
+but a paper of pins and an old coral bracelet." As for the page, he
+rushed incontinently to his master's dressing-room and examined every
+one of the pockets of his clothes; made a parcel of some of them, and
+opened all the drawers which Walker had not locked before his departure.
+He only found three-halfpence and a bill stamp, and about forty-five
+tradesmen's accounts, neatly labelled and tied up with red tape.
+These three worthies, a groom who was a great admirer of Trimmer the
+lady's-maid, and a policeman a friend of the cook's, sat down to a
+comfortable dinner at the usual hour, and it was agreed among them all
+that Walker's ruin was certain. The cook made the policeman a present of
+a china punch-bowl which Mrs. Walker had given her; and the lady's-maid
+gave her friend the "Book of Beauty" for last year, and the third volume
+of Byron's poems from the drawing-room table.
+
+"I'm dash'd if she ain't taken the little French clock, too," said the
+page, and so indeed Mrs. Walker had; it slipped in the basket where
+it lay enveloped in one of her shawls, and then struck madly and
+unnaturally a great number of times, as Morgiana was lifting her store
+of treasures out of the hackney-coach. The coachman wagged his head
+sadly as he saw her walking as quick as she could under her heavy load,
+and disappearing round the corner of the street at which Mr. Balls's
+celebrated jewellery establishment is situated. It is a grand shop, with
+magnificent silver cups and salvers, rare gold-headed canes, flutes,
+watches, diamond brooches, and a few fine specimens of the old masters
+in the window, and under the words--
+
+     BALLS, JEWELLER,
+
+you read
+
+       Money Lent.
+
+in the very smallest type, on the door.
+
+The interview with Mr. Balls need not be described; but it must have
+been a satisfactory one, for at the end of half an hour Morgiana
+returned and bounded into the coach with sparkling eyes, and told the
+driver to GALLOP to Cursitor Street; which, smiling, he promised to do,
+and accordingly set off in that direction at the rate of four miles an
+hour. "I thought so," said the philosophic charioteer. "When a man's
+in quod, a woman don't mind her silver spoons;" and he was so delighted
+with her action, that he forgot to grumble when she came to settle
+accounts with him, even though she gave him only double his fare.
+
+"Take me to him," said she to the young Hebrew who opened the door.
+
+"To whom?" says the sarcastic youth; "there's twenty HIM'S here. You're
+precious early."
+
+"To Captain Walker, young man," replied Morgiana haughtily; whereupon
+the youth opening the second door, and seeing Mr. Bendigo in a flowered
+dressing-gown descending the stairs, exclaimed, "Papa, here's a lady for
+the Captain." "I'm come to free him," said she, trembling, and holding
+out a bundle of bank-notes. "Here's the amount of your claim, sir--two
+hundred and twenty guineas, as you told me last night." The Jew took the
+notes, and grinned as he looked at her, and grinned double as he looked
+at his son, and begged Mrs. Walker to step into his study and take a
+receipt. When the door of that apartment closed upon the lady and his
+father, Mr. Bendigo the younger fell back in an agony of laughter, which
+it is impossible to describe in words, and presently ran out into a
+court where some of the luckless inmates of the house were already
+taking the air, and communicated something to them which made those
+individuals also laugh as uproariously as he had previously done.
+
+Well, after joyfully taking the receipt from Mr. Bendigo (how her cheeks
+flushed and her heart fluttered as she dried it on the blotting-book!),
+and after turning very pale again on hearing that the Captain had had a
+very bad night: "And well he might, poor dear!" said she (at which Mr.
+Bendigo, having no person to grin at, grinned at a marble bust of
+Mr. Pitt, which ornamented his sideboard)--Morgiana, I say, these
+preliminaries being concluded, was conducted to her husband's apartment,
+and once more flinging her arms round her dearest Howard's neck, told
+him with one of the sweetest smiles in the world, to make haste and
+get up and come home, for breakfast was waiting and the carriage at the
+door.
+
+"What do you mean, love?" said the Captain, starting up and looking
+exceedingly surprised.
+
+"I mean that my dearest is free; that the odious little creature is
+paid--at least the horrid bailiff is."
+
+"Have you been to Baroski?" said Walker, turning very red.
+
+"Howard!" said his wife, quite indignant.
+
+"Did--did your mother give you the money?" asked the Captain.
+
+"No; I had it by me" replies Mrs. Walker, with a very knowing look.
+
+Walker was more surprised than ever. "Have you any more by you?" said
+he.
+
+Mrs. Walker showed him her purse with two guineas. "That is all, love,"
+she said. "And I wish," continued she, "you would give me a draft to pay
+a whole list of little bills that have somehow all come in within the
+last few days."
+
+"Well, well, you shall have the cheque," continued Mr. Walker, and began
+forthwith to make his toilet, which completed, he rang for Mr. Bendigo,
+and his bill, and intimated his wish to go home directly.
+
+The honoured bailiff brought the bill, but with regard to his being
+free, said it was impossible.
+
+"How impossible?" said Mrs. Walker, turning very red: and then very
+pale. "Did I not pay just now?"
+
+"So you did, and you've got the reshipt; but there's another detainer
+against the Captain for a hundred and fifty. Eglantine and Mossrose, of
+Bond Street;--perfumery for five years, you know."
+
+"You don't mean to say you were such a fool as to pay without asking if
+there were any more detainers?" roared Walker to his wife.
+
+"Yes, she was though," chuckled Mr. Bendigo; "but she'll know better the
+next time: and, besides, Captain, what's a hundred and fifty pounds to
+you?"
+
+Though Walker desired nothing so much in the world at that moment as
+the liberty to knock down his wife, his sense of prudence overcame his
+desire for justice: if that feeling may be called prudence on his part,
+which consisted in a strong wish to cheat the bailiff into the idea that
+he (Walker) was an exceedingly respectable and wealthy man. Many worthy
+persons indulge in this fond notion, that they are imposing upon the
+world; strive to fancy, for instance, that their bankers consider
+them men of property because they keep a tolerable balance, pay little
+tradesmen's bills with ostentatious punctuality, and so forth--but the
+world, let us be pretty sure, is as wise as need be, and guesses our
+real condition with a marvellous instinct, or learns it with curious
+skill. The London tradesman is one of the keenest judges of human nature
+extant; and if a tradesman, how much more a bailiff? In reply to the
+ironic question, "What's a hundred and fifty pounds to you?" Walker,
+collecting himself, answers, "It is an infamous imposition, and I owe
+the money no more than you do; but, nevertheless, I shall instruct
+my lawyers to pay it in the course of the morning: under protest, of
+course."
+
+"Oh, of course," said Mr. Bendigo, bowing and quitting the room, and
+leaving Mrs. Walker to the pleasure of a tete-a-tete with her husband.
+
+And now being alone with the partner of his bosom, the worthy gentleman
+began an address to her which cannot be put down on paper here; because
+the world is exceedingly squeamish, and does not care to hear the whole
+truth about rascals, and because the fact is that almost every other
+word of the Captain's speech was a curse, such as would shock the
+beloved reader were it put in print.
+
+Fancy, then, in lieu of the conversation, a scoundrel, disappointed and
+in a fury, wreaking his brutal revenge upon an amiable woman, who sits
+trembling and pale, and wondering at this sudden exhibition of wrath.
+Fancy how he clenches his fists and stands over her, and stamps and
+screams out curses with a livid face, growing wilder and wilder in his
+rage; wrenching her hand when she wants to turn away, and only stopping
+at last when she has fallen off the chair in a fainting fit, with
+a heart-breaking sob that made the Jew-boy who was listening at the
+key-hole turn quite pale and walk away. Well, it is best, perhaps, that
+such a conversation should not be told at length:--at the end of
+it, when Mr. Walker had his wife lifeless on the floor, he seized a
+water-jug and poured it over her; which operation pretty soon brought
+her to herself, and shaking her black ringlets, she looked up once more
+again timidly into his face, and took his hand, and began to cry.
+
+He spoke now in a somewhat softer voice, and let her keep paddling on
+with his hand as before; he COULDN'T speak very fiercely to the poor
+girl in her attitude of defeat, and tenderness, and supplication.
+"Morgiana," said he, "your extravagance and carelessness have brought me
+to ruin, I'm afraid. If you had chosen to have gone to Baroski, a word
+from you would have made him withdraw the writ, and my property wouldn't
+have been sacrificed, as it has now been, for nothing. It mayn't be yet
+too late, however, to retrieve ourselves. This bill of Eglantine's is
+a regular conspiracy, I am sure, between Mossrose and Bendigo here: you
+must go to Eglantine--he's an old--an old flame of yours, you know."
+
+She dropped his hand: "I can't go to Eglantine after what has passed
+between us," she said; but Walker's face instantly began to wear a
+certain look, and she said with a shudder, "Well, well, dear, I WILL
+go." "You will go to Eglantine, and ask him to take a bill for the
+amount of this shameful demand--at any date, never mind what. Mind,
+however, to see him alone, and I'm sure if you choose you can settle the
+business. Make haste; set off directly, and come back, as there may be
+more detainers in."
+
+Trembling, and in a great flutter, Morgiana put on her bonnet and
+gloves, and went towards the door. "It's a fine morning," said Mr.
+Walker, looking out: "a walk will do you good; and--Morgiana--didn't you
+say you had a couple of guineas in your pocket?"
+
+"Here it is," said she, smiling all at once, and holding up her face to
+be kissed. She paid the two guineas for the kiss. Was it not a mean act?
+"Is it possible that people can love where they do not respect?" says
+Miss Prim: "_I_ never would." Nobody asked you, Miss Prim: but recollect
+Morgiana was not born with your advantages of education and breeding;
+and was, in fact, a poor vulgar creature, who loved Mr. Walker, not
+because her mamma told her, nor because he was an exceedingly eligible
+and well-brought-up young man, but because she could not help it, and
+knew no better. Nor is Mrs. Walker set up as a model of virtue: ah, no!
+when I want a model of virtue I will call in Baker Street, and ask for a
+sitting of my dear (if I may be permitted to say so) Miss Prim.
+
+We have Mr. Howard Walker safely housed in Mr. Bendigo's establishment
+in Cursitor Street, Chancery Lane; and it looks like mockery and want of
+feeling towards the excellent hero of this story (or, as should rather
+be said, towards the husband of the heroine) to say what he might have
+been but for the unlucky little circumstance of Baroski's passion for
+Morgiana.
+
+If Baroski had not fallen in love with Morgiana, he would not have given
+her two hundred guineas' worth of lessons; he would not have so far
+presumed as to seize her hand, and attempt to kiss it; if he had not
+attempted to kiss her, she would not have boxed his ears; he would not
+have taken out the writ against Walker; Walker would have been free,
+very possibly rich, and therefore certainly respected: he always said
+that a month's more liberty would have set him beyond the reach of
+misfortune.
+
+The assertion is very likely a correct one; for Walker had a flashy
+enterprising genius, which ends in wealth sometimes; in the King's Bench
+not seldom; occasionally, alas! in Van Diemen's Land. He might have been
+rich, could he have kept his credit, and had not his personal expenses
+and extravagances pulled him down. He had gallantly availed himself of
+his wife's fortune; nor could any man in London, as he proudly said,
+have made five hundred pounds go so far. He had, as we have seen,
+furnished a house, sideboard, and cellar with it: he had a carriage, and
+horses in his stable, and with the remainder he had purchased shares
+in four companies--of three of which he was founder and director, had
+conducted innumerable bargains in the foreign stocks, had lived and
+entertained sumptuously, and made himself a very considerable income. He
+had set up THE CAPITOL Loan and Life Assurance Company, had discovered
+the Chimborazo gold mines, and the Society for Recovering and Draining
+the Pontine Marshes; capital ten millions; patron HIS HOLINESS THE POPE.
+It certainly was stated in an evening paper that His Holiness had made
+him a Knight of the Spur, and had offered to him the rank of Count; and
+he was raising a loan for His Highness, the Cacique of Panama, who had
+sent him (by way of dividend) the grand cordon of His Highness's order
+of the Castle and Falcon, which might be seen any day at his office in
+Bond Street, with the parchments signed and sealed by the Grand Master
+and Falcon King-at-arms of His Highness. In a week more Walker would
+have raised a hundred thousand pounds on His Highness's twenty per cent.
+loan; he would have had fifteen thousand pounds commission for himself;
+his companies would have risen to par, he would have realised his
+shares; he would have gone into Parliament; he would have been made a
+baronet, who knows? a peer, probably! "And I appeal to you, sir," Walker
+would say to his friends, "could any man have shown better proof of his
+affection for his wife than by laying out her little miserable money as
+I did? They call me heartless, sir, because I didn't succeed; sir, my
+life has been a series of sacrifices for that woman, such as no man ever
+performed before."
+
+A proof of Walker's dexterity and capability for business may be seen
+in the fact that he had actually appeased and reconciled one of his
+bitterest enemies--our honest friend Eglantine. After Walker's marriage
+Eglantine, who had now no mercantile dealings with his former agent,
+became so enraged with him, that, as the only means of revenge in his
+power, he sent him in his bill for goods supplied to the amount of
+one hundred and fifty guineas, and sued him for the amount. But Walker
+stepped boldly over to his enemy, and in the course of half an hour they
+were friends.
+
+Eglantine promised to forego his claim; and accepted in lieu of it three
+hundred-pound shares of the ex-Panama stock, bearing twenty-five per
+cent., payable half-yearly at the house of Hocus Brothers, St. Swithin's
+Lane; three hundred-pound shares, and the SECOND class of the order
+of the Castle and Falcon, with the riband and badge. "In four years,
+Eglantine, my boy, I hope to get you the Grand Cordon of the order,"
+said Walker: "I hope to see you a KNIGHT GRAND CROSS, with a grant of a
+hundred thousand acres reclaimed from the Isthmus."
+
+To do my poor Eglantine justice, he did not care for the hundred
+thousand acres--it was the star that delighted him--ah! how his fat
+chest heaved with delight as he sewed on the cross and riband to his
+dress-coat, and lighted up four wax candles and looked at himself in
+the glass. He was known to wear a great-coat after that--it was that he
+might wear the cross under it. That year he went on a trip to Boulogne.
+He was dreadfully ill during the voyage, but as the vessel entered
+the port he was seen to emerge from the cabin, his coat open, the star
+blazing on his chest; the soldiers saluted him as he walked the streets,
+he was called Monsieur le Chevalier, and when he went home he entered
+into negotiations with Walker to purchase a commission in His Highness's
+service. Walker said he would get him the nominal rank of Captain, the
+fees at the Panama War Office were five-and-twenty pounds, which
+sum honest Eglantine produced, and had his commission, and a pack of
+visiting cards printed as Captain Archibald Eglantine, K.C.F. Many a
+time he looked at them as they lay in his desk, and he kept the cross in
+his dressing-table, and wore it as he shaved every morning.
+
+His Highness the Cacique, it is well known, came to England, and had
+lodgings in Regent Street, where he held a levee, at which Eglantine
+appeared in the Panama uniform, and was most graciously received by
+his Sovereign. His Highness proposed to make Captain Eglantine his
+aide-de-camp with the rank of Colonel, but the Captain's exchequer
+was rather low at that moment, and the fees at the "War Office" were
+peremptory. Meanwhile His Highness left Regent Street, was said by some
+to have returned to Panama, by others to be in his native city of Cork,
+by others to be leading a life of retirement in the New Cut, Lambeth;
+at any rate was not visible for some time, so that Captain Eglantine's
+advancement did not take place. Eglantine was somehow ashamed to mention
+his military and chivalric rank to Mr. Mossrose, when that gentleman
+came into partnership with him; and kept these facts secret, until
+they were detected by a very painful circumstance. On the very day when
+Walker was arrested at the suit of Benjamin Baroski, there appeared in
+the newspapers an account of the imprisonment of His Highness the Prince
+of Panama for a bill owing to a licensed victualler in Ratcliff Highway.
+The magistrate to whom the victualler subsequently came to complain
+passed many pleasantries on the occasion. He asked whether His Highness
+did not drink like a swan with two necks; whether he had brought any
+Belles savages with him from Panama, and so forth; and the whole court,
+said the report, "was convulsed with laughter when Boniface produced a
+green and yellow riband with a large star of the order of the Castle
+and Falcon, with which His Highness proposed to gratify him, in lieu of
+paying his little bill."
+
+It was as he was reading the above document with a bleeding heart that
+Mr. Mossrose came in from his daily walk to the City. "Vell, Eglantine,"
+says he, "have you heard the newsh?"
+
+"About His Highness?"
+
+"About your friend Valker; he's arrested for two hundred poundsh!"
+
+Eglantine at this could contain no more; but told his story of how he
+had been induced to accept three hundred pounds of Panama stock for
+his account against Walker, and cursed his stars for his folly. "Vell,
+you've only to bring in another bill," said the younger perfumer;
+"swear he owes you a hundred and fifty pounds, and we'll have a writ out
+against him this afternoon."
+
+And so a second writ was taken out against Captain Walker.
+
+"You'll have his wife here very likely in a day or two," said Mr.
+Mossrose to his partner; "them chaps always sends their wives, and I
+hope you know how to deal with her."
+
+"I don't value her a fig's hend," said Eglantine. "I'll treat her like
+the dust of the hearth. After that woman's conduct to me, I should like
+to see her have the haudacity to come here; and if she does, you'll see
+how I'll serve her."
+
+The worthy perfumer was, in fact, resolved to be exceedingly
+hard-hearted in his behaviour towards his old love, and acted over at
+night in bed the scene which was to occur when the meeting should take
+place. Oh, thought he, but it will be a grand thing to see the proud
+Morgiana on her knees to me; and me a-pointing to the door, and saying,
+"Madam, you've steeled this 'eart against you, you have;--bury the
+recollection of old times, of those old times when I thought my 'eart
+would have broke, but it didn't--no: 'earts are made of sterner stuff. I
+didn't die, as I thought I should; I stood it, and live to see the woman
+I despised at my feet--ha, ha, at my feet!"
+
+In the midst of these thoughts Mr. Eglantine fell asleep; but it
+was evident that the idea of seeing Morgiana once more agitated him
+considerably, else why should he have been at the pains of preparing
+so much heroism? His sleep was exceedingly fitful and troubled; he saw
+Morgiana in a hundred shapes; he dreamed that he was dressing her hair;
+that he was riding with her to Richmond; that the horse turned into a
+dragon, and Morgiana into Woolsey, who took him by the throat and choked
+him, while the dragon played the key-bugle. And in the morning when
+Mossrose was gone to his business in the City, and he sat reading the
+Morning Post in his study, ah! what a thump his heart gave as the lady
+of his dreams actually stood before him!
+
+Many a lady who purchased brushes at Eglantine's shop would have given
+ten guineas for such a colour as his when he saw her. His heart beat
+violently, he was almost choking in his stays: he had been prepared for
+the visit, but his courage failed him now it had come. They were both
+silent for some minutes.
+
+"You know what I am come for," at last said Morgiana from under her
+veil, but she put it aside as she spoke.
+
+"I--that is--yes--it's a painful affair, mem," he said, giving one look
+at her pale face, and then turning away in a flurry. "I beg to refer
+you to Blunt, Hone, and Sharpus, my lawyers, mem," he added, collecting
+himself.
+
+"I didn't expect this from YOU, Mr. Eglantine," said the lady, and began
+to sob.
+
+"And after what's 'appened, I didn't expect a visit from YOU, mem.
+I thought Mrs. Capting Walker was too great a dame to visit poor
+Harchibald Eglantine (though some of the first men in the country DO
+visit him). Is there anything in which I can oblige you, mem?"
+
+"O heavens!" cried the poor woman; "have I no friend left? I never
+thought that you, too, would have deserted me, Mr. Archibald."
+
+The "Archibald," pronounced in the old way, had evidently an effect on
+the perfumer; he winced and looked at her very eagerly for a moment.
+"What can I do for you, mem?" at last said he.
+
+"What is this bill against Mr. Walker, for which he is now in prison?"
+
+"Perfumery supplied for five years; that man used more 'air-brushes than
+any duke in the land, and as for eau-de-Cologne, he must have bathed
+himself in it. He hordered me about like a lord. He never paid me one
+shilling--he stabbed me in my most vital part--but ah! ah! never mind
+THAT: and I said I would be revenged, and I AM."
+
+The perfumer was quite in a rage again by this time, and wiped his fat
+face with his pocket-handkerchief, and glared upon Mrs. Walker with a
+most determined air.
+
+"Revenged on whom? Archibald--Mr. Eglantine, revenged on me--on a poor
+woman whom you made miserable! You would not have done so once."
+
+"Ha! and a precious way you treated me ONCE," said Eglantine: "don't
+talk to me, mem, of ONCE. Bury the recollection of once for hever!
+I thought my 'eart would have broke once, but no: 'earts are made of
+sterner stuff. I didn't die, as I thought I should; I stood it--and I
+live to see the woman who despised me at my feet."
+
+"Oh, Archibald!" was all the lady could say, and she fell to sobbing
+again: it was perhaps her best argument with the perfumer.
+
+"Oh, Harchibald, indeed!" continued he, beginning to swell; "don't call
+me Harchibald, Morgiana. Think what a position you might have held if
+you'd chose: when, when--you MIGHT have called me Harchibald. Now
+it's no use," added he, with harrowing pathos; "but, though I've been
+wronged, I can't bear to see women in tears--tell me what I can do."
+
+"Dear good Mr. Eglantine, send to your lawyers and stop this horrid
+prosecution--take Mr. Walker's acknowledgment for the debt. If he is
+free, he is sure to have a very large sum of money in a few days, and
+will pay you all. Do not ruin him--do not ruin me by persisting now. Be
+the old kind Eglantine you were."
+
+Eglantine took a hand, which Morgiana did not refuse; he thought about
+old times. He had known her since childhood almost; as a girl he dandled
+her on his knee at the "Kidneys;" as a woman he had adored her--his
+heart was melted.
+
+"He did pay me in a sort of way," reasoned the perfumer with
+himself--"these bonds, though they are not worth much, I took 'em for
+better or for worse, and I can't bear to see her crying, and to trample
+on a woman in distress. Morgiana," he added, in a loud cheerful voice,
+"cheer up; I'll give you a release for your husband: I WILL be the old
+kind Eglantine I was."
+
+"Be the old kind jackass you vash!" here roared a voice that made Mr.
+Eglantine start. "Vy, vat an old fat fool you are, Eglantine, to give up
+our just debts because a voman comes snivelling and crying to you--and
+such a voman, too!" exclaimed Mr. Mossrose, for his was the voice.
+
+"Such a woman, sir?" cried the senior partner.
+
+"Yes; such a woman--vy, didn't she jilt you herself?--hasn't she been
+trying the same game with Baroski; and are you so green as to give up
+a hundred and fifty pounds because she takes a fancy to come vimpering
+here? I won't, I can tell you. The money's as much mine as it is yours,
+and I'll have it or keep Walker's body, that's what I will."
+
+At the presence of his partner, the timid good genius of Eglantine,
+which had prompted him to mercy and kindness, at once outspread its
+frightened wings and flew away.
+
+"You see how it is, Mrs. W.," said he, looking down; "it's an affair
+of business--in all these here affairs of business Mr. Mossrose is the
+managing man; ain't you, Mr. Mossrose?"
+
+"A pretty business it would be if I wasn't," replied Mossrose, doggedly.
+"Come, ma'am," says he, "I'll tell you vat I do: I take fifty per shent;
+not a farthing less--give me that, and out your husband goes."
+
+"Oh, sir, Howard will pay you in a week."
+
+"Vell, den, let him stop at my uncle Bendigo's for a week, and come out
+den--he's very comfortable there," said Shylock with a grin. "Hadn't
+you better go to the shop, Mr. Eglantine," continued he, "and look after
+your business? Mrs. Walker can't want you to listen to her all day."
+
+Eglantine was glad of the excuse, and slunk out of the studio; not into
+the shop, but into his parlour; where he drank off a great glass of
+maraschino, and sat blushing and exceedingly agitated, until Mossrose
+came to tell him that Mrs. W. was gone, and wouldn't trouble him any
+more. But although he drank several more glasses of maraschino, and went
+to the play that night, and to the Cider-cellars afterwards, neither
+the liquor, nor the play, nor the delightful comic songs at the cellars,
+could drive Mrs. Walker out of his head, and the memory of old times,
+and the image of her pale weeping face.
+
+Morgiana tottered out of the shop, scarcely heeding the voice of Mr.
+Mossrose, who said, "I'll take forty per shent" (and went back to his
+duty cursing himself for a soft-hearted fool for giving up so much of
+his rights to a puling woman). Morgiana, I say, tottered out of the
+shop, and went up Conduit Street, weeping, weeping with all her eyes.
+She was quite faint, for she had taken nothing that morning but the
+glass of water which the pastry-cook in the Strand had given her, and
+was forced to take hold of the railings of a house for support just as
+a little gentleman with a yellow handkerchief under his arm was issuing
+from the door.
+
+"Good heavens, Mrs. Walker!" said the gentleman. It was no other than
+Mr. Woolsey, who was going forth to try a body-coat for a customer. "Are
+you ill?--what's the matter?--for God's sake come in!" and he took her
+arm under his, and led her into his back-parlour, and seated her, and
+had some wine and water before her in one minute, before she had said
+one single word regarding herself.
+
+As soon as she was somewhat recovered, and with the interruption of
+a thousand sobs, the poor thing told as well as she could her little
+story. Mr. Eglantine had arrested Mr. Walker: she had been trying to
+gain time for him; Eglantine had refused.
+
+"The hard-hearted cowardly brute to refuse HER anything!" said loyal Mr.
+Woolsey. "My dear," says he, "I've no reason to love your husband, and I
+know too much about him to respect him; but I love and respect YOU, and
+will spend my last shilling to serve you." At which Morgiana could only
+take his hand and cry a great deal more than ever. She said Mr. Walker
+would have a great deal of money in a week, that he was the best of
+husbands, and she was sure Mr. Woolsey would think better of him when
+he knew him; that Mr. Eglantine's bill was one hundred and fifty pounds,
+but that Mr. Mossrose would take forty per cent. if Mr. Woolsey could
+say how much that was.
+
+"I'll pay a thousand pound to do you good," said Mr. Woolsey, bouncing
+up; "stay here for ten minutes, my dear, until my return, and all shall
+be right, as you will see." He was back in ten minutes, and had called
+a cab from the stand opposite (all the coachmen there had seen and
+commented on Mrs. Walker's woebegone looks), and they were off for
+Cursitor Street in a moment. "They'll settle the whole debt for twenty
+pounds," said he, and showed an order to that effect from Mr. Mossrose
+to Mr. Bendigo, empowering the latter to release Walker on receiving Mr.
+Woolsey's acknowledgment for the above sum.
+
+"There's no use paying it," said Mr. Walker, doggedly; "it would only
+be robbing you, Mr. Woolsey--seven more detainers have come in while my
+wife has been away. I must go through the court now; but," he added in a
+whisper to the tailor, "my good sir, my debts of HONOUR are sacred, and
+if you will have the goodness to lend ME the twenty pounds, I pledge you
+my word as a gentleman to return it when I come out of quod."
+
+It is probable that Mr. Woolsey declined this; for, as soon as he was
+gone, Walker, in a tremendous fury, began cursing his wife for dawdling
+three hours on the road. "Why the deuce, ma'am, didn't you take a cab?"
+roared he, when he heard she had walked to Bond Street. "Those writs
+have only been in half an hour, and I might have been off but for you."
+
+"Oh, Howard," said she, "didn't you take--didn't I give you my--my last
+shilling?" and fell back and wept again more bitterly than ever.
+
+"Well, love," said her amiable husband, turning rather red, "never mind,
+it wasn't your fault. It is but going through the court. It is no great
+odds. I forgive you."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI. IN WHICH MR. WALKER STILL REMAINS IN DIFFICULTIES, BUT SHOWS
+GREAT RESIGNATION UNDER HIS MISFORTUNES.
+
+The exemplary Walker, seeing that escape from his enemies was hopeless,
+and that it was his duty as a man to turn on them and face them, now
+determined to quit the splendid though narrow lodgings which Mr.
+Bendigo had provided for him, and undergo the martyrdom of the Fleet.
+Accordingly, in company with that gentleman, he came over to Her
+Majesty's prison, and gave himself into the custody of the officers
+there; and did not apply for the accommodation of the Rules (by which
+in those days the captivity of some debtors was considerably lightened),
+because he knew perfectly well that there was no person in the wide
+world who would give a security for the heavy sums for which Walker was
+answerable. What these sums were is no matter, and on this head we do
+not think it at all necessary to satisfy the curiosity of the reader. He
+may have owed hundreds--thousands, his creditors only can tell; he paid
+the dividend which has been formerly mentioned, and showed thereby his
+desire to satisfy all claims upon him to the uttermost farthing.
+
+As for the little house in Connaught Square, when, after quitting her
+husband, Morgiana drove back thither, the door was opened by the page,
+who instantly thanked her to pay his wages; and in the drawing-room, on
+a yellow satin sofa, sat a seedy man (with a pot of porter beside him
+placed on an album for fear of staining the rosewood table), and the
+seedy man signified that he had taken possession of the furniture in
+execution for a judgment debt. Another seedy man was in the dining-room,
+reading a newspaper, and drinking gin; he informed Mrs. Walker that
+he was the representative of another judgment debt and of another
+execution:--"There's another on 'em in the kitchen," said the page,
+"taking an inwentory of the furniture; and he swears he'll have you took
+up for swindling, for pawning the plate."
+
+"Sir," said Mr. Woolsey, for that worthy man had conducted Morgiana
+home--"sir," said he, shaking his stick at the young page, "if you give
+any more of your impudence, I'll beat every button off your jacket:" and
+as there were some four hundred of these ornaments, the page was silent.
+It was a great mercy for Morgiana that the honest and faithful tailor
+had accompanied her. The good fellow had waited very patiently for her
+for an hour in the parlour or coffee-room of the lock-up house, knowing
+full well that she would want a protector on her way homewards; and his
+kindness will be more appreciated when it is stated that, during
+the time of his delay in the coffee-room, he had been subject to the
+entreaties, nay, to the insults, of Cornet Fipkin of the Blues, who was
+in prison at the suit of Linsey, Woolsey and Co., and who happened to be
+taking his breakfast in the apartment when his obdurate creditor entered
+it. The Cornet (a hero of eighteen, who stood at least five feet three
+in his boots, and owed fifteen thousand pounds) was so enraged at the
+obduracy of his creditor that he said he would have thrown him out of
+the window but for the bars which guarded it; and entertained serious
+thoughts of knocking the tailor's head off, but that the latter, putting
+his right leg forward and his fists in a proper attitude, told the
+young officer to "come on;" on which the Cornet cursed the tailor for a
+"snob," and went back to his breakfast.
+
+The execution people having taken charge of Mr. Walker's house, Mrs.
+Walker was driven to take refuge with her mamma near "Sadler's Wells,"
+and the Captain remained comfortably lodged in the Fleet. He had some
+ready money, and with it managed to make his existence exceedingly
+comfortable. He lived with the best society of the place, consisting of
+several distinguished young noblemen and gentlemen. He spent the morning
+playing at fives and smoking cigars; the evening smoking cigars and
+dining comfortably. Cards came after dinner; and, as the Captain was
+an experienced player, and near a score of years older than most of his
+friends, he was generally pretty successful: indeed, if he had received
+all the money that was owed to him, he might have come out of prison
+and paid his creditors twenty shillings in the pound--that is, if he had
+been minded to do so. But there is no use in examining into that point
+too closely, for the fact is, young Fipkin only paid him forty pounds
+out of seven hundred, for which he gave him I.O.U.'s; Algernon Deuceace
+not only did not pay him three hundred and twenty which he lost at blind
+hookey, but actually borrowed seven and sixpence in money from Walker,
+which has never been repaid to this day; and Lord Doublequits actually
+lost nineteen thousand pounds to him at heads and tails, which he never
+paid, pleading drunkenness and his minority. The reader may recollect a
+paragraph which went the round of the papers entitled--
+
+"Affair of honour in the Fleet Prison.--Yesterday morning (behind the
+pump in the second court) Lord D-bl-qu-ts and Captain H-w-rd W-lk-r (a
+near relative, we understand, of his Grace the Duke of N-rf-lk) had
+a hostile meeting and exchanged two shots. These two young sprigs of
+nobility were attended to the ground by Major Flush, who, by the way,
+is FLUSH no longer, and Captain Pam, late of the ---- Dragoons. Play is
+said to have been the cause of the quarrel, and the gallant Captain is
+reported to have handled the noble lord's nose rather roughly at one
+stage of the transactions."
+
+When Morgiana at "Sadler's Wells" heard these news, she was ready to
+faint with terror; and rushed to the Fleet Prison, and embraced her lord
+and master with her usual expansion and fits of tears: very much to that
+gentleman's annoyance, who happened to be in company with Pain and Flush
+at the time, and did not care that his handsome wife should be seen
+too much in the dubious precincts of the Fleet. He had at least so much
+shame about him, and had always rejected her entreaties to be allowed to
+inhabit the prison with him.
+
+"It is enough," would he say, casting his eyes heavenward, and with a
+most lugubrious countenance--"it is enough, Morgiana, that _I_ should
+suffer, even though your thoughtlessness has been the cause of my ruin.
+But enough of THAT! I will not rebuke you for faults for which I know
+you are now repentant; and I never could bear to see you in the midst
+of the miseries of this horrible place. Remain at home with your mother,
+and let me drag on the weary days here alone. If you can get me any more
+of that pale sherry, my love, do. I require something to cheer me in
+solitude, and have found my chest very much relieved by that wine. Put
+more pepper and eggs, my dear, into the next veal-pie you make me. I
+can't eat the horrible messes in the coffee-room here."
+
+It was Walker's wish, I can't tell why, except that it is the wish of
+a great number of other persons in this strange world, to make his
+wife believe that he was wretched in mind and ill in health; and all
+assertions to this effect the simple creature received with numberless
+tears of credulity: she would go home to Mrs. Crump, and say how her
+darling Howard was pining away, how he was ruined for HER, and with what
+angelic sweetness he bore his captivity. The fact is, he bore it with so
+much resignation that no other person in the world could see that he
+was unhappy. His life was undisturbed by duns; his day was his own from
+morning till night; his diet was good, his acquaintances jovial, his
+purse tolerably well supplied, and he had not one single care to annoy
+him.
+
+Mrs. Crump and Woolsey, perhaps, received Morgiana's account of her
+husband's miseries with some incredulity. The latter was now a daily
+visitor to "Sadler's Wells." His love for Morgiana had become a warm
+fatherly generous regard for her; it was out of the honest fellow's
+cellar that the wine used to come which did so much good to Mr. Walker's
+chest; and he tried a thousand ways to make Morgiana happy.
+
+A very happy day, indeed, it was when, returning from her visit to the
+Fleet, she found in her mother's sitting-room her dear grand rosewood
+piano, and every one of her music-books, which the kind-hearted tailor
+had purchased at the sale of Walker's effects. And I am not ashamed
+to say that Morgiana herself was so charmed, that when, as usual, Mr.
+Woolsey came to drink tea in the evening, she actually gave him a kiss;
+which frightened Mr. Woolsey, and made him blush exceedingly. She
+sat down, and played him that evening every one of the songs which
+he liked--the OLD songs--none of your Italian stuff. Podmore, the old
+music-master, was there too, and was delighted and astonished at the
+progress in singing which Morgiana had made; and when the little party
+separated, he took Mr. Woolsey by the hand, and said, "Give me leave to
+tell you, sir, that you're a TRUMP."
+
+"That he is," said Canterfield, the first tragic; "an honour to human
+nature. A man whose hand is open as day to melting charity, and whose
+heart ever melts at the tale of woman's distress."
+
+"Pooh, pooh, stuff and nonsense, sir," said the tailor; but, upon my
+word, Mr. Canterfield's words were perfectly correct. I wish as much
+could be said in favour of Woolsey's old rival, Mr. Eglantine, who
+attended the sale too, but it was with a horrid kind of satisfaction
+at the thought that Walker was ruined. He bought the yellow satin
+sofa before mentioned, and transferred it to what he calls his
+"sitting-room," where it is to this day, bearing many marks of the best
+bear's grease. Woolsey bid against Baroski for the piano, very nearly
+up to the actual value of the instrument, when the artist withdrew from
+competition; and when he was sneering at the ruin of Mr. Walker, the
+tailor sternly interrupted him by saying, "What the deuce are YOU
+sneering at? You did it, sir; and you're paid every shilling of your
+claim, ain't you?" On which Baroski turned round to Miss Larkins,
+and said, Mr. Woolsey was a "snop;" the very word, though pronounced
+somewhat differently, which the gallant Cornet Fipkin had applied to
+him.
+
+Well; so he WAS a snob. But, vulgar as he was, I declare, for my part,
+that I have a greater respect for Mr. Woolsey than for any single
+nobleman or gentleman mentioned in this true history.
+
+It will be seen from the names of Messrs. Canterfield and Podmore
+that Morgiana was again in the midst of the widow Crump's favourite
+theatrical society; and this, indeed, was the case. The widow's little
+room was hung round with the pictures which were mentioned at the
+commencement of the story as decorating the bar of the "Bootjack;" and
+several times in a week she received her friends from "The Wells," and
+entertained them with such humble refreshments of tea and crumpets as
+her modest means permitted her to purchase. Among these persons Morgiana
+lived and sang quite as contentedly as she had ever done among the
+demireps of her husband's society; and, only she did not dare to own it
+to herself, was a great deal happier than she had been for many a day.
+Mrs. Captain Walker was still a great lady amongst them. Even in his
+ruin, Walker, the director of three companies, and the owner of the
+splendid pony-chaise, was to these simple persons an awful character;
+and when mentioned they talked with a great deal of gravity of his being
+in the country, and hoped Mrs. Captain W. had good news of him. They all
+knew he was in the Fleet; but had he not in prison fought a duel with a
+viscount? Montmorency (of the Norfolk Circuit) was in the Fleet too;
+and when Canterfield went to see poor Montey, the latter had pointed out
+Walker to his friend, who actually hit Lord George Tennison across the
+shoulders in play with a racket-bat; which event was soon made known to
+the whole green-room.
+
+"They had me up one day," said Montmorency, "to sing a comic song, and
+give my recitations; and we had champagne and lobster-salad: SUCH nobs!"
+added the player. "Billingsgate and Vauxhall were there too, and left
+college at eight o'clock."
+
+When Morgiana was told of the circumstance by her mother, she hoped her
+dear Howard had enjoyed the evening, and was thankful that for once he
+could forget his sorrows. Nor, somehow, was she ashamed of herself for
+being happy afterwards, but gave way to her natural good-humour without
+repentance or self-rebuke. I believe, indeed (alas! why are we made
+acquainted with the same fact regarding ourselves long after it is past
+and gone?)--I believe these were the happiest days of Morgiana's whole
+life. She had no cares except the pleasant one of attending on her
+husband, an easy smiling temperament which made her regardless of
+to-morrow; and, add to this, a delightful hope relative to a certain
+interesting event which was about to occur, and which I shall not
+particularise further than by saying, that she was cautioned against too
+much singing by Mr. Squills, her medical attendant; and that widow Crump
+was busy making up a vast number of little caps and diminutive cambric
+shirts, such as delighted GRANDMOTHERS are in the habit of fashioning.
+I hope this is as genteel a way of signifying the circumstance which
+was about to take place in the Walker family as Miss Prim herself could
+desire. Mrs. Walker's mother was about to become a grandmother. There's
+a phrase! The Morning Post, which says this story is vulgar, I'm sure
+cannot quarrel with that. I don't believe the whole Court Guide would
+convey an intimation more delicately.
+
+Well, Mrs. Crump's little grandchild was born, entirely to the
+dissatisfaction, I must say, of his father; who, when the infant was
+brought to him in the Fleet, had him abruptly covered up in his cloak
+again, from which he had been removed by the jealous prison doorkeepers:
+why, do you think? Walker had a quarrel with one of them, and the wretch
+persisted in believing that the bundle Mrs. Crump was bringing to her
+son-in-law was a bundle of disguised brandy!
+
+"The brutes!" said the lady; "and the father's a brute, too," said she.
+"He takes no more notice of me than if I was a kitchen-maid, and of
+Woolsey than if he was a leg of mutton--the dear blessed little cherub!"
+
+Mrs. Crump was a mother-in-law; let us pardon her hatred of her
+daughter's husband.
+
+The Woolsey compared in the above sentence both to a leg of mutton and
+a cherub, was not the eminent member of the firm of Linsey, Woolsey, and
+Co., but the little baby, who was christened Howard Woolsey Walker, with
+the full consent of the father; who said the tailor was a deuced good
+fellow, and felt really obliged to him for the sherry, for a frock-coat
+which he let him have in prison, and for his kindness to Morgiana. The
+tailor loved the little boy with all his soul; he attended his mother
+to her churching, and the child to the font; and, as a present to his
+little godson on his christening, he sent two yards of the finest white
+kerseymere in his shop, to make him a cloak. The Duke had had a pair of
+inexpressibles off that very piece.
+
+House-furniture is bought and sold, music-lessons are given, children
+are born and christened, ladies are confined and churched--time, in
+other words, passes--and yet Captain Walker still remains in prison!
+Does it not seem strange that he should still languish there between
+palisaded walls near Fleet Market, and that he should not be restored to
+that active and fashionable world of which he was an ornament? The fact
+is, the Captain had been before the court for the examination of his
+debts; and the Commissioner, with a cruelty quite shameful towards
+a fallen man, had qualified his ways of getting money in most severe
+language, and had sent him back to prison again for the space of nine
+calendar months, an indefinite period, and until his accounts could
+be made up. This delay Walker bore like a philosopher, and, far from
+repining, was still the gayest fellow of the tennis-court, and the soul
+of the midnight carouse.
+
+There is no use in raking up old stories, and hunting through files
+of dead newspapers, to know what were the specific acts which made the
+Commissioner so angry with Captain Walker. Many a rogue has come before
+the Court, and passed through it since then: and I would lay a wager
+that Howard Walker was not a bit worse than his neighbours. But as he
+was not a lord, and as he had no friends on coming out of prison, and
+had settled no money on his wife, and had, as it must be confessed, an
+exceedingly bad character, it is not likely that the latter would
+be forgiven him when once more free in the world. For instance, when
+Doublequits left the Fleet, he was received with open arms by his
+family, and had two-and-thirty horses in his stables before a week
+was over. Pam, of the Dragoons, came out, and instantly got a place as
+government courier--a place found so good of late years (and no wonder,
+it is better pay than that of a colonel), that our noblemen and gentry
+eagerly press for it. Frank Hurricane was sent out as registrar of
+Tobago, or Sago, or Ticonderago; in fact, for a younger son of good
+family it is rather advantageous to get into debt twenty or thirty
+thousand pounds: you are sure of a good place afterwards in the
+colonies. Your friends are so anxious to get rid of you, that they will
+move heaven and earth to serve you. And so all the above companions of
+misfortune with Walker were speedily made comfortable; but HE had no
+rich parents; his old father was dead in York jail. How was he to start
+in the world again? What friendly hand was there to fill his pocket with
+gold, and his cup with sparkling champagne? He was, in fact, an object
+of the greatest pity--for I know of no greater than a gentleman of his
+habits without the means of gratifying them. He must live well, and
+he has not the means. Is there a more pathetic case? As for a mere low
+beggar--some labourless labourer, or some weaver out of place--don't
+let us throw away our compassion upon THEM. Psha! they're accustomed
+to starve. They CAN sleep upon boards, or dine off a crust; whereas
+a gentleman would die in the same situation. I think this was poor
+Morgiana's way of reasoning. For Walker's cash in prison beginning
+presently to run low, and knowing quite well that the dear fellow could
+not exist there without the luxuries to which he had been accustomed,
+she borrowed money from her mother, until the poor old lady was a sec.
+She even confessed, with tears, to Woolsey, that she was in particular
+want of twenty pounds, to pay a poor milliner, whose debt she could not
+bear to put in her husband's schedule. And I need not say she carried
+the money to her husband, who might have been greatly benefited by
+it--only he had a bad run of luck at the cards; and how the deuce can a
+man help THAT?
+
+Woolsey had repurchased for her one of the Cashmere shawls. She left it
+behind her one day at the Fleet prison, and some rascal stole it there;
+having the grace, however, to send Woolsey the ticket, signifying the
+place where it had been pawned. Who could the scoundrel have been?
+Woolsey swore a great oath, and fancied he knew; but if it was Walker
+himself (as Woolsey fancied, and probably as was the case) who made away
+with the shawl, being pressed thereto by necessity, was it fair to call
+him a scoundrel for so doing, and should we not rather laud the delicacy
+of his proceeding? He was poor: who can command the cards? But he did
+not wish his wife should know HOW poor: he could not bear that she
+should suppose him arrived at the necessity of pawning a shawl.
+
+She who had such beautiful ringlets, of a sudden pleaded cold in the
+head, and took to wearing caps. One summer evening, as she and the baby
+and Mrs. Crump and Woolsey (let us say all four babies together) were
+laughing and playing in Mrs. Crump's drawing-room--playing the most
+absurd gambols, fat Mrs. Crump, for instance, hiding behind the sofa,
+Woolsey chuck-chucking, cock-a-doodle-dooing, and performing those
+indescribable freaks which gentlemen with philoprogenitive organs will
+execute in the company of children--in the midst of their play the baby
+gave a tug at his mother's cap; off it came--her hair was cut close to
+her head!
+
+Morgiana turned as red as sealing-wax, and trembled very much; Mrs.
+Crump screamed, "My child, where is your hair?" and Woolsey, bursting
+out with a most tremendous oath against Walker that would send Miss Prim
+into convulsions, put his handkerchief to his face, and actually wept.
+"The infernal bubble-ubble-ackguard!" said he, roaring and clenching his
+fists.
+
+As he had passed the Bower of Bloom a few days before, he saw Mossrose,
+who was combing out a jet-black ringlet, and held it up, as if for
+Woolsey's examination, with a peculiar grin. The tailor did not
+understand the joke, but he saw now what had happened. Morgiana had sold
+her hair for five guineas; she would have sold her arm had her husband
+bidden her. On looking in her drawers it was found she had sold almost
+all her wearing apparel; the child's clothes were all there, however.
+It was because her husband talked of disposing of a gilt coral that
+the child had, that she had parted with the locks which had formed her
+pride.
+
+"I'll give you twenty guineas for that hair, you infamous fat coward,"
+roared the little tailor to Eglantine that evening. "Give it up, or I'll
+kill you-"
+
+"Mr. Mossrose! Mr. Mossrose!" shouted the perfumer.
+
+"Vell, vatsh de matter, vatsh de row, fight avay, my boys; two to one
+on the tailor," said Mr. Mossrose, much enjoying the sport (for Woolsey,
+striding through the shop without speaking to him, had rushed into the
+studio, where he plumped upon Eglantine).
+
+"Tell him about that hair, sir."
+
+"That hair! Now keep yourself quiet, Mister Timble, and don't tink for
+to bully ME. You mean Mrs. Valker's 'air? Vy, she sold it me."
+
+"And the more blackguard you for buying it! Will you take twenty guineas
+for it?"
+
+"No," said Mossrose.
+
+"Twenty-five?"
+
+"Can't," said Mossrose.
+
+"Hang it! will you take forty? There!"
+
+"I vish I'd kep it," said the Hebrew gentleman, with unfeigned regret.
+"Eglantine dressed it this very night."
+
+"For Countess Baldenstiern, the Swedish Hambassador's lady," says
+Eglantine (his Hebrew partner was by no means a favourite with the
+ladies, and only superintended the accounts of the concern). "It's this
+very night at Devonshire 'Ouse, with four hostrich plumes, lappets, and
+trimmings. And now, Mr. Woolsey, I'll trouble you to apologise."
+
+Mr. Woolsey did not answer, but walked up to Mr. Eglantine, and snapped
+his fingers so close under the perfumer's nose that the latter started
+back and seized the bell-rope. Mossrose burst out laughing, and the
+tailor walked majestically from the shop, with both hands stuck between
+the lappets of his coat.
+
+"My dear," said he to Morgiana a short time afterwards, "you must
+not encourage that husband of yours in his extravagance, and sell the
+clothes off your poor back that he may feast and act the fine gentleman
+in prison."
+
+"It is his health, poor dear soul!" interposed Mrs. Walker: "his chest.
+Every farthing of the money goes to the doctors, poor fellow!"
+
+"Well, now listen: I am a rich man" (it was a great fib, for Woolsey's
+income, as a junior partner of the firm, was but a small one); "I can
+very well afford to make him an allowance while he is in the Fleet, and
+have written to him to say so. But if you ever give him a penny, or sell
+a trinket belonging to you, upon my word and honour I will withdraw
+the allowance, and, though it would go to my heart, I'll never see you
+again. You wouldn't make me unhappy, would you?"
+
+"I'd go on my knees to serve you, and Heaven bless you," said the wife.
+
+"Well, then, you must give me this promise." And she did. "And now,"
+said he, "your mother, and Podmore, and I have been talking over
+matters, and we've agreed that you may make a very good income for
+yourself; though, to be sure, I wish it could have been managed any
+other way; but needs must, you know. You're the finest singer in the
+universe."
+
+"La!" said Morgiana, highly delighted.
+
+"_I_ never heard anything like you, though I'm no judge. Podmore says he
+is sure you will do very well, and has no doubt you might get very good
+engagements at concerts or on the stage; and as that husband will never
+do any good, and you have a child to support, sing you must."
+
+"Oh! how glad I should be to pay his debts and repay all he has done for
+me," cried Mrs. Walker. "Think of his giving two hundred guineas to Mr.
+Baroski to have me taught. Was not that kind of him? Do you REALLY think
+I should succeed?
+
+"There's Miss Larkins has succeeded."
+
+"The little high-shouldered vulgar thing!" says Morgiana. "I'm sure I
+ought to succeed if SHE did."
+
+"She sing against Morgiana?" said Mrs. Crump. "I'd like to see her,
+indeed! She ain't fit to snuff a candle to her."
+
+"I dare say not," said the tailor, "though I don't understand the thing
+myself: but if Morgiana can make a fortune, why shouldn't she?"
+
+"Heaven knows we want it, Woolsey," cried Mrs. Crump. "And to see her on
+the stage was always the wish of my heart:" and so it had formerly been
+the wish of Morgiana; and now, with the hope of helping her husband and
+child, the wish became a duty, and she fell to practising once more from
+morning till night.
+
+One of the most generous of men and tailors who ever lived now promised,
+if further instruction should be considered necessary (though that he
+could hardly believe possible), that he would lend Morgiana any sum
+required for the payment of lessons; and accordingly she once more
+betook herself, under Podmore's advice, to the singing school. Baroski's
+academy was, after the passages between them, out of the question,
+and she placed herself under the instruction of the excellent English
+composer Sir George Thrum, whose large and awful wife, Lady Thrum,
+dragon of virtue and propriety, kept watch over the master and the
+pupils, and was the sternest guardian of female virtue on or off any
+stage.
+
+Morgiana came at a propitious moment. Baroski had launched Miss Larkins
+under the name of Ligonier. The Ligonier was enjoying considerable
+success, and was singing classical music to tolerable audiences; whereas
+Miss Butts, Sir George's last pupil, had turned out a complete failure,
+and the rival house was only able to make a faint opposition to the new
+star with Miss M'Whirter, who, though an old favourite, had lost her
+upper notes and her front teeth, and, the fact was, drew no longer.
+
+Directly Sir George heard Mrs. Walker, he tapped Podmore, who
+accompanied her, on the waistcoat, and said, "Poddy, thank you; we'll
+cut the orange boy's throat with that voice." It was by the familiar
+title of orange boy that the great Baroski was known among his
+opponents.
+
+"We'll crush him, Podmore," said Lady Thrum, in her deep hollow voice.
+"You may stop and dine." And Podmore stayed to dinner, and ate cold
+mutton, and drank Marsala with the greatest reverence for the great
+English composer. The very next day Lady Thrum hired a pair of horses,
+and paid a visit to Mrs. Crump and her daughter at "Sadler's Wells."
+
+All these things were kept profoundly secret from Walker, who received
+very magnanimously the allowance of two guineas a week which Woolsey
+made him, and with the aid of the few shillings his wife could bring
+him, managed to exist as best he might. He did not dislike gin when he
+could get no claret, and the former liquor, under the name of "tape,"
+used to be measured out pretty liberally in what was formerly Her
+Majesty's prison of the Fleet.
+
+Morgiana pursued her studies under Thrum, and we shall hear in the next
+chapter how it was she changed her name to RAVENSWING.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII. IN WHICH MORGIANA ADVANCES TOWARDS FAME AND HONOUR, AND IN
+WHICH SEVERAL GREAT LITERARY CHARACTERS MAKE THEIR APPEARANCE.
+
+"We must begin, my dear madam," said Sir George Thrum, "by unlearning
+all that Mr. Baroski (of whom I do not wish to speak with the slightest
+disrespect) has taught you!"
+
+Morgiana knew that every professor says as much, and submitted to
+undergo the study requisite for Sir George's system with perfect good
+grace. Au fond, as I was given to understand, the methods of the two
+artists were pretty similar; but as there was rivalry between them, and
+continual desertion of scholars from one school to another, it was
+fair for each to take all the credit he could get in the success of
+any pupil. If a pupil failed, for instance, Thrum would say Baroski had
+spoiled her irretrievably; while the German would regret "Dat dat yong
+voman, who had a good organ, should have trown away her dime wid dat old
+Drum." When one of these deserters succeeded, "Yes, yes," would either
+professor cry, "I formed her; she owes her fortune to me." Both of them
+thus, in future days, claimed the education of the famous Ravenswing;
+and even Sir George Thrum, though he wished to ecraser the Ligonier,
+pretended that her present success was his work because once she had
+been brought by her mother, Mrs. Larkins, to sing for Sir George's
+approval.
+
+When the two professors met it was with the most delighted cordiality
+on the part of both. "Mein lieber Herr," Thrum would say (with some
+malice), "your sonata in x flat is divine." "Chevalier," Baroski would
+reply, "dat andante movement in w is worthy of Beethoven. I gif you
+my sacred honour," and so forth. In fact, they loved each other as
+gentlemen in their profession always do.
+
+The two famous professors conduct their academies on very opposite
+principles. Baroski writes ballet music; Thrum, on the contrary, says
+"he cannot but deplore the dangerous fascinations of the dance," and
+writes more for Exeter Hall and Birmingham. While Baroski drives a cab
+in the Park with a very suspicious Mademoiselle Leocadie, or Amenaide,
+by his side, you may see Thrum walking to evening church with his lady,
+and hymns are sung there of his own composition. He belongs to the
+"Athenaeum Club," he goes to the Levee once a year, he does
+everything that a respectable man should; and if, by the means of this
+respectability, he manages to make his little trade far more profitable
+than it otherwise would be, are we to quarrel with him for it?
+
+Sir George, in fact, had every reason to be respectable. He had been a
+choir-boy at Windsor, had played to the old King's violoncello, had
+been intimate with him, and had received knighthood at the hand of his
+revered sovereign. He had a snuff-box which His Majesty gave him, and
+portraits of him and the young princes all over the house. He had also
+a foreign order (no other, indeed, than the Elephant and Castle of
+Kalbsbraten-Pumpernickel), conferred upon him by the Grand Duke when
+here with the allied sovereigns in 1814. With this ribbon round his
+neck, on gala days, and in a white waistcoat, the old gentleman looked
+splendid as he moved along in a blue coat with the Windsor button, and
+neat black small-clothes, and silk stockings. He lived in an old tall
+dingy house, furnished in the reign of George III., his beloved master,
+and not much more cheerful now than a family vault. They are awfully
+funereal, those ornaments of the close of the last century--tall gloomy
+horse-hair chairs, mouldy Turkey carpets with wretched druggets to guard
+them, little cracked sticking-plaster miniatures of people in tours and
+pigtails over high-shouldered mantelpieces, two dismal urns on each side
+of a lanky sideboard, and in the midst a queer twisted receptacle
+for worn-out knives with green handles. Under the sideboard stands a
+cellaret that looks as if it held half a bottle of currant wine, and
+a shivering plate-warmer that never could get any comfort out of the
+wretched old cramped grate yonder. Don't you know in such houses the
+grey gloom that hangs over the stairs, the dull-coloured old carpet that
+winds its way up the same, growing thinner, duller, and more threadbare
+as it mounts to the bedroom floors? There is something awful in the
+bedroom of a respectable old couple of sixty-five. Think of the old
+feathers, turbans, bugles, petticoats, pomatum-pots, spencers, white
+satin shoes, false fronts, the old flaccid boneless stays tied up in
+faded riband, the dusky fans, the old forty-years-old baby linen, the
+letters of Sir George when he was young, the doll of poor Maria who died
+in 1803, Frederick's first corduroy breeches, and the newspaper which
+contains the account of his distinguishing himself at the siege of
+Seringapatam. All these lie somewhere, damp and squeezed down into glum
+old presses and wardrobes. At that glass the wife has sat many times
+these fifty years; in that old morocco bed her children were born. Where
+are they now? Fred the brave captain, and Charles the saucy colleger:
+there hangs a drawing of him done by Mr. Beechey, and that sketch by
+Cosway was the very likeness of Louisa before--
+
+"Mr. Fitz-Boodle! for Heaven's sake come down. What are you doing in a
+lady's bedroom?"
+
+"The fact is, madam, I had no business there in life; but, having had
+quite enough wine with Sir George, my thoughts had wandered upstairs
+into the sanctuary of female excellence, where your Ladyship nightly
+reposes. You do not sleep so well now as in old days, though there is no
+patter of little steps to wake you overhead."
+
+They call that room the nursery still, and the little wicket still hangs
+at the upper stairs: it has been there for forty years--bon Dieu! Can't
+you see the ghosts of little faces peering over it? I wonder whether
+they get up in the night as the moonlight shines into the blank vacant
+old room, and play there solemnly with little ghostly horses, and the
+spirits of dolls, and tops that turn and turn but don't hum.
+
+Once more, sir, come down to the lower storey--that is to the Morgiana
+story--with which the above sentences have no more to do than this
+morning's leading article in The Times; only it was at this house of
+Sir George Thrum's that I met Morgiana. Sir George, in old days, had
+instructed some of the female members of our family, and I recollect
+cutting my fingers as a child with one of those attenuated green-handled
+knives in the queer box yonder.
+
+In those days Sir George Thrum was the first great musical teacher
+of London, and the royal patronage brought him a great number of
+fashionable pupils, of whom Lady Fitz-Boodle was one. It was a long long
+time ago: in fact, Sir George Thrum was old enough to remember persons
+who had been present at Mr. Braham's first appearance, and the old
+gentleman's days of triumph had been those of Billington and Incledon,
+Catalani and Madame Storace.
+
+He was the author of several operas ("The Camel Driver," "Britons
+Alarmed; or, the Siege of Bergen-op-Zoom," etc. etc.), and, of course,
+of songs which had considerable success in their day, but are forgotten
+now, and are as much faded and out of fashion as those old carpets which
+we have described in the professor's house, and which were, doubtless,
+very brilliant once. But such is the fate of carpets, of flowers, of
+music, of men, and of the most admirable novels--even this story will
+not be alive for many centuries. Well, well, why struggle against Fate?
+
+But, though his heyday of fashion was gone, Sir George still held his
+place among the musicians of the old school, conducted occasionally
+at the Ancient Concerts and the Philharmonic, and his glees are
+still favourites after public dinners, and are sung by those old
+bacchanalians, in chestnut wigs, who attend for the purpose of amusing
+the guests on such occasions of festivity. The great old people at
+the gloomy old concerts before mentioned always pay Sir George marked
+respect; and, indeed, from the old gentleman's peculiar behaviour to his
+superiors, it is impossible they should not be delighted with him, so he
+leads at almost every one of the concerts in the old-fashioned houses in
+town.
+
+Becomingly obsequious to his superiors, he is with the rest of the world
+properly majestic, and has obtained no small success by his admirable
+and undeviating respectability. Respectability has been his great card
+through life; ladies can trust their daughters at Sir George Thrum's
+academy. "A good musician, madam," says he to the mother of a new pupil,
+"should not only have a fine ear, a good voice, and an indomitable
+industry, but, above all, a faultless character--faultless, that is, as
+far as our poor nature will permit. And you will remark that those young
+persons with whom your lovely daughter, Miss Smith, will pursue her
+musical studies, are all, in a moral point of view, as spotless as that
+charming young lady. How should it be otherwise? I have been myself the
+father of a family; I have been honoured with the intimacy of the wisest
+and best of kings, my late sovereign George III., and I can proudly show
+an example of decorum to my pupils in my Sophia. Mrs. Smith, I have the
+honour of introducing to you my Lady Thrum."
+
+The old lady would rise at this, and make a gigantic curtsey, such a
+one as had begun the minuet at Ranelagh fifty years ago; and, the
+introduction ended, Mrs. Smith would retire, after having seen the
+portraits of the princes, his late Majesty's snuff-box, and a piece of
+music which he used to play, noted by himself--Mrs. Smith, I say, would
+drive back to Baker Street, delighted to think that her Frederica had
+secured so eligible and respectable a master. I forgot to say that,
+during the interview between Mrs. Smith and Sir George, the latter would
+be called out of his study by his black servant, and my Lady Thrum would
+take that opportunity of mentioning when he was knighted, and how he
+got his foreign order, and deploring the sad condition of OTHER musical
+professors, and the dreadful immorality which sometimes arose in
+consequence of their laxness. Sir George was a good deal engaged to
+dinners in the season, and if invited to dine with a nobleman, as he
+might possibly be on the day when Mrs. Smith requested the honour of
+his company, he would write back "that he should have had the sincerest
+happiness in waiting upon Mrs. Smith in Baker Street, if, previously, my
+Lord Tweedledale had not been so kind as to engage him." This letter,
+of course, shown by Mrs. Smith to her friends, was received by them with
+proper respect; and thus, in spite of age and new fashions, Sir George
+still reigned pre-eminent for a mile round Cavendish Square. By the
+young pupils of the academy he was called Sir Charles Grandison;
+and, indeed, fully deserved this title on account of the indomitable
+respectability of his whole actions.
+
+It was under this gentleman that Morgiana made her debut in public life.
+I do not know what arrangements may have been made between Sir George
+Thrum and his pupil regarding the profits which were to accrue to the
+former from engagements procured by him for the latter; but there was,
+no doubt, an understanding between them. For Sir George, respectable as
+he was, had the reputation of being extremely clever at a bargain; and
+Lady Thrum herself, in her great high-tragedy way, could purchase a pair
+of soles or select a leg of mutton with the best housekeeper in London.
+
+When, however, Morgiana had been for some six months under his tuition,
+he began, for some reason or other, to be exceedingly hospitable, and
+invited his friends to numerous entertainments: at one of which, as I
+have said, I had the pleasure of meeting Mrs. Walker.
+
+Although the worthy musician's dinners were not good, the old knight
+had some excellent wine in his cellar, and his arrangement of his party
+deserves to be commended.
+
+For instance, he meets me and Bob Fitz-Urse in Pall Mall, at whose
+paternal house he was also a visitor. "My dear young gentlemen," says
+he, "will you come and dine with a poor musical composer? I have some
+Comet hock, and, what is more curious to you, perhaps, as men of wit,
+one or two of the great literary characters of London whom you would
+like to see--quite curiosities, my dear young friends." And we agreed to
+go.
+
+To the literary men he says: "I have a little quiet party at home: Lord
+Roundtowers, the Honourable Mr. Fitz-Urse of the Life Guards, and a few
+more. Can you tear yourself away from the war of wits, and take a quiet
+dinner with a few mere men about town?"
+
+The literary men instantly purchase new satin stocks and white gloves,
+and are delighted to fancy themselves members of the world of fashion.
+Instead of inviting twelve Royal Academicians, or a dozen authors, or
+a dozen men of science to dinner, as his Grace the Duke of ---- and the
+Right Honourable Sir Robert ---- are in the habit of doing once a
+year, this plan of fusion is the one they should adopt. Not invite all
+artists, as they would invite all farmers to a rent dinner; but they
+should have a proper commingling of artists and men of the world. There
+is one of the latter whose name is George Savage Fitz-Boodle, who-- But
+let us return to Sir George Thrum.
+
+Fitz-Urse and I arrive at the dismal old house, and are conducted up the
+staircase by a black servant, who shouts out, "Missa Fiss-Boodle--the
+HONOURABLE Missa Fiss-Urse!" It was evident that Lady Thrum had
+instructed the swarthy groom of the chambers (for there is nothing
+particularly honourable in my friend Fitz's face that I know of, unless
+an abominable squint may be said to be so). Lady Thrum, whose figure is
+something like that of the shot-tower opposite Waterloo Bridge, makes a
+majestic inclination and a speech to signify her pleasure at receiving
+under her roof two of the children of Sir George's best pupils. A
+lady in black velvet is seated by the old fireplace, with whom a stout
+gentleman in an exceedingly light coat and ornamental waistcoat is
+talking very busily. "The great star of the night," whispers our host.
+"Mrs. Walker, gentlemen--the RAVENSWING! She is talking to the famous
+Mr. Slang, of the ---- Theatre."
+
+"Is she a fine singer?" says Fitz-Urse. "She's a very fine woman."
+
+"My dear young friends, you shall hear to-night! I, who have heard every
+fine voice in Europe, confidently pledge my respectability that the
+Ravenswing is equal to them all. She has the graces, sir, of a Venus
+with the mind of a Muse. She is a siren, sir, without the dangerous
+qualities of one. She is hallowed, sir, by her misfortunes as by her
+genius; and I am proud to think that my instructions have been the means
+of developing the wondrous qualities that were latent within her until
+now."
+
+"You don't say so!" says gobemouche Fitz-Urse.
+
+Having thus indoctrinated Mr. Fitz-Urse, Sir George takes another of his
+guests, and proceeds to work upon him. "My dear Mr. Bludyer, how do you
+do? Mr. Fitz-Boodle, Mr. Bludyer, the brilliant and accomplished
+wit, whose sallies in the Tomahawk delight us every Saturday. Nay, no
+blushes, my dear sir; you are very wicked, but oh! SO pleasant. Well,
+Mr. Bludyer, I am glad to see you, sir, and hope you will have
+a favourable opinion of our genius, sir. As I was saying to Mr.
+Fitz-Boodle, she has the graces of a Venus with the mind of a Muse. She
+is a siren, without the dangerous qualities of one," etc. This
+little speech was made to half-a-dozen persons in the course of the
+evening--persons, for the most part, connected with the public journals
+or the theatrical world. There was Mr. Squinny, the editor of the
+Flowers of Fashion; Mr. Desmond Mulligan, the poet, and reporter for
+a morning paper; and other worthies of their calling. For though
+Sir George is a respectable man, and as high-minded and moral an old
+gentleman as ever wore knee-buckles, he does not neglect the little arts
+of popularity, and can condescend to receive very queer company if need
+be.
+
+For instance, at the dinner-party at which I had the honour of
+assisting, and at which, on the right hand of Lady Thrum, sat the oblige
+nobleman, whom the Thrums were a great deal too wise to omit (the sight
+of a lord does good to us commoners, or why else should we be so anxious
+to have one?). In the second place of honour, and on her ladyship's left
+hand, sat Mr. Slang, the manager of one of the theatres; a gentleman
+whom my Lady Thrum would scarcely, but for a great necessity's sake,
+have been induced to invite to her table. He had the honour of leading
+Mrs. Walker to dinner, who looked splendid in black velvet and turban,
+full of health and smiles.
+
+Lord Roundtowers is an old gentleman who has been at the theatres five
+times a week for these fifty years, a living dictionary of the stage,
+recollecting every actor and actress who has appeared upon it for half a
+century. He perfectly well remembered Miss Delancy in Morgiana; he knew
+what had become of Ali Baba, and how Cassim had left the stage, and was
+now the keeper of a public-house. All this store of knowledge he
+kept quietly to himself, or only delivered in confidence to his next
+neighbour in the intervals of the banquet, which he enjoys prodigiously.
+He lives at an hotel: if not invited to dine, eats a mutton-chop
+very humbly at his club, and finishes his evening after the play at
+Crockford's, whither he goes not for the sake of the play, but of the
+supper there. He is described in the Court Guide as of "Simmer's Hotel,"
+and of Roundtowers, county Cork. It is said that the round towers really
+exist. But he has not been in Ireland since the rebellion; and his
+property is so hampered with ancestral mortgages, and rent-charges, and
+annuities, that his income is barely sufficient to provide the modest
+mutton-chop before alluded to. He has, any time these fifty years, lived
+in the wickedest company in London, and is, withal, as harmless, mild,
+good-natured, innocent an old gentleman as can readily be seen.
+
+"Roundy," shouts the elegant Mr. Slang, across the table, with a voice
+which makes Lady Thrum shudder, "Tuff, a glass of wine."
+
+My Lord replies meekly, "Mr. Slang, I shall have very much pleasure.
+What shall it be?"
+
+"There is Madeira near you, my Lord," says my Lady, pointing to a tall
+thin decanter of the fashion of the year.
+
+"Madeira! Marsala, by Jove, your Ladyship means!" shouts Mr. Slang. "No,
+no, old birds are not caught with chaff. Thrum, old boy, let's have some
+of your Comet hock."
+
+"My Lady Thrum, I believe that IS Marsala," says the knight, blushing a
+little, in reply to a question from his Sophia. "Ajax, the hock to Mr.
+Slang."
+
+"I'm in that," yells Bludyer from the end of the table. "My Lord, I'll
+join you."
+
+"Mr. ----, I beg your pardon--I shall be very happy to take wine with
+you, sir."
+
+"It is Mr. Bludyer, the celebrated newspaper writer," whispers Lady
+Thrum.
+
+"Bludyer, Bludyer? A very clever man, I dare say. He has a very loud
+voice, and reminds me of Brett. Does your Ladyship remember Brett, who
+played the 'Fathers' at the Haymarket in 1802?"
+
+"What an old stupid Roundtowers is!" says Slang, archly, nudging Mrs.
+Walker in the side. "How's Walker, eh?"
+
+"My husband is in the country," replied Mrs. Walker, hesitatingly.
+
+"Gammon! _I_ know where he is! Law bless you!--don't blush. I've been
+there myself a dozen times. We were talking about quod, Lady Thrum. Were
+you ever in college?"
+
+"I was at the Commemoration at Oxford in 1814, when the sovereigns were
+there, and at Cambridge when Sir George received his degree of Doctor of
+Music."
+
+"Laud, Laud, THAT'S not the college WE mean."
+
+"There is also the college in Gower Street, where my grandson--"
+
+"This is the college in QUEER STREET, ma'am, haw, haw! Mulligan, you
+divvle (in an Irish accent), a glass of wine with you. Wine, here, you
+waiter! What's your name, you black nigger? 'Possum up a gum-tree, eh?
+Fill him up. Dere he go" (imitating the Mandingo manner of speaking
+English)
+
+In this agreeable way would Mr. Slang rattle on, speedily making himself
+the centre of the conversation, and addressing graceful familiarities to
+all the gentlemen and ladies round him.
+
+It was good to see how the little knight, the most moral and calm of
+men, was compelled to receive Mr. Slang's stories and the frightened air
+with which, at the conclusion of one of them, he would venture upon
+a commendatory grin. His lady, on her part too, had been laboriously
+civil; and, on the occasion on which I had the honour of meeting this
+gentleman and Mrs. Walker, it was the latter who gave the signal for
+withdrawing to the lady of the house, by saying, "I think, Lady Thrum,
+it is quite time for us to retire." Some exquisite joke of Mr. Slang's
+was the cause of this abrupt disappearance. But, as they went upstairs
+to the drawing-room, Lady Thrum took occasion to say, "My dear, in
+the course of your profession you will have to submit to many such
+familiarities on the part of persons of low breeding, such as I fear Mr.
+Slang is. But let me caution you against giving way to your temper
+as you did. Did you not perceive that _I_ never allowed him to see my
+inward dissatisfaction? And I make it a particular point that you should
+be very civil to him to-night. Your interests--our interests depend upon
+it."
+
+"And are my interests to make me civil to a wretch like that?"
+
+"Mrs. Walker, would you wish to give lessons in morality and behaviour
+to Lady Thrum?" said the old lady, drawing herself up with great
+dignity. It was evident that she had a very strong desire indeed to
+conciliate Mr. Slang; and hence I have no doubt that Sir George was to
+have a considerable share of Morgiana's earnings.
+
+Mr. Bludyer, the famous editor of the Tomahawk, whose jokes Sir George
+pretended to admire so much (Sir George who never made a joke in his
+life), was a press bravo of considerable talent and no principle, and
+who, to use his own words, would "back himself for a slashing article
+against any man in England!" He would not only write, but fight on a
+pinch; was a good scholar, and as savage in his manner as with his
+pen. Mr. Squinny is of exactly the opposite school, as delicate as
+milk-and-water, harmless in his habits, fond of the flute when the state
+of his chest will allow him, a great practiser of waltzing and dancing
+in general, and in his journal mildly malicious. He never goes beyond
+the bounds of politeness, but manages to insinuate a great deal that is
+disagreeable to an author in the course of twenty lines of criticism.
+Personally he is quite respectable, and lives with two maiden aunts at
+Brompton. Nobody, on the contrary, knows where Mr. Bludyer lives. He has
+houses of call, mysterious taverns, where he may be found at particular
+hours by those who need him, and where panting publishers are in the
+habit of hunting him up. For a bottle of wine and a guinea he will write
+a page of praise or abuse of any man living, or on any subject, or on
+any line of politics. "Hang it, sir!" says he, "pay me enough and I will
+write down my own father!" According to the state of his credit, he
+is dressed either almost in rags or else in the extremest flush of the
+fashion. With the latter attire he puts on a haughty and aristocratic
+air, and would slap a duke on the shoulder. If there is one thing more
+dangerous than to refuse to lend him a sum of money when he asks for it,
+it is to lend it to him; for he never pays, and never pardons a man to
+whom he owes. "Walker refused to cash a bill for me," he had been heard
+to say, "and I'll do for his wife when she comes out on the stage!" Mrs.
+Walker and Sir George Thrum were in an agony about the Tomahawk; hence
+the latter's invitation to Mr. Bludyer. Sir George was in a great tremor
+about the Flowers of Fashion, hence his invitation to Mr. Squinny. Mr.
+Squinny was introduced to Lord Roundtowers and Mr. Fitz-Urse as one of
+the most delightful and talented of our young men of genius; and Fitz,
+who believes everything anyone tells him, was quite pleased to have
+the honour of sitting near the live editor of a paper. I have reason to
+think that Mr. Squinny himself was no less delighted: I saw him giving
+his card to Fitz-Urse at the end of the second course.
+
+No particular attention was paid to Mr. Desmond Mulligan. Political
+enthusiasm is his forte. He lives and writes in a rapture. He is,
+of course, a member of an inn of court, and greatly addicted to
+after-dinner speaking as a preparation for the bar, where as a young man
+of genius he hopes one day to shine. He is almost the only man to whom
+Bludyer is civil; for, if the latter will fight doggedly when there is
+a necessity for so doing, the former fights like an Irishman, and has a
+pleasure in it. He has been "on the ground" I don't know how many
+times, and quitted his country on account of a quarrel with Government
+regarding certain articles published by him in the Phoenix newspaper.
+With the third bottle, he becomes overpoweringly great on the wrongs
+of Ireland, and at that period generally volunteers a couple or more of
+Irish melodies, selecting the most melancholy in the collection. At five
+in the afternoon, you are sure to see him about the House of Commons,
+and he knows the "Reform Club" (he calls it the Refawrum) as well as if
+he were a member. It is curious for the contemplative mind to mark those
+mysterious hangers-on of Irish members of Parliament--strange runners
+and aides-de-camp which all the honourable gentlemen appear to possess.
+Desmond, in his political capacity, is one of these, and besides his
+calling as reporter to a newspaper, is "our well-informed correspondent"
+of that famous Munster paper, the Green Flag of Skibbereen.
+
+With Mr. Mulligan's qualities and history I only became subsequently
+acquainted. On the present evening he made but a brief stay at the
+dinner-table, being compelled by his professional duties to attend the
+House of Commons.
+
+The above formed the party with whom I had the honour to dine. What
+other repasts Sir George Thrum may have given, what assemblies of men
+of mere science he may have invited to give their opinion regarding his
+prodigy, what other editors of papers he may have pacified or rendered
+favourable, who knows? On the present occasion, we did not quit the
+dinner-table until Mr. Slang the manager was considerably excited
+by wine, and music had been heard for some time in the drawing-room
+overhead during our absence. An addition had been made to the Thrum
+party by the arrival of several persons to spend the evening,--a man to
+play on the violin between the singing, a youth to play on the piano,
+Miss Horsman to sing with Mrs. Walker, and other scientific characters.
+In a corner sat a red-faced old lady, of whom the mistress of the
+mansion took little notice; and a gentleman with a royal button, who
+blushed and looked exceedingly modest.
+
+"Hang me!" says Mr. Bludyer, who had perfectly good reasons for
+recognising Mr Woolsey, and who on this day chose to assume his
+aristocratic air; "there's a tailor in the room! What do they mean by
+asking ME to meet tradesmen?"
+
+"Delancy, my dear," cries Slang, entering the room with a reel, "how's
+your precious health? Give us your hand! When ARE we to be married? Make
+room for me on the sofa, that's a duck!"
+
+"Get along, Slang," says Mrs. Crump, addressed by the manager by her
+maiden name (artists generally drop the title of honour which people
+adopt in the world, and call each other by their simple surnames)--"get
+along, Slang, or I'll tell Mrs. S.!" The enterprising manager replies by
+sportively striking Mrs. Crump on the side a blow which causes a great
+giggle from the lady insulted, and a most good-humoured threat to box
+Slang's ears. I fear very much that Morgiana's mother thought Mr. Slang
+an exceedingly gentlemanlike and agreeable person; besides, she was
+eager to have his good opinion of Mrs. Walker's singing.
+
+The manager stretched himself out with much gracefulness on the sofa,
+supporting two little dumpy legs encased in varnished boots on a chair.
+
+"Ajax, some tea to Mr. Slang," said my Lady, looking towards that
+gentleman with a countenance expressive of some alarm, I thought.
+
+"That's right, Ajax, my black prince!" exclaimed Slang when the negro
+brought the required refreshment; "and now I suppose you'll be wanted in
+the orchestra yonder. Don't Ajax play the cymbals, Sir George?"
+
+"Ha, ha, ha! very good--capital!" answered the knight, exceedingly
+frightened; "but ours is not a MILITARY band. Miss Horsman, Mr. Craw,
+my dear Mrs. Ravenswing, shall we begin the trio? Silence, gentlemen, if
+you please; it is a little piece from my opera of the 'Brigand's Bride.'
+Miss Horsman takes the Page's part, Mr. Craw is Stiletto the Brigand, my
+accomplished pupil is the Bride;" and the music began.
+
+          "THE BRIDE.
+
+     "My heart with joy is beating,
+        My eyes with tears are dim;
+
+          "THE PAGE.
+
+     "Her heart with joy is beating
+        Her eyes are fixed on him;
+
+          "THE BRIGAND.
+
+     "My heart with rage is beating,
+        In blood my eye-balls swim!"
+
+What may have been the merits of the music or the singing, I, of course,
+cannot guess. Lady Thrum sat opposite the tea-cups, nodding her head
+and beating time very gravely. Lord Roundtowers, by her side, nodded his
+head too, for awhile, and then fell asleep. I should have done the same
+but for the manager, whose actions were worth of remark. He sang with
+all the three singers, and a great deal louder than any of them; he
+shouted bravo! or hissed as he thought proper; he criticised all the
+points of Mrs. Walker's person. "She'll do, Crump, she'll do--a splendid
+arm--you'll see her eyes in the shilling gallery! What sort of a
+foot has she? She's five feet three, if she's an inch! Bravo--slap
+up--capital--hurrah!" And he concluded by saying, with the aid of the
+Ravenswing, he would put Ligonier's nose out of Joint!
+
+The enthusiasm of Mr. Slang almost reconciled Lady Thrum to the
+abruptness of his manners, and even caused Sir George to forget that
+his chorus had been interrupted by the obstreperous familiarity of the
+manager.
+
+"And what do YOU think, Mr. Bludyer," said the tailor, delighted that
+his protegee should be thus winning all hearts: "isn't Mrs. Walker a
+tip-top singer, eh, sir?"
+
+"I think she's a very bad one, Mr. Woolsey," said the illustrious
+author, wishing to abbreviate all communications with a tailor to whom
+he owed forty pounds.
+
+"Then, sir," says Mr. Woolsey, fiercely, "I'll--I'll thank you to pay me
+my little bill!"
+
+It is true there was no connection between Mrs. Walker's singing and
+Woolsey's little bill; that the "THEN, sir," was perfectly illogical on
+Woolsey's part; but it was a very happy hit for the future fortunes of
+Mrs. Walker. Who knows what would have come of her debut but for that
+"Then, sir," and whether a "smashing article" from the Tomahawk might
+not have ruined her for ever?
+
+"Are you a relation of Mrs. Walker's?" said Mr. Bludyer, in reply to the
+angry tailor.
+
+"What's that to you, whether I am or not?" replied Woolsey, fiercely.
+"But I'm the friend of Mrs. Walker, sir; proud am I to say so, sir; and,
+as the poet says, sir, 'a little learning's a dangerous thing,' sir;
+and I think a man who don't pay his bills may keep his tongue quiet at
+least, sir, and not abuse a lady, sir, whom everybody else praises,
+sir. You shan't humbug ME any more, sir; you shall hear from my attorney
+to-morrow, so mark that!"
+
+"Hush, my dear Mr. Woolsey," cried the literary man, "don't make a
+noise; come into this window: is Mrs. Walker REALLY a friend of yours?"
+
+"I've told you so, sir."
+
+"Well, in that case, I shall do my utmost to serve her and, look you,
+Woolsey, any article you choose to send about her to the Tomahawk I
+promise you I'll put in."
+
+"WILL you, though? then we'll say nothing about the little bill."
+
+"You may do on that point," answered Bludyer, haughtily, "exactly as
+you please. I am not to be frightened from my duty, mind that; and mind,
+too, that I can write a slashing article better than any man in England:
+I could crush her by ten lines."
+
+The tables were now turned, and it was Woolsey's turn to be alarmed.
+
+"Pooh! pooh! I WAS angry," said he, "because you abuse Mrs. Walker,
+who's an angel on earth; but I'm very willing to apologise. I
+say--come--let me take your measure for some new clothes, eh! Mr. B.?"
+
+"I'll come to your shop," answered the literary man, quite appeased.
+"Silence! they're beginning another song."
+
+The songs, which I don't attempt to describe (and, upon my word and
+honour, as far as I can understand matters, I believe to this day that
+Mrs. Walker was only an ordinary singer)--the songs lasted a great deal
+longer than I liked; but I was nailed, as it were, to the spot, having
+agreed to sup at Knightsbridge barracks with Fitz-Urse, whose carriage
+was ordered at eleven o'clock.
+
+"My dear Mr. Fitz-Boodle," said our old host to me, "you can do me the
+greatest service in the world."
+
+"Speak, sir!" said I.
+
+"Will you ask your honourable and gallant friend, the Captain, to drive
+home Mr. Squinny to Brompton?"
+
+"Can't Mr. Squinny get a cab?"
+
+Sir George looked particularly arch. "Generalship, my dear young
+friend--a little harmless generalship. Mr. Squinny will not give much
+for MY opinion of my pupil, but he will value very highly the opinion of
+the Honourable Mr. FitzUrse."
+
+For a moral man, was not the little knight a clever fellow? He had
+bought Mr. Squinny for a dinner worth ten shillings, and for a ride in
+a carriage with a lord's son. Squinny was carried to Brompton, and set
+down at his aunts' door, delighted with his new friends, and exceedingly
+sick with a cigar they had made him smoke.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII. IN WHICH MR. WALKER SHOWS GREAT PRUDENCE AND FORBEARANCE.
+
+The describing of all these persons does not advance Morgiana's story
+much. But, perhaps, some country readers are not acquainted with the
+class of persons by whose printed opinions they are guided, and are
+simple enough to imagine that mere merit will make a reputation on the
+stage or elsewhere. The making of a theatrical success is a much more
+complicated and curious thing than such persons fancy it to be. Immense
+are the pains taken to get a good word from Mr. This of the Star, or Mr.
+That of the Courier, to propitiate the favour of the critic of the day,
+and get the editors of the metropolis into a good humour,--above all, to
+have the name of the person to be puffed perpetually before the public.
+Artists cannot be advertised like Macassar oil or blacking, and they
+want it to the full as much; hence endless ingenuity must be practised
+in order to keep the popular attention awake. Suppose a great actor
+moves from London to Windsor, the Brentford Champion must state that
+"Yesterday Mr. Blazes and suite passed rapidly through our city; the
+celebrated comedian is engaged, we hear, at Windsor, to give some of his
+inimitable readings of our great national bard to the MOST ILLUSTRIOUS
+AUDIENCE in the realm." This piece of intelligence the Hammersmith
+Observer will question the next week, as thus:--"A contemporary, the
+Brentford Champion, says that Blazes is engaged to give Shakspearian
+readings at Windsor to "the most illustrious audience in the realm." We
+question this fact very much. We would, indeed, that it were true; but
+the MOST ILLUSTRIOUS AUDIENCE in the realm prefer FOREIGN melodies to
+THE NATIVE WOOD-NOTES WILD of the sweet song-bird of Avon. Mr. Blazes
+is simply gone to Eton, where his son, Master Massinger Blazes, is
+suffering, we regret to hear, under a severe attack of the chicken-pox.
+This complaint (incident to youth) has raged, we understand, with
+frightful virulence in Eton School."
+
+And if, after the above paragraphs, some London paper chooses to attack
+the folly of the provincial press, which talks of Mr. Blazes, and
+chronicles his movements, as if he were a crowned head, what harm is
+done? Blazes can write in his own name to the London journal, and say
+that it is not HIS fault if provincial journals choose to chronicle
+his movements, and that he was far from wishing that the afflictions of
+those who are dear to him should form the subject of public comment,
+and be held up to public ridicule. "We had no intention of hurting the
+feelings of an estimable public servant," writes the editor; "and our
+remarks on the chicken-pox were general, not personal. We sincerely
+trust that Master Massinger Blazes has recovered from that complaint,
+and that he may pass through the measles, the whooping-cough, the fourth
+form, and all other diseases to which youth is subject, with comfort to
+himself, and credit to his parents and teachers." At his next appearance
+on the stage after this controversy, a British public calls for Blazes
+three times after the play; and somehow there is sure to be someone with
+a laurel-wreath in a stage-box, who flings that chaplet at the inspired
+artist's feet.
+
+I don't know how it was, but before the debut of Morgiana, the English
+press began to heave and throb in a convulsive manner, as if indicative
+of the near birth of some great thing. For instance, you read in one
+paper,--
+
+"Anecdote of Karl Maria Von Weber.--When the author of 'Oberon' was in
+England, he was invited by a noble duke to dinner, and some of the most
+celebrated of our artists were assembled to meet him. The signal being
+given to descend to the salle-a-manger, the German composer was invited
+by his noble host (a bachelor) to lead the way. 'Is it not the fashion
+in your country,' said he, simply, 'for the man of the first eminence to
+take the first place? Here is one whose genius entitles him to be first
+ANYWHERE.' And, so saying, he pointed to our admirable English composer,
+Sir George Thrum. The two musicians were friends to the last, and Sir
+George has still the identical piece of rosin which the author of the
+'Freischutz' gave him."--The Moon (morning paper), June 2.
+
+"George III. a composer.--Sir George Thrum has in his possession the
+score of an air, the words from 'Samson Agonistes,' an autograph of the
+late revered monarch. We hear that that excellent composer has in store
+for us not only an opera, but a pupil, with whose transcendent merits
+the elite of our aristocracy are already familiar."--Ibid., June 5.
+
+"Music with a Vengeance.--The march to the sound of which the 49th and
+75th regiments rushed up the breach of Badajoz was the celebrated air
+from 'Britons Alarmed; or, The Siege of Bergen-op-Zoom,' by our famous
+English composer, Sir George Thrum. Marshal Davoust said that the
+French line never stood when that air was performed to the charge of the
+bayonet. We hear the veteran musician has an opera now about to
+appear, and have no doubt that Old England will now, as then, show its
+superiority over ALL foreign opponents."--Albion.
+
+"We have been accused of preferring the produit of the etranger to the
+talent of our own native shores; but those who speak so, little know
+us. We are fanatici per la musica wherever it be, and welcome merit dans
+chaque pays du monde. What do we say? Le merite n'a point de pays, as
+Napoleon said; and Sir George Thrum (Chevalier de l'Ordre de l'Elephant
+et Chateau de Kalbsbraten-Pumpernickel,) is a maestro whose fame
+appartient a l'Europe.
+
+"We have just heard the lovely eleve, whose rare qualities the Cavaliere
+has brought to perfection,--we have heard THE RAVENSWING (pourquoi
+cacher un nom que demain un monde va saluer?), and a creature more
+beautiful and gifted never bloomed before dans nos climats. She sang
+the delicious duet of the 'Nabucodonosore,' with Count Pizzicato, with
+a bellezza, a grandezza, a raggio, that excited in the bosom of the
+audience a corresponding furore: her scherzando was exquisite, though we
+confess we thought the concluding fioritura in the passage in Y flat a
+leetle, a very leetle sforzata. Surely the words,
+
+     'Giorno d'orrore,
+      Delire, dolore,
+      Nabucodonosore,'
+
+should be given andante, and not con strepito: but this is a faute bien
+legere in the midst of such unrivalled excellence, and only mentioned
+here that we may have SOMETHING to criticise.
+
+"We hear that the enterprising impresario of one of the royal theatres
+has made an engagement with the Diva; and, if we have a regret, it is
+that she should be compelled to sing in the unfortunate language of our
+rude northern clime, which does not preter itself near so well to the
+bocca of the cantatrice as do the mellifluous accents of the Lingua
+Toscana, the langue par excellence of song.
+
+"The Ravenswing's voice is a magnificent contra-basso of nine octaves,"
+etc.--Flowers of Fashion, June 10.
+
+"Old Thrum, the composer, is bringing out an opera and a pupil. The
+opera is good, the pupil first-rate. The opera will do much more than
+compete with the infernal twaddle and disgusting slip-slop of Donizetti,
+and the milk-and-water fools who imitate him: it will (and we ask the
+readers of the Tomahawk, were we EVER mistaken?) surpass all these; it
+is GOOD, of downright English stuff. The airs are fresh and pleasing,
+the choruses large and noble, the instrumentation solid and rich, the
+music is carefully written. We wish old Thrum and his opera well.
+
+"His pupil is a SURE CARD, a splendid woman, and a splendid singer. She
+is so handsome that she might sing as much out of tune as Miss Ligonier,
+and the public would forgive her; and sings so well, that were she as
+ugly as the aforesaid Ligonier, the audience would listen to her. The
+Ravenswing, that is her fantastical theatrical name (her real name is
+the same with that of a notorious scoundrel in the Fleet, who invented
+the Panama swindle, the Pontine Marshes' swindle, the Soap swindle--HOW
+ARE YOU OFF FOR SOAP NOW, Mr. W-lk-r?)--the Ravenswing, we say, will do.
+Slang has engaged her at thirty guineas per week, and she appears next
+month in Thrum's opera, of which the words are written by a great ass
+with some talent--we mean Mr. Mulligan.
+
+"There is a foreign fool in the Flowers of Fashion who is doing his best
+to disgust the public by his filthy flattery. It is enough to make
+one sick. Why is the foreign beast not kicked out of the paper?"--The
+Tomahawk, June 17.
+
+The first three "anecdotes" were supplied by Mulligan to his paper,
+with many others which need not here be repeated: he kept them up
+with amazing energy and variety. Anecdotes of Sir George Thrum met you
+unexpectedly in queer corners of country papers: puffs of the English
+school of music appeared perpetually in "Notices to Correspondents" in
+the Sunday prints, some of which Mr. Slang commanded, and in others over
+which the indefatigable Mulligan had a control. This youth was the soul
+of the little conspiracy for raising Morgiana into fame: and humble as
+he is, and great and respectable as is Sir George Thrum, it is my belief
+that the Ravenswing would never have been the Ravenswing she is but for
+the ingenuity and energy of the honest Hibernian reporter.
+
+It is only the business of the great man who writes the leading articles
+which appear in the large type of the daily papers to compose those
+astonishing pieces of eloquence; the other parts of the paper are
+left to the ingenuity of the sub-editor, whose duty it is to select
+paragraphs, reject or receive horrid accidents, police reports,
+etc.; with which, occupied as he is in the exercise of his tremendous
+functions, the editor himself cannot be expected to meddle. The fate
+of Europe is his province; the rise and fall of empires, and the great
+questions of State demand the editor's attention: the humble puff,
+the paragraph about the last murder, or the state of the crops, or the
+sewers in Chancery Lane, is confided to the care of the sub; and it
+is curious to see what a prodigious number of Irishmen exist among the
+sub-editors of London. When the Liberator enumerates the services of his
+countrymen, how the battle of Fontenoy was won by the Irish Brigade, how
+the battle of Waterloo would have been lost but for the Irish regiments,
+and enumerates other acts for which we are indebted to Milesian heroism
+and genius--he ought at least to mention the Irish brigade of the press,
+and the amazing services they do to this country.
+
+The truth is, the Irish reporters and soldiers appear to do their duty
+right well; and my friend Mr. Mulligan is one of the former. Having the
+interests of his opera and the Ravenswing strongly at heart, and being
+amongst his brethren an exceedingly popular fellow, he managed matters
+so that never a day passed but some paragraph appeared somewhere
+regarding the new singer, in whom, for their countryman's sake, all his
+brothers and sub-editors felt an interest.
+
+These puffs, destined to make known to all the world the merits of
+the Ravenswing, of course had an effect upon a gentleman very closely
+connected with that lady, the respectable prisoner in the Fleet, Captain
+Walker. As long as he received his weekly two guineas from Mr. Woolsey,
+and the occasional half-crowns which his wife could spare in her almost
+daily visits to him, he had never troubled himself to inquire what her
+pursuits were, and had allowed her (though the worthy woman longed with
+all her might to betray herself) to keep her secret. He was far from
+thinking, indeed, that his wife would prove such a treasure to him.
+
+But when the voice of fame and the columns of the public journals
+brought him each day some new story regarding the merits, genius, and
+beauty of the Ravenswing; when rumours reached him that she was the
+favourite pupil of Sir George Thrum; when she brought him five guineas
+after singing at the "Philharmonic" (other five the good soul had spent
+in purchasing some smart new cockades, hats, cloaks, and laces, for her
+little son); when, finally, it was said that Slang, the great manager,
+offered her an engagement at thirty guineas per week, Mr. Walker became
+exceedingly interested in his wife's proceedings, of which he demanded
+from her the fullest explanation.
+
+Using his marital authority, he absolutely forbade Mrs. Walker's
+appearance on the public stage; he wrote to Sir George Thrum a letter
+expressive of his highest indignation that negotiations so important
+should ever have been commenced without his authorisation; and he wrote
+to his dear Slang (for these gentlemen were very intimate, and in the
+course of his transactions as an agent Mr. W. had had many dealings
+with Mr. S.) asking his dear Slang whether the latter thought his friend
+Walker would be so green as to allow his wife to appear on the stage,
+and he remain in prison with all his debts on his head?
+
+And it was a curious thing now to behold how eager those very creditors
+who but yesterday (and with perfect correctness) had denounced Mr.
+Walker as a swindler; who had refused to come to any composition with
+him, and had sworn never to release him; how they on a sudden became
+quite eager to come to an arrangement with him, and offered, nay, begged
+and prayed him to go free,--only giving them his own and Mrs. Walker's
+acknowledgment of their debt, with a promise that a part of the lady's
+salary should be devoted to the payment of the claim.
+
+"The lady's salary!" said Mr. Walker, indignantly, to these gentlemen
+and their attorneys. "Do you suppose I will allow Mrs. Walker to go on
+the stage?--do you suppose I am such a fool as to sign bills to the full
+amount of these claims against me, when in a few months more I can walk
+out of prison without paying a shilling? Gentlemen, you take Howard
+Walker for an idiot. I like the Fleet, and rather than pay I'll stay
+here for these ten years."
+
+In other words, it was the Captain's determination to make some
+advantageous bargain for himself with his creditors and the gentlemen
+who were interested in bringing forward Mrs. Walker on the stage. And
+who can say that in so determining he did not act with laudable prudence
+and justice?
+
+"You do not, surely, consider, my very dear sir, that half the amount of
+Mrs. Walker's salaries is too much for my immense trouble and pains in
+teaching her?" cried Sir George Thrum (who, in reply to Walker's note,
+thought it most prudent to wait personally on that gentleman). "Remember
+that I am the first master in England; that I have the best interest in
+England; that I can bring her out at the Palace, and at every concert
+and musical festival in England; that I am obliged to teach her every
+single note that she utters; and that without me she could no more sing
+a song than her little baby could walk without its nurse."
+
+"I believe about half what you say," said Mr. Walker.
+
+"My dear Captain Walker! would you question my integrity? Who was it
+that made Mrs. Millington's fortune,--the celebrated Mrs. Millington,
+who has now got a hundred thousand pounds? Who was it that brought out
+the finest tenor in Europe, Poppleton? Ask the musical world, ask
+those great artists themselves, and they will tell you they owe their
+reputation, their fortune, to Sir George Thrum."
+
+"It is very likely," replied the Captain, coolly. "You ARE a good
+master, I dare say, Sir George; but I am not going to article Mrs.
+Walker to you for three years, and sign her articles in the Fleet. Mrs.
+Walker shan't sing till I'm a free man, that's flat: if I stay here till
+you're dead she shan't."
+
+"Gracious powers, sir!" exclaimed Sir George, "do you expect me to pay
+your debts?"
+
+"Yes, old boy," answered the Captain, "and to give me something handsome
+in hand, too; and that's my ultimatum: and so I wish you good morning,
+for I'm engaged to play a match at tennis below."
+
+This little interview exceedingly frightened the worthy knight, who
+went home to his lady in a delirious state of alarm occasioned by the
+audacity of Captain Walker.
+
+Mr. Slang's interview with him was scarcely more satisfactory. He
+owed, he said, four thousand pounds. His creditors might be brought to
+compound for five shillings in the pound. He would not consent to allow
+his wife to make a single engagement until the creditors were satisfied,
+and until he had a handsome sum in hand to begin the world with. "Unless
+my wife comes out, you'll be in the Gazette yourself, you know you will.
+So you may take her or leave her, as you think fit."
+
+"Let her sing one night as a trial," said Mr. Slang.
+
+"If she sings one night, the creditors will want their money in full,"
+replied the Captain. "I shan't let her labour, poor thing, for the
+profit of those scoundrels!" added the prisoner, with much feeling. And
+Slang left him with a much greater respect for Walker than he had ever
+before possessed. He was struck with the gallantry of the man who could
+triumph over misfortunes, nay, make misfortune itself an engine of good
+luck.
+
+Mrs. Walker was instructed instantly to have a severe sore throat. The
+journals in Mr. Slang's interest deplored this illness pathetically;
+while the papers in the interest of the opposition theatre magnified it
+with great malice. "The new singer," said one, "the great wonder which
+Slang promised us, is as hoarse as a RAVEN!" "Doctor Thorax pronounces,"
+wrote another paper, "that the quinsy, which has suddenly prostrated
+Mrs. Ravenswing, whose singing at the Philharmonic, previous to her
+appearance at the 'T.R----,' excited so much applause, has destroyed the
+lady's voice for ever. We luckily need no other prima donna, when that
+place, as nightly thousands acknowledge, is held by Miss Ligonier." The
+Looker-on said, "That although some well-informed contemporaries had
+declared Mrs. W. Ravenswing's complaint to be a quinsy, others, on
+whose authority they could equally rely, had pronounced it to be a
+consumption. At all events, she was in an exceedingly dangerous state;
+from which, though we do not expect, we heartily trust she may recover.
+Opinions differ as to the merits of this lady, some saying that she was
+altogether inferior to Miss Ligonier, while other connoisseurs declare
+the latter lady to be by no means so accomplished a person. This point,
+we fear," continued the Looker-on, "can never now be settled; unless,
+which we fear is improbable, Mrs. Ravenswing should ever so far recover
+as to be able to make her debut; and even then, the new singer will
+not have a fair chance unless her voice and strength shall be fully
+restored. This information, which we have from exclusive resources, may
+be relied on," concluded the Looker-on, "as authentic."
+
+It was Mr. Walker himself, that artful and audacious Fleet prisoner, who
+concocted those very paragraphs against his wife's health which appeared
+in the journals of the Ligonier party. The partisans of that lady were
+delighted, the creditors of Mr. Walker astounded, at reading them.
+Even Sir George Thrum was taken in, and came to the Fleet prison in
+considerable alarm.
+
+"Mum's the word, my good sir!" said Mr. Walker. "Now is the time to make
+arrangements with the creditors."
+
+Well, these arrangements were finally made. It does not matter how many
+shillings in the pound satisfied the rapacious creditors of Morgiana's
+husband. But it is certain that her voice returned to her all of a
+sudden upon the Captain's release. The papers of the Mulligan faction
+again trumpeted her perfections; the agreement with Mr. Slang was
+concluded; that with Sir George Thrum the great composer satisfactorily
+arranged; and the new opera underlined in immense capitals in the
+bills, and put in rehearsal with immense expenditure on the part of the
+scene-painter and costumier.
+
+Need we tell with what triumphant success the "Brigand's Bride" was
+received? All the Irish sub-editors the next morning took care to have
+such an account of it as made Miss Ligonier and Baroski die with envy.
+All the reporters who could spare time were in the boxes to support
+their friend's work. All the journeymen tailors of the establishment of
+Linsey, Woolsey, and Co. had pit tickets given to them, and applauded
+with all their might. All Mr. Walker's friends of the "Regent Club"
+lined the side-boxes with white kid gloves; and in a little box by
+themselves sat Mrs. Crump and Mr. Woolsey, a great deal too much
+agitated to applaud--so agitated, that Woolsey even forgot to fling down
+the bouquet he had brought for the Ravenswing.
+
+But there was no lack of those horticultural ornaments. The theatre
+servants wheeled away a wheelbarrow-full (which were flung on the stage
+the next night over again); and Morgiana, blushing, panting, weeping,
+was led off by Mr. Poppleton, the eminent tenor, who had crowned her
+with one of the most conspicuous of the chaplets.
+
+Here she flew to her husband, and flung her arms round his neck. He was
+flirting behind the side-scenes with Mademoiselle Flicflac, who had
+been dancing in the divertissement; and was probably the only man in
+the theatre of those who witnessed the embrace that did not care for it.
+Even Slang was affected, and said with perfect sincerity that he wished
+he had been in Walker's place. The manager's fortune was made, at least
+for the season. He acknowledged so much to Walker, who took a week's
+salary for his wife in advance that very night.
+
+There was, as usual, a grand supper in the green-room. The terrible Mr.
+Bludyer appeared in a new coat of the well-known Woolsey cut, and the
+little tailor himself and Mrs. Crump were not the least happy of the
+party. But when the Ravenswing took Woolsey's hand, and said she never
+would have been there but for him, Mr. Walker looked very grave,
+and hinted to her that she must not, in her position, encourage the
+attentions of persons in that rank of life. "I shall pay," said he,
+proudly, "every farthing that is owing to Mr. Woolsey, and shall employ
+him for the future. But you understand, my love, that one cannot at
+one's own table receive one's own tailor."
+
+Slang proposed Morgiana's health in a tremendous speech, which elicited
+cheers, and laughter, and sobs, such as only managers have the art of
+drawing from the theatrical gentlemen and ladies in their employ. It
+was observed, especially among the chorus-singers at the bottom of the
+table, that their emotion was intense. They had a meeting the next day
+and voted a piece of plate to Adolphus Slang, Esquire, for his eminent
+services in the cause of the drama.
+
+Walker returned thanks for his lady. That was, he said, the proudest
+moment of his life. He was proud to think that he had educated her for
+the stage, happy to think that his sufferings had not been in vain, and
+that his exertions in her behalf were crowned with full success. In her
+name and his own he thanked the company, and sat down, and was once more
+particularly attentive to Mademoiselle Flicflac.
+
+Then came an oration from Sir George Thrum, in reply to Slang's toast
+to HIM. It was very much to the same effect as the speech by Walker,
+the two gentlemen attributing to themselves individually the merit of
+bringing out Mrs. Walker. He concluded by stating that he should always
+hold Mrs. Walker as the daughter of his heart, and to the last moment of
+his life should love and cherish her. It is certain that Sir George was
+exceedingly elated that night, and would have been scolded by his lady
+on his return home, but for the triumph of the evening.
+
+Mulligan's speech of thanks, as author of the "Brigand's Bride," was, it
+must be confessed, extremely tedious. It seemed there would be no end
+to it; when he got upon the subject of Ireland especially, which somehow
+was found to be intimately connected with the interests of music and the
+theatre. Even the choristers pooh-poohed this speech, coming though it
+did from the successful author, whose songs of wine, love, and battle,
+they had been repeating that night.
+
+The "Brigand's Bride" ran for many nights. Its choruses were tuned on
+the organs of the day. Morgiana's airs, "The Rose upon my Balcony"
+and the "Lightning on the Cataract" (recitative and scena) were on
+everybody's lips, and brought so many guineas to Sir George Thrum that
+he was encouraged to have his portrait engraved, which still may be
+seen in the music-shops. Not many persons, I believe, bought proof
+impressions of the plate, price two guineas; whereas, on the contrary,
+all the young clerks in banks, and all the FAST young men of the
+universities, had pictures of the Ravenswing in their apartments--as
+Biondetta (the brigand's bride), as Zelyma (in the "Nuptials of
+Benares"), as Barbareska (in the "Mine of Tobolsk"), and in all her
+famous characters. In the latter she disguises herself as a Uhlan, in
+order to save her father, who is in prison; and the Ravenswing looked so
+fascinating in this costume in pantaloons and yellow boots, that Slang
+was for having her instantly in Captain Macheath, whence arose their
+quarrel.
+
+She was replaced at Slang's theatre by Snooks, the rhinoceros-tamer,
+with his breed of wild buffaloes. Their success was immense. Slang gave
+a supper, at which all the company burst into tears; and assembling
+in the green-room next day, they, as usual, voted a piece of plate to
+Adolphus Slang, Esquire, for his eminent services to the drama.
+
+In the Captain Macheath dispute Mr. Walker would have had his wife
+yield; but on this point, and for once, she disobeyed her husband and
+left the theatre. And when Walker cursed her (according to his wont) for
+her abominable selfishness and disregard of his property, she burst
+into tears and said she had spent but twenty guineas on herself and baby
+during the year, that her theatrical dressmaker's bills were yet unpaid,
+and that she had never asked him how much he spent on that odious French
+figurante.
+
+All this was true, except about the French figurante. Walker, as the
+lord and master, received all Morgiana's earnings, and spent them as
+a gentleman should. He gave very neat dinners at a cottage in Regent's
+Park (Mr. and Mrs. Walker lived at Green Street, Grosvenor Square), he
+played a good deal at the "Regent;" but as to the French figurante, it
+must be confessed, that Mrs. Walker was in a sad error: THAT lady and
+the Captain had parted long ago; it was Madame Dolores de Tras-os-Montes
+who inhabited the cottage in St. John's Wood now.
+
+But if some little errors of this kind might be attributable to the
+Captain, on the other hand, when his wife was in the provinces, he was
+the most attentive of husbands; made all her bargains, and received
+every shilling before he would permit her to sing a note. Thus he
+prevented her from being cheated, as a person of her easy temper
+doubtless would have been, by designing managers and needy
+concert-givers. They always travelled with four horses; and Walker was
+adored in every one of the principal hotels in England. The waiters flew
+at his bell. The chambermaids were afraid he was a sad naughty man, and
+thought his wife no such great beauty; the landlords preferred him to
+any duke. HE never looked at their bills, not he! In fact his income was
+at least four thousand a year for some years of his life.
+
+Master Woolsey Walker was put to Doctor Wapshot's seminary, whence,
+after many disputes on the Doctor's part as to getting his half-year's
+accounts paid, and after much complaint of ill-treatment on the little
+boy's side, he was withdrawn, and placed under the care of the Reverend
+Mr. Swishtail, at Turnham Green; where all his bills are paid by his
+godfather, now the head of the firm of Woolsey and Co.
+
+As a gentleman, Mr. Walker still declines to see him; but he has not,
+as far as I have heard, paid the sums of money which he threatened to
+refund; and, as he is seldom at home the worthy tailor can come to Green
+Street at his leisure. He and Mrs. Crump, and Mrs. Walker often take the
+omnibus to Brentford, and a cake with them to little Woolsey at school;
+to whom the tailor says he will leave every shilling of his property.
+
+The Walkers have no other children; but when she takes her airing in the
+Park she always turns away at the sight of a low phaeton, in which sits
+a woman with rouged cheeks, and a great number of overdressed children
+and a French bonne, whose name, I am given to understand, is Madame
+Dolores de Tras-os-Montes. Madame de Tras-os-Montes always puts a great
+gold glass to her eye as the Ravenswing's carriage passes, and looks
+into it with a sneer. The two coachmen used always to exchange queer
+winks at each other in the ring, until Madame de Tras-os-Montes lately
+adopted a tremendous chasseur, with huge whiskers and a green and gold
+livery; since which time the formerly named gentlemen do not recognise
+each other.
+
+The Ravenswing's life is one of perpetual triumph on the stage; and, as
+every one of the fashionable men about town have been in love with her,
+you may fancy what a pretty character she has. Lady Thrum would die
+sooner than speak to that unhappy young woman; and, in fact, the Thrums
+have a new pupil, who is a siren without the dangerous qualities of one,
+who has the person of Venus, and the mind of a Muse, and who is coming
+out at one of the theatres immediately. Baroski says, "De liddle
+Rafenschwing is just as font of me as effer!" People are very shy about
+receiving her in society; and when she goes to sing at a concert, Miss
+Prim starts up and skurries off in a state of the greatest alarm, lest
+"that person" should speak to her.
+
+Walker is voted a good, easy, rattling, gentlemanly fellow, and nobody's
+enemy but his own. His wife, they say, is dreadfully extravagant: and,
+indeed, since his marriage, and in spite of his wife's large income,
+he has been in the Bench several times; but she signs some bills and
+he comes out again, and is as gay and genial as ever. All mercantile
+speculations he has wisely long since given up; he likes to throw a
+main of an evening, as I have said, and to take his couple of bottles at
+dinner. On Friday he attends at the theatre for his wife's salary, and
+transacts no other business during the week. He grows exceedingly stout,
+dyes his hair, and has a bloated purple look about the nose and cheeks,
+very different from that which first charmed the heart of Morgiana.
+
+By the way, Eglantine has been turned out of the Bower of Bloom, and now
+keeps a shop at Tunbridge Wells. Going down thither last year without a
+razor, I asked a fat seedy man lolling in a faded nankeen jacket at the
+door of a tawdry little shop in the Pantiles, to shave me. He said in
+reply, "Sir, I do not practise in that branch of the profession!" and
+turned back into the little shop. It was Archibald Eglantine. But in the
+wreck of his fortunes he still has his captain's uniform, and his grand
+cross of the order of the Castle and Falcon of Panama.
+
+                    *****
+
+POSTSCRIPT.
+
+G. Fitz-Boodle, Esq., to O. Yorke, Esq.
+
+ZUM TRIERISCHEN HOP, COBLENZ: July 10, 1843.
+
+MY DEAR YORKE,--The story of the Ravenswing was written a long time
+since, and I never could account for the bad taste of the publishers of
+the metropolis who refused it an insertion in their various magazines.
+This fact would never have been alluded to but for the following
+circumstance:--
+
+Only yesterday, as I was dining at this excellent hotel, I remarked a
+bald-headed gentleman in a blue coat and brass buttons, who looked
+like a colonel on half-pay, and by his side a lady and a little boy
+of twelve, whom the gentleman was cramming with an amazing quantity of
+cherries and cakes. A stout old dame in a wonderful cap and ribands was
+seated by the lady's side, and it was easy to see they were English, and
+I thought I had already made their acquaintance elsewhere.
+
+The younger of the ladies at last made a bow with an accompanying blush.
+
+"Surely," said I, "I have the honour of speaking to Mrs. Ravenswing?"
+
+"Mrs. Woolsey, sir," said the gentleman; "my wife has long since left
+the stage:" and at this the old lady in the wonderful cap trod on my
+toes very severely, and nodded her head and all her ribands in a most
+mysterious way. Presently the two ladies rose and left the table, the
+elder declaring that she heard the baby crying.
+
+"Woolsey, my dear, go with your mamma," said Mr. Woolsey, patting the
+boy on the head. The young gentleman obeyed the command, carrying off a
+plate of macaroons with him.
+
+"Your son is a fine boy, sir," said I.
+
+"My step-son, sir," answered Mr. Woolsey; and added, in a louder voice,
+"I knew you, Mr. Fitz-Boodle, at once, but did not mention your name
+for fear of agitating my wife. She don't like to have the memory of old
+times renewed, sir; her former husband, whom you know, Captain Walker,
+made her very unhappy. He died in America, sir, of this, I fear"
+(pointing to the bottle), "and Mrs. W. quitted the stage a year before I
+quitted business. Are you going on to Wiesbaden?"
+
+They went off in their carriage that evening, the boy on the box making
+great efforts to blow out of the postilion's tasselled horn.
+
+I am glad that poor Morgiana is happy at last, and hasten to inform
+you of the fact. I am going to visit the old haunts of my youth at
+Pumpernickel. Adieu.
+
+Yours,
+
+G. F.-B.
+
+
+
+
+MR. AND MRS. FRANK BERRY.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I. THE FIGHT AT SLAUGHTER HOUSE.
+
+I am very fond of reading about battles, and have most of Marlborough's
+and Wellington's at my fingers' ends; but the most tremendous combat I
+ever saw, and one that interests me to think of more than Malplaquet or
+Waterloo (which, by the way, has grown to be a downright nuisance, so
+much do men talk of it after dinner, prating most disgustingly about
+"the Prussians coming up," and what not)--I say the most tremendous
+combat ever known was that between Berry and Biggs the gown-boy, which
+commenced in a certain place called Middle Briars, situated in the midst
+of the cloisters that run along the side of the playground of Slaughter
+House School, near Smithfield, London. It was there, madam, that your
+humble servant had the honour of acquiring, after six years' labour,
+that immense fund of classical knowledge which in after life has been so
+exceedingly useful to him.
+
+The circumstances of the quarrel were these:--Biggs, the gown-boy (a
+man who, in those days, I thought was at least seven feet high, and was
+quite thunderstruck to find in after life that he measured no more than
+five feet four), was what we called "second cock" of the school; the
+first cock was a great big, good-humoured, lazy, fair-haired fellow,
+Old Hawkins by name, who, because he was large and good-humoured, hurt
+nobody. Biggs, on the contrary, was a sad bully; he had half-a-dozen
+fags, and beat them all unmercifully. Moreover, he had a little brother,
+a boarder in Potky's house, whom, as a matter of course, he hated and
+maltreated worse than anyone else.
+
+Well, one day, because young Biggs had not brought his brother his
+hoops, or had not caught a ball at cricket, or for some other equally
+good reason, Biggs the elder so belaboured the poor little fellow, that
+Berry, who was sauntering by, and saw the dreadful blows which the
+elder brother was dealing to the younger with his hockey-stick, felt
+a compassion for the little fellow (perhaps he had a jealousy against
+Biggs, and wanted to try a few rounds with him, but that I can't vouch
+for); however, Berry passing by, stopped and said, "Don't you think
+you have thrashed the boy enough, Biggs?" He spoke this in a very civil
+tone, for he never would have thought of interfering rudely with the
+sacred privilege that an upper boy at a public school always has of
+beating a junior, especially when they happen to be brothers.
+
+The reply of Biggs, as might be expected, was to hit young Biggs with
+the hockey-stick twice as hard as before, until the little wretch howled
+with pain. "I suppose it's no business of yours, Berry," said Biggs,
+thumping away all the while, and laid on worse and worse.
+
+Until Berry (and, indeed, little Biggs) could bear it no longer, and the
+former, bouncing forward, wrenched the stick out of old Biggs's hands,
+and sent it whirling out of the cloister window, to the great wonder of
+a crowd of us small boys, who were looking on. Little boys always like
+to see a little companion of their own soundly beaten.
+
+"There!" said Berry, looking into Biggs's face, as much as to say, "I've
+gone and done it;" and he added to the brother, "Scud away, you little
+thief; I've saved you this time."
+
+"Stop, young Biggs!" roared out his brother after a pause; "or I'll
+break every bone in your infernal scoundrelly skin!"
+
+Young Biggs looked at Berry, then at his brother, then came at his
+brother's order, as if back to be beaten again; but lost heart, and ran
+away as fast as his little legs could carry him.
+
+"I'll do for him another time," said Biggs. "Here, under-boy, take my
+coat;" and we all began to gather round and formed a ring.
+
+"We had better wait till after school, Biggs," cried Berry, quite cool,
+but looking a little pale. "There are only five minutes now, and it will
+take you more than that to thrash me."
+
+Biggs upon this committed a great error; for he struck Berry slightly
+across the face with the back of his hand, saying, "You are in a funk."
+But this was a feeling which Frank Berry did not in the least entertain;
+for, in reply to Biggs's back-hander, and as quick as thought, and with
+all his might and main--pong! he delivered a blow upon old Biggs's nose
+that made the claret spirt, and sent the second cock down to the ground
+as if he had been shot.
+
+He was up again, however, in a minute, his face white and gashed with
+blood, his eyes glaring, a ghastly spectacle; and Berry, meanwhile,
+had taken his coat off, and by this time there were gathered in the
+cloisters, on all the windows, and upon each other's shoulders, one
+hundred and twenty young gentlemen at the very least, for the news had
+gone out through the playground of "a fight between Berry and Biggs."
+
+But Berry was quite right in his remark about the propriety of deferring
+the business, for at this minute Mr. Chip, the second master, came down
+the cloisters going into school, and grinned in his queer way as he saw
+the state of Biggs's face. "Holloa, Mr. Biggs," said he, "I suppose you
+have run against a finger-post." That was the regular joke with us at
+school, and you may be sure we all laughed heartily: as we always did
+when Mr. Chip made a joke, or anything like a joke. "You had better go
+to the pump, sir, and get yourself washed, and not let Doctor Buckle see
+you in that condition." So saying, Mr. Chip disappeared to his duties in
+the under-school, whither all we little boys followed him.
+
+It was Wednesday, a half-holiday, as everybody knows, and boiled-beef
+day at Slaughter House. I was in the same boarding-house with Berry,
+and we all looked to see whether he ate a good dinner, just as one would
+examine a man who was going to be hanged. I recollected, in after-life,
+in Germany, seeing a friend who was going to fight a duel eat five larks
+for his breakfast, and thought I had seldom witnessed greater courage.
+Berry ate moderately of the boiled beef--BOILED CHILD we used to call it
+at school, in our elegant jocular way; he knew a great deal better than
+to load his stomach upon the eve of such a contest as was going to take
+place.
+
+Dinner was very soon over, and Mr. Chip, who had been all the while
+joking Berry, and pressing him to eat, called him up into his study,
+to the great disappointment of us all, for we thought he was going to
+prevent the fight; but no such thing. The Reverend Edward Chip took
+Berry into his study, and poured him out two glasses of port-wine, which
+he made him take with a biscuit, and patted him on the back, and went
+off. I have no doubt he was longing, like all of us, to see the battle;
+but etiquette, you know, forbade.
+
+When we went out into the green, Old Hawkins was there--the great
+Hawkins, the cock of the school. I have never seen the man since, but
+still think of him as of something awful, gigantic, mysterious: he who
+could thrash everybody, who could beat all the masters; how we longed
+for him to put in his hand and lick Buckle! He was a dull boy, not very
+high in the school, and had all his exercises written for him. Buckle
+knew this, but respected him; never called him up to read Greek plays;
+passed over all his blunders, which were many; let him go out of
+half-holidays into the town as he pleased: how should any man dare to
+stop him--the great calm magnanimous silent Strength! They say he licked
+a Life-Guardsman: I wonder whether it was Shaw, who killed all those
+Frenchmen? No, it could not be Shaw, for he was dead au champ d'honneur;
+but he WOULD have licked Shaw if he had been alive. A bargeman I know he
+licked, at Jack Randall's in Slaughter House Lane. Old Hawkins was too
+lazy to play at cricket; he sauntered all day in the sunshine about the
+green, accompanied by little Tippins, who was in the sixth form, laughed
+and joked at Hawkins eternally, and was the person who wrote all his
+exercises.
+
+Instead of going into town this afternoon, Hawkins remained at Slaughter
+House, to see the great fight between the second and third cocks.
+
+The different masters of the school kept boarding-houses (such as
+Potky's, Chip's, Wickens's, Pinney's, and so on), and the playground, or
+"green" as it was called, although the only thing green about the place
+was the broken glass on the walls that separate Slaughter House from
+Wilderness Row and Goswell Street--(many a time have I seen Mr. Pickwick
+look out of his window in that street, though we did not know him
+then)--the playground, or green, was common to all. But if any stray
+boy from Potky's was found, for instance, in, or entering into, Chip's
+house, the most dreadful tortures were practised upon him: as I can
+answer in my own case.
+
+Fancy, then, our astonishment at seeing a little three-foot wretch, of
+the name of Wills, one of Hawkins's fags (they were both in Potky's),
+walk undismayed amongst us lions at Chip's house, as the "rich and rare"
+young lady did in Ireland. We were going to set upon him and devour or
+otherwise maltreat him, when he cried out in a little shrill impertinent
+voice, "TELL BERRY I WANT HIM!"
+
+We all roared with laughter. Berry was in the sixth form, and Wills or
+any under-boy would as soon have thought of "wanting" him, as I should
+of wanting the Duke of Wellington.
+
+Little Wills looked round in an imperious kind of way. "Well," says he,
+stamping his foot, "do you hear? TELL BERRY THAT HAWKINS WANTS HIM!"
+
+As for resisting the law of Hawkins, you might as soon think of
+resisting immortal Jove. Berry and Tolmash, who was to be his
+bottle-holder, made their appearance immediately, and walked out into
+the green where Hawkins was waiting, and, with an irresistible audacity
+that only belonged to himself, in the face of nature and all the
+regulations of the place, was smoking a cigar. When Berry and Tolmash
+found him, the three began slowly pacing up and down in the sunshine,
+and we little boys watched them.
+
+Hawkins moved his arms and hands every now and then, and was evidently
+laying down the law about boxing. We saw his fists darting out every now
+and then with mysterious swiftness, hitting one, two, quick as thought,
+as if in the face of an adversary; now his left hand went up, as if
+guarding his own head, now his immense right fist dreadfully flapped
+the air, as if punishing his imaginary opponent's miserable ribs. The
+conversation lasted for some ten minutes, about which time gown-boys'
+dinner was over, and we saw these youths, in their black horned-button
+jackets and knee-breeches, issuing from their door in the cloisters.
+There were no hoops, no cricket-bats, as usual on a half-holiday. Who
+would have thought of play in expectation of such tremendous sport as
+was in store for us?
+
+Towering among the gown-boys, of whom he was the head and the tyrant,
+leaning upon Bushby's arm, and followed at a little distance by many
+curious pale awe-stricken boys, dressed in his black silk stockings,
+which he always sported, and with a crimson bandanna tied round his
+waist, came BIGGS. His nose was swollen with the blow given before
+school, but his eyes flashed fire. He was laughing and sneering with
+Bushby, and evidently intended to make minced meat of Berry.
+
+The betting began pretty freely: the bets were against poor Berry. Five
+to three were offered--in ginger-beer. I took six to four in raspberry
+open tarts. The upper boys carried the thing farther still: and I know
+for a fact, that Swang's book amounted to four pound three (but he
+hedged a good deal), and Tittery lost seventeen shillings in a single
+bet to Pitts, who took the odds.
+
+As Biggs and his party arrived, I heard Hawkins say to Berry, "For
+heaven's sake, my boy, fib with your right, and MIND HIS LEFT HAND!"
+
+Middle Briars was voted to be too confined a space for the combat, and
+it was agreed that it should take place behind the under-school in
+the shade, whither we all went. Hawkins, with his immense silver
+hunting-watch, kept the time; and water was brought from the pump close
+to Notley's the pastrycook's, who did not admire fisticuffs at all on
+half-holidays, for the fights kept the boys away from his shop. Gutley
+was the only fellow in the school who remained faithful to him, and
+he sat on the counter--the great gormandising brute!--eating tarts the
+whole day.
+
+This famous fight, as every Slaughter House man knows, lasted for two
+hours and twenty-nine minutes, by Hawkins's immense watch. All this time
+the air resounded with cries of "Go it, Berry!" "Go it, Biggs!" "Pitch
+into him!" "Give it him!" and so on. Shall I describe the hundred and
+two rounds of the combat?--No!--It would occupy too much space, and the
+taste for such descriptions has passed away. [3]
+
+1st round. Both the combatants fresh, and in prime order. The weight
+and inches somewhat on the gown-boy's side. Berry goes gallantly in,
+and delivers a clinker on the gown-boy's jaw. Biggs makes play with his
+left. Berry down.
+
+                    *****
+
+4th round. Claret drawn in profusion from the gown-boy's grogshop. (He
+went down, and had his front tooth knocked out, but the blow cut Berry's
+knuckles a great deal.)
+
+                    *****
+
+15th round. Chancery. Fibbing. Biggs makes dreadful work with his
+left. Break away. Rally. Biggs down. Betting still six to four on the
+gown-boy.
+
+                    *****
+
+20th round. The men both dreadfully punished. Berry somewhat shy of his
+adversary's left hand.
+
+                    *****
+
+29th to 42nd round. The Chipsite all this while breaks away from the
+gown-boy's left, and goes down on a knee. Six to four on the gown-boy,
+until the fortieth round, when the bets became equal.
+
+                    *****
+
+102nd and last round. For half-an-hour the men had stood up to each
+other, but were almost too weary to strike. The gown-boy's face hardly
+to be recognised, swollen and streaming with blood. The Chipsite in
+a similar condition, and still more punished about his side from his
+enemy's left hand. Berry gives a blow at his adversary's face, and falls
+over him as he falls.
+
+The gown-boy can't come up to time. And thus ended the great fight of
+Berry and Biggs.
+
+And what, pray, has this horrid description of a battle and parcel of
+schoolboys to do with Men's Wives?
+
+What has it to do with Men's Wives?--A great deal more, madam, than you
+think for. Only read Chapter II., and you shall hear.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II. THE COMBAT AT VERSAILLES.
+
+I afterwards came to be Berry's fag, and, though beaten by him daily, he
+allowed, of course, no one else to lay a hand upon me, and I got no more
+thrashing than was good for me. Thus an intimacy grew up between us,
+and after he left Slaughter House and went into the dragoons, the honest
+fellow did not forget his old friend, but actually made his appearance
+one day in the playground in moustaches and a braided coat, and gave
+me a gold pencil-case and a couple of sovereigns. I blushed when I took
+them, but take them I did; and I think the thing I almost best recollect
+in my life, is the sight of Berry getting behind an immense bay
+cab-horse, which was held by a correct little groom, and was waiting
+near the school in Slaughter House Square. He proposed, too, to have me
+to "Long's," where he was lodging for the time; but this invitation
+was refused on my behalf by Doctor Buckle, who said, and possibly with
+correctness, that I should get little good by spending my holiday with
+such a scapegrace.
+
+Once afterwards he came to see me at Christ Church, and we made a show
+of writing to one another, and didn't, and always had a hearty mutual
+goodwill; and though we did not quite burst into tears on parting, were
+yet quite happy when occasion threw us together, and so almost lost
+sight of each other. I heard lately that Berry was married, and am
+rather ashamed to say, that I was not so curious as even to ask the
+maiden name of his lady.
+
+Last summer I was at Paris, and had gone over to Versailles to meet a
+party, one of which was a young lady to whom I was tenderly--But, never
+mind. The day was rainy, and the party did not keep its appointment;
+and after yawning through the interminable Palace picture-galleries, and
+then making an attempt to smoke a cigar in the Palace garden--for which
+crime I was nearly run through the body by a rascally sentinel--I was
+driven, perforce, into the great bleak lonely place before the Palace,
+with its roads branching off to all the towns in the world, which Louis
+and Napoleon once intended to conquer, and there enjoyed my favourite
+pursuit at leisure, and was meditating whether I should go back to
+"Vefour's" for dinner, or patronise my friend M. Duboux of the "Hotel
+des Reservoirs" who gives not only a good dinner, but as dear a one as
+heart can desire. I was, I say, meditating these things, when a carriage
+passed by. It was a smart low calash, with a pair of bay horses and a
+postilion in a drab jacket that twinkled with innumerable buttons, and
+I was too much occupied in admiring the build of the machine, and
+the extreme tightness of the fellow's inexpressibles, to look at the
+personages within the carriage, when the gentleman roared out "Fitz!"
+and the postilion pulled up, and the lady gave a shrill scream, and
+a little black-muzzled spaniel began barking and yelling with all his
+might, and a man with moustaches jumped out of the vehicle, and began
+shaking me by the hand.
+
+"Drive home, John," said the gentleman: "I'll be with you, my love, in
+an instant--it's an old friend. Fitz, let me present you to Mrs. Berry."
+
+The lady made an exceedingly gentle inclination of her black-velvet
+bonnet, and said, "Pray, my love, remember that it is just dinner-time.
+However, never mind ME." And with another slight toss and a nod to the
+postilion, that individual's white leather breeches began to jump up
+and down again in the saddle, and the carriage disappeared, leaving me
+shaking my old friend Berry by the hand.
+
+He had long quitted the army, but still wore his military beard,
+which gave to his fair pink face a fierce and lion-like look. He was
+extraordinarily glad to see me, as only men are glad who live in a small
+town, or in dull company. There is no destroyer of friendships like
+London, where a man has no time to think of his neighbour, and has
+far too many friends to care for them. He told me in a breath of his
+marriage, and how happy he was, and straight insisted that I must
+come home to dinner, and see more of Angelica, who had invited me
+herself--didn't I hear her?
+
+"Mrs. Berry asked YOU, Frank; but I certainly did not hear her ask ME!"
+
+"She would not have mentioned the dinner but that she meant me to ask
+you. I know she did," cried Frank Berry. "And, besides--hang it--I'm
+master of the house. So come you shall. No ceremony, old boy--one or two
+friends--snug family party--and we'll talk of old times over a bottle of
+claret."
+
+There did not seem to me to be the slightest objection to this
+arrangement, except that my boots were muddy, and my coat of the morning
+sort. But as it was quite impossible to go to Paris and back again in
+a quarter of an hour, and as a man may dine with perfect comfort to
+himself in a frock-coat, it did not occur to me to be particularly
+squeamish, or to decline an old friend's invitation upon a pretext so
+trivial.
+
+Accordingly we walked to a small house in the Avenue de Paris, and were
+admitted first into a small garden ornamented by a grotto, a fountain,
+and several nymphs in plaster-of-Paris, then up a mouldy old steep stair
+into a hall, where a statue of Cupid and another of Venus welcomed us
+with their eternal simper; then through a salle-a-manger where covers
+were laid for six; and finally to a little saloon, where Fido the dog
+began to howl furiously according to his wont.
+
+It was one of the old pavilions that had been built for a pleasure-house
+in the gay days of Versailles, ornamented with abundance of damp Cupids
+and cracked gilt cornices, and old mirrors let into the walls, and
+gilded once, but now painted a dingy French white. The long low windows
+looked into the court, where the fountain played its ceaseless dribble,
+surrounded by numerous rank creepers and weedy flowers, but in the midst
+of which the statues stood with their bases quite moist and green.
+
+I hate fountains and statues in dark confined places: that cheerless,
+endless plashing of water is the most inhospitable sound ever heard. The
+stiff grin of those French statues, or ogling Canova Graces, is by no
+means more happy, I think, than the smile of a skeleton, and not so
+natural. Those little pavilions in which the old roues sported were
+never meant to be seen by daylight, depend on't. They were lighted up
+with a hundred wax-candles, and the little fountain yonder was meant
+only to cool their claret. And so, my first impression of Berry's
+place of abode was rather a dismal one. However, I heard him in the
+salle-a-manger drawing the corks, which went off with a CLOOP, and that
+consoled me.
+
+As for the furniture of the rooms appertaining to the Berrys, there
+was a harp in a leather case, and a piano, and a flute-box, and a huge
+tambour with a Saracen's nose just begun, and likewise on the table
+a multiplicity of those little gilt books, half sentimental and half
+religious, which the wants of the age and of our young ladies have
+produced in such numbers of late. I quarrel with no lady's taste in that
+way; but heigho! I had rather that Mrs. Fitz-Boodle should read "Humphry
+Clinker!"
+
+Besides these works, there was a "Peerage," of course. What genteel
+family was ever without one?
+
+I was making for the door to see Frank drawing the corks, and was
+bounced at by the amiable little black-muzzled spaniel, who fastened his
+teeth in my pantaloons, and received a polite kick in consequence, which
+sent him howling to the other end of the room, and the animal was just
+in the act of performing that feat of agility, when the door opened
+and madame made her appearance. Frank came behind her, peering over her
+shoulder with rather an anxious look.
+
+Mrs. Berry is an exceedingly white and lean person. She has thick
+eyebrows, which meet rather dangerously over her nose, which is Grecian,
+and a small mouth with no lips--a sort of feeble pucker in the face as
+it were. Under her eyebrows are a pair of enormous eyes, which she is
+in the habit of turning constantly ceiling-wards. Her hair is rather
+scarce, and worn in bandeaux, and she commonly mounts a sprig of laurel,
+or a dark flower or two, which with the sham tour--I believe that is the
+name of the knob of artificial hair that many ladies sport--gives her
+a rigid and classical look. She is dressed in black, and has invariably
+the neatest of silk stockings and shoes: for forsooth her foot is a fine
+one, and she always sits with it before her, looking at it, stamping it,
+and admiring it a great deal. "Fido," she says to her spaniel, "you have
+almost crushed my poor foot;" or, "Frank," to her husband, "bring me a
+footstool:" or, "I suffer so from cold in the feet," and so forth; but
+be the conversation what it will, she is always sure to put HER FOOT
+into it.
+
+She invariably wears on her neck the miniature of her late father, Sir
+George Catacomb, apothecary to George III.; and she thinks those two men
+the greatest the world ever saw. She was born in Baker Street, Portman
+Square, and that is saying almost enough of her. She is as long, as
+genteel, and as dreary, as that deadly-lively place, and sports, by
+way of ornament, her papa's hatchment, as it were, as every tenth Baker
+Street house has taught her.
+
+What induced such a jolly fellow as Frank Berry to marry Miss Angelica
+Catacomb no one can tell. He met her, he says, at a ball at Hampton
+Court, where his regiment was quartered, and where, to this day, lives
+"her aunt Lady Pash." She alludes perpetually in conversation to that
+celebrated lady; and if you look in the "Baronetage" to the pedigree
+of the Pash family, you may see manuscript notes by Mrs. Frank Berry,
+relative to them and herself. Thus, when you see in print that Sir John
+Pash married Angelica, daughter of Graves Catacomb, Esquire, in a neat
+hand you find written, AND SISTER OF THE LATE SIR GEORGE CATACOMB, OF
+BAKER STREET, PORTMAN SQUARE: "A.B." follows of course. It is a wonder
+how fond ladies are of writing in books, and signing their charming
+initials! Mrs. Berry's before-mentioned little gilt books are scored
+with pencil-marks, or occasionally at the margin with a!--note of
+interjection, or the words "TOO TRUE, A.B." and so on. Much may be
+learned with regard to lovely woman by a look at the books she reads in;
+and I had gained no inconsiderable knowledge of Mrs. Berry by the ten
+minutes spent in the drawing-room, while she was at her toilet in the
+adjoining bedchamber.
+
+"You have often heard me talk of George Fitz," says Berry, with an
+appealing look to madame.
+
+"Very often," answered his lady, in a tone which clearly meant "a great
+deal too much." "Pray, sir," continued she, looking at my boots with all
+her might, "are we to have your company at dinner?"
+
+"Of course you are, my dear; what else do you think he came for? You
+would not have the man go back to Paris to get his evening coat, would
+you?"
+
+"At least, my love, I hope you will go and put on YOURS, and change
+those muddy boots. Lady Pash will be here in five minutes, and you know
+Dobus is as punctual as clockwork." Then turning to me with a sort of
+apology that was as consoling as a box on the ear, "We have some friends
+at dinner, sir, who are rather particular persons; but I am sure when
+they hear that you only came on a sudden invitation, they will excuse
+your morning dress.--Bah! what a smell of smoke!"
+
+With this speech madame placed herself majestically on a sofa, put out
+her foot, called Fido, and relapsed into an icy silence. Frank had long
+since evacuated the premises, with a rueful look at his wife, but never
+daring to cast a glance at me. I saw the whole business at once: here
+was this lion of a fellow tamed down by a she Van Amburgh, and fetching
+and carrying at her orders a great deal more obediently than her little
+yowling black-muzzled darling of a Fido.
+
+I am not, however, to be tamed so easily, and was determined in this
+instance not to be in the least disconcerted, or to show the smallest
+sign of ill-humour: so to renouer the conversation, I began about Lady
+Pash.
+
+"I heard you mention the name of Pash, I think?" said I. "I know a lady
+of that name, and a very ugly one it is too."
+
+"It is most probably not the same person," answered Mrs. Berry, with
+a look which intimated that a fellow like me could never have had the
+honour to know so exalted a person.
+
+"I mean old Lady Pash of Hampton Court. Fat woman--fair, ain't she?--and
+wears an amethyst in her forehead, has one eye, a blond wig, and dresses
+in light green?"
+
+"Lady Pash, sir, is MY AUNT," answered Mrs. Berry (not altogether
+displeased, although she expected money from the old lady; but you know
+we love to hear our friends abused when it can be safely done).
+
+"Oh, indeed! she was a daughter of old Catacomb's of Windsor, I
+remember, the undertaker. They called her husband Callipash, and her
+ladyship Pishpash. So you see, madam, that I know the whole family!"
+
+"Mr. Fitz-Simons!" exclaimed Mrs. Berry, rising, "I am not accustomed to
+hear nicknames applied to myself and my family; and must beg you,
+when you honour us with your company, to spare our feelings as much as
+possible. Mr. Catacomb had the confidence of his SOVEREIGN, sir, and Sir
+John Pash was of Charles II.'s creation. The one was my uncle, sir; the
+other my grandfather!"
+
+"My dear madam, I am extremely sorry, and most sincerely apologise
+for my inadvertence. But you owe me an apology too: my name is not
+Fitz-Simons, but Fitz-Boodle."
+
+"What! of Boodle Hall--my husband's old friend; of Charles I.'s
+creation? My dear sir, I beg you a thousand pardons, and am delighted
+to welcome a person of whom I have heard Frank say so much. Frank!" (to
+Berry, who soon entered in very glossy boots and a white waistcoat), "do
+you know, darling, I mistook Mr. Fitz-Boodle for Mr. Fitz-Simons--that
+horrid Irish horse-dealing person; and I never, never, never can pardon
+myself for being so rude to him."
+
+The big eyes here assumed an expression that was intended to kill me
+outright with kindness: from being calm, still, reserved, Angelica
+suddenly became gay, smiling, confidential, and folatre. She told me she
+had heard I was a sad creature, and that she intended to reform me, and
+that I must come and see Frank a great deal.
+
+Now, although Mr. Fitz-Simons, for whom I was mistaken, is as low
+a fellow as ever came out of Dublin, and having been a captain in
+somebody's army, is now a blackleg and horse-dealer by profession; yet,
+if I had brought him home to Mrs. Fitz-Boodle to dinner, I should have
+liked far better that that imaginary lady should have received him with
+decent civility, and not insulted the stranger within her husband's
+gates. And, although it was delightful to be received so cordially
+when the mistake was discovered, yet I found that ALL Berry's old
+acquaintances were by no means so warmly welcomed; for another old
+school-chum presently made his appearance, who was treated in a very
+different manner.
+
+This was no other than poor Jack Butts, who is a sort of small artist
+and picture-dealer by profession, and was a dayboy at Slaughter House
+when we were there, and very serviceable in bringing in sausages,
+pots of pickles, and other articles of merchandise, which we could not
+otherwise procure. The poor fellow has been employed, seemingly, in the
+same office of fetcher and carrier ever since; and occupied that post
+for Mrs. Berry. It was, "Mr. Butts, have you finished that drawing for
+Lady Pash's album?" and Butts produced it; and, "Did you match the silk
+for me at Delille's?" and there was the silk, bought, no doubt, with the
+poor fellow's last five francs; and, "Did you go to the furniture-man in
+the Rue St. Jacques; and bring the canary-seed, and call about my
+shawl at that odious dawdling Madame Fichet's; and have you brought the
+guitar-strings?"
+
+Butts hadn't brought the guitar-strings; and thereupon Mrs. Berry's
+countenance assumed the same terrible expression which I had formerly
+remarked in it, and which made me tremble for Berry.
+
+"My dear Angelica," though said he with some spirit, "Jack Butts isn't
+a baggage-waggon, nor a Jack-of-all-trades; you make him paint pictures
+for your women's albums, and look after your upholsterer, and your
+canary-bird, and your milliners, and turn rusty because he forgets your
+last message."
+
+"I did not turn RUSTY, Frank, as you call it elegantly. I'm very much
+obliged to Mr. Butts for performing my commissions--very much obliged.
+And as for not paying for the pictures to which you so kindly allude,
+Frank, _I_ should never have thought of offering payment for so paltry a
+service; but I'm sure I shall be happy to pay if Mr. Butts will send me
+in his bill."
+
+"By Jove, Angelica, this is too much!" bounced out Berry; but the little
+matrimonial squabble was abruptly ended, by Berry's French man flinging
+open the door and announcing MILADI PASH and Doctor Dobus, which two
+personages made their appearance.
+
+The person of old Pash has been already parenthetically described. But
+quite different from her dismal niece in temperament, she is as jolly an
+old widow as ever wore weeds. She was attached somehow to the Court, and
+has a multiplicity of stories about the princesses and the old King,
+to which Mrs. Berry never fails to call your attention in her grave,
+important way. Lady Pash has ridden many a time to the Windsor hounds;
+she made her husband become a member of the Four-in-hand Club, and has
+numberless stories about Sir Godfrey Webster, Sir John Lade, and the
+old heroes of those times. She has lent a rouleau to Dick Sheridan,
+and remembers Lord Byron when he was a sulky slim young lad. She says
+Charles Fox was the pleasantest fellow she ever met with, and has not
+the slightest objection to inform you that one of the princes was very
+much in love with her. Yet somehow she is only fifty-two years old, and
+I have never been able to understand her calculation. One day or other
+before her eye went out, and before those pearly teeth of hers were
+stuck to her gums by gold, she must have been a pretty-looking body
+enough. Yet, in spite of the latter inconvenience, she eats and
+drinks too much every day, and tosses off a glass of maraschino with a
+trembling pudgy hand, every finger of which twinkles with a dozen, at
+least, of old rings. She has a story about every one of those rings, and
+a stupid one too. But there is always something pleasant, I think, in
+stupid family stories: they are good-hearted people who tell them.
+
+As for Mrs. Muchit, nothing need be said of her; she is Pash's
+companion; she has lived with Lady Pash since the peace. Nor does my
+Lady take any more notice of her than of the dust of the earth. She
+calls her "poor Muchit," and considers her a half-witted creature. Mrs.
+Berry hates her cordially, and thinks she is a designing toad-eater,
+who has formed a conspiracy to rob her of her aunt's fortune. She never
+spoke a word to poor Muchit during the whole of dinner, or offered to
+help her to anything on the table.
+
+In respect to Dobus, he is an old Peninsular man, as you are made to
+know before you have been very long in his company; and, like most army
+surgeons, is a great deal more military in his looks and conversation,
+than the combatant part of the forces. He has adopted the
+sham-Duke-of-Wellington air, which is by no means uncommon in veterans;
+and, though one of the easiest and softest fellows in existence, speaks
+slowly and briefly, and raps out an oath or two occasionally, as it is
+said a certain great captain does. Besides the above, we sat down to
+table with Captain Goff, late of the ---- Highlanders; the Reverend
+Lemuel Whey, who preaches at St. Germains; little Cutler, and the
+Frenchman, who always WILL be at English parties on the Continent, and
+who, after making some frightful efforts to speak English, subsides and
+is heard no more. Young married ladies and heads of families generally
+have him for the purpose of waltzing, and in return he informs his
+friends of the club or the cafe that he has made the conquest of a
+charmante Anglaise. Listen to me, all family men who read this! and
+never LET AN UNMARRIED FRENCHMAN INTO YOUR DOORS. This lecture alone is
+worth the price of the book. It is not that they do any harm in one case
+out of a thousand, Heaven forbid! but they mean harm. They look on our
+Susannas with unholy dishonest eyes. Hearken to two of the grinning
+rogues chattering together as they clink over the asphalte of
+the Boulevard with lacquered boots, and plastered hair, and waxed
+moustaches, and turned-down shirt-collars, and stays and goggling eyes,
+and hear how they talk of a good simple giddy vain dull Baker
+Street creature, and canvass her points, and show her letters, and
+insinuate--never mind, but I tell you my soul grows angry when I think
+of the same; and I can't hear of an Englishwoman marrying a Frenchman
+without feeling a sort of shame and pity for her. [4]
+
+To return to the guests. The Reverend Lemuel Whey is a tea-party man,
+with a curl on his forehead and a scented pocket-handkerchief. He ties
+his white neckcloth to a wonder, and I believe sleeps in it. He brings
+his flute with him; and prefers Handel, of course; but has one or two
+pet profane songs of the sentimental kind, and will occasionally lift
+up his little pipe in a glee. He does not dance, but the honest fellow
+would give the world to do it; and he leaves his clogs in the passage,
+though it is a wonder he wears them, for in the muddiest weather he
+never has a speck on his foot. He was at St. John's College, Cambridge,
+and was rather gay for a term or two, he says. He is, in a word, full of
+the milk-and-water of human kindness, and his family lives near Hackney.
+
+As for Goff, he has a huge shining bald forehead, and immense bristling
+Indian-red whiskers. He wears white wash-leather gloves, drinks fairly,
+likes a rubber, and has a story for after dinner, beginning, "Doctor, ye
+racklackt Sandy M'Lellan, who joined us in the West Indies. Wal, sir,"
+etc. These and little Cutler made up the party.
+
+Now it may not have struck all readers, but any sharp fellow conversant
+with writing must have found out long ago, that if there had been
+something exceedingly interesting to narrate with regard to this dinner
+at Frank Berry's, I should have come out with it a couple of pages
+since, nor have kept the public looking for so long a time at the
+dish-covers and ornaments of the table.
+
+But the simple fact must now be told, that there was nothing of the
+slightest importance occurred at this repast, except that it gave me an
+opportunity of studying Mrs. Berry in many different ways; and, in spite
+of the extreme complaisance which she now showed me, of forming, I am
+sorry to say, a most unfavourable opinion of that fair lady. Truth to
+tell, I would much rather she should have been civil to Mrs. Muchit,
+than outrageously complimentary to your humble servant; and as she
+professed not to know what on earth there was for dinner, would it not
+have been much more natural for her not to frown, and bob, and wink,
+and point, and pinch her lips as often as Monsieur Anatole, her French
+domestic, not knowing the ways of English dinner-tables, placed anything
+out of its due order? The allusions to Boodle Hall were innumerable,
+and I don't know any greater bore than to be obliged to talk of a place
+which belongs to one's elder brother. Many questions were likewise asked
+about the dowager and her Scotch relatives, the Plumduffs, about whom
+Lady Pash knew a great deal, having seen them at Court and at Lord
+Melville's. Of course she had seen them at Court and at Lord Melville's,
+as she might have seen thousands of Scotchmen besides; but what mattered
+it to me, who care not a jot for old Lady Fitz-Boodle? "When you write,
+you'll say you met an old friend of her Ladyship's," says Mrs. Berry,
+and I faithfully promised I would when I wrote; but if the New Post
+Office paid us for writing letters (as very possibly it will soon), I
+could not be bribed to send a line to old Lady Fitz.
+
+In a word, I found that Berry, like many simple fellows before him, had
+made choice of an imperious, ill-humoured, and underbred female for a
+wife, and could see with half an eye that he was a great deal too much
+her slave.
+
+The struggle was not over yet, however. Witness that little encounter
+before dinner; and once or twice the honest fellow replied rather
+smartly during the repast, taking especial care to atone as much
+as possible for his wife's inattention to Jack and Mrs. Muchit, by
+particular attention to those personages, whom he helped to everything
+round about and pressed perpetually to champagne; he drank but little
+himself, for his amiable wife's eye was constantly fixed on him.
+
+Just at the conclusion of the dessert, madame, who had bouded Berry
+during dinner-time, became particularly gracious to her lord and master,
+and tenderly asked me if I did not think the French custom was a good
+one, of men leaving table with the ladies.
+
+"Upon my word, ma'am," says I, "I think it's a most abominable
+practice."
+
+"And so do I," says Cutler.
+
+"A most abominable practice! Do you hear THAT?" cries Berry, laughing,
+and filling his glass.
+
+"I'm sure, Frank, when we are alone you always come to the
+drawing-room," replies the lady, sharply.
+
+"Oh, yes! when we're alone, darling," says Berry, blushing; "but now
+we're NOT alone--ha, ha! Anatole, du Bordeaux!"
+
+"I'm sure they sat after the ladies at Carlton House; didn't they, Lady
+Pash?" says Dobus, who likes his glass.
+
+"THAT they did!" says my Lady, giving him a jolly nod.
+
+"I racklackt," exclaims Captain Goff, "when I was in the Mauritius, that
+Mestress MacWhirter, who commanded the Saxty-Sackond, used to say, 'Mac,
+if ye want to get lively, ye'll not stop for more than two hours after
+the leddies have laft ye: if ye want to get drunk, ye'll just dine at
+the mass.' So ye see, Mestress Barry, what was Mac's allowance--haw,
+haw! Mester Whey, I'll trouble ye for the o-lives."
+
+But although we were in a clear majority, that indomitable woman, Mrs.
+Berry, determined to make us all as uneasy as possible, and would take
+the votes all round. Poor Jack, of course, sided with her, and Whey said
+he loved a cup of tea and a little music better than all the wine of
+Bordeaux. As for the Frenchman, when Mrs. Berry said, "And what do you
+think, M. le Vicomte?"
+
+"Vat you speak?" said M. de Blagueval, breaking silence for the first
+time during two hours. "Yase--eh? to me you speak?"
+
+"Apry deeny, aimy-voo ally avec les dam?"
+
+"Comment avec les dames?"
+
+"Ally avec les dam com a Parry, ou resty avec les Messew com on
+Onglyterre?"
+
+"Ah, madame! vous me le demandez?" cries the little wretch, starting up
+in a theatrical way, and putting out his hand, which Mrs. Berry took,
+and with this the ladies left the room. Old Lady Pash trotted after her
+niece with her hand in Whey's, very much wondering at such practices,
+which were not in the least in vogue in the reign of George III.
+
+Mrs. Berry cast a glance of triumph at her husband, at the defection;
+and Berry was evidently annoyed that three-eighths of his male forces
+had left him.
+
+But fancy our delight and astonishment, when in a minute they all three
+came back again; the Frenchman looking entirely astonished, and the
+parson and the painter both very queer. The fact is, old downright Lady
+Pash, who had never been in Paris in her life before, and had no notion
+of being deprived of her usual hour's respite and nap, said at once to
+Mrs. Berry, "My dear Angelica, you're surely not going to keep these
+three men here? Send them back to the dining-room, for I've a thousand
+things to say to you." And Angelica, who expects to inherit her aunt's
+property, of course did as she was bid; on which the old lady fell into
+an easy chair, and fell asleep immediately,--so soon, that is, as
+the shout caused by the reappearance of the three gentlemen in the
+dining-room had subsided.
+
+I had meanwhile had some private conversation with little Cutler
+regarding the character of Mrs. Berry. "She's a regular screw,"
+whispered he; "a regular Tartar. Berry shows fight, though, sometimes,
+and I've known him have his own way for a week together. After dinner
+he is his own master, and hers when he has had his share of wine; and
+that's why she will never allow him to drink any."
+
+Was it a wicked, or was it a noble and honourable thought which came
+to us both at the same minute, to rescue Berry from his captivity? The
+ladies, of course, will give their verdict according to their gentle
+natures; but I know what men of courage will think, and by their jovial
+judgment will abide.
+
+We received, then, the three lost sheep back into our innocent fold
+again with the most joyous shouting and cheering. We made Berry (who
+was, in truth, nothing loth) order up I don't know how much more claret.
+We obliged the Frenchman to drink malgre lui, and in the course of
+a short time we had poor Whey in such a state of excitement, that he
+actually volunteered to sing a song, which he said he had heard at some
+very gay supper-party at Cambridge, and which begins:
+
+     "A pye sat on a pear-tree,
+      A pye sat on a pear-tree,
+      A pye sat on a pear-tree,
+        Heigh-ho, heigh-ho, heigh-ho!"
+
+Fancy Mrs. Berry's face as she looked in, in the midst of that
+Bacchanalian ditty, when she saw no less a person than the Reverend
+Lemuel Whey carolling it!
+
+"Is it you, my dear?" cries Berry, as brave now as any Petruchio. "Come
+in, and sit down, and hear Whey's song."
+
+"Lady Pash is asleep, Frank," said she.
+
+"Well, darling! that's the very reason. Give Mrs. Berry a glass, Jack,
+will you?"
+
+"Would you wake your aunt, sir?" hissed out madame.
+
+"NEVER MIND ME, LOVE! I'M AWAKE, AND LIKE IT!" cried the venerable Lady
+Pash from the salon. "Sing away, gentlemen!"
+
+At which we all set up an audacious cheer; and Mrs. Berry flounced back
+to the drawing-room, but did not leave the door open, that her aunt
+might hear our melodies.
+
+Berry had by this time arrived at that confidential state to which a
+third bottle always brings the well-regulated mind; and he made a clean
+confession to Cutler and myself of his numerous matrimonial annoyances.
+He was not allowed to dine out, he said, and but seldom to ask his
+friends to meet him at home. He never dared smoke a cigar for the life
+of him, not even in the stables. He spent the mornings dawdling in
+eternal shops, the evenings at endless tea-parties, or in reading
+poems or missionary tracts to his wife. He was compelled to take physic
+whenever she thought he looked a little pale, to change his shoes and
+stockings whenever he came in from a walk. "Look here," said he, opening
+his chest, and shaking his fist at Dobus; "look what Angelica and that
+infernal Dobus have brought me to."
+
+I thought it might be a flannel waistcoat into which madame had
+forced him; but it was worse: I give you my word of honour it was a
+PITCH-PLASTER!
+
+We all roared at this, and the doctor as loud as anyone; but he vowed
+that he had no hand in the pitch-plaster. It was a favourite family
+remedy of the late apothecary Sir George Catacomb, and had been put on
+by Mrs. Berry's own fair hands.
+
+When Anatole came in with coffee, Berry was in such high courage, that
+he told him to go to the deuce with it; and we never caught sight of
+Lady Pash more, except when, muffled up to the nose, she passed through
+the salle-a-manger to go to her carriage, in which Dobus and the parson
+were likewise to be transported to Paris. "Be a man, Frank," says she,
+"and hold your own"--for the good old lady had taken her nephew's part
+in the matrimonial business--"and you, Mr. Fitz-Boodle, come and see him
+often. You're a good fellow, take old one-eyed Callipash's word for it.
+Shall I take you to Paris?"
+
+Dear kind Angelica, she had told her aunt all I said!
+
+"Don't go, George," says Berry, squeezing me by the hand. So I said I
+was going to sleep at Versailles that night; but if she would give a
+convoy to Jack Butts, it would be conferring a great obligation on him;
+with which favour the old lady accordingly complied, saying to him,
+with great coolness, "Get up and sit with John in the rumble, Mr.
+What-d'ye-call-'im." The fact is, the good old soul despises an artist
+as much as she does a tailor.
+
+Jack tripped to his place very meekly; and "Remember Saturday," cried
+the Doctor; and "Don't forget Thursday!" exclaimed the divine,--"a
+bachelor's party, you know." And so the cavalcade drove thundering down
+the gloomy old Avenue de Paris.
+
+The Frenchman, I forgot to say, had gone away exceedingly ill long
+before; and the reminiscences of "Thursday" and "Saturday" evoked by
+Dobus and Whey, were, to tell the truth, parts of our conspiracy; for in
+the heat of Berry's courage, we had made him promise to dine with us all
+round en garcon; with all except Captain Goff, who "racklacted" that he
+was engaged every day for the next three weeks: as indeed he is, to
+a thirty-sous ordinary which the gallant officer frequents, when not
+invited elsewhere.
+
+Cutler and I then were the last on the field; and though we were for
+moving away, Berry, whose vigour had, if possible, been excited by the
+bustle and colloquy in the night air, insisted upon dragging us back
+again, and actually proposed a grill for supper!
+
+We found in the salle-a-manger a strong smell of an extinguished lamp,
+and Mrs. Berry was snuffing out the candles on the sideboard.
+
+"Hullo, my dear!" shouts Berry: "easy, if you please; we've not done
+yet!"
+
+"Not done yet, Mr. Berry!" groans the lady, in a hollow sepulchral tone.
+
+"No, Mrs. B., not done yet. We are going to have some supper, ain't we,
+George?"
+
+"I think it's quite time to go home," said Mr. Fitz-Boodle (who, to say
+the truth, began to tremble himself).
+
+"I think it is, sir; you are quite right, sir; you will pardon me,
+gentlemen, I have a bad headache, and will retire."
+
+"Good-night, my dear!" said that audacious Berry. "Anatole, tell the
+cook to broil a fowl and bring some wine."
+
+If the loving couple had been alone, or if Cutler had not been an
+attache to the embassy, before whom she was afraid of making herself
+ridiculous, I am confident that Mrs. Berry would have fainted away on
+the spot; and that all Berry's courage would have tumbled down lifeless
+by the side of her. So she only gave a martyrised look, and left the
+room; and while we partook of the very unnecessary repast, was good
+enough to sing some hymn-tunes to an exceedingly slow movement in the
+next room, intimating that she was awake, and that, though suffering,
+she found her consolations in religion.
+
+These melodies did not in the least add to our friend's courage. The
+devilled fowl had, somehow, no devil in it. The champagne in the glasses
+looked exceedingly flat and blue. The fact is, that Cutler and I were
+now both in a state of dire consternation, and soon made a move for
+our hats, and lighting each a cigar in the hall, made across the little
+green where the Cupids and nymphs were listening to the dribbling
+fountain in the dark.
+
+"I'm hanged if I don't have a cigar too!" says Berry, rushing after us;
+and accordingly putting in his pocket a key about the size of a shovel,
+which hung by the little handle of the outer grille, forth he sallied,
+and joined us in our fumigation.
+
+He stayed with us a couple of hours, and returned homewards in perfect
+good spirits, having given me his word of honour he would dine with us
+the next day. He put his immense key into the grille, and unlocked it;
+but the gate would not open: IT WAS BOLTED WITHIN.
+
+He began to make a furious jangling and ringing at the bell; and in
+oaths, both French and English, called upon the recalcitrant Anatole.
+
+After much tolling of the bell, a light came cutting across the crevices
+of the inner door; it was thrown open, and a figure appeared with a
+lamp,--a tall slim figure of a woman, clothed in white from head to
+foot.
+
+It was Mrs. Berry, and when Cutler and I saw her, we both ran away as
+fast as our legs could carry us.
+
+Berry, at this, shrieked with a wild laughter. "Remember to-morrow, old
+boys," shouted he,--"six o'clock;" and we were a quarter of a mile off
+when the gate closed, and the little mansion of the Avenue de Paris was
+once more quiet and dark.
+
+The next afternoon, as we were playing at billiards, Cutler saw Mrs.
+Berry drive by in her carriage; and as soon as rather a long rubber was
+over, I thought I would go and look for our poor friend, and so went
+down to the Pavilion. Every door was open, as the wont is in France, and
+I walked in unannounced, and saw this:
+
+He was playing a duet with her on the flute. She had been out but for
+half-an-hour, after not speaking all the morning; and having seen Cutler
+at the billiard-room window, and suspecting we might take advantage
+of her absence, she had suddenly returned home again, and had flung
+herself, weeping, into her Frank's arms, and said she could not bear to
+leave him in anger. And so, after sitting for a little while sobbing on
+his knee, she had forgotten and forgiven every thing!
+
+The dear angel! I met poor Frank in Bond Street only yesterday; but he
+crossed over to the other side of the way. He had on goloshes, and is
+grown very fat and pale. He has shaved off his moustaches, and, instead,
+wears a respirator. He has taken his name off all his clubs, and lives
+very grimly in Baker Street. Well, ladies, no doubt you say he is right:
+and what are the odds, so long as YOU are happy?
+
+
+
+
+DENNIS HAGGARTY'S WIFE.
+
+
+There was an odious Irishwoman who with her daughter used to frequent
+the "Royal Hotel" at Leamington some years ago, and who went by the name
+of Mrs. Major Gam. Gam had been a distinguished officer in His Majesty's
+service, whom nothing but death and his own amiable wife could overcome.
+The widow mourned her husband in the most becoming bombazeen she could
+muster, and had at least half an inch of lampblack round the immense
+visiting tickets which she left at the houses of the nobility and gentry
+her friends.
+
+Some of us, I am sorry to say, used to call her Mrs. Major Gammon; for
+if the worthy widow had a propensity, it was to talk largely of herself
+and family (of her own family, for she held her husband's very cheap),
+and of the wonders of her paternal mansion, Molloyville, county of Mayo.
+She was of the Molloys of that county; and though I never heard of the
+family before, I have little doubt, from what Mrs. Major Gam stated,
+that they were the most ancient and illustrious family of that part of
+Ireland. I remember there came down to see his aunt a young fellow
+with huge red whiskers and tight nankeens, a green coat, and an awful
+breastpin, who, after two days' stay at the Spa, proposed marriage to
+Miss S----, or, in default, a duel with her father; and who drove a
+flash curricle with a bay and a grey, and who was presented with much
+pride by Mrs. Gam as Castlereagh Molloy of Molloyville. We all agreed
+that he was the most insufferable snob of the whole season, and were
+delighted when a bailiff came down in search of him.
+
+Well, this is all I know personally of the Molloyville family; but at
+the house if you met the widow Gam, and talked on any subject in life,
+you were sure to hear of it. If you asked her to have peas at dinner,
+she would say, "Oh, sir, after the peas at Molloyville, I really don't
+care for any others,--do I, dearest Jemima? We always had a dish in the
+month of June, when my father gave his head gardener a guinea (we had
+three at Molloyville), and sent him with his compliments and a quart of
+peas to our neighbour, dear Lord Marrowfat. What a sweet place Marrowfat
+Park is! isn't it, Jemima?" If a carriage passed by the window, Mrs.
+Major Gammon would be sure to tell you that there were three carriages
+at Molloyville, "the barouche, the chawiot, and the covered cyar." In
+the same manner she would favour you with the number and names of the
+footmen of the establishment; and on a visit to Warwick Castle (for this
+bustling woman made one in every party of pleasure that was formed from
+the hotel), she gave us to understand that the great walk by the river
+was altogether inferior to the principal avenue of Molloyville Park.
+I should not have been able to tell so much about Mrs. Gam and her
+daughter, but that, between ourselves, I was particularly sweet upon a
+young lady at the time, whose papa lived at the "Royal," and was under
+the care of Doctor Jephson.
+
+The Jemima appealed to by Mrs. Gam in the above sentence was, of course,
+her daughter, apostrophised by her mother, "Jemima, my soul's darling?"
+or, "Jemima, my blessed child!" or, "Jemima, my own love!" The
+sacrifices that Mrs. Gam had made for that daughter were, she said,
+astonishing. The money she had spent in masters upon her, the illnesses
+through which she had nursed her, the ineffable love the mother bore
+her, were only known to Heaven, Mrs. Gam said. They used to come into
+the room with their arms round each other's waists: at dinner between
+the courses the mother would sit with one hand locked in her daughter's;
+and if only two or three young men were present at the time, would be
+pretty sure to kiss her Jemima more than once during the time whilst the
+bohea was poured out.
+
+As for Miss Gam, if she was not handsome, candour forbids me to say she
+was ugly. She was neither one nor t'other. She was a person who wore
+ringlets and a band round her forehead; she knew four songs, which
+became rather tedious at the end of a couple of months' acquaintance;
+she had excessively bare shoulders; she inclined to wear numbers of
+cheap ornaments, rings, brooches, ferronnieres, smelling-bottles, and
+was always, we thought, very smartly dressed: though old Mrs. Lynx
+hinted that her gowns and her mother's were turned over and over again,
+and that her eyes were almost put out by darning stockings.
+
+These eyes Miss Gam had very large, though rather red and weak, and used
+to roll them about at every eligible unmarried man in the place. But
+though the widow subscribed to all the balls, though she hired a fly
+to go to the meet of the hounds, though she was constant at church, and
+Jemima sang louder than any person there except the clerk, and though,
+probably, any person who made her a happy husband would be invited down
+to enjoy the three footmen, gardeners, and carriages at Molloyville, yet
+no English gentleman was found sufficiently audacious to propose.
+Old Lynx used to say that the pair had been at Tunbridge, Harrogate,
+Brighton, Ramsgate, Cheltenham, for this eight years past; where they
+had met, it seemed, with no better fortune. Indeed, the widow looked
+rather high for her blessed child: and as she looked with the contempt
+which no small number of Irish people feel upon all persons who get
+their bread by labour or commerce; and as she was a person whose
+energetic manners, costume, and brogue were not much to the taste of
+quiet English country gentlemen, Jemima--sweet, spotless flower--still
+remained on her hands, a thought withered, perhaps, and seedy.
+
+Now, at this time, the 120th Regiment was quartered at Weedon Barracks,
+and with the corps was a certain Assistant-Surgeon Haggarty, a large,
+lean, tough, raw-boned man, with big hands, knock-knees, and carroty
+whiskers, and, withal, as honest a creature as ever handled a lancet.
+Haggarty, as his name imports, was of the very same nation as Mrs. Gam,
+and, what is more, the honest fellow had some of the peculiarities which
+belonged to the widow, and bragged about his family almost as much as
+she did. I do not know of what particular part of Ireland they were
+kings; but monarchs they must have been, as have been the ancestors of
+so many thousand Hibernian families; but they had been men of no small
+consideration in Dublin, "where my father," Haggarty said, "is as well
+known as King William's statue, and where he 'rowls his carriage, too,'
+let me tell ye."
+
+Hence, Haggarty was called by the wags "Rowl the carriage," and several
+of them made inquiries of Mrs. Gam regarding him: "Mrs. Gam, when you
+used to go up from Molloyville to the Lord Lieutenant's balls, and had
+your townhouse in Fitzwilliam Square, used you to meet the famous Doctor
+Haggarty in society?"
+
+"Is it Surgeon Haggarty of Gloucester Street ye mean? The black Papist!
+D'ye suppose that the Molloys would sit down to table with a creature of
+that sort?"
+
+"Why, isn't he the most famous physician in Dublin, and doesn't he rowl
+his carriage there?"
+
+"The horrid wretch! He keeps a shop, I tell ye, and sends his sons out
+with the medicine. He's got four of them off into the army, Ulick and
+Phil, and Terence and Denny, and now it's Charles that takes out the
+physic. But how should I know about these odious creatures? Their mother
+was a Burke, of Burke's Town, county Cavan, and brought Surgeon Haggarty
+two thousand pounds. She was a Protestant; and I am surprised how she
+could have taken up with a horrid odious Popish apothecary!"
+
+From the extent of the widow's information, I am led to suppose that the
+inhabitants of Dublin are not less anxious about their neighbours than
+are the natives of English cities; and I think it is very probable that
+Mrs. Gam's account of the young Haggartys who carried out the medicine
+is perfectly correct, for a lad in the 120th made a caricature of
+Haggarty coming out of a chemist's shop with an oilcloth basket under
+his arm, which set the worthy surgeon in such a fury that there would
+have been a duel between him and the ensign, could the fiery doctor have
+had his way.
+
+Now, Dionysius Haggarty was of an exceedingly inflammable temperament,
+and it chanced that of all the invalids, the visitors, the young squires
+of Warwickshire, the young manufacturers from Birmingham, the young
+officers from the barracks--it chanced, unluckily for Miss Gam and
+himself, that he was the only individual who was in the least smitten
+by her personal charms. He was very tender and modest about his love,
+however, for it must be owned that he respected Mrs. Gam hugely, and
+fully admitted, like a good simple fellow as he was, the superiority of
+that lady's birth and breeding to his own. How could he hope that he, a
+humble assistant-surgeon, with a thousand pounds his Aunt Kitty left
+him for all his fortune--how could he hope that one of the race of
+Molloyville would ever condescend to marry him?
+
+Inflamed, however, by love, and inspired by wine, one day at a picnic at
+Kenilworth, Haggarty, whose love and raptures were the talk of the whole
+regiment, was induced by his waggish comrades to make a proposal in
+form.
+
+"Are you aware, Mr. Haggarty, that you are speaking to a Molloy?"
+was all the reply majestic Mrs. Gam made when, according to the usual
+formula, the fluttering Jemima referred her suitor to "Mamma." She left
+him with a look which was meant to crush the poor fellow to earth; she
+gathered up her cloak and bonnet, and precipitately called for her fly.
+She took care to tell every single soul in Leamington that the son of
+the odious Papist apothecary had had the audacity to propose for her
+daughter (indeed a proposal, coming from whatever quarter it may,
+does no harm), and left Haggarty in a state of extreme depression and
+despair.
+
+His down-heartedness, indeed, surprised most of his acquaintances in and
+out of the regiment, for the young lady was no beauty, and a doubtful
+fortune, and Dennis was a man outwardly of an unromantic turn, who
+seemed to have a great deal more liking for beefsteak and whisky-punch
+than for women, however fascinating.
+
+But there is no doubt this shy uncouth rough fellow had a warmer and
+more faithful heart hid within him than many a dandy who is as handsome
+as Apollo. I, for my part, never can understand why a man falls in love,
+and heartily give him credit for so doing, never mind with what or
+whom. THAT I take to be a point quite as much beyond an individual's own
+control as the catching of the small-pox or the colour of his hair. To
+the surprise of all, Assistant-Surgeon Dionysius Haggarty was deeply and
+seriously in love; and I am told that one day he very nearly killed the
+before-mentioned young ensign with a carving-knife, for venturing to
+make a second caricature, representing Lady Gammon and Jemima in a
+fantastical park, surrounded by three gardeners, three carriages, three
+footmen, and the covered cyar. He would have no joking concerning them.
+He became moody and quarrelsome of habit. He was for some time much more
+in the surgery and hospital than in the mess. He gave up the eating, for
+the most part, of those vast quantities of beef and pudding, for which
+his stomach used to afford such ample and swift accommodation; and when
+the cloth was drawn, instead of taking twelve tumblers, and singing
+Irish melodies, as he used to do, in a horrible cracked yelling voice,
+he would retire to his own apartment, or gloomily pace the barrack-yard,
+or madly whip and spur a grey mare he had on the road to Leamington,
+where his Jemima (although invisible for him) still dwelt.
+
+The season at Leamington coming to a conclusion by the withdrawal of the
+young fellows who frequented that watering-place, the widow Gam retired
+to her usual quarters for the other months of the year. Where these
+quarters were, I think we have no right to ask, for I believe she had
+quarrelled with her brother at Molloyville, and besides, was a great
+deal too proud to be a burden on anybody.
+
+Not only did the widow quit Leamington, but very soon afterwards the
+120th received its marching orders, and left Weedon and Warwickshire.
+Haggarty's appetite was by this time partially restored, but his love
+was not altered, and his humour was still morose and gloomy. I am
+informed that at this period of his life he wrote some poems relative to
+his unhappy passion; a wild set of verses of several lengths, and in
+his handwriting, being discovered upon a sheet of paper in which a
+pitch-plaster was wrapped up, which Lieutenant and Adjutant Wheezer was
+compelled to put on for a cold.
+
+Fancy then, three years afterwards, the surprise of all Haggarty's
+acquaintances on reading in the public papers the following
+announcement:
+
+"Married, at Monkstown on the 12th instant, Dionysius Haggarty, Esq.,
+of H.M. 120th Foot, to Jemima Amelia Wilhelmina Molloy, daughter of the
+late Major Lancelot Gam, R.M., and granddaughter of the late, and niece
+of the present Burke Bodkin Blake Molloy, Esq., Molloyville, county
+Mayo."
+
+"Has the course of true love at last begun to run smooth?" thought I, as
+I laid down the paper; and the old times, and the old leering bragging
+widow, and the high shoulders of her daughter, and the jolly days with
+the 120th, and Doctor Jephson's one-horse chaise, and the Warwickshire
+hunt, and--and Louisa S----, but never mind HER,--came back to my mind.
+Has that good-natured simple fellow at last met with his reward? Well,
+if he has not to marry the mother-in-law too, he may get on well enough.
+
+Another year announced the retirement of Assistant-Surgeon Haggarty
+from the 120th, where he was replaced by Assistant-Surgeon Angus
+Rothsay Leech, a Scotchman, probably; with whom I have not the least
+acquaintance, and who has nothing whatever to do with this little
+history.
+
+Still more years passed on, during which time I will not say that I kept
+a constant watch upon the fortunes of Mr. Haggarty and his lady; for,
+perhaps, if the truth were known, I never thought for a moment about
+them; until one day, being at Kingstown, near Dublin, dawdling on
+the beach, and staring at the Hill of Howth, as most people at that
+watering-place do, I saw coming towards me a tall gaunt man, with a pair
+of bushy red whiskers, of which I thought I had seen the like in former
+years, and a face which could be no other than Haggarty's. It was
+Haggarty, ten years older than when we last met, and greatly more grim
+and thin. He had on one shoulder a young gentleman in a dirty tartan
+costume, and a face exceedingly like his own peeping from under a
+battered plume of black feathers, while with his other hand he was
+dragging a light green go-cart, in which reposed a female infant of some
+two years old. Both were roaring with great power of lungs.
+
+As soon as Dennis saw me, his face lost the dull puzzled expression
+which had seemed to characterise it; he dropped the pole of the go-cart
+from one hand, and his son from the other, and came jumping forward to
+greet me with all his might, leaving his progeny roaring in the road.
+
+"Bless my sowl," says he, "sure it's Fitz-Boodle? Fitz, don't you
+remember me? Dennis Haggarty of the 120th? Leamington, you know? Molloy,
+my boy, hould your tongue, and stop your screeching, and Jemima's too;
+d'ye hear? Well, it does good to sore eyes to see an old face. How fat
+you're grown, Fitz; and were ye ever in Ireland before? and a'n't ye
+delighted with it? Confess, now, isn't it beautiful?"
+
+This question regarding the merits of their country, which I have
+remarked is put by most Irish persons, being answered in a satisfactory
+manner, and the shouts of the infants appeased from an apple-stall
+hard by, Dennis and I talked of old times; I congratulated him on his
+marriage with the lovely girl whom we all admired, and hoped he had a
+fortune with her, and so forth. His appearance, however, did not bespeak
+a great fortune: he had an old grey hat, short old trousers, an old
+waistcoat with regimental buttons, and patched Blucher boots, such as
+are not usually sported by persons in easy life.
+
+"Ah!" says he, with a sigh, in reply to my queries, "times are changed
+since them days, Fitz-Boodle. My wife's not what she was--the beautiful
+creature you knew her. Molloy, my boy, run off in a hurry to your mamma,
+and tell her an English gentleman is coming home to dine; for you'll
+dine with me, Fitz, in course?" And I agreed to partake of that meal;
+though Master Molloy altogether declined to obey his papa's orders with
+respect to announcing the stranger.
+
+"Well, I must announce you myself," said Haggarty, with a smile. "Come,
+it's just dinner-time, and my little cottage is not a hundred yards
+off." Accordingly, we all marched in procession to Dennis's little
+cottage, which was one of a row and a half of one-storied houses, with
+little courtyards before them, and mostly with very fine names on the
+doorposts of each. "Surgeon Haggarty" was emblazoned on Dennis's gate,
+on a stained green copper-plate; and, not content with this, on the
+door-post above the bell was an oval with the inscription of "New
+Molloyville." The bell was broken, of course; the court, or garden-path,
+was mouldy, weedy, seedy; there were some dirty rocks, by way of
+ornament, round a faded glass-plat in the centre, some clothes and
+rags hanging out of most part of the windows of New Molloyville, the
+immediate entrance to which was by a battered scraper, under a broken
+trellis-work, up which a withered creeper declined any longer to climb.
+
+"Small, but snug," says Haggarty: "I'll lead the way, Fitz; put your hat
+on the flower-pot there, and turn to the left into the drawing-room."
+A fog of onions and turf-smoke filled the whole of the house, and gave
+signs that dinner was not far off. Far off? You could hear it frizzling
+in the kitchen, where the maid was also endeavouring to hush the crying
+of a third refractory child. But as we entered, all three of Haggarty's
+darlings were in full roar.
+
+"Is it you, Dennis?" cried a sharp raw voice, from a dark corner in
+the drawing-room to which we were introduced, and in which a dirty
+tablecloth was laid for dinner, some bottles of porter and a cold
+mutton-bone being laid out on a rickety grand piano hard by. "Ye're
+always late, Mr. Haggarty. Have you brought the whisky from Nowlan's?
+I'll go bail ye've not, now."
+
+"My dear, I've brought an old friend of yours and mine to take pot-luck
+with us to-day," said Dennis.
+
+"When is he to come?" said the lady. At which speech I was rather
+surprised, for I stood before her.
+
+"Here he is, Jemima my love," answered Dennis, looking at me. "Mr.
+Fitz-Boodle: don't you remember him in Warwickshire, darling?"
+
+"Mr. Fitz-Boodle! I am very glad to see him," said the lady, rising and
+curtseying with much cordiality.
+
+Mrs. Haggarty was blind.
+
+Mrs. Haggarty was not only blind, but it was evident that smallpox
+had been the cause of her loss of vision. Her eyes were bound with a
+bandage, her features were entirely swollen, scarred and distorted by
+the horrible effects of the malady. She had been knitting in a corner
+when we entered, and was wrapped in a very dirty bedgown. Her voice to
+me was quite different to that in which she addressed her husband. She
+spoke to Haggarty in broad Irish: she addressed me in that most odious
+of all languages--Irish-English, endeavouring to the utmost to disguise
+her brogue, and to speak with the true dawdling distingue English air.
+
+"Are you long in I-a-land?" said the poor creature in this accent. "You
+must faind it a sad ba'ba'ous place, Mr Fitz-Boodle, I'm shu-ah! It was
+vary kaind of you to come upon us en famille, and accept a dinner sans
+ceremonie. Mr. Haggarty, I hope you'll put the waine into aice, Mr.
+Fitz-Boodle must be melted with this hot weathah."
+
+For some time she conducted the conversation in this polite strain, and
+I was obliged to say, in reply to a query of hers, that I did not find
+her the least altered, though I should never have recognised her but for
+this rencontre. She told Haggarty with a significant air to get the wine
+from the cellah, and whispered to me that he was his own butlah; and the
+poor fellow, taking the hint, scudded away into the town for a pound of
+beefsteak and a couple of bottles of wine from the tavern.
+
+"Will the childhren get their potatoes and butther here?" said a
+barefoot girl, with long black hair flowing over her face, which she
+thrust in at the door.
+
+"Let them sup in the nursery, Elizabeth, and send--ah! Edwards to me."
+
+"Is it cook you mane, ma'am?" said the girl.
+
+"Send her at once!" shrieked the unfortunate woman; and the noise of
+frying presently ceasing, a hot woman made her appearance, wiping her
+brows with her apron, and asking, with an accent decidedly Hibernian,
+what the misthress wanted.
+
+"Lead me up to my dressing-room, Edwards: I really am not fit to be seen
+in this dishabille by Mr. Fitz-Boodle."
+
+"Fait' I can't!" says Edwards; "sure the masther's at the butcher's, and
+can't look to the kitchen-fire!"
+
+"Nonsense, I must go!" cried Mrs. Haggarty; and Edwards, putting on a
+resigned air, and giving her arm and face a further rub with her apron,
+held out her arm to Mrs. Dennis, and the pair went upstairs.
+
+She left me to indulge my reflections for half-an-hour, at the end of
+which period she came downstairs dressed in an old yellow satin, with
+the poor shoulders exposed just as much as ever. She had mounted a
+tawdry cap, which Haggarty himself must have selected for her. She had
+all sorts of necklaces, bracelets, and earrings in gold, in garnets,
+in mother-of-pearl, in ormolu. She brought in a furious savour of musk,
+which drove the odours of onions and turf-smoke before it; and she
+waved across her wretched angular mean scarred features an old cambric
+handkerchief with a yellow lace-border.
+
+"And so you would have known me anywhere, Mr. Fitz-Boodle?" said she,
+with a grin that was meant to be most fascinating. "I was sure you
+would; for though my dreadful illness deprived me of my sight, it is a
+mercy that it did not change my features or complexion at all!"
+
+This mortification had been spared the unhappy woman; but I don't
+know whether, with all her vanity, her infernal pride, folly, and
+selfishness, it was charitable to leave her in her error.
+
+Yet why correct her? There is a quality in certain people which is
+above all advice, exposure, or correction. Only let a man or woman have
+DULNESS sufficient, and they need bow to no extant authority. A dullard
+recognises no betters; a dullard can't see that he is in the wrong;
+a dullard has no scruples of conscience, no doubts of pleasing, or
+succeeding, or doing right; no qualms for other people's feelings, no
+respect but for the fool himself. How can you make a fool perceive he is
+a fool? Such a personage can no more see his own folly than he can see
+his own ears. And the great quality of Dulness is to be unalterably
+contented with itself. What myriads of souls are there of this admirable
+sort,--selfish, stingy, ignorant, passionate, brutal; bad sons, mothers,
+fathers, never known to do kind actions!
+
+To pause, however, in this disquisition, which was carrying us far off
+Kingstown, New Molloyville, Ireland--nay, into the wide world wherever
+Dulness inhabits--let it be stated that Mrs. Haggarty, from my brief
+acquaintance with her and her mother, was of the order of persons just
+mentioned. There was an air of conscious merit about her, very hard to
+swallow along with the infamous dinner poor Dennis managed, after
+much delay, to get on the table. She did not fail to invite me to
+Molloyville, where she said her cousin would be charmed to see me; and
+she told me almost as many anecdotes about that place as her mother used
+to impart in former days. I observed, moreover, that Dennis cut her
+the favourite pieces of the beefsteak, that she ate thereof with great
+gusto, and that she drank with similar eagerness of the various strong
+liquors at table. "We Irish ladies are all fond of a leetle glass of
+punch," she said, with a playful air, and Dennis mixed her a powerful
+tumbler of such violent grog as I myself could swallow only with some
+difficulty. She talked of her suffering a great deal, of her sacrifices,
+of the luxuries to which she had been accustomed before marriage,--in
+a word, of a hundred of those themes on which some ladies are in the
+custom of enlarging when they wish to plague some husbands.
+
+But honest Dennis, far from being angry at this perpetual, wearisome,
+impudent recurrence to her own superiority, rather encouraged the
+conversation than otherwise. It pleased him to hear his wife discourse
+about her merits and family splendours. He was so thoroughly beaten
+down and henpecked, that he, as it were, gloried in his servitude, and
+fancied that his wife's magnificence reflected credit on himself. He
+looked towards me, who was half sick of the woman and her egotism, as
+if expecting me to exhibit the deepest sympathy, and flung me glances
+across the table as much as to say, "What a gifted creature my Jemima
+is, and what a fine fellow I am to be in possession of her!" When the
+children came down she scolded them, of course, and dismissed them
+abruptly (for which circumstance, perhaps, the writer of these pages
+was not in his heart very sorry), and, after having sat a preposterously
+long time, left us, asking whether we would have coffee there or in her
+boudoir.
+
+"Oh! here, of course," said Dennis, with rather a troubled air, and
+in about ten minutes the lovely creature was led back to us again by
+"Edwards," and the coffee made its appearance. After coffee her husband
+begged her to let Mr. Fitz-Boodle hear her voice: "He longs for some of
+his old favourites."
+
+"No! DO you?" said she; and was led in triumph to the jingling old
+piano, and with a screechy wiry voice, sang those very abominable old
+ditties which I had heard her sing at Leamington ten years back.
+
+Haggarty, as she sang, flung himself back in the chair delighted.
+Husbands always are, and with the same song, one that they have heard
+when they were nineteen years old probably; most Englishmen's tunes have
+that date, and it is rather affecting, I think, to hear an old gentleman
+of sixty or seventy quavering the old ditty that was fresh when HE was
+fresh and in his prime. If he has a musical wife, depend on it he thinks
+her old songs of 1788 are better than any he has heard since: in fact
+he has heard NONE since. When the old couple are in high good-humour the
+old gentleman will take the old lady round the waist, and say, "My dear,
+do sing me one of your own songs," and she sits down and sings with her
+old voice, and, as she sings, the roses of her youth bloom again for a
+moment. Ranelagh resuscitates, and she is dancing a minuet in powder and
+a train.
+
+This is another digression. It was occasioned by looking at poor
+Dennis's face while his wife was screeching (and, believe me, the former
+was the more pleasant occupation). Bottom tickled by the fairies could
+not have been in greater ecstasies. He thought the music was divine;
+and had further reason for exulting in it, which was, that his wife was
+always in a good humour after singing, and never would sing but in that
+happy frame of mind. Dennis had hinted so much in our little colloquy
+during the ten minutes of his lady's absence in the "boudoir;" so, at
+the conclusion of each piece, we shouted "Bravo!" and clapped our hands
+like mad.
+
+Such was my insight into the life of Surgeon Dionysius Haggarty and his
+wife; and I must have come upon him at a favourable moment too, for poor
+Dennis has spoken, subsequently, of our delightful evening at Kingstown,
+and evidently thinks to this day that his friend was fascinated by
+the entertainment there. His inward economy was as follows: he had his
+half-pay, a thousand pounds, about a hundred a year that his father
+left, and his wife had sixty pounds a year from the mother; which the
+mother, of course, never paid. He had no practice, for he was absorbed
+in attention to his Jemima and the children, whom he used to wash, to
+dress, to carry out, to walk, or to ride, as we have seen, and who
+could not have a servant, as their dear blind mother could never be left
+alone. Mrs. Haggarty, a great invalid, used to lie in bed till one, and
+have breakfast and hot luncheon there. A fifth part of his income was
+spent in having her wheeled about in a chair, by which it was his duty
+to walk daily for an allotted number of hours. Dinner would ensue, and
+the amateur clergy, who abound in Ireland, and of whom Mrs. Haggarty
+was a great admirer, lauded her everywhere as a model of resignation and
+virtue, and praised beyond measure the admirable piety with which she
+bore her sufferings.
+
+Well, every man to his taste. It did not certainly appear to me that SHE
+was the martyr of the family.
+
+"The circumstances of my marriage with Jemima," Dennis said to me, in
+some after conversations we had on this interesting subject, "were the
+most romantic and touching you can conceive. You saw what an impression
+the dear girl had made upon me when we were at Weedon; for from the
+first day I set eyes on her, and heard her sing her delightful song of
+'Dark-eyed Maiden of Araby,' I felt, and said to Turniquet of ours, that
+very night, that SHE was the dark-eyed maid of Araby for ME--not that
+she was, you know, for she was born in Shropshire. But I felt that I had
+seen the woman who was to make me happy or miserable for life. You know
+how I proposed for her at Kenilworth, and how I was rejected, and how I
+almost shot myself in consequence--no, you don't know that, for I said
+nothing about it to anyone, but I can tell you it was a very near thing;
+and a very lucky thing for me I didn't do it: for,--would you believe
+it?--the dear girl was in love with me all the time."
+
+"Was she really?" said I, who recollected that Miss Gam's love of those
+days showed itself in a very singular manner; but the fact is, when
+women are most in love they most disguise it.
+
+"Over head and ears in love with poor Dennis," resumed that worthy
+fellow, "who'd ever have thought it? But I have it from the best
+authority, from her own mother, with whom I'm not over and above good
+friends now; but of this fact she assured me, and I'll tell you when and
+how.
+
+"We were quartered at Cork three years after we were at Weedon, and it
+was our last year at home; and a great mercy that my dear girl spoke
+in time, or where should we have been now? Well, one day, marching
+home from parade, I saw a lady seated at an open window, by another who
+seemed an invalid, and the lady at the window, who was dressed in the
+profoundest mourning, cried out, with a scream, 'Gracious, heavens! it's
+Mr. Haggarty of the 120th.'
+
+"'Sure I know that voice,' says I to Whiskerton.
+
+"'It's a great mercy you don't know it a deal too well,' says he: 'it's
+Lady Gammon. She's on some husband-hunting scheme, depend on it, for
+that daughter of hers. She was at Bath last year on the same errand, and
+at Cheltenham the year before, where, Heaven bless you! she's as well
+known as the "Hen and Chickens."'
+
+"'I'll thank you not to speak disrespectfully of Miss Jemima Gam,' said
+I to Whiskerton; 'she's of one of the first families in Ireland, and
+whoever says a word against a woman I once proposed for, insults me,--do
+you understand?'
+
+"'Well, marry her, if you like,' says Whiskerton, quite peevish: 'marry
+her, and be hanged!'
+
+"Marry her! the very idea of it set my brain a-whirling, and made me a
+thousand times more mad than I am by nature.
+
+"You may be sure I walked up the hill to the parade-ground that
+afternoon, and with a beating heart too. I came to the widow's house. It
+was called 'New Molloyville,' as this is. Wherever she takes a house for
+six months she calls it 'New Molloyville;' and has had one in Mallow,
+in Bandon, in Sligo, in Castlebar, in Fermoy, in Drogheda, and the deuce
+knows where besides: but the blinds were down, and though I thought I
+saw somebody behind 'em, no notice was taken of poor Denny Haggarty,
+and I paced up and down all mess-time in hopes of catching a glimpse of
+Jemima, but in vain. The next day I was on the ground again; I was just
+as much in love as ever, that's the fact. I'd never been in that way
+before, look you; and when once caught, I knew it was for life.
+
+"There's no use in telling you how long I beat about the bush, but when
+I DID get admittance to the house (it was through the means of young
+Castlereagh Molloy, whom you may remember at Leamington, and who was
+at Cork for the regatta, and used to dine at our mess, and had taken a
+mighty fancy to me)--when I DID get into the house, I say, I rushed in
+medias res at once; I couldn't keep myself quiet, my heart was too full.
+
+"Oh, Fitz! I shall never forget the day,--the moment I was inthrojuiced
+into the dthrawing-room" (as he began to be agitated, Dennis's brogue
+broke out with greater richness than ever; but though a stranger may
+catch, and repeat from memory, a few words, it is next to impossible for
+him to KEEP UP A CONVERSATION in Irish, so that we had best give up all
+attempts to imitate Dennis). "When I saw old mother Gam," said he, "my
+feelings overcame me all at once. I rowled down on the ground, sir, as
+if I'd been hit by a musket-ball. 'Dearest madam,' says I, 'I'll die if
+you don't give me Jemima.'
+
+"'Heavens, Mr. Haggarty!' says she, 'how you seize me with surprise!
+Castlereagh, my dear nephew, had you not better leave us?' and away he
+went, lighting a cigar, and leaving me still on the floor.
+
+"'Rise, Mr. Haggarty,' continued the widow. 'I will not attempt to deny
+that this constancy towards my daughter is extremely affecting, however
+sudden your present appeal may be. I will not attempt to deny that,
+perhaps, Jemima may have a similar feeling; but, as I said, I never
+could give my daughter to a Catholic.'
+
+"'I'm as good a Protestant as yourself, ma'am,' says I; 'my mother was
+an heiress, and we were all brought up her way.'
+
+"'That makes the matter very different,' says she, turning up the whites
+of her eyes. 'How could I ever have reconciled it to my conscience to
+see my blessed child married to a Papist? How could I ever have taken
+him to Molloyville? Well, this obstacle being removed, _I_ must put
+myself no longer in the way between two young people. _I_ must sacrifice
+myself; as I always have when my darling girl was in question. YOU shall
+see her, the poor dear lovely gentle sufferer, and learn your fate from
+her own lips.'
+
+"'The sufferer, ma'am,' says I; 'has Miss Gam been ill?'
+
+"'What! haven't you heard?' cried the widow. 'Haven't you heard of the
+dreadful illness which so nearly carried her from me? For nine weeks,
+Mr. Haggarty, I watched her day and night, without taking a wink of
+sleep,--for nine weeks she lay trembling between death and life; and I
+paid the doctor eighty-three guineas. She is restored now; but she is
+the wreck of the beautiful creature she was. Suffering, and, perhaps,
+ANOTHER DISAPPOINTMENT--but we won't mention that NOW--have so pulled
+her down. But I will leave you, and prepare my sweet girl for this
+strange, this entirely unexpected visit.'
+
+"I won't tell you what took place between me and Jemima, to whom I was
+introduced as she sat in the darkened room, poor sufferer! nor describe
+to you with what a thrill of joy I seized (after groping about for it)
+her poor emaciated hand. She did not withdraw it; I came out of that
+room an engaged man, sir; and NOW I was enabled to show her that I had
+always loved her sincerely, for there was my will, made three years
+back, in her favour: that night she refused me, as I told ye. I would
+have shot myself, but they'd have brought me in non compos; and my
+brother Mick would have contested the will, and so I determined to live,
+in order that she might benefit by my dying. I had but a thousand pounds
+then: since that my father has left me two more. I willed every shilling
+to her, as you may fancy, and settled it upon her when we married, as we
+did soon after. It was not for some time that I was allowed to see
+the poor girl's face, or, indeed, was aware of the horrid loss she had
+sustained. Fancy my agony, my dear fellow, when I saw that beautiful
+wreck!"
+
+There was something not a little affecting to think, in the conduct of
+this brave fellow, that he never once, as he told his story, seemed to
+allude to the possibility of his declining to marry a woman who was not
+the same as the woman he loved; but that he was quite as faithful to
+her now, as he had been when captivated by the poor tawdry charms of the
+silly Miss of Leamington. It was hard that such a noble heart as this
+should be flung away upon yonder foul mass of greedy vanity. Was it
+hard, or not, that he should remain deceived in his obstinate humility,
+and continue to admire the selfish silly being whom he had chosen to
+worship?
+
+"I should have been appointed surgeon of the regiment," continued
+Dennis, "soon after, when it was ordered abroad to Jamaica, where it now
+is. But my wife would not hear of going, and said she would break her
+heart if she left her mother. So I retired on half-pay, and took this
+cottage; and in case any practice should fall in my way--why, there is
+my name on the brass plate, and I'm ready for anything that comes. But
+the only case that ever DID come was one day when I was driving my wife
+in the chaise; and another, one night, of a beggar with a broken head.
+My wife makes me a present of a baby every year, and we've no debts; and
+between you and me and the post, as long as my mother-in-law is out of
+the house, I'm as happy as I need be."
+
+"What! you and the old lady don't get on well?" said I.
+
+"I can't say we do; it's not in nature, you know," said Dennis, with a
+faint grin. "She comes into the house, and turns it topsy-turvy. When
+she's here I'm obliged to sleep in the scullery. She's never paid her
+daughter's income since the first year, though she brags about her
+sacrifices as if she had ruined herself for Jemima; and besides, when
+she's here, there's a whole clan of the Molloys, horse, foot, and
+dragoons, that are quartered upon us, and eat me out of house and home."
+
+"And is Molloyville such a fine place as the widow described it?" asked
+I, laughing, and not a little curious.
+
+"Oh, a mighty fine place entirely!" said Dennis. "There's the oak park
+of two hundred acres, the finest land ye ever saw, only they've cut all
+the wood down. The garden in the old Molloys' time, they say, was the
+finest ever seen in the West of Ireland; but they've taken all the glass
+to mend the house windows: and small blame to them either. There's a
+clear rent-roll of thirty-five hundred a year, only it's in the hand of
+receivers; besides other debts, for which there is no land security."
+
+"Your cousin-in-law, Castlereagh Molloy, won't come into a large
+fortune?"
+
+"Oh, he'll do very well," said Dennis. "As long as he can get credit,
+he's not the fellow to stint himself. Faith, I was fool enough to put my
+name to a bit of paper for him, and as they could not catch him in Mayo,
+they laid hold of me at Kingstown here. And there was a pretty to do.
+Didn't Mrs. Gam say I was ruining her family, that's all? I paid it by
+instalments (for all my money is settled on Jemima); and Castlereagh,
+who's an honourable fellow, offered me any satisfaction in life. Anyhow,
+he couldn't do more than THAT."
+
+"Of course not: and now you're friends?"
+
+"Yes, and he and his aunt have had a tiff, too; and he abuses her
+properly, I warrant ye. He says that she carried about Jemima from place
+to place, and flung her at the head of every unmarried man in England
+a'most--my poor Jemima, and she all the while dying in love with me!
+As soon as she got over the small-pox--she took it at Fermoy--God bless
+her, I wish I'd been by to be her nurse-tender--as soon as she was
+rid of it, the old lady said to Castlereagh, 'Castlereagh, go to the
+bar'cks, and find out in the Army List where the 120th is.' Off she came
+to Cork hot foot. It appears that while she was ill, Jemima's love for
+me showed itself in such a violent way that her mother was overcome, and
+promised that, should the dear child recover, she would try and bring us
+together. Castlereagh says she would have gone after us to Jamaica."
+
+"I have no doubt she would," said I.
+
+"Could you have a stronger proof of love than that?" cried Dennis. "My
+dear girl's illness and frightful blindness have, of course, injured her
+health and her temper. She cannot in her position look to the children,
+you know, and so they come under my charge for the most part; and her
+temper is unequal, certainly. But you see what a sensitive, refined,
+elegant creature she is, and may fancy that she's often put out by a
+rough fellow like me."
+
+Here Dennis left me, saying it was time to go and walk out the children;
+and I think his story has matter of some wholesome reflection in it for
+bachelors who are about to change their condition, or may console some
+who are mourning their celibacy. Marry, gentlemen, if you like; leave
+your comfortable dinner at the club for cold-mutton and curl-papers at
+your home; give up your books or pleasures, and take to yourselves wives
+and children; but think well on what you do first, as I have no doubt
+you will after this advice and example. Advice is always useful in
+matters of love; men always take it; they always follow other people's
+opinions, not their own: they always profit by example. When they see a
+pretty woman, and feel the delicious madness of love coming over them,
+they always stop to calculate her temper, her money, their own money,
+or suitableness for the married life.... Ha, ha, ha! Let us fool in this
+way no more. I have been in love forty-three times with all ranks and
+conditions of women, and would have married every time if they would
+have let me. How many wives had King Solomon, the wisest of men? And is
+not that story a warning to us that Love is master of the wisest? It is
+only fools who defy him.
+
+I must come, however, to the last, and perhaps the saddest, part of poor
+Denny Haggarty's history. I met him once more, and in such a condition
+as made me determine to write this history.
+
+In the month of June last I happened to be at Richmond, a delightful
+little place of retreat; and there, sunning himself upon the terrace,
+was my old friend of the 120th: he looked older, thinner, poorer,
+and more wretched than I had ever seen him. "What! you have given up
+Kingstown?" said I, shaking him by the hand.
+
+"Yes," says he.
+
+"And is my lady and your family here at Richmond?"
+
+"No," says he, with a sad shake of the head; and the poor fellow's
+hollow eyes filled with tears.
+
+"Good heavens, Denny! what's the matter?" said I. He was squeezing my
+hand like a vice as I spoke.
+
+"They've LEFT me!" he burst out with a dreadful shout of passionate
+grief--a horrible scream which seemed to be wrenched out of his heart.
+"Left me!" said he, sinking down on a seat, and clenching his great
+fists, and shaking his lean arms wildly. "I'm a wise man now, Mr.
+Fitz-Boodle. Jemima has gone away from me, and yet you know how I loved
+her, and how happy we were! I've got nobody now; but I'll die soon,
+that's one comfort: and to think it's she that'll kill me after all!"
+
+The story, which he told with a wild and furious lamentation such as is
+not known among men of our cooler country, and such as I don't like now
+to recall, was a very simple one. The mother-in-law had taken possession
+of the house, and had driven him from it. His property at his marriage
+was settled on his wife. She had never loved him, and told him this
+secret at last, and drove him out of doors with her selfish scorn and
+ill-temper. The boy had died; the girls were better, he said, brought up
+among the Molloys than they could be with him; and so he was quite alone
+in the world, and was living, or rather dying, on forty pounds a year.
+
+His troubles are very likely over by this time. The two fools who caused
+his misery will never read this history of him; THEY never read godless
+stories in magazines: and I wish, honest reader, that you and I went to
+church as much as they do. These people are not wicked BECAUSE of
+their religious observances, but IN SPITE of them. They are too dull to
+understand humility, too blind to see a tender and simple heart under
+a rough ungainly bosom. They are sure that all their conduct towards my
+poor friend here has been perfectly righteous, and that they have given
+proofs of the most Christian virtue. Haggarty's wife is considered by
+her friends as a martyr to a savage husband, and her mother is the angel
+that has come to rescue her. All they did was to cheat him and desert
+him. And safe in that wonderful self-complacency with which the fools
+of this earth are endowed, they have not a single pang of conscience for
+their villany towards him, consider their heartlessness as a proof and
+consequence of their spotless piety and virtue.
+
+
+
+
+FOOTNOTES
+
+[Footnote 1: The words of this song are copyright, nor will the
+copyright be sold for less than twopence-halfpenny.]
+
+[Footnote 2: A French proverbe furnished the author with the notion of
+the rivalry between the Barber and the Tailor.]
+
+[Footnote 3: As it is very probable that many fair readers may not
+approve of the extremely forcible language in which the combat is
+depicted, I beg them to skip it and pass on to the next chapter, and to
+remember that it has been modelled on the style of the very best writers
+of the sporting papers.]
+
+[Footnote 4: Every person who has lived abroad can, of course, point out
+a score of honourable exceptions to the case above hinted at, and knows
+many such unions in which it is the Frenchman who honours the English
+lady by marrying her. But it must be remembered that marrying in France
+means commonly fortune-hunting: and as for the respect in which marriage
+is held in France, let all the French novels in M. Rolandi's library be
+perused by those who wish to come to a decision upon the question.]
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Men's Wives, by William Makepeace Thackeray
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+****The Project Gutenberg Etext of Men's Wives, by Thackeray****
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+
+MEN'S WIVES
+
+
+
+
+Contents.
+
+The Ravenswing.
+
+I.    Which is entirely introductory - contains an account of Miss
+Crump, her suitors, and her family circle.
+
+II.   In which Mr. Walker makes three attempts to ascertain the
+dwelling of Morgiana.
+
+III.  What came of Mr. Walker's discovery of the "Bootjack."
+
+IV.   In which the heroine has a number more lovers, and cuts a very
+dashing figure in the world.
+
+V.    In which Mr. Walker falls into difficulties, and Mrs. Walker
+makes many foolish attempts to rescue him.
+
+VI.   In which Mr. Walker still remains in difficulties, but shows
+great resignation under his misfortunes.
+
+VII.  In which Morgiana advances towards fame and honour, and in
+which several great literary characters make their appearance.
+
+VIII. In which Mr. Walker shows great prudence and forbearance.
+
+Mr. and Mrs. Frank Berry.
+
+I.    The fight at Slaughter House.
+
+II.   The combat at Versailles.
+
+Dennis Haggarty's wife.
+
+
+
+
+MEN'S WIVES BY G. FITZ-BOODLE.
+
+
+
+THE RAVENSWING - CHAPTER I.
+
+
+
+WHICH IS ENTIRELY INTRODUCTORY - CONTAINS AN ACCOUNT OF MISS CRUMP,
+HER SUITORS, AND HER FAMILY CIRCLE.
+
+In a certain quiet and sequestered nook of the retired village of
+London - perhaps in the neighbourhood of Berkeley Square, or at any
+rate somewhere near Burlington Gardens--there was once a house of
+entertainment called the "Bootjack Hotel."  Mr. Crump, the landlord,
+had, in the outset of life, performed the duties of Boots in some
+inn even more frequented than his own, and, far from being ashamed
+of his origin, as many persons are in the days of their prosperity,
+had thus solemnly recorded it over the hospitable gate of his hotel.
+
+Crump married Miss Budge, so well known to the admirers of the
+festive dance on the other side of the water as Miss Delancy; and
+they had one daughter, named Morgiana, after that celebrated part in
+the "Forty Thieves" which Miss Budge performed with unbounded
+applause both at the "Surrey" and "The Wells."  Mrs. Crump sat in a
+little bar, profusely ornamented with pictures of the dancers of all
+ages, from Hillisberg, Rose, Parisot, who plied the light fantastic
+toe in 1805, down to the Sylphides of our day.  There was in the
+collection a charming portrait of herself, done by De Wilde; she was
+in the dress of Morgiana, and in the act of pouring, to very slow
+music, a quantity of boiling oil into one of the forty jars.  In
+this sanctuary she sat, with black eyes, black hair, a purple face
+and a turban, and morning, noon, or night, as you went into the
+parlour of the hotel, there was Mrs. Crump taking tea (with a little
+something in it), looking at the fashions, or reading Cumberland's
+"British Theatre."  The Sunday Times was her paper, for she voted
+the Dispatch, that journal which is taken in by most ladies of her
+profession, to be vulgar and Radical, and loved the theatrical
+gossip in which the other mentioned journal abounds.
+
+The fact is, that the "Royal Bootjack," though a humble, was a very
+genteel house; and a very little persuasion would induce Mr. Crump,
+as he looked at his own door in the sun, to tell you that he had
+himself once drawn off with that very bootjack the top-boots of His
+Royal Highness the Prince of Wales and the first gentleman in
+Europe.  While, then, the houses of entertainment in the
+neighbourhood were loud in their pretended Liberal politics, the
+"Bootjack" stuck to the good old Conservative line, and was only
+frequented by such persons as were of that way of thinking.  There
+were two parlours, much accustomed, one for the gentlemen of the
+shoulder-knot, who came from the houses of their employers hard by;
+another for some "gents who used the 'ouse," as Mrs. Crump would say
+(Heaven bless her!) in her simple Cockniac dialect, and who formed a
+little club there.
+
+I forgot to say that while Mrs. C. was sipping her eternal tea or
+washing up her endless blue china, you might often hear Miss
+Morgiana employed at the little red-silk cottage piano, singing,
+"Come where the haspens quiver," or "Bonny lad, march over hill and
+furrow," or "My art and lute," or any other popular piece of the
+day.  And the dear girl sang with very considerable skill, too, for
+she had a fine loud voice, which, if not always in tune, made up for
+that defect by its great energy and activity; and Morgiana was not
+content with singing the mere tune, but gave every one of the
+roulades, flourishes, and ornaments as she heard them at the
+theatres by Mrs. Humby, Mrs. Waylett, or Madame Vestris.  The girl
+had a fine black eye like her mamma, a grand enthusiasm for the
+stage, as every actor's child will have, and, if the truth must be
+known, had appeared many and many a time at the theatre in Catherine
+Street, in minor parts first, and then in Little Pickle, in
+Desdemona, in Rosina, and in Miss Foote's part where she used to
+dance:  I have not the name to my hand, but think it is Davidson.
+Four times in the week, at least, her mother and she used to sail
+off at night to some place of public amusement, for Mrs. Crump had a
+mysterious acquaintance with all sorts of theatrical personages; and
+the gates of her old haunt "The Wells," of the "Cobourg" (by the
+kind permission of Mrs. Davidge), nay, of the "Lane" and the
+"Market" themselves, flew open before her "Open sesame," as the
+robbers' door did to her colleague, Ali Baba (Hornbuckle), in the
+operatic piece in which she was so famous.
+
+Beer was Mr. Crump's beverage, diversified by a little gin, in the
+evenings; and little need be said of this gentleman, except that he
+discharged his duties honourably, and filled the president's chair
+at the club as completely as it could possibly be filled; for he
+could not even sit in it in his greatcoat, so accurately was the
+seat adapted to him.  His wife and daughter, perhaps, thought
+somewhat slightingly of him, for he had no literary tastes, and had
+never been at a theatre since he took his bride from one.  He was
+valet to Lord Slapper at the time, and certain it is that his
+lordship set him up in the "Bootjack," and that stories HAD been
+told.  But what are such to you or me?  Let bygones be bygones; Mrs.
+Crump was quite as honest as her neighbours, and Miss had five
+hundred pounds to be paid down on the day of her wedding.
+
+Those who know the habits of the British tradesman are aware that he
+has gregarious propensities like any lord in the land; that he loves
+a joke, that he is not averse to a glass; that after the day's toil
+he is happy to consort with men of his degree; and that as society
+is not so far advanced among us as to allow him to enjoy the
+comforts of splendid club-houses, which are open to many persons
+with not a tenth part of his pecuniary means, he meets his friends
+in the cosy tavern parlour, where a neat sanded floor, a large
+Windsor chair, and a glass of hot something and water, make him as
+happy as any of the clubmen in their magnificent saloons.
+
+At the "Bootjack" was, as we have said, a very genteel and select
+society, called the "Kidney Club," from the fact that on Saturday
+evenings a little graceful supper of broiled kidneys was usually
+discussed by the members of the club.  Saturday was their grand
+night; not but that they met on all other nights in the week when
+inclined for festivity:  and indeed some of them could not come on
+Saturdays in the summer having elegant villas in the suburbs, where
+they passed the six-and-thirty hours of recreation that are happily
+to be found at the end of every week.
+
+There was Mr. Balls, the great grocer of South Audley Street, a warm
+man, who, they say, had his twenty thousand pounds; Jack Snaffle, of
+the mews hard by, a capital fellow for a song; Clinker, the
+ironmonger:  all married gentlemen, and in the best line of
+business; Tressle, the undertaker, etc.  No liveries were admitted
+into the room, as may be imagined, but one or two select butlers and
+major-domos joined the circle; for the persons composing it knew
+very well how important it was to be on good terms with these
+gentlemen and many a time my lord's account would never have been
+paid, and my lady's large order never have been given, but for the
+conversation which took place at the "Bootjack," and the friendly
+intercourse subsisting between all the members of the society.
+
+The tiptop men of the society were two bachelors, and two as
+fashionable tradesmen as any in the town:  Mr. Woolsey, from
+Stultz's, of the famous house of Linsey, Woolsey and Co. of Conduit
+Street, Tailors; and Mr. Eglantine, the celebrated perruquier and
+perfumer of Bond Street, whose soaps, razors, and patent ventilating
+scalps are know throughout Europe.  Linsey, the senior partner of
+the tailors' firm had his handsome mansion in Regent's Park, drove
+his buggy, and did little more than lend his name to the house.
+Woolsey lived in it, was the working man of the firm, and it was
+said that his cut was as magnificent as that of any man in the
+profession.  Woolsey and Eglantine were rivals in many ways--rivals
+in fashion, rivals in wit, and, above all, rivals for the hand of an
+amiable young lady whom we have already mentioned, the dark-eyed
+songstress Morgiana Crump.  They were both desperately in love with
+her, that was the truth; and each, in the absence of the other,
+abused his rival heartily.  Of the hairdresser Woolsey said, that as
+for Eglantine being his real name, it was all his (Mr. Woolsey's)
+eye; that he was in the hands of the Jews, and his stock and grand
+shop eaten up by usury.  And with regard to Woolsey, Eglantine
+remarked, that his pretence of being descended from the Cardinal was
+all nonsense; that he was a partner, certainly, in the firm, but had
+only a sixteenth share; and that the firm could never get their
+moneys in, and had an immense number of bad debts in their books.
+As is usual, there was a great deal of truth and a great deal of
+malice in these tales; however, the gentlemen were, take them all in
+all, in a very fashionable way of business, and had their claims to
+Miss Morgiana's hand backed by the parents.  Mr. Crump was a
+partisan of the tailor; while Mrs. C. was a strong advocate for the
+claims of the enticing perfumer.
+
+Now, it was a curious fact, that these two gentlemen were each in
+need of the other's services--Woolsey being afflicted with premature
+baldness, or some other necessity for a wig still more
+fatal--Eglantine being a very fat man, who required much art to make
+his figure at all decent.  He wore a brown frock-coat and frogs, and
+attempted by all sorts of contrivances to hide his obesity; but
+Woolsey's remark, that, dress as he would, he would always look like
+a snob, and that there was only one man in England who could make a
+gentleman of him, went to the perfumer's soul; and if there was one
+thing on earth he longed for (not including the hand of Miss Crump)
+it was to have a coat from Linsey's, in which costume he was sure
+that Morgiana would not resist him.
+
+If Eglantine was uneasy about the coat, on the other hand he
+attacked Woolsey atrociously on the score of his wig; for though the
+latter went to the best makers, he never could get a peruke to sit
+naturally upon him and the unhappy epithet of Mr. Wiggins, applied
+to him on one occasion by the barber, stuck to him ever after in the
+club, and made him writhe when it was uttered.  Each man would have
+quitted the "Kidneys" in disgust long since, but for the other--for
+each had an attraction in the place, and dared not leave the field
+in possession of his rival.
+
+To do Miss Morgiana justice, it must be said, that she did not
+encourage one more than another; but as far as accepting
+eau-de-Cologne and hair-combs from the perfumer--some opera tickets,
+a treat to Greenwich, and a piece of real Genoa velvet for a bonnet
+(it had originally been intended for a waistcoat), from the admiring
+tailor, she had been equally kind to each, and in return had made
+each a present of a lock of her beautiful glossy hair.  It was all
+she had to give, poor girl! and what could she do but gratify her
+admirers by this cheap and artless testimony of her regard?  A
+pretty scene and quarrel took place between the rivals on the day
+when they discovered that each was in possession of one of
+Morgiana's ringlets.
+
+Such, then, were the owners and inmates of the little "Bootjack,"
+from whom and which, as this chapter is exceedingly discursive and
+descriptive, we must separate the reader for a while, and carry
+him--it is only into Bond Street, so no gentleman need be afraid--
+carry him into Bond Street, where some other personages are awaiting
+his consideration.
+
+Not far from Mr. Eglantine's shop in Bond Street, stand, as is very
+well known, the Windsor Chambers.  The West Diddlesex Association
+(Western Branch), the British and Foreign Soap Company, the
+celebrated attorneys Kite and Levison, have their respective offices
+here; and as the names of the other inhabitants of the chambers are
+not only painted on the walls, but also registered in Mr. Boyle's
+"Court Guide," it is quite unnecessary that they should be repeated
+here.  Among them, on the entresol (between the splendid saloons of
+the Soap Company on the first floor, with their statue of Britannia
+presenting a packet of the soap to Europe, Asia, Africa, and
+America, and the West Diddlesex Western Branch on the basement)-
+-lives a gentleman by the name of Mr. Howard Walker.  The brass
+plate on the door of that gentleman's chambers had the word "Agency"
+inscribed beneath his name; and we are therefore at liberty to
+imagine that he followed that mysterious occupation.  In person Mr.
+Walker was very genteel; he had large whiskers, dark eyes (with a
+slight cast in them), a cane, and a velvet waistcoat.  He was a
+member of a club; had an admission to the opera, and knew every face
+behind the scenes; and was in the habit of using a number of French
+phrases in his conversation, having picked up a smattering of that
+language during a residence "on the Continent;" in fact, he had
+found it very convenient at various times of his life to dwell in
+the city of Boulogne, where he acquired a knowledge of smoking,
+ecarte, and billiards, which was afterwards of great service to him.
+He knew all the best tables in town, and the marker at Hunt's could
+only give him ten.  He had some fashionable acquaintances too, and
+you might see him walking arm-in-arm with such gentlemen as my Lord
+Vauxhall, the Marquess of Billingsgate, or Captain Buff; and at the
+same time nodding to young Moses, the dandy bailiff; or Loder, the
+gambling-house keeper; or Aminadab, the cigar-seller in the
+Quadrant.  Sometimes he wore a pair of moustaches, and was called
+Captain Walker; grounding his claim to that title upon the fact of
+having once held a commission in the service of Her Majesty the
+Queen of Portugal.  It scarcely need be said that he had been
+through the Insolvent Court many times.  But to those who did not
+know his history intimately there was some difficulty in identifying
+him with the individual who had so taken the benefit of the law,
+inasmuch as in his schedule his name appeared as Hooker Walker,
+wine-merchant, commission-agent, music-seller, or what not.  The
+fact is, that though he preferred to call himself Howard, Hooker was
+his Christian name, and it had been bestowed on him by his worthy
+old father, who was a clergyman, and had intended his son for that
+profession.  But as the old gentleman died in York gaol, where he
+was a prisoner for debt, he was never able to put his pious
+intentions with regard to his son into execution; and the young
+fellow (as he was wont with many oaths to assert) was thrown on his
+own resources, and became a man of the world at a very early age.
+
+What Mr. Howard Walker's age was at the time of the commencement of
+this history, and, indeed, for an indefinite period before or
+afterwards, it is impossible to determine.  If he were
+eight-and-twenty, as he asserted himself, Time had dealt hardly with
+him:  his hair was thin, there were many crows'-feet about his eyes,
+and other signs in his countenance of the progress of decay.  If, on
+the contrary, he were forty, as Sam Snaffle declared, who himself
+had misfortunes in early life, and vowed he knew Mr. Walker in
+Whitecross Street Prison in 1820, he was a very young-looking person
+considering his age.  His figure was active and slim, his leg neat,
+and he had not in his whiskers a single white hair.
+
+It must, however, be owned that he used Mr. Eglantine's Regenerative
+Unction (which will make your whiskers as black as your boot), and,
+in fact, he was a pretty constant visitor at that gentleman's
+emporium; dealing with him largely for soaps and articles of
+perfumery, which he had at an exceedingly low rate.  Indeed, he was
+never known to pay Mr. Eglantine one single shilling for those
+objects of luxury, and, having them on such moderate terms, was
+enabled to indulge in them pretty copiously.  Thus Mr. Walker was
+almost as great a nosegay as Mr. Eglantine himself:  his
+handkerchief was scented with verbena, his hair with jessamine, and
+his coat had usually a fine perfume of cigars, which rendered his
+presence in a small room almost instantaneously remarkable.  I have
+described Mr. Walker thus accurately, because, in truth, it is more
+with characters than with astounding events that this little history
+deals, and Mr. Walker is one of the principal of our dramatis
+personae.
+
+And so, having introduced Mr. W., we will walk over with him to Mr.
+Eglantine's emporium, where that gentleman is in waiting, too, to
+have his likeness taken.
+
+There is about an acre of plate glass under the Royal arms on Mr.
+Eglantine's shop-window; and at night, when the gas is lighted, and
+the washballs are illuminated, and the lambent flame plays fitfully
+over numberless bottles of vari-coloured perfumes--now flashes on a
+case of razors, and now lightens up a crystal vase, containing a
+hundred thousand of his patent tooth-brushes--the effect of the
+sight may be imagined.  You don't suppose that he is a creature who
+has those odious, simpering wax figures in his window, that are
+called by the vulgar dummies?  He is above such a wretched artifice;
+and it is my belief that he would as soon have his own head chopped
+off, and placed as a trunkless decoration to his shop-window, as
+allow a dummy to figure there.  On one pane you read in elegant gold
+letters "Eglantinia"--'tis his essence for the handkerchief; on the
+other is written "Regenerative Unction"--'tis his invaluable pomatum
+for the hair.
+
+There is no doubt about it:  Eglantine's knowledge of his profession
+amounts to genius.  He sells a cake of soap for seven shillings, for
+which another man would not get a shilling, and his tooth-brushes go
+off like wildfire at half-a-guinea apiece.  If he has to administer
+rouge or pearl-powder to ladies, he does it with a mystery and
+fascination which there is no resisting, and the ladies believe
+there are no cosmetics like his.  He gives his wares unheard-of
+names, and obtains for them sums equally prodigious.  He CAN dress
+hair--that is a fact--as few men in this age can; and has been known
+to take twenty pounds in a single night from as many of the first
+ladies of England when ringlets were in fashion.  The introduction
+of bands, he says, made a difference of two thousand pounds a year
+in his income; and if there is one thing in the world he hates and
+despises, it is a Madonna.  "I'm not," says he, "a tradesman--I'm a
+HARTIST" (Mr. Eglantine was born in London)--"I'm a hartist; and
+show me a fine 'ead of air, and I'll dress it for nothink."  He vows
+that it was his way of dressing Mademoiselle Sontag's hair, that
+caused the count her husband to fall in love with her; and he has a
+lock of it in a brooch, and says it was the finest head he ever saw,
+except one, and that was Morgiana Crump's.
+
+With his genius and his position in the profession, how comes it,
+then, that Mr. Eglantine was not a man of fortune, as many a less
+clever has been?  If the truth must be told, he loved pleasure, and
+was in the hands of the Jews.  He had been in business twenty years:
+he had borrowed a thousand pounds to purchase his stock and shop;
+and he calculated that he had paid upwards of twenty thousand pounds
+for the use of the one thousand, which was still as much due as on
+the first day when he entered business.  He could show that he had
+received a thousand dozen of champagne from the disinterested
+money-dealers with whom he usually negotiated his paper.  He had
+pictures all over his "studios," which had been purchased in the
+same bargains.  If he sold his goods at an enormous price, he paid
+for them at a rate almost equally exorbitant.  There was not an
+article in his shop but came to him through his Israelite providers;
+and in the very front shop itself sat a gentleman who was the
+nominee of one of them, and who was called Mr. Mossrose.  He was
+there to superintend the cash account, and to see that certain
+instalments were paid to his principals, according to certain
+agreements entered into between Mr. Eglantine and them.
+
+Having that sort of opinion of Mr. Mossrose which Damocles may have
+had of the sword which hung over his head, of course Mr. Eglantine
+hated his foreman profoundly.  "HE an artist," would the former
+gentleman exclaim; "why, he's only a disguised bailiff!  Mossrose
+indeed! The chap's name's Amos, and he sold oranges before he came
+here."  Mr. Mossrose, on his side, utterly despised Mr. Eglantine,
+and looked forward to the day when he would become the proprietor of
+the shop, and take Eglantine for a foreman; and then it would HIS
+turn to sneer and bully, and ride the high horse.
+
+Thus it will be seen that there was a skeleton in the great
+perfumer's house, as the saying is:  a worm in his heart's core, and
+though to all appearance prosperous, he was really in an awkward
+position.
+
+What Mr. Eglantine's relations were with Mr. Walker may be imagined
+from the following dialogue which took place between the two
+gentlemen at five o'clock one summer's afternoon, when Mr. Walker,
+issuing from his chambers, came across to the perfumer's shop:--
+
+"Is Eglantine at home, Mr. Mossrose?" said Walker to the foreman,
+who sat in the front shop.
+
+"Don't know--go and look" (meaning go and be hanged); for Mossrose
+also hated Mr. Walker.
+
+"If you're uncivil I'll break your bones, Mr. AMOS," says Mr.
+Walker, sternly.
+
+"I should like to see you try, Mr. HOOKER Walker," replies the
+undaunted shopman; on which the Captain, looking several tremendous
+canings at him, walked into the back room or "studio."
+
+"How are you, Tiny my buck?" says the Captain.  "Much doing?"
+
+"Not a soul in town.  I 'aven't touched the hirons all day," replied
+Mr. Eglantine, in rather a desponding way.
+
+"Well, just get them ready now, and give my whiskers a turn.  I'm
+going to dine with Billingsgate and some out-and-out fellows at the
+'Regent,' and so, my lad, just do your best."
+
+"I can't," says Mr. Eglantine.  "I expect ladies, Captain, every
+minute."
+
+"Very good; I don't want to trouble such a great man, I'm sure.
+Good-bye, and let me hear from you THIS DAY WEEK, Mr. Eglantine."
+"This day week" meant that at seven days from that time a certain
+bill accepted by Mr. Eglantine would be due, and presented for
+payment.
+
+"Don't be in such a hurry, Captain--do sit down.  I'll curl you in
+one minute.  And, I say, won't the party renew?"
+
+"Impossible--it's the third renewal."
+
+"But I'll make the thing handsome to you;--indeed I will."
+
+"How much?"
+
+"Will ten pounds do the business?"
+
+"What! offer my principal ten pounds?  Are you mad, Eglantine?--A
+little more of the iron to the left whisker."
+
+"No, I meant for commission."
+
+"Well, I'll see if that will do.  The party I deal with, Eglantine,
+has power, I know, and can defer the matter no doubt.  As for me,
+you know, I'VE nothing to do in the affair, and only act as a friend
+between you and him.  I give you my honour and soul, I do."
+
+"I know you do, my dear sir."  The last two speeches were lies.  The
+perfumer knew perfectly well that Mr. Walker would pocket the ten
+pounds; but he was too easy to care for paying it, and too timid to
+quarrel with such a powerful friend.  And he had on three different
+occasions already paid ten pounds' fine for the renewal of the bill
+in question, all of which bonuses he knew went to his friend Mr.
+Walker.
+
+Here, too, the reader will perceive what was, in part, the meaning
+of the word "Agency" on Mr. Walker's door.  He was a go-between
+between money-lenders and borrowers in this world, and certain small
+sums always remained with him in the course of the transaction.  He
+was an agent for wine, too; an agent for places to be had through
+the influence of great men; he was an agent for half-a-dozen
+theatrical people, male and female, and had the interests of the
+latter especially, it was said, at heart.  Such were a few of the
+means by which this worthy gentleman contrived to support himself,
+and if, as he was fond of high living, gambling, and pleasures of
+all kinds, his revenue was not large enough for his expenditure-
+-why, he got into debt, and settled his bills that way.  He was as
+much at home in the Fleet as in Pall Mall, and quite as happy in the
+one place as in the other.  "That's the way I take things," would
+this philosopher say.  "If I've money, I spend; if I've credit, I
+borrow; if I'm dunned, I whitewash; and so you can't beat me down."
+Happy elasticity of temperament!  I do believe that, in spite of his
+misfortunes and precarious position, there was no man in England
+whose conscience was more calm, and whose slumbers were more
+tranquil, than those of Captain Howard Walker.
+
+As he was sitting under the hands of Mr. Eglantine, he reverted to
+"the ladies," whom the latter gentleman professed to expect; said he
+was a sly dog, a lucky ditto, and asked him if the ladies were
+handsome.
+
+Eglantine thought there could be no harm in telling a bouncer to a
+gentleman with whom he was engaged in money transactions; and so, to
+give the Captain an idea of his solvency and the brilliancy of his
+future prospects, "Captain," said he, "I've got a hundred and eighty
+pounds out with you, which you were obliging enough to negotiate for
+me.  Have I, or have I not, two bills out to that amount?"
+
+"Well, my good fellow, you certainly have; and what then?"
+
+"What then?  Why, I bet you five pounds to one, that in three months
+those bills are paid."
+
+"Done! five pounds to one.  I take it."
+
+This sudden closing with him made the perfumer rather uneasy; but he
+was not to pay for three months, and so he said, "Done!" too, and
+went on:  "What would you say if your bills were paid?"
+
+"Not mine; Pike's."
+
+"Well, if Pike's were paid; and the Minories' man paid, and every
+single liability I have cleared off; and that Mossrose flung out of
+winder, and me and my emporium as free as hair?"
+
+"You don't say so?  Is Queen Anne dead? and has she left you a
+fortune? or what's the luck in the wind now?"
+
+"It's better than Queen Anne, or anybody dying.  What should you say
+to seeing in that very place where Mossrose now sits (hang him!)-
+-seeing the FINEST HEAD OF 'AIR NOW IN EUROPE?  A woman, I tell
+you--a slap-up lovely woman, who, I'm proud to say, will soon be
+called Mrs. Heglantine, and will bring me five thousand pounds to
+her fortune."
+
+"Well, Tiny, this IS good luck indeed.  I say, you'll be able to do
+a bill or two for ME then, hay?  You won't forget an old friend?"
+
+"That I won't.  I shall have a place at my board for you, Capting;
+and many's the time I shall 'ope to see you under that ma'ogany."
+
+"What will the French milliner say?  She'll hang herself for
+despair, Eglantine."
+
+"Hush! not a word about 'ER.  I've sown all my wild oats, I tell
+you.  Eglantine is no longer the gay young bachelor, but the sober
+married man.  I want a heart to share the feelings of mine.  I want
+repose.  I'm not so young as I was:  I feel it."
+
+"Pooh! pooh! you are--you are--"
+
+"Well, but I sigh for an 'appy fireside; and I'll have it."
+
+"And give up that club which you belong to, hay?"
+
+"'The Kidneys?'  Oh! of course, no married man should belong to such
+places:  at least, I'LL not; and I'll have my kidneys broiled at
+home.  But be quiet, Captain, if you please; the ladies appointed
+to--"
+
+"And is it THE lady you expect? eh, you rogue!"
+
+"Well, get along.  It's her and her Ma."
+
+But Mr. Walker determined he wouldn't get along, and would see these
+lovely ladies before he stirred.
+
+The operation on Mr. Walker's whiskers being concluded, he was
+arranging his toilet before the glass in an agreeable attitude:  his
+neck out, his enormous pin settled in his stock to his satisfaction,
+his eyes complacently directed towards the reflection of his left
+and favourite whisker.  Eglantine was laid on a settee, in an easy,
+though melancholy posture; he was twiddling the tongs with which he
+had just operated on Walker with one hand, and his right-hand
+ringlet with the other, and he was thinking--thinking of Morgiana;
+and then of the bill which was to become due on the 16th; and then
+of a light-blue velvet waistcoat with gold sprigs, in which he
+looked very killing, and so was trudging round in his little circle
+of loves, fears, and vanities.  "Hang it!" Mr. Walker was thinking,
+"I AM a handsome man.  A pair of whiskers like mine are not met with
+every day.  If anybody can see that my tuft is dyed, may I be--"
+When the door was flung open, and a large lady with a curl on her
+forehead, yellow shawl, a green-velvet bonnet with feathers,
+half-boots, and a drab gown with tulips and other large exotics
+painted on it--when, in a word, Mrs. Crump and her daughter bounced
+into the room.
+
+"Here we are, Mr. E," cries Mrs. Crump, in a gay folatre
+confidential air.  "But law! there's a gent in the room!"
+
+"Don't mind me, ladies," said the gent alluded to, in his
+fascinating way.  "I'm a friend of Eglantine's; ain't I, Egg? a chip
+of the old block, hay?"
+
+"THAT you are," said the perfumer, starting up.
+
+"An 'air-dresser?" asked Mrs. Crump.  "Well, I thought he was;
+there's something, Mr. E., in gentlemen of your profession so
+exceeding, so uncommon distangy."
+
+"Madam, you do me proud," replied the gentleman so complimented,
+with great presence of mind.  "Will you allow me to try my skill
+upon you, or upon Miss, your lovely daughter?  I'm not so clever as
+Eglantine, but no bad hand, I assure you."
+
+"Nonsense, Captain," interrupted the perfumer, who was uncomfortable
+somehow at the rencontre between the Captain and the object of his
+affection.  "HE'S not in the profession, Mrs. C.  This is my friend
+Captain Walker, and proud I am to call him my friend."  And then
+aside to Mrs. C., "One of the first swells on town, ma'am--a regular
+tiptopper."
+
+Humouring the mistake which Mrs. Crump had just made, Mr. Walker
+thrust the curling-irons into the fire in a minute, and looked round
+at the ladies with such a fascinating grace, that both, now made
+acquainted with his quality, blushed and giggled, and were quite
+pleased.  Mamma looked at 'Gina, and 'Gina looked at mamma; and then
+mamma gave 'Gina a little blow in the region of her little waist,
+and then both burst out laughing, as ladies will laugh, and as, let
+us trust, they may laugh for ever and ever.  Why need there be a
+reason for laughing?  Let us laugh when we are laughy, as we sleep
+when we are sleepy.  And so Mrs. Crump and her demoiselle laughed to
+their hearts' content; and both fixed their large shining black eyes
+repeatedly on Mr. Walker.
+
+"I won't leave the room," said he, coming forward with the heated
+iron in his hand, and smoothing it on the brown paper with all the
+dexterity of a professor (for the fact is, Mr. W. every morning
+curled his own immense whiskers with the greatest skill and care)--
+"I won't leave the room, Eglantine my boy.  My lady here took me for
+a hairdresser, and so, you know, I've a right to stay."
+
+"He can't stay," said Mrs. Crump, all of a sudden, blushing as red
+as a peony.
+
+"I shall have on my peignoir, Mamma," said Miss, looking at the
+gentleman, and then dropping down her eyes and blushing too.
+
+"But he can't stay, 'Gina, I tell you:  do you think that I would,
+before a gentleman, take off my--"
+
+"Mamma means her FRONT!" said Miss, jumping up, and beginning to
+laugh with all her might; at which the honest landlady of the
+"Bootjack," who loved a joke, although at her own expense, laughed
+too, and said that no one, except Mr. Crump and Mr. Eglantine, had
+ever seen her without the ornament in question.
+
+"DO go now, you provoking thing, you!" continued Miss C. to Mr.
+Walker; "I wish to hear the hoverture, and it's six o'clock now, and
+we shall never be done against then:"  but the way in which Morgiana
+said "DO go," clearly indicated "don't" to the perspicacious mind of
+Mr. Walker.
+
+"Perhaps you 'ad better go," continued Mr. Eglantine, joining in
+this sentiment, and being, in truth, somewhat uneasy at the
+admiration which his "swell friend" excited.
+
+"I'll see you hanged first, Eggy my boy!  Go I won't, until these
+ladies have had their hair dressed:  didn't you yourself tell me
+that Miss Crump's was the most beautiful hair in Europe?  And do you
+think that I'll go away without seeing it?  No, here I stay."
+
+"You naughty wicked odious provoking man!" said Miss Crump.  But, at
+the same time, she took off her bonnet, and placed it on one of the
+side candlesticks of Mr. Eglantine's glass (it was a black-velvet
+bonnet, trimmed with sham lace, and with a wreath of nasturtiums,
+convolvuluses, and wallflowers within), and then said, "Give me the
+peignoir, Mr. Archibald, if you please;" and Eglantine, who would do
+anything for her when she called him Archibald, immediately produced
+that garment, and wrapped round the delicate shoulders of the lady,
+who, removing a sham gold chain which she wore on her forehead, two
+brass hair-combs set with glass rubies, and the comb which kept her
+back hair together--removing them, I say, and turning her great eyes
+towards the stranger, and giving her head a shake, down let tumble
+such a flood of shining waving heavy glossy jetty hair, as would
+have done Mr. Rowland's heart good to see.  It tumbled down Miss
+Morgiana's back, and it tumbled over her shoulders, it tumbled over
+the chair on which she sat, and from the midst of it her jolly
+bright-eyed rosy face beamed out with a triumphant smile, which
+said, "A'n't I now the most angelic being you ever saw?"
+
+"By Heaven! it's the most beautiful thing I ever saw!" cried Mr.
+Walker, with undisguised admiration.
+
+"ISN'T it?" said Mrs. Crump, who made her daughter's triumph her
+own.  "Heigho! when I acted at 'The Wells' in 1820, before that dear
+girl was born, _I_ had such a head of hair as that, to a shade, sir,
+to a shade.  They called me Ravenswing on account of it.  I lost my
+head of hair when that dear child was born, and I often say to her,
+'Morgiana, you came into the world to rob your mother of her 'air.'
+Were you ever at 'The Wells,' sir, in 1820?  Perhaps you recollect
+Miss Delancy?  I am that Miss Delancy.  Perhaps you recollect,--
+
+     "'Tink-a-tink, tink-a-tink,
+         By the light of the star,
+       On the blue river's brink,
+         I heard a guitar.
+
+     "'I heard a guitar,
+         On the blue waters clear,
+       And knew by its mu-u-sic,
+         That Selim was near!'
+
+You remember that in the 'Bagdad Bells'?  Fatima, Delancy; Selim,
+Benlomond (his real name was Bunnion:  and he failed, poor fellow,
+in the public line afterwards).  It was done to the tambourine, and
+dancing between each verse,--
+
+     "'Tink-a-tink, tink-a-tink,
+         How the soft music swells,
+       And I hear the soft clink
+         Of the minaret bells!
+
+     "'Tink-a--'"
+
+"Oh!" here cried Miss Crump, as if in exceeding pain (and whether
+Mr. Eglantine had twitched, pulled, or hurt any one individual hair
+of that lovely head I don't know)--"Oh, you are killing me, Mr.
+Eglantine!"
+
+And with this mamma, who was in her attitude, holding up the end of
+her boa as a visionary tambourine, and Mr. Walker, who was looking
+at her, and in his amusement at the mother's performances had almost
+forgotten the charms of the daughter--both turned round at once, and
+looked at her with many expressions of sympathy, while Eglantine, in
+a voice of reproach, said, "KILLED you, Morgiana! I kill YOU?"
+
+"I'm better now," said the young lady, with a smile--"I'm better,
+Mr. Archibald, now."  And if the truth must be told, no greater
+coquette than Miss Morgiana existed in all Mayfair--no, not among
+the most fashionable mistresses of the fashionable valets who
+frequented the "Bootjack."  She believed herself to be the most
+fascinating creature that the world ever produced; she never saw a
+stranger but she tried these fascinations upon him; and her charms
+of manner and person were of that showy sort which is most popular
+in this world, where people are wont to admire most that which gives
+them the least trouble to see; and so you will find a tulip of a
+woman to be in fashion when a little humble violet or daisy of
+creation is passed over without remark.  Morgiana was a tulip among
+women, and the tulip fanciers all came flocking round her.
+
+Well, the said "Oh" and "I'm better now, Mr. Archibald," thereby
+succeeded in drawing everybody's attention to her lovely self.  By
+the latter words Mr. Eglantine was specially inflamed; he glanced at
+Mr. Walker, and said, "Capting! didn't I tell you she was a
+CREECHER?  See her hair, sir:  it's as black and as glossy as
+satting. It weighs fifteen pound, that hair, sir; and I wouldn't let
+my apprentice--that blundering Mossrose, for instance (hang him!)--I
+wouldn't let anyone but myself dress that hair for five hundred
+guineas!  Ah, Miss Morgiana, remember that you MAY ALWAYS have
+Eglantine to dress your hair!--remember that, that's all."  And with
+this the worthy gentleman began rubbing delicately a little of the
+Eglantinia into those ambrosial locks, which he loved with all the
+love of a man and an artist.
+
+And as for Morgiana showing her hair, I hope none of my readers will
+entertain a bad opinion of the poor girl for doing so.  Her locks
+were her pride; she acted at the private theatre "hair parts," where
+she could appear on purpose to show them in a dishevelled state; and
+that her modesty was real, and not affected may be proved by the
+fact that when Mr. Walker, stepping up in the midst of Eglantine's
+last speech, took hold of a lock of her hair very gently with his
+hand, she cried "Oh!" and started with all her might.  And Mr.
+Eglantine observed very gravely, "Capting!  Miss Crump's hair is to
+be seen and not to be touched, if you please."
+
+"No more it is, Mr. Eglantine!" said her mamma.  "And now, as it's
+come to my turn, I beg the gentleman will be so obliging as to go."
+
+"MUST I?" cried Mr. Walker; and as it was half-past six, and he was
+engaged to dinner at the "Regent Club," and as he did not wish to
+make Eglantine jealous, who evidently was annoyed by his staying, he
+took his hat just as Miss Crump's coiffure was completed, and
+saluting her and her mamma, left the room.
+
+"A tip-top swell, I can assure you," said Eglantine, nodding after
+him:  "a regular bang-up chap, and no MISTAKE.  Intimate with the
+Marquess of Billingsgate, and Lord Vauxhall, and that set."
+
+"He's very genteel," said Mrs. Crump.
+
+"Law! I'm sure I think nothing of him," said Morgiana.
+
+And Captain Walker walked towards his club, meditating on the
+beauties of Morgiana.  "What hair," said he, "what eyes the girl
+has! they're as big as billiard-balls; and five thousand pounds.
+Eglantine's in luck! five thousand pounds--she can't have it, it's
+impossible!"
+
+No sooner was Mrs. Crump's front arranged, during the time of which
+operation Morgiana sat in perfect contentment looking at the last
+French fashions in the Courrier des Dames, and thinking how her pink
+satin slip would dye, and make just such a mantilla as that
+represented in the engraving--no sooner was Mrs. Crump's front
+arranged, than both ladies, taking leave of Mr. Eglantine, tripped
+back to the "Bootjack Hotel" in the neighbourhood, where a very neat
+green fly was already in waiting, the gentleman on the box of which
+(from a livery-stable in the neighbourhood) gave a knowing touch to
+his hat, and a salute with his whip, to the two ladies, as they
+entered the tavern.
+
+"Mr. W.'s inside," said the man--a driver from Mr. Snaffle's
+establishment; "he's been in and out this score of times, and
+looking down the street for you."  And in the house, in fact, was
+Mr. Woolsey, the tailor, who had hired the fly, and was engaged to
+conduct the ladies that evening to the play.
+
+It was really rather too bad to think that Miss Morgiana, after
+going to one lover to have her hair dressed, should go with another
+to the play; but such is the way with lovely woman!  Let her have a
+dozen admirers, and the dear coquette will exercise her power upon
+them all:  and as a lady, when she has a large wardrobe, and a taste
+for variety in dress, will appear every day in a different costume,
+so will the young and giddy beauty wear her lovers, encouraging now
+the black whiskers, now smiling on the brown, now thinking that the
+gay smiling rattle of an admirer becomes her very well, and now
+adopting the sad sentimental melancholy one, according as her
+changeful fancy prompts her.  Let us not be too angry with these
+uncertainties and caprices of beauty; and depend on it that, for the
+most part, those females who cry out loudest against the flightiness
+of their sisters, and rebuke their undue encouragement of this man
+or that, would do as much themselves if they had the chance, and are
+constant, as I am to my coat just now, because I have no other.
+
+"Did you see Doubleyou, 'Gina dear?" said her mamma, addressing that
+young lady.  "He's in the bar with your Pa, and has his military
+coat with the king's buttons, and looks like an officer."
+
+This was Mr. Woolsey's style, his great aim being to look like an
+army gent, for many of whom he in his capacity of tailor made those
+splendid red and blue coats which characterise our military.  As for
+the royal button, had not he made a set of coats for his late
+Majesty, George IV.? and he would add, when he narrated this
+circumstance, "Sir, Prince Blucher and Prince Swartzenberg's
+measure's in the house now; and what's more, I've cut for
+Wellington."  I believe he would have gone to St. Helena to make a
+coat for Napoleon, so great was his ardour.  He wore a blue-black
+wig, and his whiskers were of the same hue.  He was brief and stern
+in conversations; and he always went to masquerades and balls in a
+field-marshal's uniform.
+
+"He looks really quite the thing to-night," continued Mrs. Crump.
+
+"Yes," said 'Gina; "but he's such an odious wig, and the dye of his
+whiskers always comes off on his white gloves."
+
+"Everybody has not their own hair, love," continued Mrs. Crump with
+a sigh; "but Eglantine's is beautiful."
+
+"Every hairdresser's is," answered Morgiana, rather contemptuously;
+"but what I can't bear is that their fingers is always so very fat
+and pudgy."
+
+In fact, something had gone wrong with the fair Morgiana.  Was it
+that she had but little liking for the one pretender or the other?
+Was it that young Glauber, who acted Romeo in the private
+theatricals, was far younger and more agreeable than either?  Or was
+it, that seeing a REAL GENTLEMAN, such as Mr. Walker, with whom she
+had had her first interview, she felt more and more the want of
+refinement in her other declared admirers?  Certain, however, it is,
+that she was very reserved all the evening, in spite of the
+attentions of Mr. Woolsey; that she repeatedly looked round at the
+box-door, as if she expected someone to enter; and that she partook
+of only a very few oysters, indeed, out of the barrel which the
+gallant tailor had sent down to the "Bootjack," and off which the
+party supped.
+
+"What is it?" said Mr. Woolsey to his ally, Crump, as they sat
+together after the retirement of the ladies.  "She was dumb all
+night.  She never once laughed at the farce, nor cried at the
+tragedy, and you know she laughs and cries uncommon.  She only took
+half her negus, and not above a quarter of her beer."
+
+"No more she did!" replied Mr. Crump, very calmly.  "I think it must
+be the barber as has been captivating her:  he dressed her hair for
+the play."
+
+"Hang him, I'll shoot him!" said Mr. Woolsey.  "A fat foolish
+effeminate beast like that marry Miss Morgiana?  Never!  I WILL
+shoot him.  I'll provoke him next Saturday--I'll tread on his
+toe--I'll pull his nose."
+
+"No quarrelling at the 'Kidneys!'" answered Crump sternly; "there
+shall be no quarrelling in that room as long as I'm in the chair!"
+
+
+"Well, at any rate you'll stand my friend?"
+
+"You know I will," answered the other.  "You are honourable, and I
+like you better than Eglantine.  I trust you more than Eglantine,
+sir.  You're more of a man than Eglantine, though you ARE a tailor;
+and I wish with all my heart you may get Morgiana.  Mrs. C. goes the
+other way, I know:  but I tell you what, women will go their own
+ways, sir, and Morgy's like her mother in this point, and depend
+upon it, Morgy will decide for herself."
+
+Mr. Woolsey presently went home, still persisting in his plan for
+the assassination of Eglantine.  Mr. Crump went to bed very quietly,
+and snored through the night in his usual tone.  Mr. Eglantine
+passed some feverish moments of jealousy, for he had come down to
+the club in the evening, and had heard that Morgiana was gone to the
+play with his rival.  And Miss Morgiana dreamed, of a man who was-
+-must we say it?--exceedingly like Captain Howard Walker.  "Mrs.
+Captain So-and-so!" thought she.  "Oh, I do love a gentleman
+dearly!"
+
+And about this time, too, Mr. Walker himself came rolling home from
+the "Regent," hiccupping.  "Such hair!--such eyebrows!--such eyes!
+like b-b-billiard-balls, by Jove!'
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+
+IN WHICH MR. WALKER MAKES THREE ATTEMPTS TO ASCERTAIN THE DWELLING
+OF MORGIANA.
+
+The day after the dinner at the "Regent Club," Mr. Walker stepped
+over to the shop of his friend the perfumer, where, as usual, the
+young man, Mr. Mossrose, was established in the front premises.
+
+For some reason or other, the Captain was particularly
+good-humoured; and, quite forgetful of the words which had passed
+between him and Mr. Eglantine's lieutenant the day before, began
+addressing the latter with extreme cordiality.
+
+"A good morning to you, Mr. Mossrose," said Captain Walker.  "Why,
+sir, you look as fresh as your namesake--you do, indeed, now,
+Mossrose."
+
+"You look ash yellow ash a guinea," responded Mr. Mossrose, sulkily.
+He thought the Captain was hoaxing him.
+
+"My good sir," replies the other, nothing cast down, "I drank rather
+too freely last night."
+
+"The more beast you!" said Mr. Mossrose.
+
+"Thank you, Mossrose; the same to you," answered the Captain.
+
+"If you call me a beast, I'll punch your head off!" answered the
+young man, who had much skill in the art which many of his brethren
+practise.
+
+"I didn't, my fine fellow," replied Walker.  "On the contrary, you--
+"
+
+"Do you mean to give me the lie?" broke out the indignant Mossrose,
+who hated the agent fiercely, and did not in the least care to
+conceal his hate.
+
+In fact, it was his fixed purpose to pick a quarrel with Walker, and
+to drive him, if possible, from Mr. Eglantine's shop.  "Do you mean
+to give me the lie, I say, Mr. Hooker Walker?"
+
+"For Heaven's sake, Amos, hold your tongue!" exclaimed the Captain,
+to whom the name of Hooker was as poison; but at this moment a
+customer stepping in, Mr. Amos exchanged his ferocious aspect for a
+bland grin, and Mr. Walker walked into the studio.
+
+When in Mr. Eglantine's presence, Walker, too, was all smiles in a
+minute, sank down on a settee, held out his hand to the perfumer,
+and began confidentially discoursing with him.
+
+"SUCH a dinner, Tiny my boy," said he;  "such prime fellows to eat
+it, too!  Billingsgate, Vauxhall, Cinqbars, Buff of the Blues, and
+half-a-dozen more of the best fellows in town.  And what do you
+think the dinner cost a head?  I'll wager you'll never guess."
+
+"Was it two guineas a head?--In course I mean without wine," said
+the genteel perfumer.
+
+"Guess again!"
+
+"Well, was it ten guineas a head?  I'll guess any sum you please,"
+replied Mr. Eglantine:  "for I know that when you NOBS are together,
+you don't spare your money.  I myself, at the "Star and Garter" at
+Richmond, once paid--"
+
+"Eighteenpence?"
+
+"Heighteenpence, sir!--I paid five-and-thirty shillings per 'ead.
+I'd have you to know that I can act as a gentleman as well as any
+other gentleman, sir," answered the perfumer with much dignity.
+
+"Well, eighteenpence was what WE paid, and not a rap more, upon my
+honour."
+
+"Nonsense, you're joking.  The Marquess of Billinsgate dine for
+eighteenpence!  Why, hang it, if I was a marquess, I'd pay a
+five-pound note for my lunch."
+
+"You little know the person, Master Eglantine," replied the Captain,
+with a smile of contemptuous superiority; "you little know the real
+man of fashion, my good fellow.  Simplicity, sir--simplicity's the
+characteristic of the real gentleman, and so I'll tell you what we
+had for dinner."
+
+"Turtle and venison, of course:--no nob dines without THEM."
+
+"Psha! we're sick of 'em!  We had pea soup and boiled tripe!  What
+do you think of THAT?  We had sprats and herrings, a bullock's
+heart, a baked shoulder of mutton and potatoes, pig's-fry and Irish
+stew.  _I_ ordered the dinner, sir, and got more credit for
+inventing it than they ever gave to Ude or Soyer.  The Marquess was
+in ecstasies, the Earl devoured half a bushel of sprats, and if the
+Viscount is not laid up with a surfeit of bullock's heart, my name's
+not Howard Walker.  Billy, as I call him, was in the chair, and gave
+my health; and what do you think the rascal proposed?"
+
+"What DID his Lordship propose?"
+
+"That every man present should subscribe twopence, and pay for my
+share of the dinner.  By Jove! it is true, and the money was handed
+to me in a pewter-pot, of which they also begged to make me a
+present.  We afterwards went to Tom Spring's, from Tom's to the
+'Finish,' from the 'Finish' to the watch-house--that is, THEY did--
+and sent for me, just as I was getting into bed, to bail them all
+out."
+
+"They're happy dogs, those young noblemen," said Mr Eglantine;
+"nothing but pleasure from morning till night; no affectation
+neither--no HOTURE; but manly downright straightforward good
+fellows."
+
+"Should you like to meet them, Tiny my boy?" said the Captain.
+
+"If I did sir, I hope I should show myself to be gentleman,"
+answered Mr. Eglantine.
+
+"Well, you SHALL meet them, and Lady Billingsgate shall order her
+perfumes at your shop.  We are going to dine, next week, all our
+set, at Mealy-faced Bob's, and you shall be my guest," cried the
+Captain, slapping the delighted artist on the back.  "And now, my
+boy, tell me how YOU spent the evening."
+
+"At my club, sir," answered Mr. Eglantine, blushing rather.
+
+"What! not at the play with the lovely black-eyed Miss--What is her
+name, Eglantine?
+
+"Never mind her name, Captain," replied Eglantine, partly from
+prudence and partly from shame.  He had not the heart to own it was
+Crump, and he did not care that the Captain should know more of his
+destined bride.
+
+"You wish to keep the five thousand to yourself--eh, you rogue?"
+responded the Captain, with a good-humoured air, although
+exceedingly mortified; for, to say the truth, he had put himself to
+the trouble of telling the above long story of the dinner, and of
+promising to introduce Eglantine to the lords, solely that he might
+elicit from that gentleman's good-humour some further particulars
+regarding the young lady with the billiard-ball eyes.  It was for
+the very same reason, too, that he had made the attempt at
+reconciliation with Mr. Mossrose which had just so signally failed.
+Nor would the reader, did he know Mr. W. better, at all require to
+have the above explanation; but as yet we are only at the first
+chapter of his history, and who is to know what the hero's motives
+can be unless we take the trouble to explain?
+
+Well, the little dignified answer of the worthy dealer in bergamot,
+"NEVER MIND HER NAME, CAPTAIN!" threw the gallant Captain quite
+aback; and though he sat for a quarter of an hour longer, and was
+exceedingly kind; and though he threw out some skilful hints, yet
+the perfumer was quite unconquerable; or, rather, he was too
+frightened to tell:  the poor fat timid easy good-natured gentleman
+was always the prey of rogues,--panting and floundering in one
+rascal's snare or another's.  He had the dissimulation, too, which
+timid men have; and felt the presence of a victimiser as a hare does
+of a greyhound.  Now he would be quite still, now he would double,
+and now he would run, and then came the end.  He knew, by his sure
+instinct of fear, that the Captain had, in asking these questions, a
+scheme against him, and so he was cautious, and trembled, and
+doubted.  And oh! how he thanked his stars when Lady Grogmore's
+chariot drove up, with the Misses Grogmore, who wanted their hair
+dressed, and were going to a breakfast at three o'clock!
+
+"I'll look in again, Tiny," said the Captain, on hearing the
+summons.
+
+"DO, Captain," said the other: "THANK YOU;" and went into the lady's
+studio with a heavy heart.
+
+"Get out of the way, you infernal villain!" roared the Captain, with
+many oaths, to Lady Grogmore's large footman, with ruby-coloured
+tights, who was standing inhaling the ten thousand perfumes of the
+shop; and the latter, moving away in great terror, the gallant agent
+passed out, quite heedless of the grin of Mr. Mossrose.
+
+Walker was in a fury at his want of success, and walked down Bond
+Street in a fury.  "I WILL know where the girl lives!" swore he.
+"I'll spend a five-pound note, by Jove! rather than not know where
+she lives!"
+
+"THAT YOU WOULD--I KNOW YOU WOULD!" said a little grave low voice,
+all of a sudden, by his side." Pooh! what's money to you?"
+
+Walker looked down:  it was Tom Dale.
+
+Who in London did not know little Tom Dale?  He had cheeks like an
+apple, and his hair curled every morning, and a little blue stock,
+and always two new magazines under his arm, and an umbrella and a
+little brown frock-coat, and big square-toed shoes with which he
+went PAPPING down the street.  He was everywhere at once.  Everybody
+met him every day, and he knew everything that everybody ever did;
+though nobody ever knew what HE did.  He was, they say, a hundred
+years old, and had never dined at his own charge once in those
+hundred years.  He looked like a figure out of a waxwork, with
+glassy clear meaningless eyes:  he always spoke with a grin; he knew
+what you had for dinner the day before he met you, and what
+everybody had had for dinner for a century back almost.  He was the
+receptacle of all the scandal of all the world, from Bond Street to
+Bread Street; he knew all the authors, all the actors, all the
+"notorieties" of the town, and the private histories of each.  That
+is, he never knew anything really, but supplied deficiencies of
+truth and memory with ready-coined, never-failing lies.  He was the
+most benevolent man in the universe, and never saw you without
+telling you everything most cruel of your neighbour, and when he
+left you he went to do the same kind turn by yourself.
+
+"Pooh! what's money to you, my dear boy?" said little Tom Dale, who
+had just come out of Ebers's, where he had been filching an
+opera-ticket.  "You make it in bushels in the City, you know you
+do---in thousands.  I saw you go into Eglantine's.  Fine business
+that; finest in London.  Five-shilling cakes of soap, my dear boy.
+I can't wash with such.  Thousands a year that man has made--hasn't
+he?"
+
+"Upon my word, Tom, I don't know," says the Captain.
+
+"YOU not know?  Don't tell me.  You know everything--you agents.
+You KNOW he makes five thousand a year--ay, and might make ten, but
+you know why he don't."
+
+"Indeed I don't."
+
+"Nonsense.  Don't humbug a poor old fellow like me.
+Jews--Amos--fifty per cent., ay?  Why can't he get his money from a
+good Christian?"
+
+"I HAVE heard something of that sort," said Walker, laughing.  "Why,
+by Jove, Tom, you know everything!"
+
+"YOU know everything, my dear boy.  You know what a rascally trick
+that opera creature served him, poor fellow.  Cashmere shawls--Storr
+and Mortimer's--'Star and Garter.'  Much better dine quiet off
+pea-soup and sprats--ay?  His betters have, as you know very well."
+
+"Pea-soup and sprats!  What! have you heard of that already?"
+
+"Who bailed Lord Billingsgate, hey, you rogue?" and here Tom gave a
+knowing and almost demoniacal grin.  "Who wouldn't go to the
+'Finish'?  Who had the piece of plate presented to him filled with
+sovereigns?  And you deserved it, my dear boy--you deserved it.
+They said it was only halfpence, but I know better!" and here Tom
+went off in a cough.
+
+"I say, Tom," cried Walker, inspired with a sudden thought, "you,
+who know everything, and are a theatrical man, did you ever know a
+Miss Delancy, an actress?"
+
+"At 'Sadler's Wells' in '16?  Of course I did.  Real name was Budge.
+Lord Slapper admired her very much, my dear boy.  She married a man
+by the name of Crump, his Lordship's black footman, and brought him
+five thousand pounds; and they keep the 'Bootjack' public-house in
+Bunker's Buildings, and they've got fourteen children.  Is one of
+them handsome, eh, you sly rogue--and is it that which you will give
+five pounds to know?  God bless you, my dear dear boy.  Jones, my
+dear friend, how are you?"
+
+And now, seizing on Jones, Tom Dale left Mr. Walker alone, and
+proceeded to pour into Mr. Jones's ear an account of the individual
+whom he had just quitted; how he was the best fellow in the world,
+and Jones KNEW it; how he was in a fine way of making his fortune;
+how he had been in the Fleet many times, and how he was at this
+moment employed in looking out for a young lady of whom a certain
+great marquess (whom Jones knew very well, too) had expressed an
+admiration.
+
+But for these observations, which he did not hear, Captain Walker,
+it may be pronounced, did not care.  His eyes brightened up, he
+marched quickly and gaily away; and turning into his own chambers
+opposite Eglantine's, shop, saluted that establishment with a grin
+of triumph.  "You wouldn't tell me her name, wouldn't you?" said Mr.
+Walker.  "Well, the luck's with me now, and here goes."
+
+Two days after, as Mr. Eglantine, with white gloves and a case of
+eau-de-Cologne as a present in his pocket, arrived at the "Bootjack
+Hotel," Little Bunker's Buildings, Berkeley Square (for it must out-
+-that was the place in which Mr. Crump's inn was situated), he
+paused for a moment at the threshold of the little house of
+entertainment, and listened, with beating heart, to the sound of
+delicious music that a well-known voice was uttering within.
+
+The moon was playing in silvery brightness down the gutter of the
+humble street.  A "helper," rubbing down one of Lady Smigsmag's
+carriage-horses, even paused in his whistle to listen to the strain.
+Mr. Tressle's man, who had been professionally occupied, ceased his
+tap-tap upon the coffin which he was getting in readiness.  The
+greengrocer (there is always a greengrocer in those narrow streets,
+and he goes out in white Berlin gloves as a supernumerary footman)
+was standing charmed at his little green gate; the cobbler (there is
+always a cobbler too) was drunk, as usual, of evenings, but, with
+unusual subordination, never sang except when the refrain of the
+ditty arrived, when he hiccupped it forth with tipsy loyalty; and
+Eglantine leaned against the chequers painted on the door-side under
+the name of Crump, and looked at the red illumined curtain of the
+bar, and the vast well-known shadow of Mrs. Crump's turban within.
+Now and again the shadow of that worthy matron's hand would be seen
+to grasp the shadow of a bottle; then the shadow of a cup would rise
+towards the turban, and still the strain proceeded.  Eglantine, I
+say, took out his yellow bandanna, and brushed the beady drops from
+his brow, and laid the contents of his white kids on his heart, and
+sighed with ecstatic sympathy.  The song began,--
+
+         "Come to the greenwood tree, {1}
+          Come where the dark woods be,
+          Dearest, O come with me!
+     Let us rove--O my love--O my love!
+                             O my-y love!
+
+(Drunken Cobbler without)
+                             O my-y love!"
+
+"Beast!" says Eglantine.
+
+         "Come--'tis the moonlight hour,
+          Dew is on leaf and flower,
+          Come to the linden bower,
+     Let us rove--O my love--O my love!
+   Let us ro-o-ove, lurlurliety; yes, we'll rove, lurlurliety,
+   Through the gro-o-ove, lurlurliety--lurlurli-e-i-e-i-e-i!
+
+(Cobbler, as usual)--
+                             Let us ro-o-ove," etc.
+
+"YOU here?" says another individual, coming clinking up the street,
+in a military-cut dress-coat, the buttons whereof shone very bright
+in the moonlight.  "YOU here, Eglantine?--You're always here."
+
+"Hush, Woolsey," said Mr. Eglantine to his rival the tailor (for he
+was the individual in question); and Woolsey, accordingly, put his
+back against the opposite door-post and chequers, so that (with poor
+Eglantine's bulk) nothing much thicker than a sheet of paper could
+pass out or in.  And thus these two amorous caryatides kept guard as
+the song continued:--
+
+          "Dark is the wood, and wide,
+           Dangers, they say, betide;
+           But, at my Albert's side,
+     Nought, I fear, O my love--O my love!
+
+          "Welcome the greenwood tree,
+           Welcome the forest tree,
+           Dearest, with thee, with thee,
+     Nought I fear, O my love--O ma-a-y love!"
+
+Eglantine's fine eyes were filled with tears as Morgiana
+passionately uttered the above beautiful words.  Little Woolsey's
+eyes glistened, as he clenched his fist with an oath, and said,
+"Show me any singing that can beat THAT.  Cobbler, shut your mouth,
+or I'll break your head!"
+
+But the cobbler, regardless of the threat, continued to perform the
+"Lurlurliety" with great accuracy; and when that was ended, both on
+his part and Morgiana's, a rapturous knocking of glasses was heard
+in the little bar, then a great clapping of hands, and finally
+somebody shouted "Brava!"
+
+"Brava!"
+
+At that word Eglantine turned deadly pale, then gave a start, then a
+rush forward, which pinned, or rather cushioned, the tailor against
+the wall; then twisting himself abruptly round, he sprang to the
+door of the bar, and bounced into that apartment.
+
+"HOW ARE YOU, MY NOSEGAY?" exclaimed the same voice which had
+shouted "Brava!"  It was that of Captain Walker.
+
+At ten o'clock the next morning, a gentleman, with the King's button
+on his military coat, walked abruptly into Mr. Eglantine's shop,
+and, turning on Mr. Mossrose, said, "Tell your master I want to see
+him."
+
+"He's in his studio," said Mr. Mossrose.
+
+"Well, then, fellow, go and fetch him!"
+
+And Mossrose, thinking it must be the Lord Chamberlain, or Doctor
+Praetorius at least, walked into the studio, where the perfumer was
+seated in a very glossy old silk dressing-gown, his fair hair
+hanging over his white face, his double chin over his flaccid
+whity-brown shirt-collar, his pea-green slippers on the hob, and on
+the fire the pot of chocolate which was simmering for his breakfast.
+A lazier fellow than poor Eglantine it would be hard to find;
+whereas, on the contrary, Woolsey was always up and brushed,
+spick-and-span, at seven o'clock; and had gone through his books,
+and given out the work for the journeymen, and eaten a hearty
+breakfast of rashers of bacon, before Eglantine had put the usual
+pound of grease to his hair (his fingers were always as damp and
+shiny as if he had them in a pomatum-pot), and arranged his figure
+for the day.
+
+"Here's a gent wants you in the shop," says Mr. Mossrose, leaving
+the door of communication wide open.
+
+"Say I'm in bed, Mr. Mossrose; I'm out of sperrets, and really can
+see nobody."
+
+"It's someone from Vindsor, I think; he's got the royal button,"
+says Mossrose.
+
+"It's me--Woolsey," shouted the little man from the shop.
+
+Mr. Eglantine at this jumped up, made a rush to the door leading to
+his private apartment, and disappeared in a twinkling.  But it must
+not be imagined that he fled in order to avoid Mr. Woolsey.  He only
+went away for one minute just to put on his belt, for he was ashamed
+to be seen without it by his rival.
+
+This being assumed, and his toilet somewhat arranged, Mr. Woolsey
+was admitted into his private room.  And Mossrose would have heard
+every word of the conversation between those two gentlemen, had not
+Woolsey, opening the door, suddenly pounced on the assistant, taken
+him by the collar, and told him to disappear altogether into the
+shop:  which Mossrose did; vowing he would have his revenge.
+
+The subject on which Woolsey had come to treat was an important one.
+"Mr. Eglantine," says he, "there's no use disguising from one
+another that we are both of us in love with Miss Morgiana, and that
+our chances up to this time have been pretty equal.  But that
+Captain whom you introduced, like an ass as you were--"
+
+"An ass, Mr. Woolsey!  I'd have you to know, sir, that I'm no more a
+hass than you are, sir; and as for introducing the Captain, I did no
+such thing."
+
+"Well, well, he's got a-poaching into our preserves somehow.  He's
+evidently sweet upon the young woman, and is a more fashionable chap
+than either of us two.  We must get him out of the house, sir--we
+must circumwent him; and THEN, Mr. Eglantine, will be time enough
+for you and me to try which is the best man."
+
+"HE the best man?" thought Eglantine; "the little bald unsightly
+tailor-creature!  A man with no more soul than his smoothing-hiron!"
+The perfumer, as may be imagined, did not utter this sentiment
+aloud, but expressed himself quite willing to enter into any
+HAMICABLE arrangement by which the new candidate for Miss Crump's
+favour must be thrown over.  It was accordingly agreed between the
+two gentlemen that they should coalesce against the common enemy;
+that they should, by reciting many perfectly well-founded stories in
+the Captain's disfavour, influence the minds of Miss Crump's
+parents, and of herself, if possible, against this wolf in sheep's
+clothing; and that, when they were once fairly rid of him, each
+should be at liberty, as before, to prefer his own claim.
+
+"I have thought of a subject," said the little tailor, turning very
+red, and hemming and hawing a great deal.  "I've thought, I say, of
+a pint, which may be resorted to with advantage at the present
+juncture, and in which each of us may be useful to the other.  An
+exchange, Mr. Eglantine:  do you take?"
+
+"Do you mean an accommodation-bill?" said Eglantine, whose mind ran
+a good deal on that species of exchange.
+
+"Pooh, nonsense, sir!  The name of OUR firm is, I flatter myself, a
+little more up in the market than some other people's names."
+
+"Do you mean to insult the name of Archibald Eglantine, sir?  I'd
+have you to know that at three months--"
+
+"Nonsense!" says Mr. Woolsey, mastering his emotion.  "There's no
+use a-quarrelling, Mr. E.:  we're not in love with each other, I
+know that.  You wish me hanged, or as good, I know that!"
+
+"Indeed I don't, sir!"
+
+"You do, sir; I tell you, you do! and what's more, I wish the same
+to you--transported, at any rate!  But as two sailors, when a boat's
+a-sinking, though they hate each other ever so much, will help and
+bale the boat out; so, sir, let US act:  let us be the two sailors."
+
+"Bail, sir?" said Eglantine, as usual mistaking the drift of the
+argument.  "I'll bail no man!  If you're in difficulties, I think
+you had better go to your senior partner, Mr Woolsey."  And
+Eglantine's cowardly little soul was filled with a savage
+satisfaction to think that his enemy was in distress, and actually
+obliged to come to HIM for succour.
+
+"You're enough to make Job swear, you great fat stupid lazy old
+barber!" roared Mr. Woolsey, in a fury.
+
+Eglantine jumped up and made for the bell-rope.  The gallant little
+tailor laughed.
+
+"There's no need to call in Betsy," said he.  "I'm not a-going to
+eat you, Eglantine; you're a bigger man than me:  if you were just
+to fall on me, you'd smother me!  Just sit still on the sofa and
+listen to reason."
+
+"Well, sir, pro-ceed," said the barber with a gasp.
+
+"Now, listen!  What's the darling wish of your heart?  I know it,
+sir! you've told it to Mr. Tressle, sir, and other gents at the
+club.  The darling wish of your heart, sir, is to have a slap-up
+coat turned out of the ateliers of Messrs. Linsey, Woolsey and
+Company.  You said you'd give twenty guineas for one of our coats,
+you know you did!  Lord Bolsterton's a fatter man than you, and look
+what a figure we turn HIM out.  Can any firm in England dress Lord
+Bolsterton but us, so as to make his Lordship look decent?  I defy
+'em, sir!  We could have given Daniel Lambert a figure!"
+
+"If I want a coat, sir," said Mr. Eglantine, "and I don't deny it,
+there's some people want a HEAD OF HAIR!"
+
+"That's the very point I was coming to," said the tailor, resuming
+the violent blush which was mentioned as having suffused his
+countenance at the beginning of the conversation.  "Let us have
+terms of mutual accommodation.  Make me a wig, Mr. Eglantine, and
+though I never yet cut a yard of cloth except for a gentleman, I'll
+pledge you my word I'll make you a coat."
+
+"WILL you, honour bright?" says Eglantine.
+
+"Honour bright," says the tailor.  "Look!" and in an instant he drew
+from his pocket one of those slips of parchment which gentlemen of
+his profession carry, and putting Eglantine into the proper
+position, began to take the preliminary observations.  He felt
+Eglantine's heart thump with happiness as his measure passed over
+that soft part of the perfumer's person.
+
+Then pulling down the window-blind, and looking that the door was
+locked, and blushing still more deeply than ever, the tailor seated
+himself in an arm-chair towards which Mr. Eglantine beckoned him,
+and, taking off his black wig, exposed his head to the great
+perruquier's gaze.  Mr. Eglantine looked at it, measured it,
+manipulated it, sat for three minutes with his head in his hand and
+his elbow on his knee, gazing at the tailor's cranium with all his
+might, walked round it twice or thrice, and then said, "It's enough,
+Mr. Woolsey.  Consider the job as done.  And now, sir," said he,
+with a greatly relieved air--"and now, Woolsey, let us 'ave a glass
+of curacoa to celebrate this hauspicious meeting."
+
+The tailor, however, stiffly replied that he never drank in a
+morning, and left the room without offering to shake Mr. Eglantine
+by the hand:  for he despised that gentleman very heartily, and
+himself, too, for coming to any compromise with him, and for so far
+demeaning himself as to make a coat for a barber.
+
+Looking from his chambers on the other side of the street, that
+inevitable Mr. Walker saw the tailor issuing from the perfumer's
+shop, and was at no loss to guess that something extraordinary must
+be in progress when two such bitter enemies met together.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+
+
+WHAT CAME OF MR WALKER'S DISCOVERY OF THE "BOOTJACK."
+
+It is very easy to state how the Captain came to take up that proud
+position at the "Bootjack" which we have seen him occupy on the
+evening when the sound of the fatal "Brava!" so astonished Mr.
+Eglantine.
+
+The mere entry into the establishment was, of course, not difficult.
+Any person by simply uttering the words "A pint of beer," was free
+of the "Bootjack;" and it was some such watchword that Howard Walker
+employed when he made his first appearance.  He requested to be
+shown into a parlour, where he might repose himself for a while, and
+was ushered into that very sanctum where the "Kidney Club" met.
+Then he stated that the beer was the best he had ever tasted, except
+in Bavaria, and in some parts of Spain, he added; and professing to
+be extremely "peckish," requested to know if there were any cold
+meat in the house whereof he could make a dinner.
+
+"I don't usually dine at this hour, landlord," said he, flinging
+down a half-sovereign for payment of the beer; "but your parlour
+looks so comfortable, and the Windsor chairs are so snug, that I'm
+sure I could not dine better at the first club in London."
+
+"ONE of the first clubs in London is held in this very room," said
+Mr. Crump, very well pleased; "and attended by some of the best
+gents in town, too.  We call it the "Kidney Club."
+
+"Why, bless my soul! it is the very club my friend Eglantine has so
+often talked to me about, and attended by some of the tip-top
+tradesmen of the metropolis!"
+
+"There's better men here than Mr. Eglantine," replied Mr. Crump,
+"though he's a good man--I don't say he's not a good man--but
+there's better.  Mr. Clinker, sir; Mr. Woolsey, of the house of
+Linsey, Woolsey and Co--"
+
+"The great army-clothiers!" cried Walker; "the first house in town!"
+and so continued, with exceeding urbanity, holding conversation with
+Mr. Crump, until the honest landlord retired delighted, and told
+Mrs. Crump in the bar that there was a tip-top swell in the "Kidney"
+parlour, who was a-going to have his dinner there.
+
+Fortune favoured the brave Captain in every way.  It was just Mr.
+Crump's own dinner-hour; and on Mrs. Crump stepping into the parlour
+to ask the guest whether he would like a slice of the joint to which
+the family were about to sit down, fancy that lady's start of
+astonishment at recognising Mr. Eglantine's facetious friend of the
+day before.  The Captain at once demanded permission to partake of
+the joint at the family table; the lady could not with any great
+reason deny this request; the Captain was inducted into the bar; and
+Miss Crump, who always came down late for dinner, was even more
+astonished than her mamma, on beholding the occupier of the fourth
+place at the table.  Had she expected to see the fascinating
+stranger so soon again?  I think she had.  Her big eyes said as
+much, as, furtively looking up at Mr. Walker's face, they caught his
+looks; and then bouncing down again towards her plate, pretended to
+be very busy in looking at the boiled beef and carrots there
+displayed.  She blushed far redder than those carrots, but her
+shining ringlets hid her confusion together with her lovely face.
+
+Sweet Morgiana! the billiard-ball eyes had a tremendous effect on
+the Captain.  They fell plump, as it were, into the pocket of his
+heart; and he gallantly proposed to treat the company to a bottle of
+champagne, which was accepted without much difficulty.
+
+Mr. Crump, under pretence of going to the cellar (where he said he
+had some cases of the finest champagne in Europe), called Dick, the
+boy, to him, and despatched him with all speed to a wine merchant's,
+where a couple of bottles of the liquor were procured.
+
+"Bring up two bottles, Mr. C.," Captain Walker gallantly said when
+Crump made his move, as it were, to the cellar and it may be
+imagined after the two bottles were drunk (of which Mrs. Crump took
+at least nine glasses to her share), how happy, merry, and
+confidential the whole party had become.  Crump told his story of
+the "Bootjack," and whose boot it had drawn; the former Miss Delancy
+expatiated on her past theatrical life, and the pictures hanging
+round the room.  Miss was equally communicative; and, in short, the
+Captain had all the secrets of the little family in his possession
+ere sunset.  He knew that Miss cared little for either of her
+suitors, about whom mamma and papa had a little quarrel.  He heard
+Mrs. Crump talk of Morgiana's property, and fell more in love with
+her than ever.  Then came tea, the luscious crumpet, the quiet game
+at cribbage, and the song--the song which poor Eglantine heard, and
+which caused Woolsey's rage and his despair.
+
+At the close of the evening the tailor was in a greater rage, and
+the perfumer in greater despair than ever.  He had made his little
+present of eau-de-Cologne.  "Oh fie!" says the Captain, with a
+horse-laugh, "it SMELLS OF THE SHOP!"  He taunted the tailor about
+his wig, and the honest fellow had only an oath to give by way of
+repartee.  He told his stories about his club and his lordly
+friends.  What chance had either against the all-accomplished Howard
+Walker?
+
+Old Crump, with a good innate sense of right and wrong, hated the
+man; Mrs. Crump did not feel quite at her ease regarding him; but
+Morgiana thought him the most delightful person the world ever
+produced.
+
+Eglantine's usual morning costume was a blue satin neck-cloth
+embroidered with butterflies and ornamented with a brandy-ball
+brooch, a light shawl waistcoat, and a rhubarb-coloured coat of the
+sort which, I believe, are called Taglionis, and which have no
+waist-buttons, and made a pretence, as it were, to have no waists,
+but are in reality adopted by the fat in order to give them a waist.
+Nothing easier for an obese man than to have a waist; he has but to
+pinch his middle part a little, and the very fat on either side
+pushed violently forward MAKES a waist, as it were, and our worthy
+perfumer's figure was that of a bolster cut almost in two with a
+string.
+
+Walker presently saw him at his shop-door grinning in this costume,
+twiddling his ringlets with his dumpy greasy fingers, glittering
+with oil and rings, and looking so exceedingly contented and happy
+that the estate-agent felt assured some very satisfactory conspiracy
+had been planned between the tailor and him.  How was Mr. Walker to
+learn what the scheme was?  Alas! the poor fellow's vanity and
+delight were such, that he could not keep silent as to the cause of
+his satisfaction; and rather than not mention it at all, in the
+fulness of his heart he would have told his secret to Mr. Mossrose
+himself.
+
+"When I get my coat," thought the Bond Street Alnaschar, "I'll hire
+of Snaffle that easy-going cream-coloured 'oss that he bought from
+Astley's, and I'll canter through the Park, and WON'T I pass through
+Little Bunker's Buildings, that's all?  I'll wear my grey trousers
+with the velvet stripe down the side, and get my spurs lacquered up,
+and a French polish to my boot; and if I don't DO for the Captain,
+and the tailor too, my name's not Archibald.  And I know what I'll
+do:  I'll hire the small clarence, and invite the Crumps to dinner
+at the 'Gar and Starter'" (this was his facetious way of calling the
+"Star and Garter"), "and I'll ride by them all the way to Richmond.
+It's rather a long ride, but with Snaffle's soft saddle I can do it
+pretty easy, I dare say."  And so the honest fellow built castles
+upon castles in the air; and the last most beautiful vision of all
+was Miss Crump "in white satting, with a horange flower in her
+'air," putting him in possession of "her lovely 'and before the
+haltar of St. George's, 'Anover Square."  As for Woolsey, Eglantine
+determined that he should have the best wig his art could produce;
+for he had not the least fear of his rival.
+
+These points then being arranged to the poor fellow's satisfaction,
+what does he do but send out for half a quire of pink note-paper,
+and in a filagree envelope despatch a note of invitation to the
+ladies at the "Bootjack":--
+
+                            "BOWER OF BLOOM, BOND STREET:
+                                            "Thursday.
+
+"MR. ARCHIBALD EGLANTINE presents his compliments to Mrs. and Miss
+Crump, and requests the HONOUR AND PLEASURE of their company at the
+'Star and Garter' at Richmond to an early dinner on Sunday next.
+
+"IF AGREEABLE, Mr. Eglantine's carriage will be at your door at
+three o'clock, and I propose to accompany them on horseback, if
+agreeable likewise."
+
+
+This note was sealed with yellow wax, and sent to its destination;
+and of course Mr. Eglantine went himself for the answer in the
+evening:  and of course he told the ladies to look out for a certain
+new coat he was going to sport on Sunday; and of course Mr. Walker
+happens to call the next day with spare tickets for Mrs. Crump and
+her daughter, when the whole secret was laid bare to him--how the
+ladies were going to Richmond on Sunday in Mr. Snaffle's clarence,
+and how Mr. Eglantine was to ride by their side.
+
+Mr. Walker did not keep horses of his own; his magnificent friends
+at the "Regent" had plenty in their stables, and some of these were
+at livery at the establishment of the Captain's old "college"
+companion, Mr. Snaffle.  It was easy, therefore, for the Captain to
+renew his acquaintance with that individual.  So, hanging on the arm
+of my Lord Vauxhall, Captain Walker next day made his appearance at
+Snaffle's livery-stables, and looked at the various horses there for
+sale or at bait, and soon managed, by putting some facetious
+questions to Mr. Snaffle regarding the "Kidney Club," etc. to place
+himself on a friendly footing with that gentleman, and to learn from
+him what horse Mr. Eglantine was to ride on Sunday.
+
+The monster Walker had fully determined in his mind that Eglantine
+should FALL off that horse in the course of his Sunday's ride.
+
+"That sing'lar hanimal," said Mr. Snaffle, pointing to the old
+horse, "is the celebrated Hemperor that was the wonder of Hastley's
+some years back, and was parted with by Mr. Ducrow honly because his
+feelin's wouldn't allow him to keep him no longer after the death of
+the first Mrs. D., who invariably rode him.  I bought him, thinking
+that p'raps ladies and Cockney bucks might like to ride him (for his
+haction is wonderful, and he canters like a harm-chair); but he's
+not safe on any day except Sundays."
+
+"And why's that?" asked Captain Walker.  "Why is he safer on Sundays
+than other days?"
+
+"BECAUSE THERE'S NO MUSIC in the streets on Sundays.  The first gent
+that rode him found himself dancing a quadrille in Hupper Brook
+Street to an 'urdy-gurdy that was playing 'Cherry Ripe,' such is the
+natur of the hanimal.  And if you reklect the play of the 'Battle of
+Hoysterlitz,' in which Mrs. D.  hacted 'the female hussar,' you may
+remember how she and the horse died in the third act to the toon of
+'God preserve the Emperor,' from which this horse took his name.
+Only play that toon to him, and he rears hisself up, beats the hair
+in time with his forelegs, and then sinks gently to the ground as
+though he were carried off by a cannon-ball.  He served a lady
+hopposite Hapsley 'Ouse so one day, and since then I've never let
+him out to a friend except on Sunday, when, in course, there's no
+danger.  Heglantine IS a friend of mine, and of course I wouldn't
+put the poor fellow on a hanimal I couldn't trust."
+
+After a little more conversation, my lord and his friend quitted Mr.
+Snaffle's, and as they walked away towards the "Regent," his
+Lordship might be heard shrieking with laughter, crying, "Capital,
+by jingo! exthlent!  Dwive down in the dwag!  Take Lungly.  Worth a
+thousand pound, by Jove!" and similar ejaculations, indicative of
+exceeding delight.
+
+On Saturday morning, at ten o'clock to a moment, Mr. Woolsey called
+at Mr. Eglantine's with a yellow handkerchief under his arm.  It
+contained the best and handsomest body-coat that ever gentleman put
+on.  It fitted Eglantine to a nicety--it did not pinch him in the
+least, and yet it was of so exquisite a cut that the perfumer found,
+as he gazed delighted in the glass, that he looked like a manly
+portly high-bred gentleman--a lieutenant-colonel in the army, at the
+very least.
+
+"You're a full man, Eglantine," said the tailor, delighted, too,
+with his own work; "but that can't be helped.  You look more like
+Hercules than Falstaff now, sir, and if a coat can make a gentleman,
+a gentleman you are.  Let me recommend you to sink the blue cravat,
+and take the stripes off your trousers.  Dress quiet, sir; draw it
+mild.  Plain waistcoat, dark trousers, black neckcloth, black hat,
+and if there's a better-dressed man in Europe to-morrow, I'm a
+Dutchman."
+
+"Thank you, Woolsey--thank you, my dear sir," said the charmed
+perfumer.  "And now I'll just trouble you to try on this here."
+
+The wig had been made with equal skill; it was not in the florid
+style which Mr. Eglantine loved in his own person, but, as the
+perfumer said, a simple straightforward head of hair.  "It seems as
+if it had grown there all your life, Mr. Woolsey; nobody would tell
+that it was not your nat'ral colour" (Mr.  Woolsey blushed)--"it
+makes you look ten year younger; and as for that scarecrow yonder,
+you'll never, I think, want to wear that again."
+
+Woolsey looked in the glass, and was delighted too.  The two rivals
+shook hands and straightway became friends, and in the overflowing
+of his heart the perfumer mentioned to the tailor the party which he
+had arranged for the next day, and offered him a seat in the
+carriage and at the dinner at the "Star and Garter."  "Would you
+like to ride?" said Eglantine, with rather a consequential air.
+"Snaffle will mount you, and we can go one on each side of the
+ladies, if you like."
+
+But Woolsey humbly said he was not a riding man, and gladly
+consented to take a place in the clarence carriage, provided he was
+allowed to bear half the expenses of the entertainment.  This
+proposal was agreed to by Mr. Eglantine, and the two gentlemen
+parted to meet once more at the "Kidneys" that night, when everybody
+was edified by the friendly tone adopted between them.
+
+Mr. Snaffle, at the club meeting, made the very same proposal to Mr.
+Woolsey that the perfumer had made; and stated that as Eglantine was
+going to ride Hemperor, Woolsey, at least, ought to mount too.  But
+he was met by the same modest refusal on the tailor's part, who
+stated that he had never mounted a horse yet, and preferred greatly
+the use of a coach.
+
+Eglantine's character as a "swell" rose greatly with the club that
+evening.
+
+Two o'clock on Sunday came:  the two beaux arrived punctually at the
+door to receive the two smiling ladies.
+
+"Bless us, Mr. Eglantine!" said Miss Crump, quite struck by him, "I
+never saw you look so handsome in your life."  He could have flung
+his arms around her neck at the compliment.  "And law, Ma! what has
+happened to Mr. Woolsey? doesn't he look ten years younger than
+yesterday?"  Mamma assented, and Woolsey bowed gallantly, and the
+two gentlemen exchanged a nod of hearty friendship.
+
+The day was delightful.  Eglantine pranced along magnificently on
+his cantering armchair, with his hat on one ear, his left hand on
+his side, and his head flung over his shoulder, and throwing
+under-glances at Morgiana whenever the "Emperor" was in advance of
+the clarence.  The "Emperor" pricked up his ears a little uneasily
+passing the Ebenezer chapel in Richmond, where the congregation were
+singing a hymn, but beyond this no accident occurred; nor was Mr.
+Eglantine in the least stiff or fatigued by the time the party
+reached Richmond, where he arrived time enough to give his steed
+into the charge of an ostler, and to present his elbow to the ladies
+as they alighted from the clarence carriage.
+
+What this jovial party ate for dinner at the "Star and Garter" need
+not here be set down.  If they did not drink champagne I am very
+much mistaken.  They were as merry as any four people in
+Christendom; and between the bewildering attentions of the perfumer,
+and the manly courtesy of the tailor, Morgiana very likely forgot
+the gallant Captain, or, at least, was very happy in his absence.
+
+At eight o'clock they began to drive homewards.  "WON'T you come
+into the carriage?" said Morgiana to Eglantine, with one of her
+tenderest looks; "Dick can ride the horse."  But Archibald was too
+great a lover of equestrian exercise.  "I'm afraid to trust anybody
+on this horse," said he with a knowing look; and so he pranced away
+by the side of the little carriage.  The moon was brilliant, and,
+with the aid of the gas-lamps, illuminated the whole face of the
+country in a way inexpressibly lovely.
+
+Presently, in the distance, the sweet and plaintive notes of a bugle
+were heard, and the performer, with great delicacy, executed a
+religious air.  "Music, too! heavenly!" said Morgiana, throwing up
+her eyes to the stars.  The music came nearer and nearer, and the
+delight of the company was only more intense.  The fly was going at
+about four miles an hour, and the "Emperor" began cantering to time
+at the same rapid pace.
+
+"This must be some gallantry of yours, Mr. Woolsey," said the
+romantic Morgiana, turning upon that gentleman.  "Mr.  Eglantine
+treated us to the dinner, and you have provided us with the music."
+
+Now Woolsey had been a little, a very little, dissatisfied during
+the course of the evening's entertainment, by fancying that
+Eglantine, a much more voluble person than himself, had obtained
+rather an undue share of the ladies' favour; and as he himself paid
+half of the expenses, he felt very much vexed to think that the
+perfumer should take all the credit of the business to himself.  So
+when Miss Crump asked if he had provided the music, he foolishly
+made an evasive reply to her query, and rather wished her to imagine
+that he HAD performed that piece of gallantry.  "If it pleases YOU,
+Miss Morgiana," said this artful Schneider, "what more need any man
+ask? wouldn't I have all Drury Lane orchestra to please you?"
+
+The bugle had by this time arrived quite close to the clarence
+carriage, and if Morgiana had looked round she might have seen
+whence the music came.  Behind her came slowly a drag, or private
+stage-coach, with four horses.  Two grooms with cockades and folded
+arms were behind; and driving on the box, a little gentleman, with a
+blue bird's-eye neckcloth, and a white coat.  A bugleman was by his
+side, who performed the melodies which so delighted Miss Crump.  He
+played very gently and sweetly, and "God save the King" trembled so
+softly out of the brazen orifice of his bugle, that the Crumps, the
+tailor, and Eglantine himself, who was riding close by the carriage,
+were quite charmed and subdued.
+
+"Thank you, DEAR Mr. Woolsey," said the grateful Morgiana; which
+made Eglantine stare, and Woolsey was just saying, "Really, upon my
+word, I've nothing to do with it," when the man on the drag-box said
+to the bugleman, "Now!"
+
+The bugleman began the tune of--
+
+     "Heaven preserve our Emperor Fra-an-cis,
+      Rum tum-ti-tum-ti-titty-ti."
+
+At the sound, the "Emperor" reared himself (with a roar from Mr.
+Eglantine)--reared and beat the air with his fore-paws.  Eglantine
+flung his arms round the beast's neck; still he kept beating time
+with his fore-paws.  Mrs. Crump screamed:  Mr. Woolsey, Dick, the
+clarence coachman, Lord Vauxhall (for it was he), and his Lordship's
+two grooms, burst into a shout of laughter; Morgiana cries "Mercy!
+mercy!"  Eglantine yells "Stop!"--"Wo!"--"Oh!" and a thousand
+ejaculations of hideous terror; until, at last, down drops the
+"Emperor" stone dead in the middle of the road, as if carried off by
+a cannon-ball.
+
+Fancy the situation, ye callous souls who laugh at the misery of
+humanity, fancy the situation of poor Eglantine under the "Emperor"!
+He had fallen very easy, the animal lay perfectly quiet, and the
+perfumer was to all intents and purposes as dead as the animal.  He
+had not fainted, but he was immovable with terror; he lay in a
+puddle, and thought it was his own blood gushing from him; and he
+would have lain there until Monday morning, if my Lord's grooms,
+descending, had not dragged him by the coat-collar from under the
+beast, who still lay quiet.
+
+"Play 'Charming Judy Callaghan,' will ye?" says Mr. Snaffle's man,
+the fly-driver; on which the bugler performed that lively air, and
+up started the horse, and the grooms, who were rubbing Mr. Eglantine
+down against a lamp-post, invited him to remount.
+
+But his heart was too broken for that.  The ladies gladly made room
+for him in the clarence.  Dick mounted "Emperor" and rode homewards.
+The drag, too, drove away, playing "Oh dear, what can the matter
+be?" and with a scowl of furious hate, Mr. Eglantine sat and
+regarded his rival.  His pantaloons were split, and his coat torn up
+the back.
+
+"Are you hurt much, dear Mr. Archibald?" said Morgiana, with
+unaffected compassion.
+
+"N-not much," said the poor fellow, ready to burst into tears.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Woolsey," added the good-natured girl, "how could you play
+such a trick?"
+
+"Upon my word," Woolsey began, intending to plead innocence; but the
+ludicrousness of the situation was once more too much for him, and
+he burst out into a roar of laughter.
+
+"You! you cowardly beast!" howled out Eglantine, now driven to
+fury--"YOU laugh at me, you miserable cretur!  Take THAT, sir!" and
+he fell upon him with all his might, and well-nigh throttled the
+tailor, and pummelling his eyes, his nose, his ears, with
+inconceivable rapidity, wrenched, finally, his wig off his head, and
+flung it into the road.
+
+Morgiana saw that Woolsey had red hair. {2}
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+
+IN WHICH THE HEROINE HAS A NUMBER MORE LOVERS, AND  CUTS A VERY
+DASHING FIGURE IN THE WORLD.
+
+Two years have elapsed since the festival at Richmond, which, begun
+so peaceably, ended in such general uproar.  Morgiana never could be
+brought to pardon Woolsey's red hair, nor to help laughing at
+Eglantine's disasters, nor could the two gentlemen be reconciled to
+one another.  Woolsey, indeed, sent a challenge to the perfumer to
+meet him with pistols, which the latter declined, saying, justly,
+that tradesmen had no business with such weapons; on this the tailor
+proposed to meet him with coats off, and have it out like men, in
+the presence of their friends of the "Kidney Club".  The perfumer
+said he would be party to no such vulgar transaction; on which,
+Woolsey, exasperated, made an oath that he would tweak the
+perfumer's nose so surely as he ever entered the club-room; and thus
+ONE member of the "Kidneys" was compelled to vacate his armchair.
+
+Woolsey himself attended every meeting regularly, but he did not
+evince that gaiety and good-humour which render men's company
+agreeable in clubs.  On arriving, he would order the boy to "tell
+him when that scoundrel Eglantine came;" and, hanging up his hat on
+a peg, would scowl round the room, and tuck up his sleeves very
+high, and stretch, and shake his fingers and wrists, as if getting
+them ready for that pull of the nose which he intended to bestow
+upon his rival.  So prepared, he would sit down and smoke his pipe
+quite silently, glaring at all, and jumping up, and hitching up his
+coat-sleeves, when anyone entered the room.
+
+The "Kidneys" did not like this behaviour.  Clinker ceased to come.
+Bustard, the poulterer, ceased to come.  As for Snaffle, he also
+disappeared, for Woolsey wished to make him answerable for the
+misbehaviour of Eglantine, and proposed to him the duel which the
+latter had declined.  So Snaffle went.  Presently they all went,
+except the tailor and Tressle, who lived down the street, and these
+two would sit and pug their tobacco, one on each side of Crump, the
+landlord, as silent as Indian chiefs in a wigwam. There grew to be
+more and more room for poor old Crump in his chair and in his
+clothes; the "Kidneys" were gone, and why should he remain?  One
+Saturday he did not come down to preside at the club (as he still
+fondly called it), and the Saturday following Tressle had made a
+coffin for him; and Woolsey, with the undertaker by his side,
+followed to the grave the father of the "Kidneys."
+
+Mrs. Crump was now alone in the world.  "How alone?" says some
+innocent and respected reader.  Ah! my dear sir, do you know so
+little of human nature as not to be aware that, one week after the
+Richmond affair, Morgiana married Captain Walker?  That did she
+privately, of course; and, after the ceremony, came tripping back to
+her parents, as young people do in plays, and said, "Forgive me,
+dear Pa and Ma, I'm married, and here is my husband the Captain!"
+Papa and mamma did forgive her, as why shouldn't they? and papa paid
+over her fortune to her, which she carried home delighted to the
+Captain.  This happened several months before the demise of old
+Crump; and Mrs. Captain Walker was on the Continent with her Howard
+when that melancholy event took place; hence Mrs. Crump's loneliness
+and unprotected condition.  Morgiana had not latterly seen much of
+the old people; how could she, moving in her exalted sphere, receive
+at her genteel new residence in the Edgware Road the old publican
+and his wife?
+
+Being, then, alone in the world, Mrs. Crump could not abear, she
+said, to live in the house where she had been so respected and
+happy:  so she sold the goodwill of the "Bootjack," and, with the
+money arising from this sale and her own private fortune, being able
+to muster some sixty pounds per annum, retired to the neighbourhood
+of her dear old "Sadler's Wells," where she boarded with one of Mrs.
+Serle's forty pupils.  Her heart was broken, she said; but,
+nevertheless, about nine months after Mr. Crump's death, the
+wallflowers, nasturtiums, polyanthuses, and convolvuluses began to
+blossom under her bonnet as usual; in a year she was dressed quite
+as fine as ever, and now never missed "The Wells," or some other
+place of entertainment, one single night, but was as regular as the
+box-keeper.  Nay, she was a buxom widow still, and an old flame of
+hers, Fisk, so celebrated as pantaloon in Grimaldi's time, but now
+doing the "heavy fathers" at "The Wells," proposed to her to
+exchange her name for his.
+
+But this proposal the worthy widow declined altogether.  To say
+truth, she was exceedingly proud of her daughter, Mrs. Captain
+Walker.  They did not see each other much at first; but every now
+and then Mrs. Crump would pay a visit to the folks in Connaught
+Square; and on the days when "the Captain's" lady called in the City
+Road, there was not a single official at "The Wells," from the first
+tragedian down to the call-boy, who was not made aware of the fact.
+
+It has been said that Morgiana carried home her fortune in her own
+reticule, and, smiling, placed the money in her husband's lap; and
+hence the reader may imagine, who knows Mr. Walker to be an
+extremely selfish fellow, that a great scene of anger must have
+taken place, and many coarse oaths and epithets of abuse must have
+come from him, when he found that five hundred pounds was all that
+his wife had, although he had expected five thousand with her.  But,
+to say the truth, Walker was at this time almost in love with his
+handsome rosy good-humoured simple wife.  They had made a
+fortnight's tour, during which they had been exceedingly happy; and
+there was something so frank and touching in the way in which the
+kind creature flung her all into his lap, saluting him with a hearty
+embrace at the same time, and wishing that it were a thousand
+billion billion times more, so that her darling Howard might enjoy
+it, that the man would have been a ruffian indeed could he have
+found it in his heart to be angry with her; and so he kissed her in
+return, and patted her on the shining ringlets, and then counted
+over the notes with rather a disconsolate air, and ended by locking
+them up in his portfolio.  In fact, SHE had never deceived him;
+Eglantine had, and he in return had out-tricked Eglantine and so
+warm were his affections for Morgiana at this time that, upon my
+word and honour, I don't think he repented of his bargain.  Besides,
+five hundred pounds in crisp bank-notes was a sum of money such as
+the Captain was not in the habit of handling every day; a dashing
+sanguine fellow, he fancied there was no end to it, and already
+thought of a dozen ways by which it should increase and multiply
+into a plum.  Woe is me!  Has not many a simple soul examined five
+new hundred-pound notes in this way, and calculated their powers of
+duration and multiplication?
+
+This subject, however, is too painful to be dwelt on.  Let us hear
+what Walker did with his money.  Why, he furnished the house in the
+Edgware Road before mentioned, he ordered a handsome service of
+plate, he sported a phaeton and two ponies, he kept a couple of
+smart maids and a groom foot-boy--in fact, he mounted just such a
+neat unpretending gentleman-like establishment as becomes a
+respectable young couple on their outset in life.  "I've sown my
+wild oats," he would say to his acquaintances; "a few years since,
+perhaps, I would have longed to cut a dash, but now prudence is the
+word; and I've settled every farthing of Mrs. Walker's fifteen
+thousand on herself."  And the best proof that the world had
+confidence in him is the fact, that for the articles of plate,
+equipage, and furniture, which have been mentioned as being in his
+possession, he did not pay one single shilling; and so prudent was
+he, that but for turnpikes, postage-stamps, and king's taxes, he
+hardly had occasion to change a five-pound note of his wife's
+fortune.
+
+To tell the truth, Mr. Walker had determined to make his fortune.
+And what is easier in London?  Is not the share-market open to all?
+Do not Spanish and Columbian bonds rise and fall?  For what are
+companies invented, but to place thousands in the pockets of
+shareholders and directors?  Into these commercial pursuits the
+gallant Captain now plunged with great energy, and made some
+brilliant hits at first starting, and bought and sold so
+opportunely, that his name began to rise in the City as a
+capitalist, and might be seen in the printed list of directors of
+many excellent and philanthropic schemes, of which there is never
+any lack in London.  Business to the amount of thousands was done at
+his agency; shares of vast value were bought and sold under his
+management.  How poor Mr. Eglantine used to hate him and envy him,
+as from the door of his emporium (the firm was Eglantine and
+Mossrose now) he saw the Captain daily arrive in his pony-phaeton,
+and heard of the start he had taken in life.
+
+The only regret Mrs. Walker had was that she did not enjoy enough of
+her husband's society.  His business called him away all day; his
+business, too, obliged him to leave her of evenings very frequently
+alone; whilst he (always in pursuit of business) was dining with his
+great friends at the club, and drinking claret and champagne to the
+same end.
+
+She was a perfectly good-natured and simple soul, never made him a
+single reproach; but when he could pass an evening at home with her
+she was delighted, and when he could drive with her in the Park she
+was happy for a week after.  On these occasions, and in the fulness
+of her heart, she would drive to her mother and tell her story.
+"Howard drove with me in the Park yesterday, Mamma;" and "Howard has
+promised to take me to the Opera," and so forth.  And that evening
+the manager, Mr. Gawler, the first tragedian, Mrs. Serle and her
+forty pupils, all the box-keepers, bonnet-women--nay, the
+ginger-beer girls themselves at "The Wells," knew that Captain and
+Mrs. Walker were at Kensington Gardens, or were to have the
+Marchioness of Billingsgate's box at the Opera.  One night--O joy of
+joys!--Mrs. Captain Walker appeared in a private box at "The Wells."
+That's she with the black ringlets and Cashmere shawl,
+smelling-bottle, and black-velvet gown, and bird of paradise in her
+hat.  Goodness gracious! how they all acted at her, Gawler and all,
+and how happy Mrs. Crump was!  She kissed her daughter between all
+the acts, she nodded to all her friends on the stage, in the slips,
+or in the real water; she introduced her daughter, Mrs. Captain
+Walker, to the box-opener; and Melvil Delamere (the first comic),
+Canterfield (the tyrant), and Jonesini (the celebrated Fontarabian
+Statuesque), were all on the steps, and shouted for Mrs. Captain
+Walker's carriage, and waved their hats, and bowed as the little
+pony-phaeton drove away.  Walker, in his moustaches, had come in at
+the end of the play, and was not a little gratified by the
+compliments paid to himself and lady.
+
+Among the other articles of luxury with which the Captain furnished
+his house we must not omit to mention an extremely grand piano,
+which occupied four-fifths of Mrs. Walker's little back
+drawing-room, and at which she was in the habit of practising
+continually.  All day and all night during Walker's absences (and
+these occurred all night and all day), you might hear--the whole
+street might hear--the voice of the lady at No. 23, gurgling, and
+shaking, and quavering, as ladies do when they practise.  The street
+did not approve of the continuance of the noise; but neighbours are
+difficult to please, and what would Morgiana have had to do if she
+had ceased to sing?  It would be hard to lock a blackbird in a cage
+and prevent him from singing too.  And so Walker's blackbird, in the
+snug little cage in the Edgware Road, sang and was not unhappy.
+
+After the pair had been married for about a year, the omnibus that
+passes both by Mrs. Crump's house near "The Wells," and by Mrs.
+Walker's street off the Edgware Road, brought up the former-named
+lady almost every day to her daughter.  She came when the Captain
+had gone to his business; she stayed to a two-o'clock dinner with
+Morgiana; she drove with her in the pony-carriage round the Park;
+but she never stopped later than six.  Had she not to go to the play
+at seven?  And, besides, the Captain might come home with some of
+his great friends, and he always swore and grumbled much if he found
+his mother-in-law on the premises.  As for Morgiana, she was one of
+those women who encourage despotism in husbands.  What the husband
+says must be right, because he says it; what he orders must be
+obeyed tremblingly.  Mrs. Walker gave up her entire reason to her
+lord.  Why was it?  Before marriage she had been an independent
+little person; she had far more brains than her Howard.  I think it
+must have been his moustaches that frightened her, and caused in her
+this humility.
+
+Selfish husbands have this advantage in maintaining with easy-minded
+wives a rigid and inflexible behaviour, viz. that if they DO by any
+chance grant a little favour, the ladies receive it with such
+transports of gratitude as they would never think of showing to a
+lord and master who was accustomed to give them everything they
+asked for; and hence, when Captain Walker signified his assent to
+his wife's prayer that she should take a singing-master, she thought
+his generosity almost divine, and fell upon her mamma's neck, when
+that lady came the next day, and said what a dear adorable angel her
+Howard was, and what ought she not to do for a man who had taken her
+from her humble situation, and raised her to be what she was!  What
+she was, poor soul!  She was the wife of a swindling parvenu
+gentleman.  She received visits from six ladies of her husband's
+acquaintances--two attorneys' ladies, his bill-broker's lady, and
+one or two more, of whose characters we had best, if you please, say
+nothing; and she thought it an honour to be so distinguished:  as if
+Walker had been a Lord Exeter to marry a humble maiden, or a noble
+prince to fall in love with a humble Cinderella, or a majestic Jove
+to come down from heaven and woo a Semele.  Look through the world,
+respectable reader, and among your honourable acquaintances, and say
+if this sort of faith in women is not very frequent?  They WILL
+believe in their husbands, whatever the latter do.  Let John be
+dull, ugly, vulgar, and a humbug, his Mary Ann never finds it out;
+let him tell his stories ever so many times, there is she always
+ready with her kind smile; let him be stingy, she says he is
+prudent; let him quarrel with his best friend, she says he is always
+in the right; let him be prodigal, she says he is generous, and that
+his health requires enjoyment; let him be idle, he must have
+relaxation; and she will pinch herself and her household that he may
+have a guinea for his club.  Yes; and every morning, as she wakes
+and looks at the face, snoring on the pillow by her side--every
+morning, I say, she blesses that dull ugly countenance, and the dull
+ugly soul reposing there, and thinks both are something divine.  I
+want to know how it is that women do not find out their husbands to
+be humbugs?  Nature has so provided it, and thanks to her.  When
+last year they were acting the "Midsummer Night's Dream," and all
+the boxes began to roar with great coarse heehaws at Titania hugging
+Bottom's long long ears--to me, considering these things, it seemed
+that there were a hundred other male brutes squatted round about,
+and treated just as reasonably as Bottom was.  Their Titanias lulled
+them to sleep in their laps, summoned a hundred smiling delicate
+household fairies to tickle their gross intellects and minister to
+their vulgar pleasures; and (as the above remarks are only supposed
+to apply to honest women loving their own lawful spouses) a mercy it
+is that no wicked Puck is in the way to open their eyes, and point
+out their folly.  Cui bono? let them live on in their deceit:  I
+know two lovely ladies who will read this, and will say it is just
+very likely, and not see in the least, that it has been written
+regarding THEM.
+
+Another point of sentiment, and one curious to speculate on.  Have
+you not remarked the immense works of art that women get through?
+The worsted-work sofas, the counterpanes patched or knitted (but
+these are among the old-fashioned in the country), the bushels of
+pincushions, the albums they laboriously fill, the tremendous pieces
+of music they practise, the thousand other fiddle-faddles which
+occupy the attention of the dear souls--nay, have we not seen them
+seated of evenings in a squad or company, Louisa employed at the
+worsted-work before mentioned, Eliza at the pincushions, Amelia at
+card-racks or filagree matches, and, in the midst, Theodosia with
+one of the candles, reading out a novel aloud?  Ah! my dear sir,
+mortal creatures must be very hard put to it for amusement, be sure
+of that, when they are forced to gather together in a company and
+hear novels read aloud!  They only do it because they can't help it,
+depend upon it:  it is a sad life, a poor pastime.  Mr. Dickens, in
+his American book, tells of the prisoners at the silent prison, how
+they had ornamented their rooms, some of them with a frightful
+prettiness and elaboration.  Women's fancy-work is of this sort
+often--only prison work, done because there was no other
+exercising-ground for their poor little thoughts and fingers; and
+hence these wonderful pincushions are executed, these counterpanes
+woven, these sonatas learned.  By everything sentimental, when I see
+two kind innocent fresh-cheeked young women go to a piano, and sit
+down opposite to it upon two chairs piled with more or less
+music-books (according to their convenience), and, so seated, go
+through a set of double-barrelled variations upon this or that tune
+by Herz or Kalkbrenner--I say, far from receiving any satisfaction
+at the noise made by the performance, my too susceptible heart is
+given up entirely to bleeding for the performers.  What hours, and
+weeks, nay, preparatory years of study, has that infernal jig cost
+them!  What sums has papa paid, what scoldings has mamma
+administered ("Lady Bullblock does not play herself;" Sir Thomas
+says, "but she has naturally the finest ear for music ever known!");
+what evidences of slavery, in a word, are there!  It is the
+condition of the young lady's existence.  She breakfasts at eight,
+she does "Mangnall's Questions" with the governess till ten, she
+practises till one, she walks in the square with bars round her till
+two, then she practises again, then she sews or hems, or reads
+French, or Hume's "History," then she comes down to play to papa,
+because he likes music whilst he is asleep after dinner, and then it
+is bed-time, and the morrow is another day with what are called the
+same "duties" to be gone through.  A friend of mine went to call at
+a nobleman's house the other day, and one of the young ladies of the
+house came into the room with a tray on her head; this tray was to
+give Lady Maria a graceful carriage.  Mon Dieu! and who knows but at
+that moment Lady Bell was at work with a pair of her dumb namesakes,
+and Lady Sophy lying flat on a stretching-board?  I could write
+whole articles on this theme but peace! we are keeping Mrs. Walker
+waiting all the while.
+
+Well, then, if the above disquisitions have anything to do with the
+story, as no doubt they have, I wish it to be understood that,
+during her husband's absence, and her own solitary confinement, Mrs.
+Howard Walker bestowed a prodigious quantity of her time and energy
+on the cultivation of her musical talent; and having, as before
+stated, a very fine loud voice, speedily attained no ordinary skill
+in the use of it.  She first had for teacher little Podmore, the fat
+chorus-master at "The Wells," and who had taught her mother the
+"Tink-a-tink" song which has been such a favourite since it first
+appeared.  He grounded her well, and bade her eschew the singing of
+all those "Eagle Tavern" ballads in which her heart formerly
+delighted; and when he had brought her to a certain point of skill,
+the honest little chorus-master said she should have a still better
+instructor, and wrote a note to Captain Walker (enclosing his own
+little account), speaking in terms of the most flattering encomium
+of his lady's progress, and recommending that she should take
+lessons of the celebrated Baroski.  Captain Walker dismissed Podmore
+then, and engaged Signor Baroski, at a vast expense; as he did not
+fail to tell his wife.  In fact, he owed Baroski no less than two
+hundred and twenty guineas when he was-- But we are advancing
+matters.
+
+Little Baroski is the author of the opera of "Eliogabalo," of the
+oratorio of "Purgatorio," which made such an immense sensation, of
+songs and ballet-musics innumerable.  He is a German by birth, and
+shows such an outrageous partiality for pork and sausages, and
+attends at church so constantly, that I am sure there cannot be any
+foundation in the story that he is a member of the ancient religion.
+He is a fat little man, with a hooked nose and jetty whiskers, and
+coal-black shining eyes, and plenty of rings and jewels on his
+fingers and about his person, and a very considerable portion of his
+shirtsleeves turned over his coat to take the air.  His great hands
+(which can sprawl over half a piano, and produce those effects on
+the instrument for which he is celebrated) are encased in
+lemon-coloured kids, new, or cleaned daily.  Parenthetically, let us
+ask why so many men, with coarse red wrists and big hands, persist
+in the white kid glove and wristband system?  Baroski's gloves alone
+must cost him a little fortune; only he says with a leer, when asked
+the question, "Get along vid you; don't you know dere is a gloveress
+that lets me have dem very sheap?"  He rides in the Park; has
+splendid lodgings in Dover Street; and is a member of the "Regent
+Club," where he is a great source of amusement to the members, to
+whom he tells astonishing stories of his successes with the ladies,
+and for whom he has always play and opera tickets in store.  His eye
+glistens and his little heart beats when a lord speaks to him; and
+he has been known to spend large sums of money in giving treats to
+young sprigs of fashion at Richmond and elsewhere.  "In my
+bolyticks," he says, "I am consarevatiff to de bag-bone."  In fine,
+he is a puppy, and withal a man of considerable genius in his
+profession.
+
+This gentleman, then, undertook to complete the musical education of
+Mrs. Walker.  He expressed himself at once "enshanted vid her
+gababilities," found that the extent of her voice was "brodigious,"
+and guaranteed that she should become a first-rate singer.  The
+pupil was apt, the master was exceedingly skilful; and, accordingly,
+Mrs. Walker's progress was very remarkable:  although, for her part,
+honest Mrs. Crump, who used to attend her daughter's lessons, would
+grumble not a little at the new system, and the endless exercises
+which she, Morgiana, was made to go through.  It was very different
+in HER time, she said.  Incledon knew no music, and who could sing
+so well now?  Give her a good English ballad:  it was a thousand
+times sweeter than your "Figaros" and "Semiramides."
+
+In spite of these objections, however, and with amazing perseverance
+and cheerfulness, Mrs. Walker pursued the method of study pointed
+out to her by her master.  As soon as her husband went to the City
+in the morning her operations began; if he remained away at dinner,
+her labours still continued:  nor is it necessary for me to
+particularise her course of study, nor, indeed, possible; for,
+between ourselves, none of the male Fitz-Boodles ever could sing a
+note, and the jargon of scales and solfeggios is quite unknown to
+me.  But as no man can have seen persons addicted to music without
+remarking the prodigious energies they display in the pursuit, as
+there is no father of daughters, however ignorant, but is aware of
+the piano-rattling and voice-exercising which go on in his house
+from morning till night, so let all fancy, without further inquiry,
+how the heroine of our story was at this stage of her existence
+occupied.
+
+Walker was delighted with her progress, and did everything but pay
+Baroski, her instructor.  We know why he didn't pay.  It was his
+nature not to pay bills, except on extreme compulsion; but why did
+not Baroski employ that extreme compulsion?  Because, if he had
+received his money, he would have lost his pupil, and because he
+loved his pupil more than money.  Rather than lose her, he would
+have given her a guinea as well as her cachet.  He would sometimes
+disappoint a great personage, but he never missed his attendance on
+HER; and the truth must out, that he was in love with her, as
+Woolsey and Eglantine had been before.
+
+"By the immortel Chofe!" he would say, "dat letell ding sents me mad
+vid her big ice!  But only vait avile:  in six veeks I can bring any
+voman in England on her knees to me and you shall see vat I vill do
+vid my Morgiana."  He attended her for six weeks punctually, and yet
+Morgiana was never brought down on her knees; he exhausted his best
+stock of "gomblimends," and she never seemed disposed to receive
+them with anything but laughter.  And, as a matter of course, he
+only grew more infatuated with the lovely creature who was so
+provokingly good-humoured and so laughingly cruel.
+
+Benjamin Baroski was one of the chief ornaments of the musical
+profession in London; he charged a guinea for a lesson of
+three-quarters of an hour abroad, and he had, furthermore, a school
+at his own residence, where pupils assembled in considerable
+numbers, and of that curious mixed kind which those may see who
+frequent these places of instruction.  There were very innocent
+young ladies with their mammas, who would hurry them off trembling
+to the farther corner of the room when certain doubtful professional
+characters made their appearance.  There was Miss Grigg, who sang at
+the "Foundling," and Mr. Johnson, who sang at the "Eagle Tavern,"
+and Madame Fioravanti (a very doubtful character), who sang nowhere,
+but was always coming out at the Italian Opera.  There was Lumley
+Limpiter (Lord Tweedledale's son), one of the most accomplished
+tenors in town, and who, we have heard, sings with the professionals
+at a hundred concerts; and with him, too, was Captain Guzzard, of
+the Guards, with his tremendous bass voice, which all the world
+declared to be as fine as Porto's, and who shared the applause of
+Baroski's school with Mr. Bulger, the dentist of Sackville Street,
+who neglected his ivory and gold plates for his voice, as every
+unfortunate individual will do who is bitten by the music mania.
+Then among the ladies there were a half-score of dubious pale
+governesses and professionals with turned frocks and lank damp
+bandeaux of hair under shabby little bonnets; luckless creatures
+these, who were parting with their poor little store of half-guineas
+to be enabled to say they were pupils of Signor Baroski, and so get
+pupils of their own among the British youths, or employment in the
+choruses of the theatres.
+
+The prima donna of the little company was Amelia Larkins, Baroski's
+own articled pupil, on whose future reputation the eminent master
+staked his own, whose profits he was to share, and whom he had
+farmed, to this end, from her father, a most respectable sheriff's
+officer's assistant, and now, by his daughter's exertions, a
+considerable capitalist.  Amelia is blonde and blue-eyed, her
+complexion is as bright as snow, her ringlets of the colour of
+straw, her figure--but why describe her figure?  Has not all the
+world seen her at the Theatres Royal and in America under the name
+of Miss Ligonier?
+
+Until Mrs. Walker arrived, Miss Larkins was the undisputed princess
+of the Baroski company--the Semiramide, the Rosina, the Tamina, the
+Donna Anna.  Baroski vaunted her everywhere as the great rising
+genius of the day, bade Catalani look to her laurels, and questioned
+whether Miss Stephens could sing a ballad like his pupil.  Mrs.
+Howard Walker arrived, and created, on the first occasion, no small
+sensation.  She improved, and the little society became speedily
+divided into Walkerites and Larkinsians; and between these two
+ladies (as indeed between Guzzard and Bulger before mentioned,
+between Miss Brunck and Miss Horsman, the two contraltos, and
+between the chorus-singers, after their kind) a great rivalry arose.
+Larkins was certainly the better singer; but could her
+straw-coloured curls and dumpy high-shouldered figure bear any
+comparison with the jetty ringlets and stately form of Morgiana?
+Did not Mrs. Walker, too, come to the music-lesson in her carriage,
+and with a black velvet gown and Cashmere shawl, while poor Larkins
+meekly stepped from Bell Yard, Temple Bar, in an old print gown and
+clogs, which she left in the hall?  "Larkins sing!" said Mrs. Crump,
+sarcastically; "I'm sure she ought; her mouth's big enough to sing a
+duet."  Poor Larkins had no one to make epigrams in her behoof; her
+mother was at home tending the younger ones, her father abroad
+following the duties of his profession; she had but one protector,
+as she thought, and that one was Baroski.  Mrs. Crump did not fail
+to tell Lumley Limpiter of her own former triumphs, and to sing him
+"Tink-a-tink," which we have previously heard, and to state how in
+former days she had been called the Ravenswing.  And Lumley, on this
+hint, made a poem, in which he compared Morgiana's hair to the
+plumage of the Raven's wing, and Larkinissa's to that of the canary;
+by which two names the ladies began soon to be known in the school.
+
+Ere long the flight of the Ravenswing became evidently stronger,
+whereas that of the canary was seen evidently to droop.  When
+Morgiana sang, all the room would cry "Bravo!" when Amelia
+performed, scarce a hand was raised for applause of her, except
+Morgiana's own, and that the Larkinses thought was lifted in odious
+triumph, rather than in sympathy, for Miss L. was of an envious
+turn, and little understood the generosity of her rival.
+
+At last, one day, the crowning victory of the Ravenswing came.  In
+the trio of Baroski's own opera of "Eliogabalo," "Rosy lips and rosy
+wine," Miss Larkins, who was evidently unwell, was taking the part
+of the English captive, which she had sung in public concerts before
+royal dukes, and with considerable applause, and, from some reason,
+performed it so ill, that Baroski, slapping down the music on the
+piano in a fury, cried, "Mrs. Howard Walker, as Miss Larkins cannot
+sing to-day, will you favour us by taking the part of Boadicetta?"
+Mrs. Walker got up smilingly to obey--the triumph was too great to
+be withstood; and, as she advanced to the piano, Miss Larkins looked
+wildly at her, and stood silent for a while, and, at last, shrieked
+out, "BENJAMIN!" in a tone of extreme agony, and dropped fainting
+down on the ground.  Benjamin looked extremely red, it must be
+confessed, at being thus called by what we shall denominate his
+Christian name, and Limpiter looked round at Guzzard, and Miss
+Brunck nudged Miss Horsman, and the lesson concluded rather abruptly
+that day; for Miss Larkins was carried off to the next room, laid on
+a couch, and sprinkled with water.
+
+Good-natured Morgiana insisted that her mother should take Miss
+Larkins to Bell Yard in her carriage, and went herself home on foot;
+but I don't know that this piece of kindness prevented Larkins from
+hating her.  I should doubt if it did.
+
+Hearing so much of his wife's skill as a singer, the astute Captain
+Walker determined to take advantage of it for the purpose of
+increasing his "connection."  He had Lumley Limpiter at his house
+before long, which was, indeed, no great matter, for honest Lum
+would go anywhere for a good dinner--and an opportunity to show off
+his voice afterwards, and Lumley was begged to bring any more clerks
+in the Treasury of his acquaintance; Captain Guzzard was invited,
+and any officers of the Guards whom he might choose to bring; Bulger
+received occasional cards:--in a word, and after a short time, Mrs.
+Howard Walker's musical parties began to be considerably suivies.
+Her husband had the satisfaction to see his rooms filled by many
+great personages; and once or twice in return (indeed, whenever she
+was wanted, or when people could not afford to hire the first
+singers) she was asked to parties elsewhere, and treated with that
+killing civility which our English aristocracy knows how to bestow
+on artists.  Clever and wise aristocracy!  It is sweet to mark your
+ways, and study your commerce with inferior men.
+
+I was just going to commence a tirade regarding the aristocracy
+here, and to rage against that cool assumption of superiority which
+distinguishes their lordships' commerce with artists of all sorts:
+that politeness which, if it condescends to receive artists at all,
+takes care to have them altogether, so that there can be no mistake
+about their rank--that august patronage of art which rewards it with
+a silly flourish of knighthood, to be sure, but takes care to
+exclude it from any contact with its betters in society--I was, I
+say, just going to commence a tirade against the aristocracy for
+excluding artists from their company, and to be extremely satirical
+upon them, for instance, for not receiving my friend Morgiana, when
+it suddenly came into my head to ask, was Mrs. Walker fit to move in
+the best society?--to which query it must humbly be replied that she
+was not.  Her education was not such as to make her quite the equal
+of Baker Street.  She was a kind honest and clever creature; but, it
+must be confessed, not refined.  Wherever she went she had, if not
+the finest, at any rate the most showy gown in the room; her
+ornaments were the biggest; her hats, toques, berets, marabouts, and
+other fallals, always the most conspicuous.  She drops "h's" here
+and there.  I have seen her eat peas with a knife (and Walker,
+scowling on the opposite side of the table, striving in vain to
+catch her eye); and I shall never forget Lady Smigsmag's horror when
+she asked for porter at dinner at Richmond, and began to drink it
+out of the pewter pot.  It was a fine sight.  She lifted up the
+tankard with one of the finest arms, covered with the biggest
+bracelets ever seen; and had a bird of paradise on her head, that
+curled round the pewter disc of the pot as she raised it, like a
+halo.  These peculiarities she had, and has still.  She is best away
+from the genteel world, that is the fact.  When she says that "The
+weather is so 'ot that it is quite debiliating;" when she laughs,
+when she hits her neighbour at dinner on the side of the waistcoat
+(as she will if he should say anything that amuses her), she does
+what is perfectly natural and unaffected on her part, but what is
+not customarily done among polite persons, who can sneer at her odd
+manners and her vanity, but don't know the kindness, honesty, and
+simplicity which distinguish her.  This point being admitted, it
+follows, of course, that the tirade against the aristocracy would,
+in the present instance, be out of place--so it shall be reserved
+for some other occasion.
+
+The Ravenswing was a person admirably disposed by nature to be
+happy.  She had a disposition so kindly that any small attention
+would satisfy it; was pleased when alone; was delighted in a crowd;
+was charmed with a joke, however old; was always ready to laugh, to
+sing, to dance, or to be merry; was so tender-hearted that the
+smallest ballad would make her cry:  and hence was supposed, by many
+persons, to be extremely affected, and by almost all to be a
+downright coquette.  Several competitors for her favour presented
+themselves besides Baroski.  Young dandies used to canter round her
+phaeton in the park, and might be seen haunting her doors in the
+mornings.  The fashionable artist of the day made a drawing of her,
+which was engraved and sold in the shops; a copy of it was printed
+in a song, "Black-eyed Maiden of Araby," the words by Desmond
+Mulligan, Esquire, the music composed and dedicated to MRS. HOWARD
+WALKER, by her most faithful and obliged servant, Benjamin Baroski;
+and at night her Opera-box was full.  Her Opera-box?  Yes, the
+heiress of the "Bootjack" actually had an Opera-box, and some of the
+most fashionable manhood of London attended it.
+
+Now, in fact, was the time of her greatest prosperity; and her
+husband gathering these fashionable characters about him, extended
+his "agency" considerably, and began to thank his stars that he had
+married a woman who was as good as a fortune to him.
+
+In extending his agency, however, Mr. Walker increased his expenses
+proportionably, and multiplied his debts accordingly.  More
+furniture and more plate, more wines and more dinner-parties, became
+necessary; the little pony-phaeton was exchanged for a brougham of
+evenings; and we may fancy our old friend Mr. Eglantine's rage and
+disgust, as he looked from the pit of the Opera, to see Mrs. Walker
+surrounded by what he called "the swell young nobs" about London,
+bowing to my Lord, and laughing with his Grace, and led to carriage
+by Sir John.
+
+The Ravenswing's position at this period was rather an exceptional
+one.  She was an honest woman, visited by that peculiar class of our
+aristocracy who chiefly associate with ladies who are NOT honest.
+She laughed with all, but she encouraged none.  Old Crump was
+constantly at her side now when she appeared in public, the most
+watchful of mammas, always awake at the Opera, though she seemed to
+be always asleep; but no dandy debauchee could deceive her
+vigilance, and for this reason Walker, who disliked her (as every
+man naturally will, must, and should dislike his mother-in-law), was
+contented to suffer her in his house to act as a chaperon to
+Morgiana.
+
+None of the young dandies ever got admission of mornings to the
+little mansion in the Edgware Road; the blinds were always down; and
+though you might hear Morgiana's voice half across the Park as she
+was practising, yet the youthful hall-porter in the sugar-loaf
+buttons was instructed to deny her, and always declared that his
+mistress was gone out, with the most admirable assurance.
+
+After some two years of her life of splendour, there were, to be
+sure, a good number of morning visitors, who came with SINGLE
+knocks, and asked for Captain Walker; but these were no more
+admitted than the dandies aforesaid, and were referred, generally,
+to the Captain's office, whither they went or not at their
+convenience.  The only man who obtained admission into the house was
+Baroski, whose cab transported him thrice a week to the
+neighbourhood of Connaught Square, and who obtained ready entrance
+in his professional capacity.
+
+But even then, and much to the wicked little music-master's
+disappointment, the dragon Crump was always at the piano, with her
+endless worsted work, or else reading her unfailing Sunday Times;
+and Baroski could only employ "de langvitch of de ice," as he called
+it, with his fair pupil, who used to mimic his manner of rolling his
+eyes about afterwards, and perform "Baroski in love" for the
+amusement of her husband and her mamma.  The former had his reasons
+for overlooking the attentions of the little music-master; and as
+for the latter, had she not been on the stage, and had not many
+hundreds of persons, in jest or earnest, made love to her?  What
+else can a pretty woman expect who is much before the public?  And
+so the worthy mother counselled her daughter to bear these
+attentions with good humour, rather than to make them a subject of
+perpetual alarm and quarrel.
+
+Baroski, then, was allowed to go on being in love, and was never in
+the least disturbed in his passion; and if he was not successful, at
+least the little wretch could have the pleasure of HINTING that he
+was, and looking particularly roguish when the Ravenswing was named,
+and assuring his friends at the club, that "upon his vort dere vas
+no trut IN DAT REBORT."
+
+At last one day it happened that Mrs. Crump did not arrive in time
+for her daughter's lesson (perhaps it rained and the omnibus was
+full--a smaller circumstance than that has changed a whole life ere
+now)--Mrs. Crump did not arrive, and Baroski did, and Morgiana,
+seeing no great harm, sat down to her lesson as usual, and in the
+midst of it down went the music-master on his knees, and made a
+declaration in the most eloquent terms he could muster.
+
+"Don't be a fool, Baroski!" said the lady--(I can't help it if her
+language was not more choice, and if she did not rise with cold
+dignity, exclaiming, "Unhand me, sir!")--"Don't be a fool!" said
+Mrs. Walker, "but get up and let's finish the lesson."
+
+"You hard-hearted adorable little greature, vill you not listen to
+me?"
+
+"No, I vill not listen to you, Benjamin!" concluded the lady.  "Get
+up and take a chair, and don't go on in that ridiklous way, don't!"
+
+But Baroski, having a speech by heart, determined to deliver himself
+of it in that posture, and begged Morgiana not to turn avay her
+divine hice, and to listen to de voice of his despair, and so forth;
+he seized the lady's hand, and was going to press it to his lips,
+when she said, with more spirit, perhaps, than grace,--
+
+"Leave go my hand, sir; I'll box your ears if you don't!"
+
+But Baroski wouldn't release her hand, and was proceeding to imprint
+a kiss upon it; and Mrs. Crump, who had taken the omnibus at a
+quarter-past twelve instead of that at twelve, had just opened the
+drawing-room door and was walking in, when Morgiana, turning as red
+as a peony, and unable to disengage her left hand, which the
+musician held, raised up her right hand, and, with all her might and
+main, gave her lover such a tremendous slap in the face as caused
+him abruptly to release the hand which he held, and would have laid
+him prostrate on the carpet but for Mrs. Crump, who rushed forward
+and prevented him from falling by administering right and left a
+whole shower of slaps, such as he had never endured since the day he
+was at school.
+
+"What imperence!" said that worthy lady; "you'll lay hands on my
+daughter, will you? (one, two).  You'll insult a woman in distress,
+will you, you little coward? (one, two).  Take that, and mind your
+manners, you filthy monster!"
+
+Baroski bounced up in a fury.  "By Chofe, you shall hear of dis!"
+shouted he; "you shall pay me dis!"
+
+"As many more as you please, little Benjamin," cried the widow.
+"Augustus" (to the page), "was that the Captain's knock?"  At this
+Baroski made for his hat.  "Augustus, show this imperence to the
+door; and if he tries to come in again, call a policeman:  do you
+hear?"
+
+The music-master vanished very rapidly, and the two ladies, instead
+of being frightened or falling into hysterics, as their betters
+would have done, laughed at the odious monster's discomfiture, as
+they called him.  "Such a man as that set himself up against my
+Howard!" said Morgiana, with becoming pride; but it was agreed
+between them that Howard should know nothing of what had occurred,
+for fear of quarrels, or lest he should be annoyed.  So when he came
+home not a word was said; and only that his wife met him with more
+warmth than usual, you could not have guessed that anything
+extraordinary had occurred.  It is not my fault that my heroine's
+sensibilities were not more keen, that she had not the least
+occasion for sal-volatile or symptom of a fainting fit; but so it
+was, and Mr. Howard Walker knew nothing of the quarrel between his
+wife and her instructor until--
+
+Until he was arrested next day at the suit of Benjamin Baroski for
+two hundred and twenty guineas, and, in default of payment, was
+conducted by Mr. Tobias Larkins to his principal's lock-up house in
+Chancery Lane.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+
+
+IN WHICH MR. WALKER FALLS INTO DIFFICULTIES, AND MRS. WALKER MAKES
+MANY FOOLISH ATTEMPTS TO RESCUE HIM.
+
+I hope the beloved reader is not silly enough to imagine that Mr.
+Walker, on finding himself inspunged for debt in Chancery Lane, was
+so foolish as to think of applying to any of his friends (those
+great personages who have appeared every now and then in the course
+of this little history, and have served to give it a fashionable
+air).  No, no; he knew the world too well; and that, though
+Billingsgate would give him as many dozen of claret as he could
+carry away under his belt, as the phrase is (I can't help it, madam,
+if the phrase is not more genteel), and though Vauxhall would lend
+him his carriage, slap him on the back, and dine at his house,--
+their lordships would have seen Mr. Walker depending from a beam in
+front of the Old Bailey rather than have helped him to a hundred
+pounds.
+
+And why, forsooth, should we expect otherwise in the world?  I
+observe that men who complain of its selfishness are quite as
+selfish as the world is, and no more liberal of money than their
+neighbours; and I am quite sure with regard to Captain Walker that
+he would have treated a friend in want exactly as he when in want
+was treated.  There was only his lady who was in the least afflicted
+by his captivity; and as for the club, that went on, we are bound to
+say, exactly as it did on the day previous to his disappearance.
+
+By the way, about clubs--could we not, but for fear of detaining the
+fair reader too long, enter into a wholesome dissertation here on
+the manner of friendship established in those institutions, and the
+noble feeling of selfishness which they are likely to encourage in
+the male race?  I put out of the question the stale topics of
+complaint, such as leaving home, encouraging gormandising and
+luxurious habits, etc.; but look also at the dealings of club-men
+with one another.  Look at the rush for the evening paper!  See how
+Shiverton orders a fire in the dog-days, and Swettenham opens the
+windows in February.  See how Cramley takes the whole breast of the
+turkey on his plate, and how many times Jenkins sends away his
+beggarly half-pint of sherry!  Clubbery is organised egotism.  Club
+intimacy is carefully and wonderfully removed from friendship.  You
+meet Smith for twenty years, exchange the day's news with him, laugh
+with him over the last joke, grow as well acquainted as two men may
+be together--and one day, at the end of the list of members of the
+club, you read in a little paragraph by itself, with all the
+honours,
+
+     MEMBER DECEASED.
+     Smith, John, Esq.;
+
+or he, on the other hand, has the advantage of reading your own name
+selected for a similar typographical distinction.  There it is, that
+abominable little exclusive list at the end of every
+club-catalogue--you can't avoid it.  I belong to eight clubs myself,
+and know that one year Fitz-Boodle, George Savage, Esq.  (unless it
+should please fate to remove my brother and his six sons, when of
+course it would be Fitz-Boodle, Sir George Savage, Bart.), will
+appear in the dismal category.  There is that list; down I must go
+in it:--the day will come, and I shan't be seen in the bow-window,
+someone else will be sitting in the vacant armchair:  the rubber
+will begin as usual, and yet somehow Fitz will not be there.
+"Where's Fitz?" says Trumpington, just arrived from the Rhine.
+"Don't you know?" says Punter, turning down his thumb to the carpet.
+"You led the club, I think?" says Ruff to his partner (the OTHER
+partner!), and the waiter snuffs the candles.
+
+                    *          *          *
+
+I hope in the course of the above little pause, every single member
+of a club who reads this has profited by the perusal.  He may
+belong, I say, to eight clubs; he will die, and not be missed by any
+of the five thousand members.  Peace be to him; the waiters will
+forget him, and his name will pass away, and another great-coat will
+hang on the hook whence his own used to be dependent.
+
+And this, I need not say, is the beauty of the club-institutions.
+If it were otherwise--if, forsooth, we were to be sorry when our
+friends died, or to draw out our purses when our friends were in
+want, we should be insolvent, and life would be miserable.  Be it
+ours to button up our pockets and our hearts; and to make merry--it
+is enough to swim down this life-stream for ourselves; if Poverty is
+clutching hold of our heels, or Friendship would catch an arm, kick
+them both off.  Every man for himself, is the word, and plenty to do
+too.
+
+My friend Captain Walker had practised the above maxims so long and
+resolutely as to be quite aware when he came himself to be in
+distress, that not a single soul in the whole universe would help
+him, and he took his measures accordingly.
+
+When carried to Mr. Bendigo's lock-up house, he summoned that
+gentleman in a very haughty way, took a blank banker's cheque out of
+his pocket-book, and filling it up for the exact sum of the writ,
+orders Mr. Bendigo forthwith to open the door and let him go forth.
+
+Mr. Bendigo, smiling with exceeding archness, and putting a finger
+covered all over with diamond rings to his extremely aquiline nose,
+inquired of Mr. Walker whether he saw anything green about his face?
+intimating by this gay and good-humoured interrogatory his suspicion
+of the unsatisfactory nature of the document handed over to him by
+Mr. Walker.
+
+"Hang it, sir!" says Mr. Walker, "go and get the cheque cashed, and
+be quick about it.  Send your man in a cab, and here's a half-crown
+to pay for it."  The confident air somewhat staggers the bailiff,
+who asked him whether he would like any refreshment while his man
+was absent getting the amount of the cheque, and treated his
+prisoner with great civility during the time of the messenger's
+journey.
+
+But as Captain Walker had but a balance of two pounds five and
+twopence (this sum was afterwards divided among his creditors, the
+law expenses being previously deducted from it), the bankers of
+course declined to cash the Captain's draft for two hundred and odd
+pounds, simply writing the words "No effects" on the paper; on
+receiving which reply Walker, far from being cast down, burst out
+laughing very gaily, produced a real five-pound note, and called
+upon his host for a bottle of champagne, which the two worthies
+drank in perfect friendship and good-humour.  The bottle was
+scarcely finished, and the young Israelitish gentleman who acts as
+waiter in Cursitor Street had only time to remove the flask and the
+glasses, when poor Morgiana with a flood of tears rushed into her
+husband's arms, and flung herself on his neck, and calling him her
+"dearest, blessed Howard," would have fainted at his feet; but that
+he, breaking out in a fury of oaths, asked her how, after getting
+him into that scrape through her infernal extravagance, she dared to
+show her face before him?  This address speedily frightened the poor
+thing out of her fainting fit--there is nothing so good for female
+hysterics as a little conjugal sternness, nay, brutality, as many
+husbands can aver who are in the habit of employing the remedy.
+
+"My extravagance, Howard?" said she, in a faint way; and quite put
+off her purpose of swooning by the sudden attack made upon her--
+"Surely, my love, you have nothing to complain of--"
+
+"To complain of, ma'am?" roared the excellent Walker.  "Is two
+hundred guineas to a music-master nothing to complain of?  Did you
+bring me such a fortune as to authorise your taking guinea lessons?
+Haven't I raised you out of your sphere of life and introduced you
+to the best of the land?  Haven't I dressed you like a duchess?
+Haven't I been for you such a husband as very few women in the world
+ever had, madam?--answer me that."
+
+"Indeed, Howard, you were always very kind," sobbed the lady.
+
+"Haven't I toiled and slaved for you--been out all day working for
+you?  Haven't I allowed your vulgar old mother to come to your
+house--to my house, I say?  Haven't I done all this?"
+
+She could not deny it, and Walker, who was in a rage (and when a man
+is in a rage, for what on earth is a wife made but that he should
+vent his rage on her?), continued for some time in this strain, and
+so abused, frightened, and overcame poor Morgiana that she left her
+husband fully convinced that she was the most guilty of beings, and
+bemoaning his double bad fortune, that her Howard was ruined and she
+the cause of his misfortunes.
+
+When she was gone, Mr. Walker resumed his equanimity (for he was not
+one of those men whom a few months of the King's Bench were likely
+to terrify), and drank several glasses of punch in company with his
+host; with whom in perfect calmness he talked over his affairs.
+That he intended to pay his debt and quit the spunging-house next
+day is a matter of course; no one ever was yet put in a
+spunging-house that did not pledge his veracity he intended to quit
+it to-morrow.  Mr. Bendigo said he should be heartily glad to open
+the door to him, and in the meantime sent out diligently to see
+among his friends if there were any more detainers against the
+Captain, and to inform the Captain's creditors to come forward
+against him.
+
+Morgiana went home in profound grief, it may be imagined, and could
+hardly refrain from bursting into tears when the sugar-loaf page
+asked whether master was coming home early, or whether he had taken
+his key; she lay awake tossing and wretched the whole night, and
+very early in the morning rose up, and dressed, and went out.
+
+Before nine o'clock she was in Cursitor Street, and once more
+joyfully bounced into her husband's arms; who woke up yawning and
+swearing somewhat, with a severe headache, occasioned by the
+jollification of the previous night:  for, strange though it may
+seem, there are perhaps no places in Europe where jollity is more
+practised than in prisons for debt; and I declare for my own part (I
+mean, of course, that I went to visit a friend) I have dined at Mr.
+Aminadab's as sumptuously as at Long's.
+
+But it is necessary to account for Morgiana's joyfulness; which was
+strange in her husband's perplexity, and after her sorrow of the
+previous night.  Well, then, when Mrs. Walker went out in the
+morning, she did so with a very large basket under her arm.  "Shall
+I carry the basket, ma'am?" said the page, seizing it with much
+alacrity.
+
+"No, thank you," cried his mistress, with equal eagerness:  "it's
+only--"
+
+"Of course, ma'am," replied the boy, sneering, "I knew it was that."
+
+"Glass," continued Mrs. Walker, turning extremely red.  "Have the
+goodness to call a coach, sir, and not to speak till you are
+questioned."
+
+The young gentleman disappeared upon his errand:  the coach was
+called and came.  Mrs. Walker slipped into it with her basket, and
+the page went downstairs to his companions in the kitchen, and said,
+"It's a-comin'! master's in quod, and missus has gone out to pawn
+the plate."  When the cook went out that day, she somehow had by
+mistake placed in her basket a dozen of table-knives and a plated
+egg-stand.  When the lady's-maid took a walk in the course of the
+afternoon, she found she had occasion for eight cambric
+pocket-handkerchiefs, (marked with her mistress's cipher),
+half-a-dozen pair of shoes, gloves, long and short, some silk
+stockings, and a gold-headed scent-bottle.  "Both the new cashmeres
+is gone," said she, "and there's nothing left in Mrs. Walker's
+trinket-box but a paper of pins and an old coral bracelet."  As for
+the page, he rushed incontinently to his master's dressing-room and
+examined every one of the pockets of his clothes; made a parcel of
+some of them, and opened all the drawers which Walker had not locked
+before his departure.  He only found three-halfpence and a bill
+stamp, and about forty-five tradesmen's accounts, neatly labelled
+and tied up with red tape.  These three worthies, a groom who was a
+great admirer of Trimmer the lady's-maid, and a policeman a friend
+of the cook's, sat down to a comfortable dinner at the usual hour,
+and it was agreed among them all that Walker's ruin was certain.
+The cook made the policeman a present of a china punch-bowl which
+Mrs. Walker had given her; and the lady's-maid gave her friend the
+"Book of Beauty" for last year, and the third volume of Byron's
+poems from the drawing-room table.
+
+"I'm dash'd if she ain't taken the little French clock, too," said
+the page, and so indeed Mrs. Walker had; it slipped in the basket
+where it lay enveloped in one of her shawls, and then struck madly
+and unnaturally a great number of times, as Morgiana was lifting her
+store of treasures out of the hackney-coach.  The coachman wagged
+his head sadly as he saw her walking as quick as she could under her
+heavy load, and disappearing round the corner of the street at which
+Mr. Balls's celebrated jewellery establishment is situated.  It is a
+grand shop, with magnificent silver cups and salvers, rare
+gold-headed canes, flutes, watches, diamond brooches, and a few fine
+specimens of the old masters in the window, and under the words--
+
+     BALLS, JEWELLER,
+
+you read
+
+       Money Lent.
+
+in the very smallest type, on the door.
+
+The interview with Mr. Balls need not be described; but it must have
+been a satisfactory one, for at the end of half an hour Morgiana
+returned and bounded into the coach with sparkling eyes, and told
+the driver to GALLOP to Cursitor Street; which, smiling, he promised
+to do, and accordingly set off in that direction at the rate of four
+miles an hour.  "I thought so," said the philosophic charioteer.
+"When a man's in quod, a woman don't mind her silver spoons;" and he
+was so delighted with her action, that he forgot to grumble when she
+came to settle accounts with him, even though she gave him only
+double his fare.
+
+"Take me to him," said she to the young Hebrew who opened the door.
+
+"To whom?" says the sarcastic youth; "there's twenty HIM'S here.
+You're precious early."
+
+"To Captain Walker, young man," replied Morgiana haughtily;
+whereupon the youth opening the second door, and seeing Mr. Bendigo
+in a flowered dressing-gown descending the stairs, exclaimed, "Papa,
+here's a lady for the Captain."  "I'm come to free him," said she,
+trembling, and holding out a bundle of bank-notes.  "Here's the
+amount of your claim, sir--two hundred and twenty guineas, as you
+told me last night."  The Jew took the notes, and grinned as he
+looked at her, and grinned double as he looked at his son, and
+begged Mrs. Walker to step into his study and take a receipt.  When
+the door of that apartment closed upon the lady and his father, Mr.
+Bendigo the younger fell back in an agony of laughter, which it is
+impossible to describe in words, and presently ran out into a court
+where some of the luckless inmates of the house were already taking
+the air, and communicated something to them which made those
+individuals also laugh as uproariously as he had previously done.
+
+Well, after joyfully taking the receipt from Mr. Bendigo (how her
+cheeks flushed and her heart fluttered as she dried it on the
+blotting-book!), and after turning very pale again on hearing that
+the Captain had had a very bad night:  "And well he might, poor
+dear!" said she (at which Mr. Bendigo, having no person to grin at,
+grinned at a marble bust of Mr. Pitt, which ornamented his
+sideboard)--Morgiana, I say, these preliminaries being concluded,
+was conducted to her husband's apartment, and once more flinging her
+arms round her dearest Howard's neck, told him with one of the
+sweetest smiles in the world, to make haste and get up and come
+home, for breakfast was waiting and the carriage at the door.
+
+"What do you mean, love?" said the Captain, starting up and looking
+exceedingly surprised.
+
+"I mean that my dearest is free; that the odious little creature is
+paid--at least the horrid bailiff is."
+
+"Have you been to Baroski?" said Walker, turning very red.
+
+"Howard!" said his wife, quite indignant.
+
+"Did--did your mother give you the money?" asked the Captain.
+
+"No; I had it by me" replies Mrs. Walker, with a very knowing look.
+
+Walker was more surprised than ever.  "Have you any more by you?"
+said he.
+
+Mrs. Walker showed him her purse with two guineas.  "That is all,
+love," she said.  "And I wish," continued she, "you would give me a
+draft to pay a whole list of little bills that have somehow all come
+in within the last few days."
+
+"Well, well, you shall have the cheque," continued Mr. Walker, and
+began forthwith to make his toilet, which completed, he rang for Mr.
+Bendigo, and his bill, and intimated his wish to go home directly.
+
+The honoured bailiff brought the bill, but with regard to his being
+free, said it was impossible.
+
+"How impossible?" said Mrs. Walker, turning very red: and then very
+pale.  "Did I not pay just now?"
+
+"So you did, and you've got the reshipt; but there's another
+detainer against the Captain for a hundred and fifty.  Eglantine and
+Mossrose, of Bond Street;--perfumery for five years, you know."
+
+"You don't mean to say you were such a fool as to pay without asking
+if there were any more detainers?" roared Walker to his wife.
+
+"Yes, she was though," chuckled Mr. Bendigo; "but she'll know better
+the next time:  and, besides, Captain, what's a hundred and fifty
+pounds to you?"
+
+Though Walker desired nothing so much in the world at that moment as
+the liberty to knock down his wife, his sense of prudence overcame
+his desire for justice:  if that feeling may be called prudence on
+his part, which consisted in a strong wish to cheat the bailiff into
+the idea that he (Walker) was an exceedingly respectable and wealthy
+man.  Many worthy persons indulge in this fond notion, that they are
+imposing upon the world; strive to fancy, for instance, that their
+bankers consider them men of property because they keep a tolerable
+balance, pay little tradesmen's bills with ostentatious punctuality,
+and so forth--but the world, let us be pretty sure, is as wise as
+need be, and guesses our real condition with a marvellous instinct,
+or learns it with curious skill.  The London tradesman is one of the
+keenest judges of human nature extant; and if a tradesman, how much
+more a bailiff?  In reply to the ironic question, "What's a hundred
+and fifty pounds to you?" Walker, collecting himself, answers, "It
+is an infamous imposition, and I owe the money no more than you do;
+but, nevertheless, I shall instruct my lawyers to pay it in the
+course of the morning:  under protest, of course."
+
+"Oh, of course," said Mr. Bendigo, bowing and quitting the room, and
+leaving Mrs. Walker to the pleasure of a tete-a-tete with her
+husband.
+
+And now being alone with the partner of his bosom, the worthy
+gentleman began an address to her which cannot be put down on paper
+here; because the world is exceedingly squeamish, and does not care
+to hear the whole truth about rascals, and because the fact is that
+almost every other word of the Captain's speech was a curse, such as
+would shock the beloved reader were it put in print.
+
+Fancy, then, in lieu of the conversation, a scoundrel, disappointed
+and in a fury, wreaking his brutal revenge upon an amiable woman,
+who sits trembling and pale, and wondering at this sudden exhibition
+of wrath.  Fancy how he clenches his fists and stands over her, and
+stamps and screams out curses with a livid face, growing wilder and
+wilder in his rage; wrenching her hand when she wants to turn away,
+and only stopping at last when she has fallen off the chair in a
+fainting fit, with a heart-breaking sob that made the Jew-boy who
+was listening at the key-hole turn quite pale and walk away.  Well,
+it is best, perhaps, that such a conversation should not be told at
+length:--at the end of it, when Mr. Walker had his wife lifeless on
+the floor, he seized a water-jug and poured it over her; which
+operation pretty soon brought her to herself, and shaking her black
+ringlets, she looked up once more again timidly into his face, and
+took his hand, and began to cry.
+
+He spoke now in a somewhat softer voice, and let her keep paddling
+on with his hand as before; he COULDN'T speak very fiercely to the
+poor girl in her attitude of defeat, and tenderness, and
+supplication.  "Morgiana," said he, "your extravagance and
+carelessness have brought me to ruin, I'm afraid.  If you had chosen
+to have gone to Baroski, a word from you would have made him
+withdraw the writ, and my property wouldn't have been sacrificed, as
+it has now been, for nothing.  It mayn't be yet too late, however,
+to retrieve ourselves.  This bill of Eglantine's is a regular
+conspiracy, I am sure, between Mossrose and Bendigo here:  you must
+go to Eglantine--he's an old--an old flame of yours, you know."
+
+She dropped his hand:  "I can't go to Eglantine after what has
+passed between us," she said; but Walker's face instantly began to
+wear a certain look, and she said with a shudder, "Well, well, dear,
+I WILL go."  "You will go to Eglantine, and ask him to take a bill
+for the amount of this shameful demand--at any date, never mind
+what.  Mind, however, to see him alone, and I'm sure if you choose
+you can settle the business.  Make haste; set off directly, and come
+back, as there may be more detainers in."
+
+Trembling, and in a great flutter, Morgiana put on her bonnet and
+gloves, and went towards the door.  "It's a fine morning," said Mr.
+Walker, looking out:  "a walk will do you good;
+and--Morgiana--didn't you say you had a couple of guineas in your
+pocket?"
+
+"Here it is," said she, smiling all at once, and holding up her face
+to be kissed.  She paid the two guineas for the kiss.  Was it not a
+mean act?  "Is it possible that people can love where they do not
+respect?" says Miss Prim:  "_I_ never would."  Nobody asked you,
+Miss Prim:  but recollect Morgiana was not born with your advantages
+of education and breeding; and was, in fact, a poor vulgar creature,
+who loved Mr. Walker, not because her mamma told her, nor because he
+was an exceedingly eligible and well-brought-up young man, but
+because she could not help it, and knew no better.  Nor is Mrs.
+Walker set up as a model of virtue:  ah, no! when I want a model of
+virtue I will call in Baker Street, and ask for a sitting of my dear
+(if I may be permitted to say so) Miss Prim.
+
+We have Mr. Howard Walker safely housed in Mr. Bendigo's
+establishment in Cursitor Street, Chancery Lane; and it looks like
+mockery and want of feeling towards the excellent hero of this story
+(or, as should rather be said, towards the husband of the heroine)
+to say what he might have been but for the unlucky little
+circumstance of Baroski's passion for Morgiana,
+
+If Baroski had not fallen in love with Morgiana, he would not have
+given her two hundred guineas' worth of lessons; he would not have
+so far presumed as to seize her hand, and attempt to kiss it; if he
+had not attempted to kiss her, she would not have boxed his ears; he
+would not have taken out the writ against Walker; Walker would have
+been free, very possibly rich, and therefore certainly respected:
+he always said that a month's more liberty would have set him beyond
+the reach of misfortune.
+
+The assertion is very likely a correct one; for Walker had a flashy
+enterprising genius, which ends in wealth sometimes; in the King's
+Bench not seldom; occasionally, alas! in Van Diemen's Land.  He
+might have been rich, could he have kept his credit, and had not his
+personal expenses and extravagances pulled him down.  He had
+gallantly availed himself of his wife's fortune; nor could any man
+in London, as he proudly said, have made five hundred pounds go so
+far.  He had, as we have seen, furnished a house, sideboard, and
+cellar with it:  he had a carriage, and horses in his stable, and
+with the remainder he had purchased shares in four companies--of
+three of which he was founder and director, had conducted
+innumerable bargains in the foreign stocks, had lived and
+entertained sumptuously, and made himself a very considerable
+income.  He had set up THE CAPITOL Loan and Life Assurance Company,
+had discovered the Chimborazo gold mines, and the Society for
+Recovering and Draining the Pontine Marshes; capital ten millions;
+patron HIS HOLINESS THE POPE.  It certainly was stated in an evening
+paper that His Holiness had made him a Knight of the Spur, and had
+offered to him the rank of Count; and he was raising a loan for His
+Highness, the Cacique of Panama, who had sent him (by way of
+dividend) the grand cordon of His Highness's order of the Castle and
+Falcon, which might be seen any day at his office in Bond Street,
+with the parchments signed and sealed by the Grand Master and Falcon
+King-at-arms of His Highness.  In a week more Walker would have
+raised a hundred thousand pounds on His Highness's twenty per cent.
+loan; he would have had fifteen thousand pounds commission for
+himself; his companies would have risen to par, he would have
+realised his shares; he would have gone into Parliament; he would
+have been made a baronet, who knows? a peer, probably!  "And I
+appeal to you, sir," Walker would say to his friends, "could any man
+have shown better proof of his affection for his wife than by laying
+out her little miserable money as I did?  They call me heartless,
+sir, because I didn't succeed; sir, my life has been a series of
+sacrifices for that woman, such as no man ever performed before."
+
+A proof of Walker's dexterity and capability for business may be
+seen in the fact that he had actually appeased and reconciled one of
+his bitterest enemies--our honest friend Eglantine.  After Walker's
+marriage Eglantine, who had now no mercantile dealings with his
+former agent, became so enraged with him, that, as the only means of
+revenge in his power, he sent him in his bill for goods supplied to
+the amount of one hundred and fifty guineas, and sued him for the
+amount.  But Walker stepped boldly over to his enemy, and in the
+course of half an hour they were friends.
+
+Eglantine promised to forego his claim; and accepted in lieu of it
+three hundred-pound shares of the ex-Panama stock, bearing
+twenty-five per cent., payable half-yearly at the house of Hocus
+Brothers, St. Swithin's Lane; three hundred-pound shares, and the
+SECOND class of the order of the Castle and Falcon, with the riband
+and badge.  "In four years, Eglantine, my boy, I hope to get you the
+Grand Cordon of the order," said Walker:  "I hope to see you a
+KNIGHT GRAND CROSS, with a grant of a hundred thousand acres
+reclaimed from the Isthmus."
+
+To do my poor Eglantine justice, he did not care for the hundred
+thousand acres--it was the star that delighted him--ah! how his fat
+chest heaved with delight as he sewed on the cross and riband to his
+dress-coat, and lighted up four wax candles and looked at himself in
+the glass.  He was known to wear a great-coat after that--it was
+that he might wear the cross under it.  That year he went on a trip
+to Boulogne.  He was dreadfully ill during the voyage, but as the
+vessel entered the port he was seen to emerge from the cabin, his
+coat open, the star blazing on his chest; the soldiers saluted him
+as he walked the streets, he was called Monsieur le Chevalier, and
+when he went home he entered into negotiations with Walker to
+purchase a commission in His Highness's service.  Walker said he
+would get him the nominal rank of Captain, the fees at the Panama
+War Office were five-and-twenty pounds, which sum honest Eglantine
+produced, and had his commission, and a pack of visiting cards
+printed as Captain Archibald Eglantine, K.C.F.  Many a time he
+looked at them as they lay in his desk, and he kept the cross in his
+dressing-table, and wore it as he shaved every morning.
+
+His Highness the Cacique, it is well known, came to England, and had
+lodgings in Regent Street, where he held a levee, at which Eglantine
+appeared in the Panama uniform, and was most graciously received by
+his Sovereign.  His Highness proposed to make Captain Eglantine his
+aide-de-camp with the rank of Colonel, but the Captain's exchequer
+was rather low at that moment, and the fees at the "War Office" were
+peremptory.  Meanwhile His Highness left Regent Street, was said by
+some to have returned to Panama, by others to be in his native city
+of Cork, by others to be leading a life of retirement in the New
+Cut, Lambeth; at any rate was not visible for some time, so that
+Captain Eglantine's advancement did not take place.  Eglantine was
+somehow ashamed to mention his military and chivalric rank to Mr.
+Mossrose, when that gentleman came into partnership with him; and
+kept these facts secret, until they were detected by a very painful
+circumstance.  On the very day when Walker was arrested at the suit
+of Benjamin Baroski, there appeared in the newspapers an account of
+the imprisonment of His Highness the Prince of Panama for a bill
+owing to a licensed victualler in Ratcliff Highway.  The magistrate
+to whom the victualler subsequently came to complain passed many
+pleasantries on the occasion.  He asked whether His Highness did not
+drink like a swan with two necks; whether he had brought any Belles
+savages with him from Panama, and so forth; and the whole court,
+said the report, "was convulsed with laughter when Boniface produced
+a green and yellow riband with a large star of the order of the
+Castle and Falcon, with which His Highness proposed to gratify him,
+in lieu of paying his little bill."
+
+It was as he was reading the above document with a bleeding heart
+that Mr. Mossrose came in from his daily walk to the City.  "Vell,
+Eglantine," says he, "have you heard the newsh?"
+
+"About His Highness?"
+
+"About your friend Valker; he's arrested for two hundred poundsh!"
+
+Eglantine at this could contain no more; but told his story of how
+he had been induced to accept three hundred pounds of Panama stock
+for his account against Walker, and cursed his stars for his folly.
+"Vell, you've only to bring in another bill," said the younger
+perfumer; "swear he owes you a hundred and fifty pounds, and we'll
+have a writ out against him this afternoon."
+
+And so a second writ was taken out against Captain Walker.
+
+"You'll have his wife here very likely in a day or two," said Mr.
+Mossrose to his partner; "them chaps always sends their wives, and I
+hope you know how to deal with her."
+
+"I don't value her a fig's hend," said Eglantine.  "I'll treat her
+like the dust of the hearth.  After that woman's conduct to me, I
+should like to see her have the haudacity to come here; and if she
+does, you'll see how I'll serve her."
+
+The worthy perfumer was, in fact, resolved to be exceedingly
+hard-hearted in his behaviour towards his old love, and acted over
+at night in bed the scene which was to occur when the meeting should
+take place.  Oh, thought he, but it will be a grand thing to see the
+proud Morgiana on her knees to me; and me a-pointing to the door,
+and saying, "Madam, you've steeled this 'eart against you, you
+have;--bury the recollection of old times, of those old times when I
+thought my 'eart would have broke, but it didn't--no:  'earts are
+made of sterner stuff.  I didn't die, as I thought I should; I stood
+it, and live to see the woman I despised at my feet--ha, ha, at my
+feet!"
+
+In the midst of these thoughts Mr. Eglantine fell asleep; but it was
+evident that the idea of seeing Morgiana once more agitated him
+considerably, else why should he have been at the pains of preparing
+so much heroism?  His sleep was exceedingly fitful and troubled; he
+saw Morgiana in a hundred shapes; he dreamed that he was dressing
+her hair; that he was riding with her to Richmond; that the horse
+turned into a dragon, and Morgiana into Woolsey, who took him by the
+throat and choked him, while the dragon played the key-bugle.  And
+in the morning when Mossrose was gone to his business in the City,
+and he sat reading the Morning Post in his study, ah! what a thump
+his heart gave as the lady of his dreams actually stood before him!
+
+Many a lady who purchased brushes at Eglantine's shop would have
+given ten guineas for such a colour as his when he saw her.  His
+heart beat violently, he was almost choking in his stays:  he had
+been prepared for the visit, but his courage failed him now it had
+come.  They were both silent for some minutes.
+
+"You know what I am come for," at last said Morgiana from under her
+veil, but she put it aside as she spoke.
+
+"I--that is--yes--it's a painful affair, mem," he said, giving one
+look at her pale face, and then turning away in a flurry.  "I beg to
+refer you to Blunt, Hone, and Sharpus, my lawyers, mem," he added,
+collecting himself.
+
+"I didn't expect this from YOU, Mr. Eglantine," said the lady, and
+began to sob.
+
+"And after what's 'appened, I didn't expect a visit from YOU, mem.
+I thought Mrs. Capting Walker was too great a dame to visit poor
+Harchibald Eglantine (though some of the first men in the country DO
+visit him).  Is there anything in which I can oblige you, mem?"
+
+"O heavens!" cried the poor woman; "have I no friend left?  I never
+thought that you, too, would have deserted me, Mr. Archibald."
+
+The "Archibald," pronounced in the old way, had evidently an effect
+on the perfumer; he winced and looked at her very eagerly for a
+moment.  "What can I do for you, mem?" at last said he.
+
+"What is this bill against Mr. Walker, for which he is now in
+prison?"
+
+"Perfumery supplied for five years; that man used more 'air-brushes
+than any duke in the land, and as for eau-de-Cologne, he must have
+bathed himself in it.  He hordered me about like a lord.  He never
+paid me one shilling--he stabbed me in my most vital part--but ah!
+ah! never mind THAT:  and I said I would be revenged, and I AM."
+
+The perfumer was quite in a rage again by this time, and wiped his
+fat face with his pocket-handkerchief, and glared upon Mrs. Walker
+with a most determined air.
+
+"Revenged on whom?  Archibald--Mr.  Eglantine, revenged on me--on a
+poor woman whom you made miserable!  You would not have done so
+once."
+
+"Ha! and a precious way you treated me ONCE," said Eglantine:
+"don't talk to me, mem, of ONCE.  Bury the recollection of once for
+hever!  I thought my 'eart would have broke once, but no:  'earts
+are made of sterner stuff.  I didn't die, as I thought I should; I
+stood it--and I live to see the woman who despised me at my feet."
+
+"Oh, Archibald!" was all the lady could say, and she fell to sobbing
+again:  it was perhaps her best argument with the perfumer.
+
+"Oh, Harchibald, indeed!" continued he, beginning to swell; "don't
+call me Harchibald, Morgiana.  Think what a position you might have
+held if you'd chose:  when, when--you MIGHT have called me
+Harchibald.  Now it's no use," added he, with harrowing pathos;
+"but, though I've been wronged, I can't bear to see women in tears-
+-tell me what I can do."
+
+"Dear good Mr. Eglantine, send to your lawyers and stop this horrid
+prosecution--take Mr. Walker's acknowledgment for the debt.  If he
+is free, he is sure to have a very large sum of money in a few days,
+and will pay you all.  Do not ruin him--do not ruin me by persisting
+now.  Be the old kind Eglantine you were."
+
+Eglantine took a hand, which Morgiana did not refuse; he thought
+about old times.  He had known her since childhood almost; as a girl
+he dandled her on his knee at the "Kidneys;" as a woman he had
+adored her--his heart was melted.
+
+"He did pay me in a sort of way," reasoned the perfumer with
+himself--"these bonds, though they are not worth much, I took 'em
+for better or for worse, and I can't bear to see her crying, and to
+trample on a woman in distress.  Morgiana," he added, in a loud
+cheerful voice, "cheer up; I'll give you a release for your husband:
+I WILL be the old kind Eglantine I was."
+
+"Be the old kind jackass you vash!" here roared a voice that made
+Mr. Eglantine start.  "Vy, vat an old fat fool you are, Eglantine,
+to give up our just debts because a voman comes snivelling and
+crying to you--and such a voman, too!" exclaimed Mr. Mossrose, for
+his was the voice.
+
+"Such a woman, sir?" cried the senior partner.
+
+"Yes; such a woman--vy, didn't she jilt you herself?--hasn't she
+been trying the same game with Baroski; and are you so green as to
+give up a hundred and fifty pounds because she takes a fancy to come
+vimpering here?  I won't, I can tell you.  The money's as much mine
+as it is yours, and I'll have it or keep Walker's body, that's what
+I will."
+
+At the presence of his partner, the timid good genius of Eglantine,
+which had prompted him to mercy and kindness, at once outspread its
+frightened wings and flew away.
+
+"You see how it is, Mrs. W.," said he, looking down; "it's an affair
+of business--in all these here affairs of business Mr. Mossrose is
+the managing man; ain't you, Mr. Mossrose?"
+
+"A pretty business it would be if I wasn't," replied Mossrose,
+doggedly.  "Come, ma'am," says he, "I'll tell you vat I do:  I take
+fifty per shent; not a farthing less--give me that, and out your
+husband goes."
+
+"Oh, sir, Howard will pay you in a week."
+
+"Vell, den, let him stop at my uncle Bendigo's for a week, and come
+out den--he's very comfortable there," said Shylock with a grin.
+"Hadn't you better go to the shop, Mr. Eglantine," continued he,
+"and look after your business?  Mrs. Walker can't want you to listen
+to her all day."
+
+Eglantine was glad of the excuse, and slunk out of the studio; not
+into the shop, but into his parlour; where he drank off a great
+glass of maraschino, and sat blushing and exceedingly agitated,
+until Mossrose came to tell him that Mrs. W. was gone, and wouldn't
+trouble him any more.  But although he drank several more glasses of
+maraschino, and went to the play that night, and to the
+Cider-cellars afterwards, neither the liquor, nor the play, nor the
+delightful comic songs at the cellars, could drive Mrs. Walker out
+of his head, and the memory of old times, and the image of her pale
+weeping face.
+
+Morgiana tottered out of the shop, scarcely heeding the voice of Mr.
+Mossrose, who said, "I'll take forty per shent" (and went back to
+his duty cursing himself for a soft-hearted fool for giving up so
+much of his rights to a puling woman).  Morgiana, I say, tottered
+out of the shop, and went up Conduit Street, weeping, weeping with
+all her eyes.  She was quite faint, for she had taken nothing that
+morning but the glass of water which the pastry-cook in the Strand
+had given her, and was forced to take hold of the railings of a
+house for support just as a little gentleman with a yellow
+handkerchief under his arm was issuing from the door.
+
+"Good heavens, Mrs. Walker!" said the gentleman.  It was no other
+than Mr. Woolsey, who was going forth to try a body-coat for a
+customer.  "Are you ill?--what's the matter?--for God's sake come
+in!" and he took her arm under his, and led her into his
+back-parlour, and seated her, and had some wine and water before her
+in one minute, before she had said one single word regarding
+herself.
+
+As soon as she was somewhat recovered, and with the interruption of
+a thousand sobs, the poor thing told as well as she could her little
+story.  Mr. Eglantine had arrested Mr. Walker:  she had been trying
+to gain time for him; Eglantine had refused.
+
+"The hard-hearted cowardly brute to refuse HER anything!" said loyal
+Mr. Woolsey.  "My dear," says he, "I've no reason to love your
+husband, and I know too much about him to respect him; but I love
+and respect YOU, and will spend my last shilling to serve you."  At
+which Morgiana could only take his hand and cry a great deal more
+than ever.  She said Mr. Walker would have a great deal of money in
+a week, that he was the best of husbands, and she was sure Mr.
+Woolsey would think better of him when he knew him; that Mr.
+Eglantine's bill was one hundred and fifty pounds, but that Mr.
+Mossrose would take forty per cent. if Mr. Woolsey could say how
+much that was.
+
+"I'll pay a thousand pound to do you good," said Mr. Woolsey,
+bouncing up; "stay here for ten minutes, my dear, until my return,
+and all shall be right, as you will see."  He was back in ten
+minutes, and had called a cab from the stand opposite (all the
+coachmen there had seen and commented on Mrs. Walker's woebegone
+looks), and they were off for Cursitor Street in a moment.  "They'll
+settle the whole debt for twenty pounds," said he, and showed an
+order to that effect from Mr. Mossrose to Mr. Bendigo, empowering
+the latter to release Walker on receiving Mr. Woolsey's
+acknowledgment for the above sum.
+
+"There's no use paying it," said Mr. Walker, doggedly; "it would
+only be robbing you, Mr. Woolsey--seven more detainers have come in
+while my wife has been away.  I must go through the court now; but,"
+he added in a whisper to the tailor, "my good sir, my debts of
+HONOUR are sacred, and if you will have the goodness to lend ME the
+twenty pounds, I pledge you my word as a gentleman to return it when
+I come out of quod."
+
+It is probable that Mr. Woolsey declined this; for, as soon as he
+was gone, Walker, in a tremendous fury, began cursing his wife for
+dawdling three hours on the road.  "Why the deuce, ma'am, didn't you
+take a cab?" roared he, when he heard she had walked to Bond Street.
+"Those writs have only been in half an hour, and I might have been
+off but for you."
+
+"Oh, Howard," said she, "didn't you take--didn't I give you my--my
+last shilling?" and fell back and wept again more bitterly than
+ever.
+
+"Well, love," said her amiable husband, turning rather red, "never
+mind, it wasn't your fault.  It is but going through the court.  It
+is no great odds.  I forgive you."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+
+
+IN WHICH MR. WALKER STILL REMAINS IN DIFFICULTIES, BUT  SHOWS GREAT
+RESIGNATION UNDER HIS MISFORTUNES.
+
+The exemplary Walker, seeing that escape from his enemies was
+hopeless, and that it was his duty as a man to turn on them and face
+them, now determined to quit the splendid though narrow lodgings
+which Mr. Bendigo had provided for him, and undergo the martyrdom of
+the Fleet.  Accordingly, in company with that gentleman, he came
+over to Her Majesty's prison, and gave himself into the custody of
+the officers there; and did not apply for the accommodation of the
+Rules (by which in those days the captivity of some debtors was
+considerably lightened), because he knew perfectly well that there
+was no person in the wide world who would give a security for the
+heavy sums for which Walker was answerable.  What these sums were is
+no matter, and on this head we do not think it at all necessary to
+satisfy the curiosity of the reader.  He may have owed hundreds--
+thousands, his creditors only can tell; he paid the dividend which
+has been formerly mentioned, and showed thereby his desire to
+satisfy all claims upon him to the uttermost farthing.
+
+As for the little house in Connaught Square, when, after quitting
+her husband, Morgiana drove back thither, the door was opened by the
+page, who instantly thanked her to pay his wages; and in the
+drawing-room, on a yellow satin sofa, sat a seedy man (with a pot of
+porter beside him placed on an album for fear of staining the
+rosewood table), and the seedy man signified that he had taken
+possession of the furniture in execution for a judgment debt.
+Another seedy man was in the dining-room, reading a newspaper, and
+drinking gin; he informed Mrs. Walker that he was the representative
+of another judgment debt and of another execution:--"There's another
+on 'em in the kitchen," said the page, "taking an inwentory of the
+furniture; and he swears he'll have you took up for swindling, for
+pawning the plate."
+
+"Sir," said Mr. Woolsey, for that worthy man had conducted Morgiana
+home--"sir," said he, shaking his stick at the young page, "if you
+give any more of your impudence, I'll beat every button off your
+jacket:" and as there were some four hundred of these ornaments, the
+page was silent.  It was a great mercy for Morgiana that the honest
+and faithful tailor had accompanied her.  The good fellow had waited
+very patiently for her for an hour in the parlour or coffee-room of
+the lock-up house, knowing full well that she would want a protector
+on her way homewards; and his kindness will be more appreciated when
+it is stated that, during the time of his delay in the coffee-room,
+he had been subject to the entreaties, nay, to the insults, of
+Cornet Fipkin of the Blues, who was in prison at the suit of Linsey,
+Woolsey and Co., and who happened to be taking his breakfast in the
+apartment when his obdurate creditor entered it.  The Cornet (a hero
+of eighteen, who stood at least five feet three in his boots, and
+owed fifteen thousand pounds) was so enraged at the obduracy of his
+creditor that he said he would have thrown him out of the window but
+for the bars which guarded it; and entertained serious thoughts of
+knocking the tailor's head off, but that the latter, putting his
+right leg forward and his fists in a proper attitude, told the young
+officer to "come on;" on which the Cornet cursed the tailor for a
+"snob," and went back to his breakfast.
+
+The execution people having taken charge of Mr. Walker's house, Mrs.
+Walker was driven to take refuge with her mamma near "Sadler's
+Wells," and the Captain remained comfortably lodged in the Fleet.
+He had some ready money, and with it managed to make his existence
+exceedingly comfortable.  He lived with the best society of the
+place, consisting of several distinguished young noblemen and
+gentlemen.  He spent the morning playing at fives and smoking
+cigars; the evening smoking cigars and dining comfortably.  Cards
+came after dinner; and, as the Captain was an experienced player,
+and near a score of years older than most of his friends, he was
+generally pretty successful:  indeed, if he had received all the
+money that was owed to him, he might have come out of prison and
+paid his creditors twenty shillings in the pound--that is, if he had
+been minded to do so.  But there is no use in examining into that
+point too closely, for the fact is, young Fipkin only paid him forty
+pounds out of seven hundred, for which he gave him I.O.U.'s;
+Algernon Deuceace not only did not pay him three hundred and twenty
+which he lost at blind hookey, but actually borrowed seven and
+sixpence in money from Walker, which has never been repaid to this
+day; and Lord Doublequits actually lost nineteen thousand pounds to
+him at heads and tails, which he never paid, pleading drunkenness
+and his minority.  The reader may recollect a paragraph which went
+the round of the papers entitled--
+
+"Affair of honour in the Fleet Prison.--Yesterday morning (behind
+the pump in the second court) Lord D-bl-qu-ts and Captain H-w-rd
+W-lk-r (a near relative, we understand, of his Grace the Duke of
+N-rf-lk) had a hostile meeting and exchanged two shots.  These two
+young sprigs of nobility were attended to the ground by Major Flush,
+who, by the way, is FLUSH no longer, and Captain Pam, late of the --
+--- Dragoons.  Play is said to have been the cause of the quarrel,
+and the gallant Captain is reported to have handled the noble lord's
+nose rather roughly at one stage of the transactions."
+
+When Morgiana at "Sadler's Wells" heard these news, she was ready to
+faint with terror; and rushed to the Fleet Prison, and embraced her
+lord and master with her usual expansion and fits of tears:  very
+much to that gentleman's annoyance, who happened to be in company
+with Pain and Flush at the time, and did not care that his handsome
+wife should be seen too much in the dubious precincts of the Fleet.
+He had at least so much shame about him, and had always rejected her
+entreaties to be allowed to inhabit the prison with him.
+
+"It is enough," would he say, casting his eyes heavenward, and with
+a most lugubrious countenance--"it is enough, Morgiana, that _I_
+should suffer, even though your thoughtlessness has been the cause
+of my ruin.  But enough of THAT!  I will not rebuke you for faults
+for which I know you are now repentant; and I never could bear to
+see you in the midst of the miseries of this horrible place.  Remain
+at home with your mother, and let me drag on the weary days here
+alone.  If you can get me any more of that pale sherry, my love, do.
+I require something to cheer me in solitude, and have found my chest
+very much relieved by that wine.  Put more pepper and eggs, my dear,
+into the next veal-pie you make me.  I can't eat the horrible messes
+in the coffee-room here."
+
+It was Walker's wish, I can't tell why, except that it is the wish
+of a great number of other persons in this strange world, to make
+his wife believe that he was wretched in mind and ill in health; and
+all assertions to this effect the simple creature received with
+numberless tears of credulity:  she would go home to Mrs. Crump, and
+say how her darling Howard was pining away, how he was ruined for
+HER, and with what angelic sweetness he bore his captivity.  The
+fact is, he bore it with so much resignation that no other person in
+the world could see that he was unhappy.  His life was undisturbed
+by duns; his day was his own from morning till night; his diet was
+good, his acquaintances jovial, his purse tolerably well supplied,
+and he had not one single care to annoy him.
+
+Mrs. Crump and Woolsey, perhaps, received Morgiana's account of her
+husband's miseries with some incredulity.  The latter was now a
+daily visitor to "Sadler's Wells."  His love for Morgiana had become
+a warm fatherly generous regard for her; it was out of the honest
+fellow's cellar that the wine used to come which did so much good to
+Mr. Walker's chest; and he tried a thousand ways to make Morgiana
+happy.
+
+A very happy day, indeed, it was when, returning from her visit to
+the Fleet, she found in her mother's sitting-room her dear grand
+rosewood piano, and every one of her music-books, which the
+kind-hearted tailor had purchased at the sale of Walker's effects.
+And I am not ashamed to say that Morgiana herself was so charmed,
+that when, as usual, Mr. Woolsey came to drink tea in the evening,
+she actually gave him a kiss; which frightened Mr. Woolsey, and made
+him blush exceedingly.  She sat down, and played him that evening
+every one of the songs which he liked--the OLD songs--none of your
+Italian stuff.  Podmore, the old music-master, was there too, and
+was delighted and astonished at the progress in singing which
+Morgiana had made; and when the little party separated, he took Mr.
+Woolsey by the hand, and said, "Give me leave to tell you, sir, that
+you're a TRUMP."
+
+"That he is," said Canterfield, the first tragic; "an honour to
+human nature.  A man whose hand is open as day to melting charity,
+and whose heart ever melts at the tale of woman's distress."
+
+"Pooh, pooh, stuff and nonsense, sir," said the tailor; but, upon my
+word, Mr. Canterfield's words were perfectly correct.  I wish as
+much could be said in favour of Woolsey's old rival, Mr. Eglantine,
+who attended the sale too, but it was with a horrid kind of
+satisfaction at the thought that Walker was ruined.  He bought the
+yellow satin sofa before mentioned, and transferred it to what he
+calls his "sitting-room," where it is to this day, bearing many
+marks of the best bear's grease.  Woolsey bid against Baroski for
+the piano, very nearly up to the actual value of the instrument,
+when the artist withdrew from competition; and when he was sneering
+at the ruin of Mr. Walker, the tailor sternly interrupted him by
+saying, "What the deuce are YOU sneering at?  You did it, sir; and
+you're paid every shilling of your claim, ain't you?"  On which
+Baroski turned round to Miss Larkins, and said, Mr. Woolsey was a
+"snop;" the very word, though pronounced somewhat differently, which
+the gallant Cornet Fipkin had applied to him.
+
+Well; so he WAS a snob.  But, vulgar as he was, I declare, for my
+part, that I have a greater respect for Mr. Woolsey than for any
+single nobleman or gentleman mentioned in this true history.
+
+It will be seen from the names of Messrs. Canterfield and Podmore
+that Morgiana was again in the midst of the widow Crump's favourite
+theatrical society; and this, indeed, was the case.  The widow's
+little room was hung round with the pictures which were mentioned at
+the commencement of the story as decorating the bar of the
+"Bootjack;" and several times in a week she received her friends
+from "The Wells," and entertained them with such humble refreshments
+of tea and crumpets as her modest means permitted her to purchase.
+Among these persons Morgiana lived and sang quite as contentedly as
+she had ever done among the demireps of her husband's society; and,
+only she did not dare to own it to herself, was a great deal happier
+than she had been for many a day.  Mrs. Captain Walker was still a
+great lady amongst them.  Even in his ruin, Walker, the director of
+three companies, and the owner of the splendid pony-chaise, was to
+these simple persons an awful character; and when mentioned they
+talked with a great deal of gravity of his being in the country, and
+hoped Mrs. Captain W.  had good news of him.  They all knew he was
+in the Fleet; but had he not in prison fought a duel with a
+viscount?  Montmorency (of the Norfolk Circuit) was in the Fleet
+too; and when Canterfield went to see poor Montey, the latter had
+pointed out Walker to his friend, who actually hit Lord George
+Tennison across the shoulders in play with a racket-bat; which event
+was soon made known to the whole green-room.
+
+"They had me up one day," said Montmorency, "to sing a comic song,
+and give my recitations; and we had champagne and lobster-salad:
+SUCH nobs!" added the player.  "Billingsgate and Vauxhall were there
+too, and left college at eight o'clock."
+
+When Morgiana was told of the circumstance by her mother, she hoped
+her dear Howard had enjoyed the evening, and was thankful that for
+once he could forget his sorrows.  Nor, somehow, was she ashamed of
+herself for being happy afterwards, but gave way to her natural
+good-humour without repentance or self-rebuke.  I believe, indeed
+(alas! why are we made acquainted with the same fact regarding
+ourselves long after it is past and gone?)--I believe these were the
+happiest days of Morgiana's whole life.  She had no cares except the
+pleasant one of attending on her husband, an easy smiling
+temperament which made her regardless of to-morrow; and, add to
+this, a delightful hope relative to a certain interesting event
+which was about to occur, and which I shall not particularise
+further than by saying, that she was cautioned against too much
+singing by Mr. Squills, her medical attendant; and that widow Crump
+was busy making up a vast number of little caps and diminutive
+cambric shirts, such as delighted GRANDMOTHERS are in the habit of
+fashioning.  I hope this is as genteel a way of signifying the
+circumstance which was about to take place in the Walker family as
+Miss Prim herself could desire.  Mrs. Walker's mother was about to
+become a grandmother.  There's a phrase!  The Morning Post, which
+says this story is vulgar, I'm sure cannot quarrel with that.  I
+don't believe the whole Court Guide would convey an intimation more
+delicately.
+
+Well, Mrs. Crump's little grandchild was born, entirely to the
+dissatisfaction, I must say, of his father; who, when the infant was
+brought to him in the Fleet, had him abruptly covered up in his
+cloak again, from which he had been removed by the jealous prison
+doorkeepers:  why, do you think?  Walker had a quarrel with one of
+them, and the wretch persisted in believing that the bundle Mrs.
+Crump was bringing to her son-in-law was a bundle of disguised
+brandy!
+
+"The brutes!" said the lady;" and the father's a brute, too," said
+she.  "He takes no more notice of me than if I was a kitchen-maid,
+and of Woolsey than if he was a leg of mutton--the dear blessed
+little cherub!"
+
+Mrs. Crump was a mother-in-law; let us pardon her hatred of her
+daughter's husband.
+
+The Woolsey compared in the above sentence both to a leg of mutton
+and a cherub, was not the eminent member of the firm of Linsey,
+Woolsey, and Co. , but the little baby, who was christened Howard
+Woolsey Walker, with the full consent of the father; who said the
+tailor was a deuced good fellow, and felt really obliged to him for
+the sherry, for a frock-coat which he let him have in prison, and
+for his kindness to Morgiana.  The tailor loved the little boy with
+all his soul; he attended his mother to her churching, and the child
+to the font; and, as a present to his little godson on his
+christening, he sent two yards of the finest white kerseymere in his
+shop, to make him a cloak.  The Duke had had a pair of
+inexpressibles off that very piece.
+
+House-furniture is bought and sold, music-lessons are given,
+children are born and christened, ladies are confined and
+churched--time, in other words, passes--and yet Captain Walker still
+remains in prison!  Does it not seem strange that he should still
+languish there between palisaded walls near Fleet Market, and that
+he should not be restored to that active and fashionable world of
+which he was an ornament?  The fact is, the Captain had been before
+the court for the examination of his debts; and the Commissioner,
+with a cruelty quite shameful towards a fallen man, had qualified
+his ways of getting money in most severe language, and had sent him
+back to prison again for the space of nine calendar months, an
+indefinite period, and until his accounts could be made up.  This
+delay Walker bore like a philosopher, and, far from repining, was
+still the gayest fellow of the tennis-court, and the soul of the
+midnight carouse.
+
+There is no use in raking up old stories, and hunting through files
+of dead newspapers, to know what were the specific acts which made
+the Commissioner so angry with Captain Walker.  Many a rogue has
+come before the Court, and passed through it since then:  and I
+would lay a wager that Howard Walker was not a bit worse than his
+neighbours.  But as he was not a lord, and as he had no friends on
+coming out of prison, and had settled no money on his wife, and had,
+as it must be confessed, an exceedingly bad character, it is not
+likely that the latter would be forgiven him when once more free in
+the world.  For instance, when Doublequits left the Fleet, he was
+received with open arms by his family, and had two-and-thirty horses
+in his stables before a week was over.  Pam, of the Dragoons, came
+out, and instantly got a place as government courier--a place found
+so good of late years (and no wonder, it is better pay than that of
+a colonel), that our noblemen and gentry eagerly press for it.
+Frank Hurricane was sent out as registrar of Tobago, or Sago, or
+Ticonderago; in fact, for a younger son of good family it is rather
+advantageous to get into debt twenty or thirty thousand pounds:  you
+are sure of a good place afterwards in the colonies.  Your friends
+are so anxious to get rid of you, that they will move heaven and
+earth to serve you.  And so all the above companions of misfortune
+with Walker were speedily made comfortable; but HE had no rich
+parents; his old father was dead in York jail.  How was he to start
+in the world again?  What friendly hand was there to fill his pocket
+with gold, and his cup with sparkling champagne?  He was, in fact,
+an object of the greatest pity--for I know of no greater than a
+gentleman of his habits without the means of gratifying them.  He
+must live well, and he has not the means.  Is there a more pathetic
+case?  As for a mere low beggar--some labourless labourer, or some
+weaver out of place--don't let us throw away our compassion upon
+THEM.  Psha! they're accustomed to starve.  They CAN sleep upon
+boards, or dine off a crust; whereas a gentleman would die in the
+same situation.  I think this was poor Morgiana's way of reasoning.
+For Walker's cash in prison beginning presently to run low, and
+knowing quite well that the dear fellow could not exist there
+without the luxuries to which he had been accustomed, she borrowed
+money from her mother, until the poor old lady was a sec.  She even
+confessed, with tears, to Woolsey, that she was in particular want
+of twenty pounds, to pay a poor milliner, whose debt she could not
+bear to put in her husband's schedule.  And I need not say she
+carried the money to her husband, who might have been greatly
+benefited by it--only he had a bad run of luck at the cards; and how
+the deuce can a man help THAT?
+
+Woolsey had repurchased for her one of the Cashmere shawls.  She
+left it behind her one day at the Fleet prison, and some rascal
+stole it there; having the grace, however, to send Woolsey the
+ticket, signifying the place where it had been pawned.  Who could
+the scoundrel have been?  Woolsey swore a great oath, and fancied he
+knew; but if it was Walker himself (as Woolsey fancied, and probably
+as was the case) who made away with the shawl, being pressed thereto
+by necessity, was it fair to call him a scoundrel for so doing, and
+should we not rather laud the delicacy of his proceeding?  He was
+poor:  who can command the cards?  But he did not wish his wife
+should know HOW poor:  he could not bear that she should suppose him
+arrived at the necessity of pawning a shawl.
+
+She who had such beautiful ringlets, of a sudden pleaded cold in the
+head, and took to wearing caps.  One summer evening, as she and the
+baby and Mrs. Crump and Woolsey (let us say all four babies
+together) were laughing and playing in Mrs. Crump's
+drawing-room--playing the most absurd gambols, fat Mrs. Crump, for
+instance, hiding behind the sofa, Woolsey chuck-chucking,
+cock-a-doodle-dooing, and performing those indescribable freaks
+which gentlemen with philoprogenitive organs will execute in the
+company of children--in the midst of their play the baby gave a tug
+at his mother's cap; off it came--her hair was cut close to her
+head!
+
+Morgiana turned as red as sealing-wax, and trembled very much; Mrs.
+Crump screamed, "My child, where is your hair?" and Woolsey,
+bursting out with a most tremendous oath against Walker that would
+send Miss Prim into convulsions, put his handkerchief to his face,
+and actually wept.  "The infernal bubble-ubble-ackguard!" said he,
+roaring and clenching his fists.
+
+As he had passed the Bower of Bloom a few days before, he saw
+Mossrose, who was combing out a jet-black ringlet, and held it up,
+as if for Woolsey's examination, with a peculiar grin.  The tailor
+did not understand the joke, but he saw now what had happened.
+Morgiana had sold her hair for five guineas; she would have sold her
+arm had her husband bidden her.  On looking in her drawers it was
+found she had sold almost all her wearing apparel; the child's
+clothes were all there, however.  It was because her husband talked
+of disposing of a gilt coral that the child had, that she had parted
+with the locks which had formed her pride.
+
+"I'll give you twenty guineas for that hair, you infamous fat
+coward," roared the little tailor to Eglantine that evening.  "Give
+it up, or I'll kill you-"
+
+"Mr. Mossrose! Mr. Mossrose!" shouted the perfumer.
+
+"Vell, vatsh de matter, vatsh de row, fight avay, my boys; two to
+one on the tailor," said Mr. Mossrose, much enjoying the sport (for
+Woolsey, striding through the shop without speaking to him, had
+rushed into the studio, where he plumped upon Eglantine).
+
+"Tell him about that hair, sir."
+
+"That hair!  Now keep yourself quiet, Mister Timble, and don't tink
+for to bully ME.  You mean Mrs. Valker's 'air?  Vy, she sold it me."
+
+"And the more blackguard you for buying it!  Will you take twenty
+guineas for it?"
+
+"No," said Mossrose.
+
+"Twenty-five?"
+
+"Can't," said Mossrose.
+
+"Hang it! will you take forty?  There!"
+
+"I vish I'd kep it," said the Hebrew gentleman, with unfeigned
+regret.  "Eglantine dressed it this very night."
+
+"For Countess Baldenstiern, the Swedish Hambassador's lady," says
+Eglantine (his Hebrew partner was by no means a favourite with the
+ladies, and only superintended the accounts of the concern).  "It's
+this very night at Devonshire 'Ouse, with four hostrich plumes,
+lappets, and trimmings.  And now, Mr. Woolsey, I'll trouble you to
+apologise."
+
+Mr. Woolsey did not answer, but walked up to Mr. Eglantine, and
+snapped his fingers so close under the perfumer's nose that the
+latter started back and seized the bell-rope.  Mossrose burst out
+laughing, and the tailor walked majestically from the shop, with
+both hands stuck between the lappets of his coat.
+
+"My dear," said he to Morgiana a short time afterwards, "you must
+not encourage that husband of yours in his extravagance, and sell
+the clothes off your poor back that he may feast and act the fine
+gentleman in prison."
+
+"It is his health, poor dear soul!" interposed Mrs. Walker: "his
+chest.  Every farthing of the money goes to the doctors, poor
+fellow!"
+
+"Well, now listen:  I am a rich man" (it was a great fib, for
+Woolsey's income, as a junior partner of the firm, was but a small
+one); "I can very well afford to make him an allowance while he is
+in the Fleet, and have written to him to say so.  But if you ever
+give him a penny, or sell a trinket belonging to you, upon my word
+and honour I will withdraw the allowance, and, though it would go to
+my heart, I'll never see you again.  You wouldn't make me unhappy,
+would you?"
+
+"I'd go on my knees to serve you, and Heaven bless you," said the
+wife.
+
+"Well, then, you must give me this promise."  And she did.  "And
+now," said he, "your mother, and Podmore, and I have been talking
+over matters, and we've agreed that you may make a very good income
+for yourself; though, to be sure, I wish it could have been managed
+any other way; but needs must, you know.  You're the finest singer
+in the universe."
+
+"La!" said Morgiana, highly delighted.
+
+"_I_ never heard anything like you, though I'm no judge.  Podmore
+says he is sure you will do very well, and has no doubt you might
+get very good engagements at concerts or on the stage; and as that
+husband will never do any good, and you have a child to support,
+sing you must."
+
+"Oh! how glad I should be to pay his debts and repay all he has done
+for me," cried Mrs. Walker.  "Think of his giving two hundred
+guineas to Mr. Baroski to have me taught.  Was not that kind of him?
+Do you REALLY think I should succeed?
+
+"There's Miss Larkins has succeeded."
+
+"The little high-shouldered vulgar thing!" says Morgiana.  "I'm sure
+I ought to succeed if SHE did."
+
+"She sing against Morgiana?" said Mrs. Crump.  "I'd like to see her,
+indeed!  She ain't fit to snuff a candle to her."
+
+"I dare say not," said the tailor, "though I don't understand the
+thing myself:  but if Morgiana can make a fortune, why shouldn't
+she?"
+
+"Heaven knows we want it, Woolsey," cried Mrs. Crump.  "And to see
+her on the stage was always the wish of my heart:" and so it had
+formerly been the wish of Morgiana; and now, with the hope of
+helping her husband and child, the wish became a duty, and she fell
+to practising once more from morning till night.
+
+One of the most generous of men and tailors who ever lived now
+promised, if further instruction should be considered necessary
+(though that he could hardly believe possible), that he would lend
+Morgiana any sum required for the payment of lessons; and
+accordingly she once more betook herself, under Podmore's advice, to
+the singing school.  Baroski's academy was, after the passages
+between them, out of the question, and she placed herself under the
+instruction of the excellent English composer Sir George Thrum,
+whose large and awful wife, Lady Thrum, dragon of virtue and
+propriety, kept watch over the master and the pupils, and was the
+sternest guardian of female virtue on or off any stage.
+
+Morgiana came at a propitious moment.  Baroski had launched Miss
+Larkins under the name of Ligonier.  The Ligonier was enjoying
+considerable success, and was singing classical music to tolerable
+audiences; whereas Miss Butts, Sir George's last pupil, had turned
+out a complete failure, and the rival house was only able to make a
+faint opposition to the new star with Miss M'Whirter, who, though an
+old favourite, had lost her upper notes and her front teeth, and,
+the fact was, drew no longer.
+
+Directly Sir George heard Mrs. Walker, he tapped Podmore, who
+accompanied her, on the waistcoat, and said, "Poddy, thank you;
+we'll cut the orange boy's throat with that voice."  It was by the
+familiar title of orange boy that the great Baroski was known among
+his opponents.
+
+"We'll crush him, Podmore," said Lady Thrum, in her deep hollow
+voice.  "You may stop and dine."  And Podmore stayed to dinner, and
+ate cold mutton, and drank Marsala with the greatest reverence for
+the great English composer.  The very next day Lady Thrum hired a
+pair of horses, and paid a visit to Mrs. Crump and her daughter at
+"Sadler's Wells."
+
+All these things were kept profoundly secret from Walker, who
+received very magnanimously the allowance of two guineas a week
+which Woolsey made him, and with the aid of the few shillings his
+wife could bring him, managed to exist as best he might.  He did not
+dislike gin when he could get no claret, and the former liquor,
+under the name of "tape," used to be measured out pretty liberally
+in what was formerly Her Majesty's prison of the Fleet.
+
+Morgiana pursued her studies under Thrum, and we shall hear in the
+next chapter how it was she changed her name to RAVENSWING.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+
+
+IN WHICH MORGIANA ADVANCES TOWARDS FAME AND HONOUR,  AND IN WHICH
+SEVERAL GREAT LITERARY CHARACTERS MAKE THEIR APPEARANCE.
+
+"We must begin, my dear madam," said Sir George Thrum, "by
+unlearning all that Mr. Baroski (of whom I do not wish to speak with
+the slightest disrespect) has taught you!"
+
+Morgiana knew that every professor says as much, and submitted to
+undergo the study requisite for Sir George's system with perfect
+good grace.  Au fond, as I was given to understand, the methods of
+the two artists were pretty similar; but as there was rivalry
+between them, and continual desertion of scholars from one school to
+another, it was fair for each to take all the credit he could get in
+the success of any pupil.  If a pupil failed, for instance, Thrum
+would say Baroski had spoiled her irretrievably; while the German
+would regret "Dat dat yong voman, who had a good organ, should have
+trown away her dime wid dat old Drum."  When one of these deserters
+succeeded, "Yes, yes," would either professor cry, "I formed her;
+she owes her fortune to me."  Both of them thus, in future days,
+claimed the education of the famous Ravenswing; and even Sir George
+Thrum, though he wished to ecraser the Ligonier, pretended that her
+present success was his work because once she had been brought by
+her mother, Mrs. Larkins, to sing for Sir George's approval.
+
+When the two professors met it was with the most delighted
+cordiality on the part of both.  "Mein lieber Herr," Thrum would say
+(with some malice), "your sonata in x flat is divine."  "Chevalier,"
+Baroski would reply, "dat andante movement in w is worthy of
+Beethoven.  I gif you my sacred honour," and so forth.  In fact,
+they loved each other as gentlemen in their profession always do.
+
+The two famous professors conduct their academies on very opposite
+principles.  Baroski writes ballet music; Thrum, on the contrary,
+says "he cannot but deplore the dangerous fascinations of the
+dance," and writes more for Exeter Hall and Birmingham.  While
+Baroski drives a cab in the Park with a very suspicious Mademoiselle
+Leocadie, or Amenaide, by his side, you may see Thrum walking to
+evening church with his lady, and hymns are sung there of his own
+composition.  He belongs to the "Athenaeum Club," he goes to the
+Levee once a year, he does everything that a respectable man should;
+and if, by the means of this respectability, he manages to make his
+little trade far more profitable than it otherwise would be, are we
+to quarrel with him for it?
+
+Sir George, in fact, had every reason to be respectable.  He had
+been a choir-boy at Windsor, had played to the old King's
+violoncello, had been intimate with him, and had received knighthood
+at the hand of his revered sovereign.  He had a snuff-box which His
+Majesty gave him, and portraits of him and the young princes all
+over the house.  He had also a foreign order (no other, indeed, than
+the Elephant and Castle of Kalbsbraten-Pumpernickel), conferred upon
+him by the Grand Duke when here with the allied sovereigns in 1814.
+With this ribbon round his neck, on gala days, and in a white
+waistcoat, the old gentleman looked splendid as he moved along in a
+blue coat with the Windsor button, and neat black small-clothes, and
+silk stockings.  He lived in an old tall dingy house, furnished in
+the reign of George III., his beloved master, and not much more
+cheerful now than a family vault.  They are awfully funereal, those
+ornaments of the close of the last century--tall gloomy horse-hair
+chairs, mouldy Turkey carpets with wretched druggets to guard them,
+little cracked sticking-plaster miniatures of people in tours and
+pigtails over high-shouldered mantelpieces, two dismal urns on each
+side of a lanky sideboard, and in the midst a queer twisted
+receptacle for worn-out knives with green handles.  Under the
+sideboard stands a cellaret that looks as if it held half a bottle
+of currant wine, and a shivering plate-warmer that never could get
+any comfort out of the wretched old cramped grate yonder.  Don't you
+know in such houses the grey gloom that hangs over the stairs, the
+dull-coloured old carpet that winds its way up the same, growing
+thinner, duller, and more threadbare as it mounts to the bedroom
+floors?  There is something awful in the bedroom of a respectable
+old couple of sixty-five.  Think of the old feathers, turbans,
+bugles, petticoats, pomatum-pots, spencers, white satin shoes, false
+fronts, the old flaccid boneless stays tied up in faded riband, the
+dusky fans, the old forty-years-old baby linen, the letters of Sir
+George when he was young, the doll of poor Maria who died in 1803,
+Frederick's first corduroy breeches, and the newspaper which
+contains the account of his distinguishing himself at the siege of
+Seringapatam.  All these lie somewhere, damp and squeezed down into
+glum old presses and wardrobes.  At that glass the wife has sat many
+times these fifty years; in that old morocco bed her children were
+born.  Where are they now?  Fred the brave captain, and Charles the
+saucy colleger:  there hangs a drawing of him done by Mr. Beechey,
+and that sketch by Cosway was the very likeness of Louisa before--
+
+"Mr. Fitz-Boodle! for Heaven's sake come down.  What are you doing
+in a lady's bedroom?"
+
+"The fact is, madam, I had no business there in life; but, having
+had quite enough wine with Sir George, my thoughts had wandered
+upstairs into the sanctuary of female excellence, where your
+Ladyship nightly reposes.  You do not sleep so well now as in old
+days, though there is no patter of little steps to wake you
+overhead."
+
+They call that room the nursery still, and the little wicket still
+hangs at the upper stairs:  it has been there for forty years--bon
+Dieu!  Can't you see the ghosts of little faces peering over it?  I
+wonder whether they get up in the night as the moonlight shines into
+the blank vacant old room, and play there solemnly with little
+ghostly horses, and the spirits of dolls, and tops that turn and
+turn but don't hum.
+
+Once more, sir, come down to the lower storey--that is to the
+Morgiana story--with which the above sentences have no more to do
+than this morning's leading article in The Times; only it was at
+this house of Sir George Thrum's that I met Morgiana.  Sir George,
+in old days, had instructed some of the female members of our
+family, and I recollect cutting my fingers as a child with one of
+those attenuated green-handled knives in the queer box yonder.
+
+In those days Sir George Thrum was the first great musical teacher
+of London, and the royal patronage brought him a great number of
+fashionable pupils, of whom Lady Fitz-Boodle was one.  It was a long
+long time ago:  in fact, Sir George Thrum was old enough to remember
+persons who had been present at Mr. Braham's first appearance, and
+the old gentleman's days of triumph had been those of Billington and
+Incledon, Catalani and Madame Storace.
+
+He was the author of several operas ("The Camel Driver," "Britons
+Alarmed; or, the Siege of Bergen-op-Zoom," etc. etc.), and, of
+course, of songs which had considerable success in their day, but
+are forgotten now, and are as much faded and out of fashion as those
+old carpets which we have described in the professor's house, and
+which were, doubtless, very brilliant once.  But such is the fate of
+carpets, of flowers, of music, of men, and of the most admirable
+novels--even this story will not be alive for many centuries.  Well,
+well, why struggle against Fate?
+
+But, though his heyday of fashion was gone, Sir George still held
+his place among the musicians of the old school, conducted
+occasionally at the Ancient Concerts and the Philharmonic, and his
+glees are still favourites after public dinners, and are sung by
+those old bacchanalians, in chestnut wigs, who attend for the
+purpose of amusing the guests on such occasions of festivity.  The
+great old people at the gloomy old concerts before mentioned always
+pay Sir George marked respect; and, indeed, from the old gentleman's
+peculiar behaviour to his superiors, it is impossible they should
+not be delighted with him, so he leads at almost every one of the
+concerts in the old-fashioned houses in town.
+
+Becomingly obsequious to his superiors, he is with the rest of the
+world properly majestic, and has obtained no small success by his
+admirable and undeviating respectability.  Respectability has been
+his great card through life; ladies can trust their daughters at Sir
+George Thrum's academy.  "A good musician, madam," says he to the
+mother of a new pupil, "should not only have a fine ear, a good
+voice, and an indomitable industry, but, above all, a faultless
+character--faultless, that is, as far as our poor nature will
+permit.  And you will remark that those young persons with whom your
+lovely daughter, Miss Smith, will pursue her musical studies, are
+all, in a moral point of view, as spotless as that charming young
+lady.  How should it be otherwise?  I have been myself the father of
+a family; I have been honoured with the intimacy of the wisest and
+best of kings, my late sovereign George III., and I can proudly show
+an example of decorum to my pupils in my Sophia.  Mrs. Smith, I have
+the honour of introducing to you my Lady Thrum."
+
+The old lady would rise at this, and make a gigantic curtsey, such a
+one as had begun the minuet at Ranelagh fifty years ago; and, the
+introduction ended, Mrs. Smith would retire, after having seen the
+portraits of the princes, his late Majesty's snuff-box, and a piece
+of music which he used to play, noted by himself--Mrs. Smith, I say,
+would drive back to Baker Street, delighted to think that her
+Frederica had secured so eligible and respectable a master.  I
+forgot to say that, during the interview between Mrs. Smith and Sir
+George, the latter would be called out of his study by his black
+servant, and my Lady Thrum would take that opportunity of mentioning
+when he was knighted, and how he got his foreign order, and
+deploring the sad condition of OTHER musical professors, and the
+dreadful immorality which sometimes arose in consequence of their
+laxness.  Sir George was a good deal engaged to dinners in the
+season, and if invited to dine with a nobleman, as he might possibly
+be on the day when Mrs. Smith requested the honour of his company,
+he would write back "that he should have had the sincerest happiness
+in waiting upon Mrs. Smith in Baker Street, if, previously, my Lord
+Tweedledale had not been so kind as to engage him."  This letter, of
+course, shown by Mrs. Smith to her friends, was received by them
+with proper respect; and thus, in spite of age and new fashions, Sir
+George still reigned pre-eminent for a mile round Cavendish Square.
+By the young pupils of the academy he was called Sir Charles
+Grandison; and, indeed, fully deserved this title on account of the
+indomitable respectability of his whole actions.
+
+It was under this gentleman that Morgiana made her debut in public
+life.  I do not know what arrangements may have been made between
+Sir George Thrum and his pupil regarding the profits which were to
+accrue to the former from engagements procured by him for the
+latter; but there was, no doubt, an understanding between them.  For
+Sir George, respectable as he was, had the reputation of being
+extremely clever at a bargain; and Lady Thrum herself, in her great
+high-tragedy way, could purchase a pair of soles or select a leg of
+mutton with the best housekeeper in London.
+
+When, however, Morgiana had been for some six months under his
+tuition, he began, for some reason or other, to be exceedingly
+hospitable, and invited his friends to numerous entertainments:  at
+one of which, as I have said, I had the pleasure of meeting Mrs.
+Walker.
+
+Although the worthy musician's dinners were not good, the old knight
+had some excellent wine in his cellar, and his arrangement of his
+party deserves to be commended.
+
+For instance, he meets me and Bob Fitz-Urse in Pall Mall, at whose
+paternal house he was also a visitor.  "My dear young gentlemen,"
+says he, "will you come and dine with a poor musical composer?  I
+have some Comet hock, and, what is more curious to you, perhaps, as
+men of wit, one or two of the great literary characters of London
+whom you would like to see--quite curiosities, my dear young
+friends."  And we agreed to go.
+
+To the literary men he says:  "I have a little quiet party at home:
+Lord Roundtowers, the Honourable Mr. Fitz-Urse of the Life Guards,
+and a few more.  Can you tear yourself away from the war of wits,
+and take a quiet dinner with a few mere men about town?"
+
+The literary men instantly purchase new satin stocks and white
+gloves, and are delighted to fancy themselves members of the world
+of fashion.  Instead of inviting twelve Royal Academicians, or a
+dozen authors, or a dozen men of science to dinner, as his Grace the
+Duke of ----- and the Right Honourable Sir Robert ----- are in the
+habit of doing once a year, this plan of fusion is the one they
+should adopt.  Not invite all artists, as they would invite all
+farmers to a rent dinner; but they should have a proper commingling
+of artists and men of the world.  There is one of the latter whose
+name is George Savage Fitz-Boodle, who--  But let us return to Sir
+George Thrum.
+
+Fitz-Urse and I arrive at the dismal old house, and are conducted up
+the staircase by a black servant, who shouts out, "Missa
+Fiss-Boodle--the HONOURABLE Missa Fiss-Urse!"  It was evident that
+Lady Thrum had instructed the swarthy groom of the chambers (for
+there is nothing particularly honourable in my friend Fitz's face
+that I know of, unless an abominable squint may be said to be so).
+Lady Thrum, whose figure is something like that of the shot-tower
+opposite Waterloo Bridge, makes a majestic inclination and a speech
+to signify her pleasure at receiving under her roof two of the
+children of Sir George's best pupils.  A lady in black velvet is
+seated by the old fireplace, with whom a stout gentleman in an
+exceedingly light coat and ornamental waistcoat is talking very
+busily.  "The great star of the night," whispers our host.  "Mrs.
+Walker, gentlemen--the RAVENSWING!  She is talking to the famous Mr.
+Slang, of the ----- Theatre."
+
+"Is she a fine singer?" says Fitz-Urse.  "She's a very fine woman."
+
+"My dear young friends, you shall hear to-night!  I, who have heard
+every fine voice in Europe, confidently pledge my respectability
+that the Ravenswing is equal to them all.  She has the graces, sir,
+of a Venus with the mind of a Muse.  She is a siren, sir, without
+the dangerous qualities of one.  She is hallowed, sir, by her
+misfortunes as by her genius; and I am proud to think that my
+instructions have been the means of developing the wondrous
+qualities that were latent within her until now."
+
+"You don't say so!" says gobemouche Fitz-Urse.
+
+Having thus indoctrinated Mr. Fitz-Urse, Sir George takes another of
+his guests, and proceeds to work upon him.  "My dear Mr. Bludyer,
+how do you do?  Mr. Fitz-Boodle, Mr. Bludyer, the brilliant and
+accomplished wit, whose sallies in the Tomahawk delight us every
+Saturday.  Nay, no blushes, my dear sir; you are very wicked, but
+oh! SO pleasant.  Well, Mr. Bludyer, I am glad to see you, sir, and
+hope you will have a favourable opinion of our genius, sir.  As I
+was saying to Mr. Fitz-Boodle, she has the graces of a Venus with
+the mind of a Muse.  She is a siren, without the dangerous qualities
+of one," etc.  This little speech was made to half-a-dozen persons
+in the course of the evening--persons, for the most part, connected
+with the public journals or the theatrical world.  There was Mr.
+Squinny, the editor of the Flowers of Fashion; Mr. Desmond Mulligan,
+the poet, and reporter for a morning paper; and other worthies of
+their calling.  For though Sir George is a respectable man, and as
+high-minded and moral an old gentleman as ever wore knee-buckles, he
+does not neglect the little arts of popularity, and can condescend
+to receive very queer company if need be.
+
+For instance, at the dinner-party at which I had the honour of
+assisting, and at which, on the right hand of Lady Thrum, sat the
+oblige nobleman, whom the Thrums were a great deal too wise to omit
+(the sight of a lord does good to us commoners, or why else should
+we be so anxious to have one?).  In the second place of honour, and
+on her ladyship's left hand, sat Mr. Slang, the manager of one of
+the theatres; a gentleman whom my Lady Thrum would scarcely, but for
+a great necessity's sake, have been induced to invite to her table.
+He had the honour of leading Mrs. Walker to dinner, who looked
+splendid in black velvet and turban, full of health and smiles.
+
+Lord Roundtowers is an old gentleman who has been at the theatres
+five times a week for these fifty years, a living dictionary of the
+stage, recollecting every actor and actress who has appeared upon it
+for half a century.  He perfectly well remembered Miss Delancy in
+Morgiana; he knew what had become of Ali Baba, and how Cassim had
+left the stage, and was now the keeper of a public-house.  All this
+store of knowledge he kept quietly to himself, or only delivered in
+confidence to his next neighbour in the intervals of the banquet,
+which he enjoys prodigiously.  He lives at an hotel:  if not invited
+to dine, eats a mutton-chop very humbly at his club, and finishes
+his evening after the play at Crockford's, whither he goes not for
+the sake of the play, but of the supper there.  He is described in
+the Court Guide as of "Simmer's Hotel," and of Roundtowers, county
+Cork.  It is said that the round towers really exist.  But he has
+not been in Ireland since the rebellion; and his property is so
+hampered with ancestral mortgages, and rent-charges, and annuities,
+that his income is barely sufficient to provide the modest
+mutton-chop before alluded to.  He has, any time these fifty years,
+lived in the wickedest company in London, and is, withal, as
+harmless, mild, good-natured, innocent an old gentleman as can
+readily be seen.
+
+"Roundy," shouts the elegant Mr. Slang, across the table, with a
+voice which makes Lady Thrum shudder, "Tuff, a glass of wine."
+
+My Lord replies meekly, "Mr. Slang, I shall have very much pleasure.
+What shall it be?"
+
+"There is Madeira near you, my Lord," says my Lady, pointing to a
+tall thin decanter of the fashion of the year.
+
+"Madeira!  Marsala, by Jove, your Ladyship means!" shouts Mr. Slang.
+"No, no, old birds are not caught with chaff.  Thrum, old boy, let's
+have some of your Comet hock."
+
+"My Lady Thrum, I believe that IS Marsala," says the knight,
+blushing a little, in reply to a question from his Sophia.  "Ajax,
+the hock to Mr. Slang."
+
+"I'm in that," yells Bludyer from the end of the table.  "My Lord,
+I'll join you."
+
+"Mr.  -----, I beg your pardon--I shall be very happy to take wine
+with you, sir."
+
+"It is Mr. Bludyer, the celebrated newspaper writer," whispers Lady
+Thrum.
+
+"Bludyer, Bludyer?  A very clever man, I dare say.  He has a very
+loud voice, and reminds me of Brett.  Does your Ladyship remember
+Brett, who played the 'Fathers' at the Haymarket in 1802?"
+
+"What an old stupid Roundtowers is!" says Slang, archly, nudging
+Mrs. Walker in the side.  "How's Walker, eh?"
+
+My husband is in the country," replied Mrs. Walker, hesitatingly.
+
+"Gammon!  _I_ know where he is!  Law bless you!--don't blush.  I've
+been there myself a dozen times.  We were talking about quod, Lady
+Thrum.  Were you ever in college?"
+
+"I was at the Commemoration at Oxford in 1814, when the sovereigns
+were there, and at Cambridge when Sir George received his degree of
+Doctor of Music."
+
+"Laud, Laud, THAT'S not the college WE mean."
+
+"There is also the college in Gower Street, where my grandson--"
+
+"This is the college in QUEER STREET, ma'am, haw, haw!  Mulligan,
+you divvle (in an Irish accent), a glass of wine with you.  Wine,
+here, you waiter!  What's your name, you black nigger?  'Possum up a
+gum-tree, eh?  Fill him up.  Dere he go " (imitating the Mandingo
+manner of speaking English)
+
+In this agreeable way would Mr. Slang rattle on, speedily making
+himself the centre of the conversation, and addressing graceful
+familiarities to all the gentlemen and ladies round him.
+
+It was good to see how the little knight, the most moral and calm of
+men, was compelled to receive Mr. Slang's stories and the frightened
+air with which, at the conclusion of one of them, he would venture
+upon a commendatory grin.  His lady, on her part too, had been
+laboriously civil; and, on the occasion on which I had the honour of
+meeting this gentleman and Mrs. Walker, it was the latter who gave
+the signal for withdrawing to the lady of the house, by saying, "I
+think, Lady Thrum, it is quite time for us to retire."  Some
+exquisite joke of Mr. Slang's was the cause of this abrupt
+disappearance.  But, as they went upstairs to the drawing-room, Lady
+Thrum took occasion to say, "My dear, in the course of your
+profession you will have to submit to many such familiarities on the
+part of persons of low breeding, such as I fear Mr. Slang is.  But
+let me caution you against giving way to your temper as you did.
+Did you not perceive that _I_ never allowed him to see my inward
+dissatisfaction?  And I make it a particular point that you should
+be very civil to him to-night.  Your interests--our interests depend
+upon it."
+
+"And are my interests to make me civil to a wretch like that?"
+
+"Mrs. Walker, would you wish to give lessons in morality and
+behaviour to Lady Thrum?" said the old lady, drawing herself up with
+great dignity.  It was evident that she had a very strong desire
+indeed to conciliate Mr. Slang; and hence I have no doubt that Sir
+George was to have a considerable share of Morgiana's earnings.
+
+Mr. Bludyer, the famous editor of the Tomahawk, whose jokes Sir
+George pretended to admire so much (Sir George who never made a joke
+in his life), was a press bravo of considerable talent and no
+principle, and who, to use his own words, would "back himself for a
+slashing article against any man in England!"  He would not only
+write, but fight on a pinch; was a good scholar, and as savage in
+his manner as with his pen.  Mr. Squinny is of exactly the opposite
+school, as delicate as milk-and-water, harmless in his habits, fond
+of the flute when the state of his chest will allow him, a great
+practiser of waltzing and dancing in general, and in his journal
+mildly malicious.  He never goes beyond the bounds of politeness,
+but manages to insinuate a great deal that is disagreeable to an
+author in the course of twenty lines of criticism.  Personally he is
+quite respectable, and lives with two maiden aunts at Brompton.
+Nobody, on the contrary, knows where Mr. Bludyer lives.  He has
+houses of call, mysterious taverns, where he may be found at
+particular hours by those who need him, and where panting publishers
+are in the habit of hunting him up.  For a bottle of wine and a
+guinea he will write a page of praise or abuse of any man living, or
+on any subject, or on any line of politics.  "Hang it, sir!" says
+he, "pay me enough and I will write down my own father!"  According
+to the state of his credit, he is dressed either almost in rags or
+else in the extremest flush of the fashion.  With the latter attire
+he puts on a haughty and aristocratic air, and would slap a duke on
+the shoulder.  If there is one thing more dangerous than to refuse
+to lend him a sum of money when he asks for it, it is to lend it to
+him; for he never pays, and never pardons a man to whom he owes.
+"Walker refused to cash a bill for me," he had been heard to say,
+"and I'll do for his wife when she comes out on the stage!"  Mrs.
+Walker and Sir George Thrum were in an agony about the Tomahawk;
+hence the latter's invitation to Mr. Bludyer.  Sir George was in a
+great tremor about the Flowers of Fashion, hence his invitation to
+Mr. Squinny.  Mr. Squinny was introduced to Lord Roundtowers and Mr.
+Fitz-Urse as one of the most delightful and talented of our young
+men of genius; and Fitz, who believes everything anyone tells him,
+was quite pleased to have the honour of sitting near the live editor
+of a paper.  I have reason to think that Mr. Squinny himself was no
+less delighted:  I saw him giving his card to Fitz-Urse at the end
+of the second course.
+
+No particular attention was paid to Mr. Desmond Mulligan.  Political
+enthusiasm is his forte.  He lives and writes in a rapture.  He is,
+of course, a member of an inn of court, and greatly addicted to
+after-dinner speaking as a preparation for the bar, where as a young
+man of genius he hopes one day to shine.  He is almost the only man
+to whom Bludyer is civil; for, if the latter will fight doggedly
+when there is a necessity for so doing, the former fights like an
+Irishman, and has a pleasure in it.  He has been "on the ground" I
+don't know how many times, and quitted his country on account of a
+quarrel with Government regarding certain articles published by him
+in the Phoenix newspaper.  With the third bottle, he becomes
+overpoweringly great on the wrongs of Ireland, and at that period
+generally volunteers a couple or more of Irish melodies, selecting
+the most melancholy in the collection.  At five in the afternoon,
+you are sure to see him about the House of Commons, and he knows the
+"Reform Club" (he calls it the Refawrum) as well as if he were a
+member.  It is curious for the contemplative mind to mark those
+mysterious hangers-on of Irish members of Parliament--strange
+runners and aides-de-camp which all the honourable gentlemen appear
+to possess.  Desmond, in his political capacity, is one of these,
+and besides his calling as reporter to a newspaper, is "our
+well-informed correspondent" of that famous Munster paper, the Green
+Flag of Skibbereen.
+
+With Mr. Mulligan's qualities and history I only became subsequently
+acquainted.  On the present evening he made but a brief stay at the
+dinner-table, being compelled by his professional duties to attend
+the House of Commons.
+
+The above formed the party with whom I had the honour to dine.  What
+other repasts Sir George Thrum may have given, what assemblies of
+men of mere science he may have invited to give their opinion
+regarding his prodigy, what other editors of papers he may have
+pacified or rendered favourable, who knows?  On the present
+occasion, we did not quit the dinner-table until Mr. Slang the
+manager was considerably excited by wine, and music had been heard
+for some time in the drawing-room overhead during our absence.  An
+addition had been made to the Thrum party by the arrival of several
+persons to spend the evening,--a man to play on the violin between
+the singing, a youth to play on the piano, Miss Horsman to sing with
+Mrs. Walker, and other scientific characters.  In a corner sat a
+red-faced old lady, of whom the mistress of the mansion took little
+notice; and a gentleman with a royal button, who blushed and looked
+exceedingly modest.
+
+"Hang me!" says Mr. Bludyer, who had perfectly good reasons for
+recognising Mr Woolsey, and who on this day chose to assume his
+aristocratic air; "there's a tailor in the room!  What do they mean
+by asking ME to meet tradesmen?"
+
+"Delancy, my dear," cries Slang, entering the room with a reel,
+"how's your precious health?  Give us your hand!  When ARE we to be
+married?  Make room for me on the sofa, that's a duck!"
+
+"Get along, Slang," says Mrs. Crump, addressed by the manager by her
+maiden name (artists generally drop the title of honour which people
+adopt in the world, and call each other by their simple
+surnames)--"get along, Slang, or I'll tell Mrs. S.!"  The
+enterprising manager replies by sportively striking Mrs. Crump on
+the side a blow which causes a great giggle from the lady insulted,
+and a most good-humoured threat to box Slang's ears.  I fear very
+much that Morgiana's mother thought Mr. Slang an exceedingly
+gentlemanlike and agreeable person; besides, she was eager to have
+his good opinion of Mrs. Walker's singing.
+
+The manager stretched himself out with much gracefulness on the
+sofa, supporting two little dumpy legs encased in varnished boots on
+a chair.
+
+"Ajax, some tea to Mr. Slang," said my Lady, looking towards that
+gentleman with a countenance expressive of some alarm, I thought.
+
+"That's right, Ajax, my black prince!" exclaimed Slang when the
+negro brought the required refreshment; "and now I suppose you'll be
+wanted in the orchestra yonder.  Don't Ajax play the cymbals, Sir
+George?"
+
+"Ha, ha, ha! very good--capital!" answered the knight, exceedingly
+frightened; "but ours is not a MILITARY band.  Miss Horsman, Mr.
+Craw, my dear Mrs. Ravenswing, shall we begin the trio?  Silence,
+gentlemen, if you please; it is a little piece from my opera of the
+'Brigand's Bride.'  Miss Horsman takes the Page's part, Mr. Craw is
+Stiletto the Brigand, my accomplished pupil is the Bride;" and the
+music began.
+
+          "THE BRIDE.
+
+     "My heart with joy is beating,
+        My eyes with tears are dim;
+
+          "THE PAGE.
+
+     "Her heart with joy is beating
+        Her eyes are fixed on him;
+
+          "THE BRIGAND.
+
+     "My heart with rage is beating,
+        In blood my eye-balls swim!"
+
+What may have been the merits of the music or the singing, I, of
+course, cannot guess.  Lady Thrum sat opposite the tea-cups, nodding
+her head and beating time very gravely.  Lord Roundtowers, by her
+side, nodded his head too, for awhile, and then fell asleep.  I
+should have done the same but for the manager, whose actions were
+worth of remark.  He sang with all the three singers, and a great
+deal louder than any of them; he shouted bravo! or hissed as he
+thought proper; he criticised all the points of Mrs. Walker's
+person.  "She'll do, Crump, she'll do--a splendid arm--you'll see
+her eyes in the shilling gallery!  What sort of a foot has she?
+She's five feet three, if she's an inch!  Bravo--slap up--capital-
+-hurrah!"  And he concluded by saying, with the aid of the
+Ravenswing, he would put Ligonier's nose out of Joint!
+
+The enthusiasm of Mr. Slang almost reconciled Lady Thrum to the
+abruptness of his manners, and even caused Sir George to forget that
+his chorus had been interrupted by the obstreperous familiarity of
+the manager.
+
+"And what do YOU think, Mr. Bludyer," said the tailor, delighted
+that his protegee should be thus winning all hearts:  "isn't Mrs.
+Walker a tip-top singer, eh, sir?"
+
+"I think she's a very bad one, Mr. Woolsey," said the illustrious
+author, wishing to abbreviate all communications with a tailor to
+whom he owed forty pounds.
+
+"Then, sir," says Mr. Woolsey, fiercely, "I'll--I'll thank you to
+pay me my little bill!"
+
+It is true there was no connection between Mrs. Walker's singing and
+Woolsey's little bill; that the "THEN, sir," was perfectly illogical
+on Woolsey's part; but it was a very happy hit for the future
+fortunes of Mrs. Walker.  Who knows what would have come of her
+debut but for that "Then, sir," and whether a "smashing article"
+from the Tomahawk might not have ruined her for ever?
+
+"Are you a relation of Mrs. Walker's?" said Mr. Bludyer, in reply to
+the angry tailor.
+
+"What's that to you, whether I am or not?" replied Woolsey,
+fiercely.  "But I'm the friend of Mrs. Walker, sir; proud am I to
+say so, sir; and, as the poet says, sir, 'a little learning's a
+dangerous thing,' sir; and I think a man who don't pay his bills may
+keep his tongue quiet at least, sir, and not abuse a lady, sir, whom
+everybody else praises, sir.  You shan't humbug ME any more, sir;
+you shall hear from my attorney to-morrow, so mark that!"
+
+"Hush, my dear Mr. Woolsey," cried the literary man, "don't make a
+noise; come into this window:  is Mrs. Walker REALLY a friend of
+yours?"
+
+"I've told you so, sir."
+
+"Well, in that case, I shall do my utmost to serve her and, look
+you, Woolsey, any article you choose to send about her to the
+Tomahawk I promise you I'll put in."
+
+"WILL you, though? then we'll say nothing about the little bill."
+
+"You may do on that point," answered Bludyer, haughtily, "exactly as
+you please.  I am not to be frightened from my duty, mind that; and
+mind, too, that I can write a slashing article better than any man
+in England:  I could crush her by ten lines."
+
+The tables were now turned, and it was Woolsey's turn to be alarmed.
+
+"Pooh! pooh! I WAS angry," said he, "because you abuse Mrs. Walker,
+who's an angel on earth; but I'm very willing to apologise.  I
+say--come--let me take your measure for some new clothes, eh! Mr.
+B.?"
+
+"I'll come to your shop," answered the literary man, quite appeased.
+"Silence! they're beginning another song."
+
+The songs, which I don't attempt to describe (and, upon my word and
+honour, as far as I can understand matters, I believe to this day
+that Mrs. Walker was only an ordinary singer)--the songs lasted a
+great deal longer than I liked; but I was nailed, as it were, to the
+spot, having agreed to sup at Knightsbridge barracks with Fitz-Urse,
+whose carriage was ordered at eleven o'clock.
+
+"My dear Mr. Fitz-Boodle," said our old host to me, "you can do me
+the greatest service in the world."
+
+"Speak, sir!" said I.
+
+"Will you ask your honourable and gallant friend, the Captain, to
+drive home Mr. Squinny to Brompton?"
+
+"Can't Mr. Squinny get a cab?"
+
+Sir George looked particularly arch.  "Generalship, my dear young
+friend--a little harmless generalship.  Mr. Squinny will not give
+much for MY opinion of my pupil, but he will value very highly the
+opinion of the Honourable Mr. FitzUrse."
+
+For a moral man, was not the little knight a clever fellow?  He had
+bought Mr. Squinny for a dinner worth ten shillings, and for a ride
+in a carriage with a lord's son.  Squinny was carried to Brompton,
+and set down at his aunts' door, delighted with his new friends, and
+exceedingly sick with a cigar they had made him smoke.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+
+
+IN WHICH MR. WALKER SHOWS GREAT PRUDENCE AND FORBEARANCE.
+
+The describing of all these persons does not advance Morgiana's
+story much.  But, perhaps, some country readers are not acquainted
+with the class of persons by whose printed opinions they are guided,
+and are simple enough to imagine that mere merit will make a
+reputation on the stage or elsewhere.  The making of a theatrical
+success is a much more complicated and curious thing than such
+persons fancy it to be.  Immense are the pains taken to get a good
+word from Mr. This of the Star, or Mr. That of the Courier, to
+propitiate the favour of the critic of the day, and get the editors
+of the metropolis into a good humour,--above all, to have the name
+of the person to be puffed perpetually before the public.  Artists
+cannot be advertised like Macassar oil or blacking, and they want it
+to the full as much; hence endless ingenuity must be practised in
+order to keep the popular attention awake.  Suppose a great actor
+moves from London to Windsor, the Brentford Champion must state that
+"Yesterday Mr. Blazes and suite passed rapidly through our city; the
+celebrated comedian is engaged, we hear, at Windsor, to give some of
+his inimitable readings of our great national bard to the MOST
+ILLUSTRIOUS AUDIENCE in the realm."  This piece of intelligence the
+Hammersmith Observer will question the next week, as thus:--"A
+contemporary, the Brentford Champion, says that Blazes is engaged to
+give Shakspearian readings at Windsor to "the most illustrious
+audience in the realm."  We question this fact very much.  We would,
+indeed, that it were true; but the MOST ILLUSTRIOUS AUDIENCE in the
+realm prefer FOREIGN melodies to THE NATIVE WOOD-NOTES WILD of the
+sweet song-bird of Avon.  Mr. Blazes is simply gone to Eton, where
+his son, Master Massinger Blazes, is suffering, we regret to hear,
+under a severe attack of the chicken-pox.  This complaint (incident
+to youth) has raged, we understand, with frightful virulence in Eton
+School."
+
+And if, after the above paragraphs, some London paper chooses to
+attack the folly of the provincial press, which talks of Mr. Blazes,
+and chronicles his movements, as if he were a crowned head, what
+harm is done?  Blazes can write in his own name to the London
+journal, and say that it is not HIS fault if provincial journals
+choose to chronicle his movements, and that he was far from wishing
+that the afflictions of those who are dear to him should form the
+subject of public comment, and be held up to public ridicule.  "We
+had no intention of hurting the feelings of an estimable public
+servant," writes the editor; "and our remarks on the chicken-pox
+were general, not personal.  We sincerely trust that Master
+Massinger Blazes has recovered from that complaint, and that he may
+pass through the measles, the whooping-cough, the fourth form, and
+all other diseases to which youth is subject, with comfort to
+himself, and credit to his parents and teachers."  At his next
+appearance on the stage after this controversy, a British public
+calls for Blazes three times after the play; and somehow there is
+sure to be someone with a laurel-wreath in a stage-box, who flings
+that chaplet at the inspired artist's feet.
+
+I don't know how it was, but before the debut of Morgiana, the
+English press began to heave and throb in a convulsive manner, as if
+indicative of the near birth of some great thing.  For instance, you
+read in one paper,--
+
+"Anecdote of Karl Maria Von Weber.--When the author of 'Oberon' was
+in England, he was invited by a noble duke to dinner, and some of
+the most celebrated of our artists were assembled to meet him.  The
+signal being given to descend to the salle-a-manger, the German
+composer was invited by his noble host (a bachelor) to lead the way.
+'Is it not the fashion in your country,' said he, simply, 'for the
+man of the first eminence to take the first place?  Here is one
+whose genius entitles him to be first ANYWHERE.'  And, so saying, he
+pointed to our admirable English composer, Sir George Thrum.  The
+two musicians were friends to the last, and Sir George has still the
+identical piece of rosin which the author of the 'Freischutz' gave
+him."--The Moon (morning paper), June 2.
+
+"George III. a composer.--Sir George Thrum has in his possession the
+score of an air, the words from 'Samson Agonistes,' an autograph of
+the late revered monarch.  We hear that that excellent composer has
+in store for us not only an opera, but a pupil, with whose
+transcendent merits the elite of our aristocracy are already
+familiar."--Ibid., June 5.
+
+"Music with a Vengeance.--The march to the sound of which the 49th
+and 75th regiments rushed up the breach of Badajoz was the
+celebrated air from 'Britons Alarmed; or, The Siege of
+Bergen-op-Zoom,' by our famous English composer, Sir George Thrum.
+Marshal Davoust said that the French line never stood when that air
+was performed to the charge of the bayonet.  We hear the veteran
+musician has an opera now about to appear, and have no doubt that
+Old England will now, as then, show its superiority over ALL foreign
+opponents."--Albion.
+
+"We have been accused of preferring the produit of the etranger to
+the talent of our own native shores; but those who speak so, little
+know us.  We are fanatici per la musica wherever it be, and welcome
+merit dans chaque pays du monde.  What do we say?  Le merite n'a
+point de pays, as Napoleon said; and Sir George Thrum (Chevalier de
+l'Ordre de l'Elephant et Chateau de Kalbsbraten-Pumpernickel,) is a
+maestro whose fame appartient a l'Europe.
+
+"We have just heard the lovely eleve, whose rare qualities the
+Cavaliere has brought to perfection,--we have heard THE RAVENSWING
+(pourquoi cacher un nom que demain un monde va saluer?), and a
+creature more beautiful and gifted never bloomed before dans nos
+climats.  She sang the delicious duet of the 'Nabucodonosore,' with
+Count Pizzicato, with a bellezza, a grandezza, a raggio, that
+excited in the bosom of the audience a corresponding furore:  her
+scherzando was exquisite, though we confess we thought the
+concluding fioritura in the passage in Y flat a leetle, a very
+leetle sforzata.  Surely the words,
+
+     'Giorno d'orrore,
+      Delire, dolore,
+      Nabucodonosore,'
+
+should be given andante, and not con strepito:  but this is a faute
+bien legere in the midst of such unrivalled excellence, and only
+mentioned here that we may have SOMETHING to criticise.
+
+"We hear that the enterprising impresario of one of the royal
+theatres has made an engagement with the Diva; and, if we have a
+regret, it is that she should be compelled to sing in the
+unfortunate language of our rude northern clime, which does not
+preter itself near so well to the bocca of the cantatrice as do the
+mellifluous accents of the Lingua Toscana, the langue par excellence
+of song.
+
+"The Ravenswing's voice is a magnificent contra-basso of nine
+octaves," etc.--Flowers of Fashion, June 10.
+
+"Old Thrum, the composer, is bringing out an opera and a pupil.  The
+opera is good, the pupil first-rate.  The opera will do much more
+than compete with the infernal twaddle and disgusting slip-slop of
+Donizetti, and the milk-and-water fools who imitate him:  it will
+(and we ask the readers of the Tomahawk, were we EVER mistaken?)
+surpass all these; it is GOOD, of downright English stuff.  The airs
+are fresh and pleasing, the choruses large and noble, the
+instrumentation solid and rich, the music is carefully written.  We
+wish old Thrum and his opera well.
+
+"His pupil is a SURE CARD, a splendid woman, and a splendid singer.
+She is so handsome that she might sing as much out of tune as Miss
+Ligonier, and the public would forgive her; and sings so well, that
+were she as ugly as the aforesaid Ligonier, the audience would
+listen to her.  The Ravenswing, that is her fantastical theatrical
+name (her real name is the same with that of a notorious scoundrel
+in the Fleet, who invented the Panama swindle, the Pontine Marshes'
+swindle, the Soap swindle--HOW ARE YOU OFF FOR SOAP NOW, Mr.
+W-lk-r?)--the Ravenswing, we say, will do.  Slang has engaged her at
+thirty guineas per week, and she appears next month in Thrum's
+opera, of which the words are written by a great ass with some
+talent--we mean Mr. Mulligan.
+
+"There is a foreign fool in the Flowers of Fashion who is doing his
+best to disgust the public by his filthy flattery.  It is enough to
+make one sick.  Why is the foreign beast not kicked out of the
+paper?"--The Tomahawk, June 17.
+
+The first three "anecdotes" were supplied by Mulligan to his paper,
+with many others which need not here be repeated:  he kept them up
+with amazing energy and variety.  Anecdotes of Sir George Thrum met
+you unexpectedly in queer corners of country papers:  puffs of the
+English school of music appeared perpetually in "Notices to
+Correspondents" in the Sunday prints, some of which Mr. Slang
+commanded, and in others over which the indefatigable Mulligan had a
+control.  This youth was the soul of the little conspiracy for
+raising Morgiana into fame:  and humble as he is, and great and
+respectable as is Sir George Thrum, it is my belief that the
+Ravenswing would never have been the Ravenswing she is but for the
+ingenuity and energy of the honest Hibernian reporter.
+
+It is only the business of the great man who writes the leading
+articles which appear in the large type of the daily papers to
+compose those astonishing pieces of eloquence; the other parts of
+the paper are left to the ingenuity of the sub-editor, whose duty it
+is to select paragraphs, reject or receive horrid accidents, police
+reports, etc.; with which, occupied as he is in the exercise of his
+tremendous functions, the editor himself cannot be expected to
+meddle.  The fate of Europe is his province; the rise and fall of
+empires, and the great questions of State demand the editor's
+attention:  the humble puff, the paragraph about the last murder, or
+the state of the crops, or the sewers in Chancery Lane, is confided
+to the care of the sub; and it is curious to see what a prodigious
+number of Irishmen exist among the sub-editors of London.  When the
+Liberator enumerates the services of his countrymen, how the battle
+of Fontenoy was won by the Irish Brigade, how the battle of Waterloo
+would have been lost but for the Irish regiments, and enumerates
+other acts for which we are indebted to Milesian heroism and
+genius--he ought at least to mention the Irish brigade of the press,
+and the amazing services they do to this country.
+
+The truth is, the Irish reporters and soldiers appear to do their
+duty right well; and my friend Mr. Mulligan is one of the former.
+Having the interests of his opera and the Ravenswing strongly at
+heart, and being amongst his brethren an exceedingly popular fellow,
+he managed matters so that never a day passed but some paragraph
+appeared somewhere regarding the new singer, in whom, for their
+countryman's sake, all his brothers and sub-editors felt an
+interest.
+
+These puffs, destined to make known to all the world the merits of
+the Ravenswing, of course had an effect upon a gentleman very
+closely connected with that lady, the respectable prisoner in the
+Fleet, Captain Walker.  As long as he received his weekly two
+guineas from Mr. Woolsey, and the occasional half-crowns which his
+wife could spare in her almost daily visits to him, he had never
+troubled himself to inquire what her pursuits were, and had allowed
+her (though the worthy woman longed with all her might to betray
+herself) to keep her secret.  He was far from thinking, indeed, that
+his wife would prove such a treasure to him.
+
+But when the voice of fame and the columns of the public journals
+brought him each day some new story regarding the merits, genius,
+and beauty of the Ravenswing; when rumours reached him that she was
+the favourite pupil of Sir George Thrum; when she brought him five
+guineas after singing at the "Philharmonic" (other five the good
+soul had spent in purchasing some smart new cockades, hats, cloaks,
+and laces, for her little son); when, finally, it was said that
+Slang, the great manager, offered her an engagement at thirty
+guineas per week, Mr. Walker became exceedingly interested in his
+wife's proceedings, of which he demanded from her the fullest
+explanation.
+
+Using his marital authority, he absolutely forbade Mrs. Walker's
+appearance on the public stage; he wrote to Sir George Thrum a
+letter expressive of his highest indignation that negotiations so
+important should ever have been commenced without his authorisation;
+and he wrote to his dear Slang (for these gentlemen were very
+intimate, and in the course of his transactions as an agent Mr. W.
+had had many dealings with Mr. S.) asking his dear Slang whether the
+latter thought his friend Walker would be so green as to allow his
+wife to appear on the stage, and he remain in prison with all his
+debts on his head?
+
+And it was a curious thing now to behold how eager those very
+creditors who but yesterday (and with perfect correctness) had
+denounced Mr. Walker as a swindler; who had refused to come to any
+composition with him, and had sworn never to release him; how they
+on a sudden became quite eager to come to an arrangement with him,
+and offered, nay, begged and prayed him to go free,--only giving
+them his own and Mrs. Walker's acknowledgment of their debt, with a
+promise that a part of the lady's salary should be devoted to the
+payment of the claim.
+
+"The lady's salary!" said Mr. Walker, indignantly, to these
+gentlemen and their attorneys.  "Do you suppose I will allow Mrs.
+Walker to go on the stage?--do you suppose I am such a fool as to
+sign bills to the full amount of these claims against me, when in a
+few months more I can walk out of prison without paying a shilling?
+Gentlemen, you take Howard Walker for an idiot.  I like the Fleet,
+and rather than pay I'll stay here for these ten years."
+
+In other words, it was the Captain's determination to make some
+advantageous bargain for himself with his creditors and the
+gentlemen who were interested in bringing forward Mrs. Walker on the
+stage.  And who can say that in so determining he did not act with
+laudable prudence and justice?
+
+"You do not, surely, consider, my very dear sir, that half the
+amount of Mrs. Walker's salaries is too much for my immense trouble
+and pains in teaching her?" cried Sir George Thrum (who, in reply to
+Walker's note, thought it most prudent to wait personally on that
+gentleman).  "Remember that I am the first master in England; that I
+have the best interest in England; that I can bring her out at the
+Palace, and at every concert and musical festival in England; that I
+am obliged to teach her every single note that she utters; and that
+without me she could no more sing a song than her little baby could
+walk without its nurse."
+
+"I believe about half what you say," said Mr. Walker.
+
+"My dear Captain Walker! would you question my integrity?  Who was
+it that made Mrs. Millington's fortune,--the celebrated Mrs.
+Millington, who has now got a hundred thousand pounds?  Who was it
+that brought out the finest tenor in Europe, Poppleton?  Ask the
+musical world, ask those great artists themselves, and they will
+tell you they owe their reputation, their fortune, to Sir George
+Thrum."
+
+"It is very likely," replied the Captain, coolly.  "You ARE a good
+master, I dare say, Sir George; but I am not going to article Mrs.
+Walker to you for three years, and sign her articles in the Fleet.
+Mrs. Walker shan't sing till I'm a free man, that's flat:  if I stay
+here till you're dead she shan't."
+
+"Gracious powers, sir!" exclaimed Sir George, "do you expect me to
+pay your debts?"
+
+"Yes, old boy," answered the Captain, "and to give me something
+handsome in hand, too; and that's my ultimatum:  and so I wish you
+good morning, for I'm engaged to play a match at tennis below."
+
+This little interview exceedingly frightened the worthy knight, who
+went home to his lady in a delirious state of alarm occasioned by
+the audacity of Captain Walker.
+
+Mr. Slang's interview with him was scarcely more satisfactory.  He
+owed, he said, four thousand pounds.  His creditors might be brought
+to compound for five shillings in the pound.  He would not consent
+to allow his wife to make a single engagement until the creditors
+were satisfied, and until he had a handsome sum in hand to begin the
+world with.  "Unless my wife comes out, you'll be in the Gazette
+yourself, you know you will.  So you may take her or leave her, as
+you think fit."
+
+"Let her sing one night as a trial," said Mr. Slang.
+
+"If she sings one night, the creditors will want their money in
+full," replied the Captain.  "I shan't let her labour, poor thing,
+for the profit of those scoundrels!" added the prisoner, with much
+feeling.  And Slang left him with a much greater respect for Walker
+than he had ever before possessed.  He was struck with the gallantry
+of the man who could triumph over misfortunes, nay, make misfortune
+itself an engine of good luck.
+
+Mrs. Walker was instructed instantly to have a severe sore throat.
+The journals in Mr. Slang's interest deplored this illness
+pathetically; while the papers in the interest of the opposition
+theatre magnified it with great malice.  "The new singer," said one,
+"the great wonder which Slang promised us, is as hoarse as a RAVEN!"
+"Doctor Thorax pronounces," wrote another paper, "that the quinsy,
+which has suddenly prostrated Mrs. Ravenswing, whose singing at the
+Philharmonic, previous to her appearance at the 'T.R-----,' excited
+so much applause, has destroyed the lady's voice for ever.  We
+luckily need no other prima donna, when that place, as nightly
+thousands acknowledge, is held by Miss Ligonier."  The Looker-on
+said, "That although some well-informed contemporaries had declared
+Mrs. W. Ravenswing's complaint to be a quinsy, others, on whose
+authority they could equally rely, had pronounced it to be a
+consumption.  At all events, she was in an exceedingly dangerous
+state; from which, though we do not expect, we heartily trust she
+may recover.  Opinions differ as to the merits of this lady, some
+saying that she was altogether inferior to Miss Ligonier, while
+other connoisseurs declare the latter lady to be by no means so
+accomplished a person.  This point, we fear," continued the
+Looker-on, "can never now be settled; unless, which we fear is
+improbable, Mrs. Ravenswing should ever so far recover as to be able
+to make her debut; and even then, the new singer will not have a
+fair chance unless her voice and strength shall be fully restored.
+This information, which we have from exclusive resources, may be
+relied on," concluded the Looker-on, "as authentic."
+
+It was Mr. Walker himself, that artful and audacious Fleet prisoner,
+who concocted those very paragraphs against his wife's health which
+appeared in the journals of the Ligonier party.  The partisans of
+that lady were delighted, the creditors of Mr. Walker astounded, at
+reading them.  Even Sir George Thrum was taken in, and came to the
+Fleet prison in considerable alarm.
+
+"Mum's the word, my good sir!" said Mr. Walker.  "Now is the time to
+make arrangements with the creditors."
+
+Well, these arrangements were finally made.  It does not matter how
+many shillings in the pound satisfied the rapacious creditors of
+Morgiana's husband.  But it is certain that her voice returned to
+her all of a sudden upon the Captain's release.  The papers of the
+Mulligan faction again trumpeted her perfections; the agreement with
+Mr. Slang was concluded; that with Sir George Thrum the great
+composer satisfactorily arranged; and the new opera underlined in
+immense capitals in the bills, and put in rehearsal with immense
+expenditure on the part of the scene-painter and costumier.
+
+Need we tell with what triumphant success the "Brigand's Bride" was
+received?  All the Irish sub-editors the next morning took care to
+have such an account of it as made Miss Ligonier and Baroski die
+with envy.  All the reporters who could spare time were in the boxes
+to support their friend's work.  All the journeymen tailors of the
+establishment of Linsey, Woolsey, and Co. had pit tickets given to
+them, and applauded with all their might.  All Mr. Walker's friends
+of the "Regent Club" lined the side-boxes with white kid gloves; and
+in a little box by themselves sat Mrs. Crump and Mr. Woolsey, a
+great deal too much agitated to applaud--so agitated, that Woolsey
+even forgot to fling down the bouquet he had brought for the
+Ravenswing.
+
+But there was no lack of those horticultural ornaments.  The theatre
+servants wheeled away a wheelbarrow-full (which were flung on the
+stage the next night over again); and Morgiana, blushing, panting,
+weeping, was led off by Mr. Poppleton, the eminent tenor, who had
+crowned her with one of the most conspicuous of the chaplets.
+
+Here she flew to her husband, and flung her arms round his neck.  He
+was flirting behind the side-scenes with Mademoiselle Flicflac, who
+had been dancing in the divertissement; and was probably the only
+man in the theatre of those who witnessed the embrace that did not
+care for it.  Even Slang was affected, and said with perfect
+sincerity that he wished he had been in Walker's place.  The
+manager's fortune was made, at least for the season.  He
+acknowledged so much to Walker, who took a week's salary for his
+wife in advance that very night.
+
+There was, as usual, a grand supper in the green-room.  The terrible
+Mr. Bludyer appeared in a new coat of the well-known Woolsey cut,
+and the little tailor himself and Mrs. Crump were not the least
+happy of the party.  But when the Ravenswing took Woolsey's hand,
+and said she never would have been there but for him, Mr. Walker
+looked very grave, and hinted to her that she must not, in her
+position, encourage the attentions of persons in that rank of life.
+"I shall pay," said he, proudly, "every farthing that is owing to
+Mr. Woolsey, and shall employ him for the future.  But you
+understand, my love, that one cannot at one's own table receive
+one's own tailor."
+
+Slang proposed Morgiana's health in a tremendous speech, which
+elicited cheers, and laughter, and sobs, such as only managers have
+the art of drawing from the theatrical gentlemen and ladies in their
+employ.  It was observed, especially among the chorus-singers at the
+bottom of the table, that their emotion was intense.  They had a
+meeting the next day and voted a piece of plate to Adolphus Slang,
+Esquire, for his eminent services in the cause of the drama.
+
+Walker returned thanks for his lady.  That was, he said, the
+proudest moment of his life.  He was proud to think that he had
+educated her for the stage, happy to think that his sufferings had
+not been in vain, and that his exertions in her behalf were crowned
+with full success.  In her name and his own he thanked the company,
+and sat down, and was once more particularly attentive to
+Mademoiselle Flicflac.
+
+Then came an oration from Sir George Thrum, in reply to Slang's
+toast to HIM.  It was very much to the same effect as the speech by
+Walker, the two gentlemen attributing to themselves individually the
+merit of bringing out Mrs. Walker.  He concluded by stating that he
+should always hold Mrs. Walker as the daughter of his heart, and to
+the last moment of his life should love and cherish her.  It is
+certain that Sir George was exceedingly elated that night, and would
+have been scolded by his lady on his return home, but for the
+triumph of the evening.
+
+Mulligan's speech of thanks, as author of the "Brigand's Bride,"
+was, it must be confessed, extremely tedious.  It seemed there would
+be no end to it; when he got upon the subject of Ireland especially,
+which somehow was found to be intimately connected with the
+interests of music and the theatre.  Even the choristers pooh-poohed
+this speech, coming though it did from the successful author, whose
+songs of wine, love, and battle, they had been repeating that night.
+
+The "Brigand's Bride" ran for many nights.  Its choruses were tuned
+on the organs of the day.  Morgiana's airs, "The Rose upon my
+Balcony" and the "Lightning on the Cataract" (recitative and scena)
+were on everybody's lips, and brought so many guineas to Sir George
+Thrum that he was encouraged to have his portrait engraved, which
+still may be seen in the music-shops.  Not many persons, I believe,
+bought proof impressions of the plate, price two guineas; whereas,
+on the contrary, all the young clerks in banks, and all the FAST
+young men of the universities, had pictures of the Ravenswing in
+their apartments--as Biondetta (the brigand's bride), as Zelyma (in
+the "Nuptials of Benares"), as Barbareska (in the "Mine of
+Tobolsk"), and in all her famous characters.  In the latter she
+disguises herself as a Uhlan, in order to save her father, who is in
+prison; and the Ravenswing looked so fascinating in this costume in
+pantaloons and yellow boots, that Slang was for having her instantly
+in Captain Macheath, whence arose their quarrel.
+
+She was replaced at Slang's theatre by Snooks, the rhinoceros-tamer,
+with his breed of wild buffaloes.  Their success was immense.  Slang
+gave a supper, at which all the company burst into tears; and
+assembling in the green-room next day, they, as usual, voted a piece
+of plate to Adolphus Slang, Esquire, for his eminent services to the
+drama.
+
+In the Captain Macheath dispute Mr. Walker would have had his wife
+yield; but on this point, and for once, she disobeyed her husband
+and left the theatre.  And when Walker cursed her (according to his
+wont) for her abominable selfishness and disregard of his property,
+she burst into tears and said she had spent but twenty guineas on
+herself and baby during the year, that her theatrical dressmaker's
+bills were yet unpaid, and that she had never asked him how much he
+spent on that odious French figurante.
+
+All this was true, except about the French figurante.  Walker, as
+the lord and master, received all Morgiana's earnings, and spent
+them as a gentleman should.  He gave very neat dinners at a cottage
+in Regent's Park (Mr. and Mrs. Walker lived at Green Street,
+Grosvenor Square), he played a good deal at the "Regent;" but as to
+the French figurante, it must be confessed, that Mrs. Walker was in
+a sad error:  THAT lady and the Captain had parted long ago; it was
+Madame Dolores de Tras-os-Montes who inhabited the cottage in St.
+John's Wood now.
+
+But if some little errors of this kind might be attributable to the
+Captain, on the other hand, when his wife was in the provinces, he
+was the most attentive of husbands; made all her bargains, and
+received every shilling before he would permit her to sing a note.
+Thus he prevented her from being cheated, as a person of her easy
+temper doubtless would have been, by designing managers and needy
+concert-givers.  They always travelled with four horses; and Walker
+was adored in every one of the principal hotels in England.  The
+waiters flew at his bell.  The chambermaids were afraid he was a sad
+naughty man, and thought his wife no such great beauty; the
+landlords preferred him to any duke.  HE never looked at their
+bills, not he!  In fact his income was at least four thousand a year
+for some years of his life.
+
+Master Woolsey Walker was put to Doctor Wapshot's seminary, whence,
+after many disputes on the Doctor's part as to getting his
+half-year's accounts paid, and after much complaint of ill-treatment
+on the little boy's side, he was withdrawn, and placed under the
+care of the Reverend Mr. Swishtail, at Turnham Green; where all his
+bills are paid by his godfather, now the head of the firm of Woolsey
+and Co.
+
+As a gentleman, Mr. Walker still declines to see him; but he has
+not, as far as I have heard, paid the sums of money which he
+threatened to refund; and, as he is seldom at home the worthy tailor
+can come to Green Street at his leisure.  He and Mrs. Crump, and
+Mrs. Walker often take the omnibus to Brentford, and a cake with
+them to little Woolsey at school; to whom the tailor says he will
+leave every shilling of his property.
+
+The Walkers have no other children; but when she takes her airing in
+the Park she always turns away at the sight of a low phaeton, in
+which sits a woman with rouged cheeks, and a great number of
+overdressed children and a French bonne, whose name, I am given to
+understand, is Madame Dolores de Tras-os-Montes.  Madame de
+Tras-os-Montes always puts a great gold glass to her eye as the
+Ravenswing's carriage passes, and looks into it with a sneer.  The
+two coachmen used always to exchange queer winks at each other in
+the ring, until Madame de Tras-os-Montes lately adopted a tremendous
+chasseur, with huge whiskers and a green and gold livery; since
+which time the formerly named gentlemen do not recognise each other.
+
+The Ravenswing's life is one of perpetual triumph on the stage; and,
+as every one of the fashionable men about town have been in love
+with her, you may fancy what a pretty character she has.  Lady Thrum
+would die sooner than speak to that unhappy young woman; and, in
+fact, the Thrums have a new pupil, who is a siren without the
+dangerous qualities of one, who has the person of Venus, and the
+mind of a Muse, and who is coming out at one of the theatres
+immediately.  Baroski says, "De liddle Rafenschwing is just as font
+of me as effer!"  People are very shy about receiving her in
+society; and when she goes to sing at a concert, Miss Prim starts up
+and skurries off in a state of the greatest alarm, lest "that
+person" should speak to her.
+
+Walker is voted a good, easy, rattling, gentlemanly fellow, and
+nobody's enemy but his own.  His wife, they say, is dreadfully
+extravagant:  and, indeed, since his marriage, and in spite of his
+wife's large income, he has been in the Bench several times; but she
+signs some bills and he comes out again, and is as gay and genial as
+ever.  All mercantile speculations he has wisely long since given
+up; he likes to throw a main of an evening, as I have said, and to
+take his couple of bottles at dinner.  On Friday he attends at the
+theatre for his wife's salary, and transacts no other business
+during the week.  He grows exceedingly stout, dyes his hair, and has
+a bloated purple look about the nose and cheeks, very different from
+that which first charmed the heart of Morgiana.
+
+By the way, Eglantine has been turned out of the Bower of Bloom, and
+now keeps a shop at Tunbridge Wells.  Going down thither last year
+without a razor, I asked a fat seedy man lolling in a faded nankeen
+jacket at the door of a tawdry little shop in the Pantiles, to shave
+me.  He said in reply, "Sir, I do not practise in that branch of the
+profession!" and turned back into the little shop.  It was Archibald
+Eglantine.  But in the wreck of his fortunes he still has his
+captain's uniform, and his grand cross of the order of the Castle
+and Falcon of Panama.
+
+                    *          *          *
+
+POSTSCRIPT.
+
+     G. Fitz-Boodle, Esq., to O. Yorke, Esq.
+
+                    ZUM TRIERISCHEN HOP, COBLENZ:  July 10, 1843.
+
+MY DEAR YORKE,--The story of the Ravenswing was written a long time
+since, and I never could account for the bad taste of the publishers
+of the metropolis who refused it an insertion in their various
+magazines.  This fact would never have been alluded to but for the
+following circumstance:--
+
+Only yesterday, as I was dining at this excellent hotel, I remarked
+a bald-headed gentleman in a blue coat and brass buttons, who looked
+like a colonel on half-pay, and by his side a lady and a little boy
+of twelve, whom the gentleman was cramming with an amazing quantity
+of cherries and cakes.  A stout old dame in a wonderful cap and
+ribands was seated by the lady's side, and it was easy to see they
+were English, and I thought I had already made their acquaintance
+elsewhere.
+
+The younger of the ladies at last made a bow with an accompanying
+blush.
+
+"Surely," said I, "I have the honour of speaking to Mrs.
+Ravenswing?"
+
+"Mrs. Woolsey, sir," said the gentleman; "my wife has long since
+left the stage:" and at this the old lady in the wonderful cap trod
+on my toes very severely, and nodded her head and all her ribands in
+a most mysterious way.  Presently the two ladies rose and left the
+table, the elder declaring that she heard the baby crying.
+
+"Woolsey, my dear, go with your mamma," said Mr. Woolsey, patting
+the boy on the head.  The young gentleman obeyed the command,
+carrying off a plate of macaroons with him.
+
+"Your son is a fine boy, sir," said I.
+
+"My step-son, sir," answered Mr. Woolsey; and added, in a louder
+voice, "I knew you, Mr. Fitz-Boodle, at once, but did not mention
+your name for fear of agitating my wife.  She don't like to have the
+memory of old times renewed, sir; her former husband, whom you know,
+Captain Walker, made her very unhappy.  He died in America, sir, of
+this, I fear" (pointing to the bottle), "and Mrs. W. quitted the
+stage a year before I quitted business.  Are you going on to
+Wiesbaden?"
+
+They went off in their carriage that evening, the boy on the box
+making great efforts to blow out of the postilion's tasselled horn.
+
+I am glad that poor Morgiana is happy at last, and hasten to inform
+you of the fact.  I am going to visit the old haunts of my youth at
+Pumpernickel.  Adieu.
+
+Yours,
+
+G.  F.-B.
+
+
+
+MR. AND MRS. FRANK BERRY. - CHAPTER I.
+
+
+
+THE FIGHT AT SLAUGHTER HOUSE.
+
+I am very fond of reading about battles, and have most of
+Marlborough's and Wellington's at my fingers' ends; but the most
+tremendous combat I ever saw, and one that interests me to think of
+more than Malplaquet or Waterloo (which, by the way, has grown to be
+a downright nuisance, so much do men talk of it after dinner,
+prating most disgustingly about "the Prussians coming up," and what
+not)--I say the most tremendous combat ever known was that between
+Berry and Biggs the gown-boy, which commenced in a certain place
+called Middle Briars, situated in the midst of the cloisters that
+run along the side of the playground of Slaughter House School, near
+Smithfield, London.  It was there, madam, that your humble servant
+had the honour of acquiring, after six years' labour, that immense
+fund of classical knowledge which in after life has been so
+exceedingly useful to him.
+
+The circumstances of the quarrel were these:--Biggs, the gown-boy (a
+man who, in those days, I thought was at least seven feet high, and
+was quite thunderstruck to find in after life that he measured no
+more than five feet four), was what we called "second cock" of the
+school; the first cock was a great big, good-humoured, lazy,
+fair-haired fellow, Old Hawkins by name, who, because he was large
+and good-humoured, hurt nobody.  Biggs, on the contrary, was a sad
+bully; he had half-a-dozen fags, and beat them all unmercifully.
+Moreover, he had a little brother, a boarder in Potky's house, whom,
+as a matter of course, he hated and maltreated worse than anyone
+else.
+
+Well, one day, because young Biggs had not brought his brother his
+hoops, or had not caught a ball at cricket, or for some other
+equally good reason, Biggs the elder so belaboured the poor little
+fellow, that Berry, who was sauntering by, and saw the dreadful
+blows which the elder brother was dealing to the younger with his
+hockey-stick, felt a compassion for the little fellow (perhaps he
+had a jealousy against Biggs, and wanted to try a few rounds with
+him, but that I can't vouch for); however, Berry passing by, stopped
+and said, "Don't you think you have thrashed the boy enough, Biggs?"
+He spoke this in a very civil tone, for he never would have thought
+of interfering rudely with the sacred privilege that an upper boy at
+a public school always has of beating a junior, especially when they
+happen to be brothers.
+
+The reply of Biggs, as might be expected, was to hit young Biggs
+with the hockey-stick twice as hard as before, until the little
+wretch howled with pain.  "I suppose it's no business of yours,
+Berry," said Biggs, thumping away all the while, and laid on worse
+and worse.
+
+Until Berry (and, indeed, little Biggs) could bear it no longer, and
+the former, bouncing forward, wrenched the stick out of old Biggs's
+hands, and sent it whirling out of the cloister window, to the great
+wonder of a crowd of us small boys, who were looking on.  Little
+boys always like to see a little companion of their own soundly
+beaten.
+
+"There!" said Berry, looking into Biggs's face, as much as to say,
+"I've gone and done it;" and he added to the brother, "Scud away,
+you little thief; I've saved you this time."
+
+"Stop, young Biggs!" roared out his brother after a pause; "or I'll
+break every bone in your infernal scoundrelly skin!"
+
+Young Biggs looked at Berry, then at his brother, then came at his
+brother's order, as if back to be beaten again; but lost heart, and
+ran away as fast as his little legs could carry him.
+
+"I'll do for him another time," said Biggs.  "Here, under-boy, take
+my coat;" and we all began to gather round and formed a ring.
+
+"We had better wait till after school, Biggs," cried Berry, quite
+cool, but looking a little pale.  "There are only five minutes now,
+and it will take you more than that to thrash me."
+
+Biggs upon this committed a great error; for he struck Berry
+slightly across the face with the back of his hand, saying, "You are
+in a funk."  But this was a feeling which Frank Berry did not in the
+least entertain; for, in reply to Biggs's back-hander, and as quick
+as thought, and with all his might and main--pong! he delivered a
+blow upon old Biggs's nose that made the claret spirt, and sent the
+second cock down to the ground as if he had been shot.
+
+He was up again, however, in a minute, his face white and gashed
+with blood, his eyes glaring, a ghastly spectacle; and Berry,
+meanwhile, had taken his coat off, and by this time there were
+gathered in the cloisters, on all the windows, and upon each other's
+shoulders, one hundred and twenty young gentlemen at the very least,
+for the news had gone out through the playground of "a fight between
+Berry and Biggs."
+
+But Berry was quite right in his remark about the propriety of
+deferring the business, for at this minute Mr. Chip, the second
+master, came down the cloisters going into school, and grinned in
+his queer way as he saw the state of Biggs's face.  "Holloa, Mr.
+Biggs," said he, "I suppose you have run against a finger-post."
+That was the regular joke with us at school, and you may be sure we
+all laughed heartily:  as we always did when Mr. Chip made a joke,
+or anything like a joke.  "You had better go to the pump, sir, and
+get yourself washed, and not let Doctor Buckle see you in that
+condition."  So saying, Mr. Chip disappeared to his duties in the
+under-school, whither all we little boys followed him.
+
+It was Wednesday, a half-holiday, as everybody knows, and
+boiled-beef day at Slaughter House.  I was in the same
+boarding-house with Berry, and we all looked to see whether he ate a
+good dinner, just as one would examine a man who was going to be
+hanged.  I recollected, in after-life, in Germany, seeing a friend
+who was going to fight a duel eat five larks for his breakfast, and
+thought I had seldom witnessed greater courage.  Berry ate
+moderately of the boiled beef--BOILED CHILD we used to call it at
+school, in our elegant jocular way; he knew a great deal better than
+to load his stomach upon the eve of such a contest as was going to
+take place.
+
+Dinner was very soon over, and Mr. Chip, who had been all the while
+joking Berry, and pressing him to eat, called him up into his study,
+to the great disappointment of us all, for we thought he was going
+to prevent the fight; but no such thing.  The Reverend Edward Chip
+took Berry into his study, and poured him out two glasses of
+port-wine, which he made him take with a biscuit, and patted him on
+the back, and went off.  I have no doubt he was longing, like all of
+us, to see the battle; but etiquette, you know, forbade.
+
+When we went out into the green, Old Hawkins was there--the great
+Hawkins, the cock of the school.  I have never seen the man since,
+but still think of him as of something awful, gigantic, mysterious:
+he who could thrash everybody, who could beat all the masters; how
+we longed for him to put in his hand and lick Buckle!  He was a dull
+boy, not very high in the school, and had all his exercises written
+for him.  Buckle knew this, but respected him; never called him up
+to read Greek plays; passed over all his blunders, which were many;
+let him go out of half-holidays into the town as he pleased:  how
+should any man dare to stop him--the great calm magnanimous silent
+Strength!  They say he licked a Life-Guardsman:  I wonder whether it
+was Shaw, who killed all those Frenchmen?  No, it could not be Shaw,
+for he was dead au champ d'honneur; but he WOULD have licked Shaw if
+he had been alive.  A bargeman I know he licked, at Jack Randall's
+in Slaughter House Lane.  Old Hawkins was too lazy to play at
+cricket; he sauntered all day in the sunshine about the green,
+accompanied by little Tippins, who was in the sixth form, laughed
+and joked at Hawkins eternally, and was the person who wrote all his
+exercises.
+
+Instead of going into town this afternoon, Hawkins remained at
+Slaughter House, to see the great fight between the second and third
+cocks.
+
+The different masters of the school kept boarding-houses (such as
+Potky's, Chip's, Wickens's, Pinney's, and so on), and the
+playground, or "green" as it was called, although the only thing
+green about the place was the broken glass on the walls that
+separate Slaughter House from Wilderness Row and Goswell
+Street--(many a time have I seen Mr. Pickwick look out of his window
+in that street, though we did not know him then)--the playground, or
+green, was common to all.  But if any stray boy from Potky's was
+found, for instance, in, or entering into, Chip's house, the most
+dreadful tortures were practised upon him:  as I can answer in my
+own case.
+
+Fancy, then, our astonishment at seeing a little three-foot wretch,
+of the name of Wills, one of Hawkins's fags (they were both in
+Potky's), walk undismayed amongst us lions at Chip's house, as the
+"rich and rare" young lady did in Ireland.  We were going to set
+upon him and devour or otherwise maltreat him, when he cried out in
+a little shrill impertinent voice, "TELL BERRY I WANT HIM!"
+
+We all roared with laughter.  Berry was in the sixth form, and Wills
+or any under-boy would as soon have thought of "wanting" him, as I
+should of wanting the Duke of Wellington.
+
+Little Wills looked round in an imperious kind of way.  "Well," says
+he, stamping his foot, "do you hear?  TELL BERRY THAT HAWKINS WANTS
+HIM!"
+
+As for resisting the law of Hawkins, you might as soon think of
+resisting immortal Jove.  Berry and Tolmash, who was to be his
+bottle-holder, made their appearance immediately, and walked out
+into the green where Hawkins was waiting, and, with an irresistible
+audacity that only belonged to himself, in the face of nature and
+all the regulations of the place, was smoking a cigar.  When Berry
+and Tolmash found him, the three began slowly pacing up and down in
+the sunshine, and we little boys watched them.
+
+Hawkins moved his arms and hands every now and then, and was
+evidently laying down the law about boxing.  We saw his fists
+darting out every now and then with mysterious swiftness, hitting
+one, two, quick as thought, as if in the face of an adversary; now
+his left hand went up, as if guarding his own head, now his immense
+right fist dreadfully flapped the air, as if punishing his imaginary
+opponent's miserable ribs.  The conversation lasted for some ten
+minutes, about which time gown-boys' dinner was over, and we saw
+these youths, in their black horned-button jackets and
+knee-breeches, issuing from their door in the cloisters.  There were
+no hoops, no cricket-bats, as usual on a half-holiday.  Who would
+have thought of play in expectation of such tremendous sport as was
+in store for us?
+
+Towering among the gown-boys, of whom he was the head and the
+tyrant, leaning upon Bushby's arm, and followed at a little distance
+by many curious pale awe-stricken boys, dressed in his black silk
+stockings, which he always sported, and with a crimson bandanna tied
+round his waist, came BIGGS.  His nose was swollen with the blow
+given before school, but his eyes flashed fire.  He was laughing and
+sneering with Bushby, and evidently intended to make minced meat of
+Berry.
+
+The betting began pretty freely:  the bets were against poor Berry.
+Five to three were offered--in ginger-beer.  I took six to four in
+raspberry open tarts.  The upper boys carried the thing farther
+still:  and I know for a fact, that Swang's book amounted to four
+pound three (but he hedged a good deal), and Tittery lost seventeen
+shillings in a single bet to Pitts, who took the odds.
+
+As Biggs and his party arrived, I heard Hawkins say to Berry, "For
+heaven's sake, my boy, fib with your right, and MIND HIS LEFT HAND!"
+
+Middle Briars was voted to be too confined a space for the combat,
+and it was agreed that it should take place behind the under-school
+in the shade, whither we all went.  Hawkins, with his immense silver
+hunting-watch, kept the time; and water was brought from the pump
+close to Notley's the pastrycook's, who did not admire fisticuffs at
+all on half-holidays, for the fights kept the boys away from his
+shop.  Gutley was the only fellow in the school who remained
+faithful to him, and he sat on the counter--the great gormandising
+brute!--eating tarts the whole day.
+
+This famous fight, as every Slaughter House man knows, lasted for
+two hours and twenty-nine minutes, by Hawkins's immense watch.  All
+this time the air resounded with cries of "Go it, Berry!" "Go it,
+Biggs!" "Pitch into him!" "Give it him!" and so on.  Shall I
+describe the hundred and two rounds of the combat?--No!--It would
+occupy too much space, and the taste for such descriptions has
+passed away. {3}
+
+1st round.  Both the combatants fresh, and in prime order.  The
+weight and inches somewhat on the gown-boy's side.  Berry goes
+gallantly in, and delivers a clinker on the gown-boy's jaw.  Biggs
+makes play with his left.  Berry down.
+
+                    *          *          *
+
+4th round.  Claret drawn in profusion from the gown-boy's grogshop.
+(He went down, and had his front tooth knocked out, but the blow cut
+Berry's knuckles a great deal.)
+
+                    *          *          *
+
+15th round.  Chancery.  Fibbing.  Biggs makes dreadful work with his
+left.  Break away.  Rally.  Biggs down.  Betting still six to four
+on the gown-boy.
+
+                    *          *          *
+
+20th round.  The men both dreadfully punished.  Berry somewhat shy
+of his adversary's left hand.
+
+                    *          *          *
+
+29th to 42nd round.  The Chipsite all this while breaks away from
+the gown-boy's left, and goes down on a knee.  Six to four on the
+gown-boy, until the fortieth round, when the bets became equal.
+
+                    *          *          *
+
+102nd and last round.  For half-an-hour the men had stood up to each
+other, but were almost too weary to strike.  The gown-boy's face
+hardly to be recognised, swollen and streaming with blood.  The
+Chipsite in a similar condition, and still more punished about his
+side from his enemy's left hand.  Berry gives a blow at his
+adversary's face, and falls over him as he falls.
+
+The gown-boy can't come up to time.  And thus ended the great fight
+of Berry and Biggs.
+
+And what, pray, has this horrid description of a battle and parcel
+of schoolboys to do with Men's Wives?
+
+What has it to do with Men's Wives?--A great deal more, madam, than
+you think for.  Only read Chapter II., and you shall hear.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+
+THE COMBAT AT VERSAILLES.
+
+I afterwards came to be Berry's fag, and, though beaten by him
+daily, he allowed, of course, no one else to lay a hand upon me, and
+I got no more thrashing than was good for me.  Thus an intimacy grew
+up between us, and after he left Slaughter House and went into the
+dragoons, the honest fellow did not forget his old friend, but
+actually made his appearance one day in the playground in moustaches
+and a braided coat, and gave me a gold pencil-case and a couple of
+sovereigns.  I blushed when I took them, but take them I did; and I
+think the thing I almost best recollect in my life, is the sight of
+Berry getting behind an immense bay cab-horse, which was held by a
+correct little groom, and was waiting near the school in Slaughter
+House Square.  He proposed, too, to have me to "Long's," where he
+was lodging for the time; but this invitation was refused on my
+behalf by Doctor Buckle, who said, and possibly with correctness,
+that I should get little good by spending my holiday with such a
+scapegrace.
+
+Once afterwards he came to see me at Christ Church, and we made a
+show of writing to one another, and didn't, and always had a hearty
+mutual goodwill; and though we did not quite burst into tears on
+parting, were yet quite happy when occasion threw us together, and
+so almost lost sight of each other.  I heard lately that Berry was
+married, and am rather ashamed to say, that I was not so curious as
+even to ask the maiden name of his lady.
+
+Last summer I was at Paris, and had gone over to Versailles to meet
+a party, one of which was a young lady to whom I was tenderly--But,
+never mind.  The day was rainy, and the party did not keep its
+appointment; and after yawning through the interminable Palace
+picture-galleries, and then making an attempt to smoke a cigar in
+the Palace garden--for which crime I was nearly run through the body
+by a rascally sentinel--I was driven, perforce, into the great bleak
+lonely place before the Palace, with its roads branching off to all
+the towns in the world, which Louis and Napoleon once intended to
+conquer, and there enjoyed my favourite pursuit at leisure, and was
+meditating whether I should go back to "Vefour's" for dinner, or
+patronise my friend M. Duboux of the "Hotel des Reservoirs" who
+gives not only a good dinner, but as dear a one as heart can desire.
+I was, I say, meditating these things, when a carriage passed by.
+It was a smart low calash, with a pair of bay horses and a postilion
+in a drab jacket that twinkled with innumerable buttons, and I was
+too much occupied in admiring the build of the machine, and the
+extreme tightness of the fellow's inexpressibles, to look at the
+personages within the carriage, when the gentleman roared out
+"Fitz!" and the postilion pulled up, and the lady gave a shrill
+scream, and a little black-muzzled spaniel began barking and yelling
+with all his might, and a man with moustaches jumped out of the
+vehicle, and began shaking me by the hand.
+
+"Drive home, John," said the gentleman:  "I'll be with you, my love,
+in an instant--it's an old friend.  Fitz, let me present you to Mrs.
+Berry."
+
+The lady made an exceedingly gentle inclination of her black-velvet
+bonnet, and said, "Pray, my love, remember that it is just
+dinner-time.  However, never mind ME."  And with another slight toss
+and a nod to the postilion, that individual's white leather breeches
+began to jump up and down again in the saddle, and the carriage
+disappeared, leaving me shaking my old friend Berry by the hand.
+
+He had long quitted the army, but still wore his military beard,
+which gave to his fair pink face a fierce and lion-like look.  He
+was extraordinarily glad to see me, as only men are glad who live in
+a small town, or in dull company.  There is no destroyer of
+friendships like London, where a man has no time to think of his
+neighbour, and has far too many friends to care for them.  He told
+me in a breath of his marriage, and how happy he was, and straight
+insisted that I must come home to dinner, and see more of Angelica,
+who had invited me herself--didn't I hear her?
+
+"Mrs. Berry asked YOU, Frank; but I certainly did not hear her ask
+ME!"
+
+"She would not have mentioned the dinner but that she meant me to
+ask you.  I know she did," cried Frank Berry.  "And, besides--hang
+it--I'm master of the house.  So come you shall.  No ceremony, old
+boy--one or two friends--snug family party--and we'll talk of old
+times over a bottle of claret."
+
+There did not seem to me to be the slightest objection to this
+arrangement, except that my boots were muddy, and my coat of the
+morning sort.  But as it was quite impossible to go to Paris and
+back again in a quarter of an hour, and as a man may dine with
+perfect comfort to himself in a frock-coat, it did not occur to me
+to be particularly squeamish, or to decline an old friend's
+invitation upon a pretext so trivial.
+
+Accordingly we walked to a small house in the Avenue de Paris, and
+were admitted first into a small garden ornamented by a grotto, a
+fountain, and several nymphs in plaster-of-Paris, then up a mouldy
+old steep stair into a hall, where a statue of Cupid and another of
+Venus welcomed us with their eternal simper; then through a salle-a-
+manger where covers were laid for six; and finally to a little
+saloon, where Fido the dog began to howl furiously according to his
+wont.
+
+It was one of the old pavilions that had been built for a
+pleasure-house in the gay days of Versailles, ornamented with
+abundance of damp Cupids and cracked gilt cornices, and old mirrors
+let into the walls, and gilded once, but now painted a dingy French
+white.  The long low windows looked into the court, where the
+fountain played its ceaseless dribble, surrounded by numerous rank
+creepers and weedy flowers, but in the midst of which the statues
+stood with their bases quite moist and green.
+
+I hate fountains and statues in dark confined places:  that
+cheerless, endless plashing of water is the most inhospitable sound
+ever heard.  The stiff grin of those French statues, or ogling
+Canova Graces, is by no means more happy, I think, than the smile of
+a skeleton, and not so natural.  Those little pavilions in which the
+old roues sported were never meant to be seen by daylight, depend
+on't.  They were lighted up with a hundred wax-candles, and the
+little fountain yonder was meant only to cool their claret.  And so,
+my first impression of Berry's place of abode was rather a dismal
+one.  However, I heard him in the salle-a-manger drawing the corks,
+which went off with a CLOOP, and that consoled me.
+
+As for the furniture of the rooms appertaining to the Berrys, there
+was a harp in a leather case, and a piano, and a flute-box, and a
+huge tambour with a Saracen's nose just begun, and likewise on the
+table a multiplicity of those little gilt books, half sentimental
+and half religious, which the wants of the age and of our young
+ladies have produced in such numbers of late.  I quarrel with no
+lady's taste in that way; but heigho! I had rather that Mrs.
+Fitz-Boodle should read "Humphry Clinker!"
+
+Besides these works, there was a "Peerage," of course.  What genteel
+family was ever without one?
+
+I was making for the door to see Frank drawing the corks, and was
+bounced at by the amiable little black-muzzled spaniel, who fastened
+his teeth in my pantaloons, and received a polite kick in
+consequence, which sent him howling to the other end of the room,
+and the animal was just in the act of performing that feat of
+agility, when the door opened and madame made her appearance.  Frank
+came behind her, peering over her shoulder with rather an anxious
+look.
+
+Mrs. Berry is an exceedingly white and lean person.  She has thick
+eyebrows, which meet rather dangerously over her nose, which is
+Grecian, and a small mouth with no lips--a sort of feeble pucker in
+the face as it were.  Under her eyebrows are a pair of enormous
+eyes, which she is in the habit of turning constantly ceiling-wards.
+Her hair is rather scarce, and worn in bandeaux, and she commonly
+mounts a sprig of laurel, or a dark flower or two, which with the
+sham tour--I believe that is the name of the knob of artificial hair
+that many ladies sport--gives her a rigid and classical look.  She
+is dressed in black, and has invariably the neatest of silk
+stockings and shoes:  for forsooth her foot is a fine one, and she
+always sits with it before her, looking at it, stamping it, and
+admiring it a great deal.  "Fido," she says to her spaniel, "you
+have almost crushed my poor foot;" or, "Frank," to her husband,
+"bring me a footstool:" or, "I suffer so from cold in the feet," and
+so forth; but be the conversation what it will, she is always sure
+to put HER FOOT into it.
+
+She invariably wears on her neck the miniature of her late father,
+Sir George Catacomb, apothecary to George III.; and she thinks those
+two men the greatest the world ever saw.  She was born in Baker
+Street, Portman Square, and that is saying almost enough of her.
+She is as long, as genteel, and as dreary, as that deadly-lively
+place, and sports, by way of ornament, her papa's hatchment, as it
+were, as every tenth Baker Street house has taught her.
+
+What induced such a jolly fellow as Frank Berry to marry Miss
+Angelica Catacomb no one can tell.  He met her, he says, at a ball
+at Hampton Court, where his regiment was quartered, and where, to
+this day, lives "her aunt Lady Pash."  She alludes perpetually in
+conversation to that celebrated lady; and if you look in the
+"Baronetage" to the pedigree of the Pash family, you may see
+manuscript notes by Mrs. Frank Berry, relative to them and herself.
+Thus, when you see in print that Sir John Pash married Angelica,
+daughter of Graves Catacomb, Esquire, in a neat hand you find
+written, AND SISTER OF THE LATE SIR GEORGE CATACOMB, OF BAKER
+STREET, PORTMAN SQUARE:  "A.B." follows of course.  It is a wonder
+how fond ladies are of writing in books, and signing their charming
+initials!  Mrs. Berry's before-mentioned little gilt books are
+scored with pencil-marks, or occasionally at the margin with
+a!--note of interjection, or the words "TOO TRUE, A.B." and so on.
+Much may be learned with regard to lovely woman by a look at the
+books she reads in; and I had gained no inconsiderable knowledge of
+Mrs. Berry by the ten minutes spent in the drawing-room, while she
+was at her toilet in the adjoining bedchamber.
+
+"You have often heard me talk of George Fitz," says Berry, with an
+appealing look to madame.
+
+"Very often," answered his lady, in a tone which clearly meant "a
+great deal too much."  "Pray, sir," continued she, looking at my
+boots with all her might, "are we to have your company at dinner?"
+
+"Of course you are, my dear; what else do you think he came for?
+You would not have the man go back to Paris to get his evening coat,
+would you?"
+
+"At least, my love, I hope you will go and put on YOURS, and change
+those muddy boots.  Lady Pash will be here in five minutes, and you
+know Dobus is as punctual as clockwork."  Then turning to me with a
+sort of apology that was as consoling as a box on the ear, "We have
+some friends at dinner, sir, who are rather particular persons; but
+I am sure when they hear that you only came on a sudden invitation,
+they will excuse your morning dress.--Bah! what a smell of smoke!"
+
+With this speech madame placed herself majestically on a sofa, put
+out her foot, called Fido, and relapsed into an icy silence.  Frank
+had long since evacuated the premises, with a rueful look at his
+wife, but never daring to cast a glance at me.  I saw the whole
+business at once:  here was this lion of a fellow tamed down by a
+she Van Amburgh, and fetching and carrying at her orders a great
+deal more obediently than her little yowling black-muzzled darling
+of a Fido.
+
+I am not, however, to be tamed so easily, and was determined in this
+instance not to be in the least disconcerted, or to show the
+smallest sign of ill-humour:  so to renouer the conversation, I
+began about Lady Pash.
+
+"I heard you mention the name of Pash, I think?" said I.  "I know a
+lady of that name, and a very ugly one it is too."
+
+"It is most probably not the same person," answered Mrs. Berry, with
+a look which intimated that a fellow like me could never have had
+the honour to know so exalted a person.
+
+"I mean old Lady Pash of Hampton Court.  Fat woman--fair, ain't
+she?--and wears an amethyst in her forehead, has one eye, a blond
+wig, and dresses in light green?"
+
+"Lady Pash, sir, is MY AUNT," answered Mrs. Berry (not altogether
+displeased, although she expected money from the old lady; but you
+know we love to hear our friends abused when it can be safely done).
+
+"Oh, indeed! she was a daughter of old Catacomb's of Windsor, I
+remember, the undertaker.  They called her husband Callipash, and
+her ladyship Pishpash.  So you see, madam, that I know the whole
+family!"
+
+"Mr.  Fitz-Simons!" exclaimed Mrs. Berry, rising, "I am not
+accustomed to hear nicknames applied to myself and my family; and
+must beg you, when you honour us with your company, to spare our
+feelings as much as possible.  Mr. Catacomb had the confidence of
+his SOVEREIGN, sir, and Sir John Pash was of Charles II.'s creation.
+The one was my uncle, sir; the other my grandfather!"
+
+"My dear madam, I am extremely sorry, and most sincerely apologise
+for my inadvertence.  But you owe me an apology too:  my name is not
+Fitz-Simons, but Fitz-Boodle."
+
+"What! of Boodle Hall--my husband's old friend; of Charles I.'s
+creation?  My dear sir, I beg you a thousand pardons, and am
+delighted to welcome a person of whom I have heard Frank say so
+much.  Frank!" (to Berry, who soon entered in very glossy boots and
+a white waistcoat), "do you know, darling, I mistook Mr. Fitz-Boodle
+for Mr. Fitz-Simons--that horrid Irish horse-dealing person; and I
+never, never, never can pardon myself for being so rude to him."
+
+The big eyes here assumed an expression that was intended to kill me
+outright with kindness:  from being calm, still, reserved, Angelica
+suddenly became gay, smiling, confidential, and folatre.  She told
+me she had heard I was a sad creature, and that she intended to
+reform me, and that I must come and see Frank a great deal.
+
+Now, although Mr. Fitz-Simons, for whom I was mistaken, is as low a
+fellow as ever came out of Dublin, and having been a captain in
+somebody's army, is now a blackleg and horse-dealer by profession;
+yet, if I had brought him home to Mrs. Fitz-Boodle to dinner, I
+should have liked far better that that imaginary lady should have
+received him with decent civility, and not insulted the stranger
+within her husband's gates.  And, although it was delightful to be
+received so cordially when the mistake was discovered, yet I found
+that ALL Berry's old acquaintances were by no means so warmly
+welcomed; for another old school-chum presently made his appearance,
+who was treated in a very different manner.
+
+This was no other than poor Jack Butts, who is a sort of small
+artist and picture-dealer by profession, and was a dayboy at
+Slaughter House when we were there, and very serviceable in bringing
+in sausages, pots of pickles, and other articles of merchandise,
+which we could not otherwise procure.  The poor fellow has been
+employed, seemingly, in the same office of fetcher and carrier ever
+since; and occupied that post for Mrs. Berry.  It was, "Mr. Butts,
+have you finished that drawing for Lady Pash's album?" and Butts
+produced it; and, "Did you match the silk for me at Delille's?" and
+there was the silk, bought, no doubt, with the poor fellow's last
+five francs; and, "Did you go to the furniture-man in the Rue St.
+Jacques; and bring the canary-seed, and call about my shawl at that
+odious dawdling Madame Fichet's; and have you brought the
+guitar-strings?"
+
+Butts hadn't brought the guitar-strings; and thereupon Mrs. Berry's
+countenance assumed the same terrible expression which I had
+formerly remarked in it, and which made me tremble for Berry.
+
+"My dear Angelica," though said he with some spirit, "Jack Butts
+isn't a baggage-waggon, nor a Jack-of-all-trades; you make him paint
+pictures for your women's albums, and look after your upholsterer,
+and your canary-bird, and your milliners, and turn rusty because he
+forgets your last message."
+
+"I did not turn RUSTY, Frank, as you call it elegantly.  I'm very
+much obliged to Mr. Butts for performing my commissions--very much
+obliged.  And as for not paying for the pictures to which you so
+kindly allude, Frank, _I_ should never have thought of offering
+payment for so paltry a service; but I'm sure I shall be happy to
+pay if Mr. Butts will send me in his bill."
+
+"By Jove, Angelica, this is too much!" bounced out Berry; but the
+little matrimonial squabble was abruptly ended, by Berry's French
+man flinging open the door and announcing MILADI PASH and Doctor
+Dobus, which two personages made their appearance.
+
+The person of old Pash has been already parenthetically described.
+But quite different from her dismal niece in temperament, she is as
+jolly an old widow as ever wore weeds.  She was attached somehow to
+the Court, and has a multiplicity of stories about the princesses
+and the old King, to which Mrs. Berry never fails to call your
+attention in her grave, important way.  Lady Pash has ridden many a
+time to the Windsor hounds; she made her husband become a member of
+the Four-in-hand Club, and has numberless stories about Sir Godfrey
+Webster, Sir John Lade, and the old heroes of those times.  She has
+lent a rouleau to Dick Sheridan, and remembers Lord Byron when he
+was a sulky slim young lad.  She says Charles Fox was the
+pleasantest fellow she ever met with, and has not the slightest
+objection to inform you that one of the princes was very much in
+love with her.  Yet somehow she is only fifty-two years old, and I
+have never been able to understand her calculation.  One day or
+other before her eye went out, and before those pearly teeth of hers
+were stuck to her gums by gold, she must have been a pretty-looking
+body enough.  Yet, in spite of the latter inconvenience, she eats
+and drinks too much every day, and tosses off a glass of maraschino
+with a trembling pudgy hand, every finger of which twinkles with a
+dozen, at least, of old rings.  She has a story about every one of
+those rings, and a stupid one too.  But there is always something
+pleasant, I think, in stupid family stories:  they are good-hearted
+people who tell them.
+
+As for Mrs. Muchit, nothing need be said of her; she is Pash's
+companion; she has lived with Lady Pash since the peace.  Nor does
+my Lady take any more notice of her than of the dust of the earth.
+She calls her "poor Muchit," and considers her a half-witted
+creature.  Mrs. Berry hates her cordially, and thinks she is a
+designing toad-eater, who has formed a conspiracy to rob her of her
+aunt's fortune.  She never spoke a word to poor Muchit during the
+whole of dinner, or offered to help her to anything on the table.
+
+In respect to Dobus, he is an old Peninsular man, as you are made to
+know before you have been very long in his company; and, like most
+army surgeons, is a great deal more military in his looks and
+conversation, than the combatant part of the forces.  He has adopted
+the sham-Duke-of-Wellington air, which is by no means uncommon in
+veterans; and, though one of the easiest and softest fellows in
+existence, speaks slowly and briefly, and raps out an oath or two
+occasionally, as it is said a certain great captain does.  Besides
+the above, we sat down to table with Captain Goff, late of the --
+Highlanders; the Reverend Lemuel Whey, who preaches at St.
+Germains; little Cutler, and the Frenchman, who always WILL be at
+English parties on the Continent, and who, after making some
+frightful efforts to speak English, subsides and is heard no more.
+Young married ladies and heads of families generally have him for
+the purpose of waltzing, and in return he informs his friends of the
+club or the cafe that he has made the conquest of a charmante
+Anglaise.  Listen to me, all family men who read this! and never LET
+AN UNMARRIED FRENCHMAN INTO YOUR DOORS.  This lecture alone is worth
+the price of the book.  It is not that they do any harm in one case
+out of a thousand, Heaven forbid! but they mean harm.  They look on
+our Susannas with unholy dishonest eyes.  Hearken to two of the
+grinning rogues chattering together as they clink over the asphalte
+of the Boulevard with lacquered boots, and plastered hair, and waxed
+moustaches, and turned-down shirt-collars, and stays and goggling
+eyes, and hear how they talk of a good simple giddy vain dull Baker
+Street creature, and canvass her points, and show her letters, and
+insinuate--never mind, but I tell you my soul grows angry when I
+think of the same; and I can't hear of an Englishwoman marrying a
+Frenchman without feeling a sort of shame and pity for her. {4}
+
+To return to the guests.  The Reverend Lemuel Whey is a tea-party
+man, with a curl on his forehead and a scented pocket-handkerchief.
+He ties his white neckcloth to a wonder, and I believe sleeps in it.
+He brings his flute with him; and prefers Handel, of course; but has
+one or two pet profane songs of the sentimental kind, and will
+occasionally lift up his little pipe in a glee.  He does not dance,
+but the honest fellow would give the world to do it; and he leaves
+his clogs in the passage, though it is a wonder he wears them, for
+in the muddiest weather he never has a speck on his foot.  He was at
+St. John's College, Cambridge, and was rather gay for a term or two,
+he says.  He is, in a word, full of the milk-and-water of human
+kindness, and his family lives near Hackney.
+
+As for Goff, he has a huge shining bald forehead, and immense
+bristling Indian-red whiskers.  He wears white wash-leather gloves,
+drinks fairly, likes a rubber, and has a story for after dinner,
+beginning, "Doctor, ye racklackt Sandy M'Lellan, who joined us in
+the West Indies.  Wal, sir," etc.  These and little Cutler made up
+the party.
+
+Now it may not have struck all readers, but any sharp fellow
+conversant with writing must have found out long ago, that if there
+had been something exceedingly interesting to narrate with regard to
+this dinner at Frank Berry's, I should have come out with it a
+couple of pages since, nor have kept the public looking for so long
+a time at the dish-covers and ornaments of the table.
+
+But the simple fact must now be told, that there was nothing of the
+slightest importance occurred at this repast, except that it gave me
+an opportunity of studying Mrs. Berry in many different ways; and,
+in spite of the extreme complaisance which she now showed me, of
+forming, I am sorry to say, a most unfavourable opinion of that fair
+lady.  Truth to tell, I would much rather she should have been civil
+to Mrs. Muchit, than outrageously complimentary to your humble
+servant; and as she professed not to know what on earth there was
+for dinner, would it not have been much more natural for her not to
+frown, and bob, and wink, and point, and pinch her lips as often as
+Monsieur Anatole, her French domestic, not knowing the ways of
+English dinner-tables, placed anything out of its due order?  The
+allusions to Boodle Hall were innumerable, and I don't know any
+greater bore than to be obliged to talk of a place which belongs to
+one's elder brother.  Many questions were likewise asked about the
+dowager and her Scotch relatives, the Plumduffs, about whom Lady
+Pash knew a great deal, having seen them at Court and at Lord
+Melville's.  Of course she had seen them at Court and at Lord
+Melville's, as she might have seen thousands of Scotchmen besides;
+but what mattered it to me, who care not a jot for old Lady
+Fitz-Boodle?  "When you write, you'll say you met an old friend of
+her Ladyship's," says Mrs. Berry, and I faithfully promised I would
+when I wrote; but if the New Post Office paid us for writing letters
+(as very possibly it will soon), I could not be bribed to send a
+line to old Lady Fitz.
+
+In a word, I found that Berry, like many simple fellows before him,
+had made choice of an imperious, ill-humoured, and underbred female
+for a wife, and could see with half an eye that he was a great deal
+too much her slave.
+
+The struggle was not over yet, however.  Witness that little
+encounter before dinner; and once or twice the honest fellow replied
+rather smartly during the repast, taking especial care to atone as
+much as possible for his wife's inattention to Jack and Mrs. Muchit,
+by particular attention to those personages, whom he helped to
+everything round about and pressed perpetually to champagne; he
+drank but little himself, for his amiable wife's eye was constantly
+fixed on him.
+
+Just at the conclusion of the dessert, madame, who had bouded Berry
+during dinner-time, became particularly gracious to her lord and
+master, and tenderly asked me if I did not think the French custom
+was a good one, of men leaving table with the ladies.
+
+"Upon my word, ma'am," says I, "I think it's a most abominable
+practice."
+
+"And so do I," says Cutler.
+
+"A most abominable practice!  Do you hear THAT?" cries Berry,
+laughing, and filling his glass.
+
+"I'm sure, Frank, when we are alone you always come to the
+drawing-room," replies the lady, sharply.
+
+"Oh, yes! when we're alone, darling," says Berry, blushing; "but now
+we're NOT alone--ha, ha!  Anatole, du Bordeaux!"
+
+"I'm sure they sat after the ladies at CarIton House; didn't they,
+Lady Pash?" says Dobus, who likes his glass.
+
+"THAT they did!" says my Lady, giving him a jolly nod.
+
+"I racklackt," exclaims Captain Goff, "when I was in the Mauritius,
+that Mestress MacWhirter, who commanded the Saxty-Sackond, used to
+say, 'Mac, if ye want to get lively, ye'll not stop for more than
+two hours after the leddies have laft ye:  if ye want to get drunk,
+ye'll just dine at the mass.'  So ye see, Mestress Barry, what was
+Mac's allowance--haw, haw!  Mester Whey, I'll trouble ye for the
+o-lives."
+
+But although we were in a clear majority, that indomitable woman,
+Mrs. Berry, determined to make us all as uneasy as possible, and
+would take the votes all round.  Poor Jack, of course, sided with
+her, and Whey said he loved a cup of tea and a little music better
+than all the wine of Bordeaux.  As for the Frenchman, when Mrs.
+Berry said, "And what do you think, M. le Vicomte?"
+
+"Vat you speak?" said M. de Blagueval, breaking silence for the
+first time during two hours.  "Yase--eh? to me you speak?"
+
+"Apry deeny, aimy-voo ally avec les dam?"
+
+"Comment avec les dames?"
+
+"Ally avec les dam com a Parry, ou resty avec les Messew com on
+Onglyterre?"
+
+"Ah, madame! vous me le demandez?" cries the little wretch, starting
+up in a theatrical way, and putting out his hand, which Mrs. Berry
+took, and with this the ladies left the room.  Old Lady Pash trotted
+after her niece with her hand in Whey's, very much wondering at such
+practices, which were not in the least in vogue in the reign of
+George III.
+
+Mrs. Berry cast a glance of triumph at her husband, at the
+defection; and Berry was evidently annoyed that three-eighths of his
+male forces had left him.
+
+But fancy our delight and astonishment, when in a minute they all
+three came back again; the Frenchman looking entirely astonished,
+and the parson and the painter both very queer.  The fact is, old
+downright Lady Pash, who had never been in Paris in her life before,
+and had no notion of being deprived of her usual hour's respite and
+nap, said at once to Mrs. Berry, "My dear Angelica, you're surely
+not going to keep these three men here?  Send them back to the
+dining-room, for I've a thousand things to say to you."  And
+Angelica, who expects to inherit her aunt's property, of course did
+as she was bid; on which the old lady fell into an easy chair, and
+fell asleep immediately,--so soon, that is, as the shout caused by
+the reappearance of the three gentlemen in the dining-room had
+subsided.
+
+I had meanwhile had some private conversation with little Cutler
+regarding the character of Mrs. Berry.  "She's a regular screw,"
+whispered he; "a regular Tartar.  Berry shows fight, though,
+sometimes, and I've known him have his own way for a week together.
+After dinner he is his own master, and hers when he has had his
+share of wine; and that's why she will never allow him to drink
+any."
+
+Was it a wicked, or was it a noble and honourable thought which came
+to us both at the same minute, to rescue Berry from his captivity?
+The ladies, of course, will give their verdict according to their
+gentle natures; but I know what men of courage will think, and by
+their jovial judgment will abide.
+
+We received, then, the three lost sheep back into our innocent fold
+again with the most joyous shouting and cheering.  We made Berry
+(who was, in truth, nothing loth) order up I don't know how much
+more claret.  We obliged the Frenchman to drink malgre lui, and in
+the course of a short time we had poor Whey in such a state of
+excitement, that he actually volunteered to sing a song, which he
+said he had heard at some very gay supper-party at Cambridge, and
+which begins:
+
+     "A pye sat on a pear-tree,
+      A pye sat on a pear-tree,
+      A pye sat on a pear-tree,
+        Heigh-ho, heigh-ho, heigh-ho!"
+
+Fancy Mrs. Berry's face as she looked in, in the midst of that
+Bacchanalian ditty, when she saw no less a person than the Reverend
+Lemuel Whey carolling it!
+
+"Is it you, my dear?" cries Berry, as brave now as any Petruchio.
+"Come in, and sit down, and hear Whey's song."
+
+"Lady Pash is asleep, Frank," said she.
+
+"Well, darling! that's the very reason.  Give Mrs. Berry a glass,
+Jack, will you?"
+
+"Would you wake your aunt, sir?" hissed out madame.
+
+"NEVER MIND ME, LOVE!  I'M AWAKE, AND LIKE IT!" cried the venerable
+Lady Pash from the salon.  "Sing away, gentlemen!"
+
+At which we all set up an audacious cheer; and Mrs. Berry flounced
+back to the drawing-room, but did not leave the door open, that her
+aunt might hear our melodies.
+
+Berry had by this time arrived at that confidential state to which a
+third bottle always brings the well-regulated mind; and he made a
+clean confession to Cutler and myself of his numerous matrimonial
+annoyances.  He was not allowed to dine out, he said, and but seldom
+to ask his friends to meet him at home.  He never dared smoke a
+cigar for the life of him, not even in the stables.  He spent the
+mornings dawdling in eternal shops, the evenings at endless
+tea-parties, or in reading poems or missionary tracts to his wife.
+He was compelled to take physic whenever she thought he looked a
+little pale, to change his shoes and stockings whenever he came in
+from a walk.  "Look here," said he, opening his chest, and shaking
+his fist at Dobus; "look what Angelica and that infernal Dobus have
+brought me to."
+
+I thought it might be a flannel waistcoat into which madame had
+forced him; but it was worse:  I give you my word of honour it was a
+PITCH-PLASTER!
+
+We all roared at this, and the doctor as loud as anyone; but he
+vowed that he had no hand in the pitch-plaster.  It was a favourite
+family remedy of the late apothecary Sir George Catacomb, and had
+been put on by Mrs. Berry's own fair hands.
+
+When Anatole came in with coffee, Berry was in such high courage,
+that he told him to go to the deuce with it; and we never caught
+sight of Lady Pash more, except when, muffled up to the nose, she
+passed through the salle-a-manger to go to her carriage, in which
+Dobus and the parson were likewise to be transported to Paris.  "Be
+a man, Frank," says she, "and hold your own"--for the good old lady
+had taken her nephew's part in the matrimonial business--"and you,
+Mr. Fitz-Boodle, come and see him often.  You're a good fellow, take
+old one-eyed Callipash's word for it.  Shall I take you to Paris?"
+
+Dear kind Angelica, she had told her aunt all I said!
+
+"Don't go, George," says Berry, squeezing me by the hand.  So I said
+I was going to sleep at Versailles that night; but if she would give
+a convoy to Jack Butts, it would be conferring a great obligation on
+him; with which favour the old lady accordingly complied, saying to
+him, with great coolness, "Get up and sit with John in the rumble,
+Mr. What-d'ye-call-'im."  The fact is, the good old soul despises an
+artist as much as she does a tailor.
+
+Jack tripped to his place very meekly; and "Remember Saturday,"
+cried the Doctor; and "Don't forget Thursday!" exclaimed the
+divine,--"a bachelor's party, you know."  And so the cavalcade drove
+thundering down the gloomy old Avenue de Paris.
+
+The Frenchman, I forgot to say, had gone away exceedingly ill long
+before; and the reminiscences of "Thursday" and "Saturday" evoked by
+Dobus and Whey, were, to tell the truth, parts of our conspiracy;
+for in the heat of Berry's courage, we had made him promise to dine
+with us all round en garcon; with all except Captain Goff, who
+"racklacted" that he was engaged every day for the next three weeks:
+as indeed he is, to a thirty-sous ordinary which the gallant officer
+frequents, when not invited elsewhere.
+
+Cutler and I then were the last on the field; and though we were for
+moving away, Berry, whose vigour had, if possible, been excited by
+the bustle and colloquy in the night air, insisted upon dragging us
+back again, and actually proposed a grill for supper!
+
+We found in the salle-a-manger a strong smell of an extinguished
+lamp, and Mrs. Berry was snuffing out the,candles on the sideboard.
+
+"Hullo, my dear!" shouts Berry:  "easy, if you please; we've not
+done yet!"
+
+"Not done yet, Mr. Berry!" groans the lady, in a hollow sepulchral
+tone.
+
+"No, Mrs. B., not done yet.  We are going to have some supper, ain't
+we, George?"
+
+"I think it's quite time to go home," said Mr. Fitz-Boodle (who, to
+say the truth, began to tremble himself).
+
+"I think it is, sir; you are quite right, sir; you will pardon me,
+gentlemen, I have a bad headache, and will retire."
+
+"Good-night, my dear!" said that audacious Berry.  "Anatole, tell
+the cook to broil a fowl and bring some wine."
+
+If the loving couple had been alone, or if Cutler had not been an
+attache to the embassy, before whom she was afraid of making herself
+ridiculous, I am confident that Mrs. Berry would have fainted away
+on the spot; and that all Berry's courage would have tumbled down
+lifeless by the side of her.  So she only gave a martyrised look,
+and left the room; and while we partook of the very unnecessary
+repast, was good enough to sing some hymn-tunes to an exceedingly
+slow movement in the next room, intimating that she was awake, and
+that, though suffering, she found her consolations in religion.
+
+These melodies did not in the least add to our friend's courage.
+The devilled fowl had, somehow, no devil in it.  The champagne in
+the glasses looked exceedingly flat and blue.  The fact is, that
+Cutler and I were now both in a state of dire consternation, and
+soon made a move for our hats, and lighting each a cigar in the
+hall, made across the little green where the Cupids and nymphs were
+listening to the dribbling fountain in the dark.
+
+"I'm hanged if I don't have a cigar too!" says Berry, rushing after
+us; and accordingly putting in his pocket a key about the size of a
+shovel, which hung by the little handle of the outer grille, forth
+he sallied, and joined us in our fumigation.
+
+He stayed with us a couple of hours, and returned homewards in
+perfect good spirits, having given me his word of honour he would
+dine with us the next day.  He put his immense key into the grille,
+and unlocked it; but the gate would not open:  IT WAS BOLTED WITHIN.
+
+He began to make a furious jangling and ringing at the bell; and in
+oaths, both French and English, called upon the recalcitrant
+Anatole.
+
+After much tolling of the bell, a light came cutting across the
+crevices of the inner door; it was thrown open, and a figure
+appeared with a lamp,--a tall slim figure of a woman, clothed in
+white from head to foot.
+
+It was Mrs. Berry, and when Cutler and I saw her, we both ran away
+as fast as our legs could carry us.
+
+Berry, at this, shrieked with a wild laughter.  "Remember to-morrow,
+old boys," shouted he,--"six o'clock;" and we were a quarter of a
+mile off when the gate closed, and the little mansion of the Avenue
+de Paris was once more quiet and dark.
+
+The next afternoon, as we were playing at billiards, Cutler saw Mrs.
+Berry drive by in her carriage; and as soon as rather a long rubber
+was over, I thought I would go and look for our poor friend, and so
+went down to the Pavilion.  Every door was open, as the wont is in
+France, and I walked in unannounced, and saw this:
+
+He was playing a duet with her on the flute.  She had been out but
+for half-an-hour, after not speaking all the morning; and having
+seen Cutler at the billiard-room window, and suspecting we might
+take advantage of her absence, she had suddenly returned home again,
+and had flung herself, weeping, into her Frank's arms, and said she
+could not bear to leave him in anger.  And so, after sitting for a
+little while sobbing on his knee, she had forgotten and forgiven
+every thing!
+
+The dear angel!  I met poor Frank in Bond Street only yesterday; but
+he crossed over to the other side of the way.  He had on goloshes,
+and is grown very fat and pale.  He has shaved off his moustaches,
+and, instead, wears a respirator.  He has taken his name off all his
+clubs, and lives very grimly in Baker Street.  Well, ladies, no
+doubt you say he is right:  and what are the odds, so long as YOU
+are happy?
+
+
+
+DENNIS HAGGARTY'S WIFE.
+
+
+
+There was an odious Irishwoman who with her daughter used to
+frequent the "Royal Hotel" at Leamington some years ago, and who
+went by the name of Mrs. Major Gam.  Gam had been a distinguished
+officer in His Majesty's service, whom nothing but death and his own
+amiable wife could overcome.  The widow mourned her husband in the
+most becoming bombazeen she could muster, and had at least half an
+inch of lampblack round the immense visiting tickets which she left
+at the houses of the nobility and gentry her friends.
+
+Some of us, I am sorry to say, used to call her Mrs. Major Gammon;
+for if the worthy widow had a propensity, it was to talk largely of
+herself and family (of her own family, for she held her husband's
+very cheap), and of the wonders of her paternal mansion,
+Molloyville, county of Mayo.  She was of the Molloys of that county;
+and though I never heard of the family before, I have little doubt,
+from what Mrs. Major Gam stated, that they were the most ancient and
+illustrious family of that part of Ireland.  I remember there came
+down to see his aunt a young fellow with huge red whiskers and tight
+nankeens, a green coat, and an awful breastpin, who, after two days'
+stay at the Spa, proposed marriage to Miss S-----, or, in default, a
+duel with her father; and who drove a flash curricle with a bay and
+a grey, and who was presented with much pride by Mrs. Gam as
+Castlereagh Molloy of Molloyville.  We all agreed that he was the
+most insufferable snob of the whole season, and were delighted when
+a bailiff came down in search of him.
+
+Well, this is all I know personally of the Molloyville family; but
+at the house if you met the widow Gam, and talked on any subject in
+life, you were sure to hear of it.  If you asked her to have peas at
+dinner, she would say, "Oh, sir, after the peas at Molloyville, I
+really don't care for any others,--do I, dearest Jemima?  We always
+had a dish in the month of June, when my father gave his head
+gardener a guinea (we had three at Molloyville), and sent him with
+his compliments and a quart of peas to our neighbour, dear Lord
+Marrowfat.  What a sweet place Marrowfat Park is! isn't it, Jemima?"
+If a carriage passed by the window, Mrs. Major Gammon would be sure
+to tell you that there were three carriages at Molloyville, "the
+barouche, the chawiot, and the covered cyar."  In the same manner
+she would favour you with the number and names of the footmen of the
+establishment; and on a visit to Warwick Castle (for this bustling
+woman made one in every party of pleasure that was formed from the
+hotel), she gave us to understand that the great walk by the river
+was altogether inferior to the principal avenue of Molloyville Park.
+I should not have been able to tell so much about Mrs. Gam and her
+daughter, but that, between ourselves, I was particularly sweet upon
+a young lady at the time, whose papa lived at the "Royal," and was
+under the care of Doctor Jephson.
+
+The Jemima appealed to by Mrs. Gam in the above sentence was, of
+course, her daughter, apostrophised by her mother, "Jemima, my
+soul's darling?" or, "Jemima, my blessed child!" or, "Jemima, my own
+love!"  The sacrifices that Mrs. Gam had made for that daughter
+were, she said, astonishing.  The money she had spent in masters
+upon her, the illnesses through which she had nursed her, the
+ineffable love the mother bore her, were only known to Heaven, Mrs.
+Gam said.  They used to come into the room with their arms round
+each other's waists:  at dinner between the courses the mother would
+sit with one hand locked in her daughter's; and if only two or three
+young men were present at the time, would be pretty sure to kiss her
+Jemima more than once during the time whilst the bohea was poured
+out.
+
+As for Miss Gam, if she was not handsome, candour forbids me to say
+she was ugly.  She was neither one nor t'other.  She was a person
+who wore ringlets and a band round her forehead; she knew four
+songs, which became rather tedious at the end of a couple of months'
+acquaintance; she had excessively bare shoulders; she inclined to
+wear numbers of cheap ornaments, rings, brooches, ferronnieres,
+smelling-bottles, and was always, we thought, very smartly dressed:
+though old Mrs. Lynx hinted that her gowns and her mother's were
+turned over and over again, and that her eyes were almost put out by
+darning stockings.
+
+These eyes Miss Gam had very large, though rather red and weak, and
+used to roll them about at every eligible unmarried man in the
+place.  But though the widow subscribed to all the balls, though she
+hired a fly to go to the meet of the hounds, though she was constant
+at church, and Jemima sang louder than any person there except the
+clerk, and though, probably, any person who made her a happy husband
+would be invited down to enjoy the three footmen, gardeners, and
+carriages at Molloyville, yet no English gentleman was found
+sufficiently audacious to propose.  Old Lynx used to say that the
+pair had been at Tunbridge, Harrogate, Brighton, Ramsgate,
+Cheltenham, for this eight years past; where they had met, it
+seemed, with no better fortune.  Indeed, the widow looked rather
+high for her blessed child:  and as she looked with the contempt
+which no small number of Irish people feel upon all persons who get
+their bread by labour or commerce; and as she was a person whose
+energetic manners, costume, and brogue were not much to the taste of
+quiet English country gentlemen, Jemima--sweet, spotless
+flower--still remained on her hands, a thought withered, perhaps,
+and seedy.
+
+Now, at this time, the 120th Regiment was quartered at Weedon
+Barracks, and with the corps was a certain Assistant-Surgeon
+Haggarty, a large, lean, tough, raw-boned man, with big hands,
+knock-knees, and carroty whiskers, and, withal, as honest a creature
+as ever handled a lancet.  Haggarty, as his name imports, was of the
+very same nation as Mrs. Gam, and, what is more, the honest fellow
+had some of the peculiarities which belonged to the widow, and
+bragged about his family almost as much as she did.  I do not know
+of what particular part of Ireland they were kings; but monarchs
+they must have been, as have been the ancestors of so many thousand
+Hibernian families; but they had been men of no small consideration
+in Dublin, "where my father," Haggarty said, "is as well known as
+King William's statue, and where he 'rowls his carriage, too,' let
+me tell ye."
+
+Hence, Haggarty was called by the wags "Rowl the carriage," and
+several of them made inquiries of Mrs. Gam regarding him:  "Mrs.
+Gam, when you used to go up from Molloyville to the Lord
+Lieutenant's balls, and had your townhouse in Fitzwilliam Square,
+used you to meet the famous Doctor Haggarty in society?"
+
+"Is it Surgeon Haggarty of Gloucester Street ye mean?  The black
+Papist!  D'ye suppose that the Molloys would sit down to table with
+a creature of that sort?"
+
+"Why, isn't he the most famous physician in Dublin, and doesn't he
+rowl his carriage there?"
+
+"The horrid wretch! He keeps a shop, I tell ye, and sends his sons
+out with the medicine.  He's got four of them off into the army,
+Ulick and Phil, and Terence and Denny, and now it's Charles that
+takes out the physic.  But how should I know about these odious
+creatures?  Their mother was a Burke, of Burke's Town, county Cavan,
+and brought Surgeon Haggarty two thousand pounds.  She was a
+Protestant; and I am surprised how she could have taken up with a
+horrid odious Popish apothecary!"
+
+From the extent of the widow's information, I am led to suppose that
+the inhabitants of Dublin are not less anxious about their
+neighbours than are the natives of English cities; and I think it is
+very probable that Mrs. Gam's account of the young Haggartys who
+carried out the medicine is perfectly correct, for a lad in the
+120th made a caricature of Haggarty coming out of a chemist's shop
+with an oilcloth basket under his arm, which set the worthy surgeon
+in such a fury that there would have been a duel between him and the
+ensign, could the fiery doctor have had his way.
+
+Now, Dionysius Haggarty was of an exceedingly inflammable
+temperament, and it chanced that of all the invalids, the visitors,
+the young squires of Warwickshire, the young manufacturers from
+Birmingham, the young officers from the barracks--it chanced,
+unluckily for Miss Gam and himself, that he was the only individual
+who was in the least smitten by her personal charms.  He was very
+tender and modest about his love, however, for it must be owned that
+he respected Mrs. Gam hugely, and fully admitted, like a good simple
+fellow as he was, the superiority of that lady's birth and breeding
+to his own.  How could he hope that he, a humble assistant-surgeon,
+with a thousand pounds his Aunt Kitty left him for all his fortune--
+how could he hope that one of the race of Molloyville would ever
+condescend to marry him?
+
+Inflamed, however, by love, and inspired by wine, one day at a
+picnic at Kenilworth, Haggarty, whose love and raptures were the
+talk of the whole regiment, was induced by his waggish comrades to
+make a proposal in form.
+
+"Are you aware, Mr. Haggarty, that you are speaking to a Molloy?"
+was all the reply majestic Mrs. Gam made when, according to the
+usual formula, the fluttering Jemima referred her suitor to "Mamma."
+She left him with a look which was meant to crush the poor fellow to
+earth; she gathered up her cloak and bonnet, and precipitately
+called for her fly.  She took care to tell every single soul in
+Leamington that the son of the odious Papist apothecary had had the
+audacity to propose for her daughter (indeed a proposal, coming from
+whatever quarter it may, does no harm), and left Haggarty in a state
+of extreme depression and despair.
+
+His down-heartedness, indeed, surprised most of his acquaintances in
+and out of the regiment, for the young lady was no beauty, and a
+doubtful fortune, and Dennis was a man outwardly of an unromantic
+turn, who seemed to have a great deal more liking for beefsteak and
+whisky-punch than for women, however fascinating.
+
+But there is no doubt this shy uncouth rough fellow had a warmer and
+more faithful heart hid within him than many a dandy who is as
+handsome as Apollo.  I, for my part, never can understand why a man
+falls in love, and heartily give him credit for so doing, never mind
+with what or whom.  THAT I take to be a point quite as much beyond
+an individual's own control as the catching of the small-pox or the
+colour of his hair.  To the surprise of all, Assistant-Surgeon
+Dionysius Haggarty was deeply and seriously in love; and I am told
+that one day he very nearly killed the before-mentioned young ensign
+with a carving-knife, for venturing to make a second caricature,
+representing Lady Gammon and Jemima in a fantastical park,
+surrounded by three gardeners, three carriages, three footmen, and
+the covered cyar.  He would have no joking concerning them.  He
+became moody and quarrelsome of habit.  He was for some time much
+more in the surgery and hospital than in the mess.  He gave up the
+eating, for the most part, of those vast quantities of beef and
+pudding, for which his stomach used to afford such ample and swift
+accommodation; and when the cloth was drawn, instead of taking
+twelve tumblers, and singing Irish melodies, as he used to do, in a
+horrible cracked yelling voice, he would retire to his own
+apartment, or gloomily pace the barrack-yard, or madly whip and spur
+a grey mare he had on the road to Leamington, where his Jemima
+(although invisible for him) still dwelt.
+
+The season at Leamington coming to a conclusion by the withdrawal of
+the young fellows who frequented that watering-place, the widow Gam
+retired to her usual quarters for the other months of the year.
+Where these quarters were, I think we have no right to ask, for I
+believe she had quarrelled with her brother at Molloyville, and
+besides, was a great deal too proud to be a burden on anybody.
+
+Not only did the widow quit Leamington, but very soon afterwards the
+120th received its marching orders, and left Weedon and
+Warwickshire.  Haggarty's appetite was by this time partially
+restored, but his love was not altered, and his humour was still
+morose and gloomy.  I am informed that at this period of his life he
+wrote some poems relative to his unhappy passion; a wild set of
+verses of several lengths, and in his handwriting, being discovered
+upon a sheet of paper in which a pitch-plaster was wrapped up, which
+Lieutenant and Adjutant Wheezer was compelled to put on for a cold.
+
+Fancy then, three years afterwards, the surprise of all Haggarty's
+acquaintances on reading in the public papers the following
+announcement:
+
+"Married, at Monkstown on the 12th instant, Dionysius Haggarty,
+Esq., of H.M. 120th Foot, to Jemima Amelia Wilhelmina Molloy,
+daughter of the late Major Lancelot Gam, R.M., and granddaughter of
+the late, and niece of the present Burke Bodkin Blake Molloy, Esq.,
+Molloyville, county Mayo."
+
+"Has the course of true love at last begun to run smooth?" thought
+I, as I laid down the paper; and the old times, and the old leering
+bragging widow, and the high shoulders of her daughter, and the
+jolly days with the 120th, and Doctor Jephson's one-horse chaise,
+and the Warwickshire hunt, and--and Louisa S-----, but never mind
+HER,--came back to my mind.  Has that good-natured simple fellow at
+last met with his reward?  Well, if he has not to marry the
+mother-in-law too, he may get on well enough.
+
+Another year announced the retirement of Assistant-Surgeon Haggarty
+from the 120th, where he was replaced by Assistant-Surgeon Angus
+Rothsay Leech, a Scotchman, probably; with whom I have not the least
+acquaintance, and who has nothing whatever to do with this little
+history.
+
+Still more years passed on, during which time I will not say that I
+kept a constant watch upon the fortunes of Mr. Haggarty and his
+lady; for, perhaps, if the truth were known, I never thought for a
+moment about them; until one day, being at Kingstown, near Dublin,
+dawdling on the beach, and staring at the Hill of Howth, as most
+people at that watering-place do, I saw coming towards me a tall
+gaunt man, with a pair of bushy red whiskers, of which I thought I
+had seen the like in former years, and a face which could be no
+other than Haggarty's.  It was Haggarty, ten years older than when
+we last met, and greatly more grim and thin.  He had on one shoulder
+a young gentleman in a dirty tartan costume, and a face exceedingly
+like his own peeping from under a battered plume of black feathers,
+while with his other hand he was dragging a light green go-cart, in
+which reposed a female infant of some two years old.  Both were
+roaring with great power of lungs.
+
+As soon as Dennis saw me, his face lost the dull puzzled expression
+which had seemed to characterise it; he dropped the pole of the
+go-cart from one hand, and his son from the other, and came jumping
+forward to greet me with all his might, leaving his progeny roaring
+in the road.
+
+"Bless my sowl," says he, "sure it's Fitz-Boodle?  Fitz, don't you
+remember me?  Dennis Haggarty of the 120th?  Leamington, you know?
+Molloy, my boy, hould your tongue, and stop your screeching, and
+Jemima's too; d'ye hear?  Well, it does good to sore eyes to see an
+old face.  How fat you're grown, Fitz; and were ye ever in Ireland
+before? and a'n't ye delighted with it?  Confess, now, isn't it
+beautiful?"
+
+This question regarding the merits of their country, which I have
+remarked is put by most Irish persons, being answered in a
+satisfactory manner, and the shouts of the infants appeased from an
+apple-stall hard by, Dennis and I talked of old times; I
+congratulated him on his marriage with the lovely girl whom we all
+admired, and hoped he had a fortune with her, and so forth.  His
+appearance, however, did not bespeak a great fortune:  he had an old
+grey hat, short old trousers, an old waistcoat with regimental
+buttons, and patched Blucher boots, such as are not usually sported
+by persons in easy life.
+
+"Ah!" says he, with a sigh, in reply to my queries, "times are
+changed since them days, Fitz-Boodle.  My wife's not what she was--
+the beautiful creature you knew her.  Molloy, my boy, run off in a
+hurry to your mamma, and tell her an English gentleman is coming
+home to dine; for you'll dine with me, Fitz, in course?"  And I
+agreed to partake of that meal; though Master Molloy altogether
+declined to obey his papa's orders with respect to announcing the
+stranger.
+
+"Well, I must announce you myself," said Haggarty, with a smile.
+"Come, it's just dinner-time, and my little cottage is not a hundred
+yards off."  Accordingly, we all marched in procession to Dennis's
+little cottage, which was one of a row and a half of one-storied
+houses, with little courtyards before them, and mostly with very
+fine names on the doorposts of each.  "Surgeon Haggarty" was
+emblazoned on Dennis's gate, on a stained green copper-plate; and,
+not content with this, on the door-post above the bell was an oval
+with the inscription of "New Molloyville."  The bell was broken, of
+course; the court, or garden-path, was mouldy, weedy, seedy; there
+were some dirty rocks, by way of ornament, round a faded glass-plat
+in the centre, some clothes and rags hanging out of most part of the
+windows of New Molloyville, the immediate entrance to which was by a
+battered scraper, under a broken trellis-work, up which a withered
+creeper declined any longer to climb.
+
+"Small, but snug," says Haggarty:  "I'll lead the way, Fitz; put
+your hat on the flower-pot there, and turn to the left into the
+drawing-room."  A fog of onions and turf-smoke filled the whole of
+the house, and gave signs that dinner was not far off.  Far off?
+You could hear it frizzling in the kitchen, where the maid was also
+endeavouring to hush the crying of a third refractory child.  But as
+we entered, all three of Haggarty's darlings were in full roar.
+
+"Is it you, Dennis?" cried a sharp raw voice, from a dark corner in
+the drawing-room to which we were introduced, and in which a dirty
+tablecloth was laid for dinner, some bottles of porter and a cold
+mutton-bone being laid out on a rickety grand piano hard by.  "Ye're
+always late, Mr. Haggarty.  Have you brought the whisky from
+Nowlan's?  I'll go bail ye've not, now."
+
+"My dear, I've brought an old friend of yours and mine to take
+pot-luck with us to-day," said Dennis.
+
+"When is he to come?" said the lady.  At which speech I was rather
+surprised, for I stood before her.
+
+"Here he is, Jemima my love," answered Dennis, looking at me.  "Mr.
+Fitz-Boodle:  don't you remember him in Warwickshire, darling?"
+
+"Mr. Fitz-Boodle!  I am very glad to see him," said the lady, rising
+and curtseying with much cordiality.
+
+Mrs. Haggarty was blind.
+
+Mrs. Haggarty was not only blind, but it was evident that smallpox
+had been the cause of her loss of vision.  Her eyes were bound with
+a bandage, her features were entirely swollen, scarred and distorted
+by the horrible effects of the malady.  She had been knitting in a
+corner when we entered, and was wrapped in a very dirty bedgown.
+Her voice to me was quite different to that in which she addressed
+her husband.  She spoke to Haggarty in broad Irish:  she addressed
+me in that most odious of all languages--Irish-English, endeavouring
+to the utmost to disguise her brogue, and to speak with the true
+dawdling distingue English air.
+
+"Are you long in I-a-land?" said the poor creature in this accent.
+"You must faind it a sad ba'ba'ous place, Mr Fitz-Boodle, I'm shu-
+ah!  It was vary kaind of you to come upon us en famille, and accept
+a dinner sans ceremonie.  Mr. Haggarty, I hope you'll put the waine
+into aice, Mr. Fitz-Boodle must be melted with this hot weathah."
+
+For some time she conducted the conversation in this polite strain,
+and I was obliged to say, in reply to a query of hers, that I did
+not find her the least altered, though I should never have
+recognised her but for this rencontre.  She told Haggarty with a
+significant air to get the wine from the cellah, and whispered to me
+that he was his own butlah; and the poor fellow, taking the hint,
+scudded away into the town for a pound of beefsteak and a couple of
+bottles of wine from the tavern.
+
+"Will the childhren get their potatoes and butther here?" said a
+barefoot girl, with long black hair flowing over her face, which she
+thrust in at the door.
+
+"Let them sup in the nursery, Elizabeth, and send--ah! Edwards to
+me."
+
+"Is it cook you mane, ma'am?" said the girl.
+
+"Send her at once!" shrieked the unfortunate woman; and the noise of
+frying presently ceasing, a hot woman made her appearance, wiping
+her brows with her apron, and asking, with an accent decidedly
+Hibernian, what the misthress wanted.
+
+"Lead me up to my dressing-room, Edwards:  I really am not fit to be
+seen in this dishabille by Mr. Fitz-Boodle."
+
+"Fait' I can't!" says Edwards; "sure the masther's at the butcher's,
+and can't look to the kitchen-fire!"
+
+"Nonsense, I must go!" cried Mrs. Haggarty; and Edwards, putting on
+a resigned air, and giving her arm and face a further rub with her
+apron, held out her arm to Mrs. Dennis, and the pair went upstairs.
+
+She left me to indulge my reflections for half-an-hour, at the end
+of which period she came downstairs dressed in an old yellow satin,
+with the poor shoulders exposed just as much as ever.  She had
+mounted a tawdry cap, which Haggarty himself must have selected for
+her.  She had all sorts of necklaces, bracelets, and earrings in
+gold, in garnets, in mother-of-pearl, in ormolu.  She brought in a
+furious savour of musk, which drove the odours of onions and
+turf-smoke before it; and she waved across her wretched angular mean
+scarred features an old cambric handkerchief with a yellow
+lace-border.
+
+"And so you would have known me anywhere, Mr. Fitz-Boodle?" said
+she, with a grin that was meant to be most fascinating.  "I was sure
+you would; for though my dreadful illness deprived me of my sight,
+it is a mercy that it did not change my features or complexion at
+all!"
+
+This mortification had been spared the unhappy woman; but I don't
+know whether, with all her vanity, her infernal pride, folly, and
+selfishness, it was charitable to leave her in her error.
+
+Yet why correct her?  There is a quality in certain people which is
+above all advice, exposure, or correction.  Only let a man or woman
+have DULNESS sufficient, and they need bow to no extant authority.
+A dullard recognises no betters; a dullard can't see that he is in
+the wrong; a dullard has no scruples of conscience, no doubts of
+pleasing, or succeeding, or doing right; no qualms for other
+people's feelings, no respect but for the fool himself.  How can you
+make a fool perceive he is a fool?  Such a personage can no more see
+his own folly than he can see his own ears.  And the great quality
+of Dulness is to be unalterably contented with itself.  What myriads
+of souls are there of this admirable sort,--selfish, stingy,
+ignorant, passionate, brutal; bad sons, mothers, fathers, never
+known to do kind actions!
+
+To pause, however, in this disquisition, which was carrying us far
+off Kingstown, New Molloyville, Ireland--nay, into the wide world
+wherever Dulness inhabits--let it be stated that Mrs. Haggarty, from
+my brief acquaintance with her and her mother, was of the order of
+persons just mentioned.  There was an air of conscious merit about
+her, very hard to swallow along with the infamous dinner poor Dennis
+managed, after much delay, to get on the table.  She did not fail to
+invite me to Molloyville, where she said her cousin would be charmed
+to see me; and she told me almost as many anecdotes about that place
+as her mother used to impart in former days.  I observed, moreover,
+that Dennis cut her the favourite pieces of the beefsteak, that she
+ate thereof with great gusto, and that she drank with similar
+eagerness of the various strong liquors at table.  "We Irish ladies
+are all fond of a leetle glass of punch," she said, with a playful
+air, and Dennis mixed her a powerful tumbler of such violent grog as
+I myself could swallow only with some difficulty.  She talked of her
+suffering a great deal, of her sacrifices, of the luxuries to which
+she had been accustomed before marriage,--in a word, of a hundred of
+those themes on which some ladies are in the custom of enlarging
+when they wish to plague some husbands.
+
+But honest Dennis, far from being angry at this perpetual,
+wearisome, impudent recurrence to her own superiority, rather
+encouraged the conversation than otherwise.  It pleased him to hear
+his wife discourse about her merits and family splendours.  He was
+so thoroughly beaten down and henpecked, that he, as it were,
+gloried in his servitude, and fancied that his wife's magnificence
+reflected credit on himself.  He looked towards me, who was half
+sick of the woman and her egotism, as if expecting me to exhibit the
+deepest sympathy, and flung me glances across the table as much as
+to say, "What a gifted creature my Jemima is, and what a fine fellow
+I am to be in possession of her!"  When the children came down she
+scolded them, of course, and dismissed them abruptly (for which
+circumstance, perhaps, the writer of these pages was not in his
+heart very sorry), and, after having sat a preposterously long time,
+left us, asking whether we would have coffee there or in her
+boudoir.
+
+"Oh! here, of course," said Dennis, with rather a troubled air, and
+in about ten minutes the lovely creature was led back to us again by
+"Edwards," and the coffee made its appearance.  After coffee her
+husband begged her to let Mr. Fitz-Boodle hear her voice:  "He longs
+for some of his old favourites."
+
+"No! DO you?" said she; and was led in triumph to the jingling old
+piano, and with a screechy wiry voice, sang those very abominable
+old ditties which I had heard her sing at Leamington ten years back.
+
+Haggarty, as she sang, flung himself back in the chair delighted.
+Husbands always are, and with the same song, one that they have
+heard when they were nineteen years old probably; most Englishmen's
+tunes have that date, and it is rather affecting, I think, to hear
+an old gentleman of sixty or seventy quavering the old ditty that
+was fresh when HE was fresh and in his prime.  If he has a musical
+wife, depend on it he thinks her old songs of 1788 are better than
+any he has heard since:  in fact he has heard NONE since.  When the
+old couple are in high good-humour the old gentleman will take the
+old lady round the waist, and say, "My dear, do sing me one of your
+own songs," and she sits down and sings with her old voice, and, as
+she sings, the roses of her youth bloom again for a moment.
+Ranelagh resuscitates, and she is dancing a minuet in powder and a
+train.
+
+This is another digression.  It was occasioned by looking at poor
+Dennis's face while his wife was screeching (and, believe me, the
+former was the more pleasant occupation).  Bottom tickled by the
+fairies could not have been in greater ecstasies.  He thought the
+music was divine; and had further reason for exulting in it, which
+was, that his wife was always in a good humour after singing, and
+never would sing but in that happy frame of mind.  Dennis had hinted
+so much in our little colloquy during the ten minutes of his lady's
+absence in the "boudoir;" so, at the conclusion of each piece, we
+shouted "Bravo!" and clapped our hands like mad.
+
+Such was my insight into the life of Surgeon Dionysius Haggarty and
+his wife; and I must have come upon him at a favourable moment too,
+for poor Dennis has spoken, subsequently, of our delightful evening
+at Kingstown, and evidently thinks to this day that his friend was
+fascinated by the entertainment there.  His inward economy was as
+follows:  he had his half-pay, a thousand pounds, about a hundred a
+year that his father left, and his wife had sixty pounds a year from
+the mother; which the mother, of course, never paid.  He had no
+practice, for he was absorbed in attention to his Jemima and the
+children, whom he used to wash, to dress, to carry out, to walk, or
+to ride, as we have seen, and who could not have a servant, as their
+dear blind mother could never be left alone.  Mrs. Haggarty, a great
+invalid, used to lie in bed till one, and have breakfast and hot
+luncheon there.  A fifth part of his income was spent in having her
+wheeled about in a chair, by which it was his duty to walk daily for
+an allotted number of hours.  Dinner would ensue, and the amateur
+clergy, who abound in Ireland, and of whom Mrs. Haggarty was a great
+admirer, lauded her everywhere as a model of resignation and virtue,
+and praised beyond measure the admirable piety with which she bore
+her sufferings.
+
+Well, every man to his taste.  It did not certainly appear to me
+that SHE was the martyr of the family.
+
+"The circumstances of my marriage with Jemima," Dennis said to me,
+in some after conversations we had on this interesting subject,
+"were the most romantic and touching you can conceive.  You saw what
+an impression the dear girl had made upon me when we were at Weedon;
+for from the first day I set eyes on her, and heard her sing her
+delightful song of 'Dark-eyed Maiden of Araby,' I felt, and said to
+Turniquet of ours, that very night, that SHE was the dark-eyed maid
+of Araby for ME--not that she was, you know, for she was born in
+Shropshire.  But I felt that I had seen the woman who was to make me
+happy or miserable for life.  You know how I proposed for her at
+Kenilworth, and how I was rejected, and how I almost shot myself in
+consequence--no, you don't know that, for I said nothing about it to
+anyone, but I can tell you it was a very near thing; and a very
+lucky thing for me I didn't do it:  for,--would you believe it?--the
+dear girl was in love with me all the time."
+
+"Was she really?" said I, who recollected that Miss Gam's love of
+those days showed itself in a very singular manner; but the fact is,
+when women are most in love they most disguise it.
+
+"Over head and ears in love with poor Dennis," resumed that worthy
+fellow, "who'd ever have thought it?  But I have it from the best
+authority, from her own mother, with whom I'm not over and above
+good friends now; but of this fact she assured me, and I'll tell you
+when and how.
+
+"We were quartered at Cork three years after we were at Weedon, and
+it was our last year at home; and a great mercy that my dear girl
+spoke in time, or where should we have been now?  Well, one day,
+marching home from parade, I saw a lady seated at an open window, by
+another who seemed an invalid, and the lady at the window, who was
+dressed in the profoundest mourning, cried out, with a scream,
+'Gracious, heavens! it's Mr. Haggarty of the 120th.'
+
+"'Sure I know that voice,' says I to Whiskerton.
+
+"'It's a great mercy you don't know it a deal too well,' says he:
+'it's Lady Gammon.  She's on some husband-hunting scheme, depend on
+it, for that daughter of hers.  She was at Bath last year on the
+same errand, and at Cheltenham the year before, where, Heaven bless
+you! she's as well known as the "Hen and Chickens."'
+
+"'I'll thank you not to speak disrespectfully of Miss Jemima Gam,'
+said I to Whiskerton; 'she's of one of the first families in
+Ireland, and whoever says a word against a woman I once proposed
+for, insults me,--do you understand?'
+
+"'Well, marry her, if you like,' says Whiskerton, quite peevish:
+'marry her, and be hanged!'
+
+"Marry her! the very idea of it set my brain a-whirling, and made me
+a thousand times more mad than I am by nature.
+
+"You may be sure I walked up the hill to the parade-ground that
+afternoon, and with a beating heart too.  I came to the widow's
+house.  It was called 'New Molloyville,' as this is.  Wherever she
+takes a house for six months she calls it 'New Molloyville;' and has
+had one in Mallow, in Bandon, in Sligo, in Castlebar, in Fermoy, in
+Drogheda, and the deuce knows where besides:  but the blinds were
+down, and though I thought I saw somebody behind 'em, no notice was
+taken of poor Denny Haggarty, and I paced up and down all mess-time
+in hopes of catching a glimpse of Jemima, but in vain.  The next day
+I was on the ground again; I was just as much in love as ever,
+that's the fact.  I'd never been in that way before, look you; and
+when once caught, I knew it was for life.
+
+"There's no use in telling you how long I beat about the bush, but
+when I DID get admittance to the house (it was through the means of
+young Castlereagh Molloy, whom you may remember at Leamington, and
+who was at Cork for the regatta, and used to dine at our mess, and
+had taken a mighty fancy to me)--when I DID get into the house, I
+say, I rushed in medias res at once; I couldn't keep myself quiet,
+my heart was too full.
+
+"Oh, Fitz! I shall never forget the day,--the moment I was
+inthrojuiced into the dthrawing-room " (as he began to be agitated,
+Dennis's brogue broke out with greater richness than ever; but
+though a stranger may catch, and repeat from memory, a few words, it
+is next to impossible for him to KEEP UP A CONVERSATION in Irish, so
+that we had best give up all attempts to imitate Dennis).  "When I
+saw old mother Gam," said he, "my feelings overcame me all at once.
+I rowled down on the ground, sir, as if I'd been hit by a
+musket-ball.  'Dearest madam,' says I, 'I'll die if you don't give
+me Jemima.'
+
+"'Heavens, Mr. Haggarty!' says she, 'how you seize me with surprise!
+Castlereagh, my dear nephew, had you not better leave us?' and away
+he went, lighting a cigar, and leaving me still on the floor.
+
+"'Rise, Mr. Haggarty,' continued the widow.  'I will not attempt to
+deny that this constancy towards my daughter is extremely affecting,
+however sudden your present appeal may be.  I will not attempt to
+deny that, perhaps, Jemima may have a similar feeling; but, as I
+said, I never could give my daughter to a Catholic.'
+
+"'I'm as good a Protestant as yourself, ma'am,' says I; 'my mother
+was an heiress, and we were all brought up her way.'
+
+"'That makes the matter very different,' says she, turning up the
+whites of her eyes.  'How could I ever have reconciled it to my
+conscience to see my blessed child married to a Papist?  How could I
+ever have taken him to Molloyville?  Well, this obstacle being
+removed, _I_ must put myself no longer in the way between two young
+people.  _I_ must sacrifice myself; as I always have when my darling
+girl was in question.  YOU shall see her, the poor dear lovely
+gentle sufferer, and learn your fate from her own lips.'
+
+"'The sufferer, ma'am,' says I; 'has Miss Gam been ill?'
+
+"'What! haven't you heard?' cried the widow.  'Haven't you heard of
+the dreadful illness which so nearly carried her from me?  For nine
+weeks, Mr. Haggarty, I watched her day and night, without taking a
+wink of sleep,--for nine weeks she lay trembling between death and
+life; and I paid the doctor eighty-three guineas.  She is restored
+now; but she is the wreck of the beautiful creature she was.
+Suffering, and, perhaps, ANOTHER DISAPPOINTMENT--but we won't
+mention that NOW--have so pulled her down.  But I will leave you,
+and prepare my sweet girl for this strange, this entirely unexpected
+visit.'
+
+"I won't tell you what took place between me and Jemima, to whom I
+was introduced as she sat in the darkened room, poor sufferer! nor
+describe to you with what a thrill of joy I seized (after groping
+about for it) her poor emaciated hand.  She did not withdraw it; I
+came out of that room an engaged man, sir; and NOW I was enabled to
+show her that I had always loved her sincerely, for there was my
+will, made three years back, in her favour:  that night she refused
+me, as I told ye.  I would have shot myself, but they'd have brought
+me in non compos; and my brother Mick would have contested the will,
+and so I determined to live, in order that she might benefit by my
+dying.  I had but a thousand pounds then:  since that my father has
+left me two more.  I willed every shilling to her, as you may fancy,
+and settled it upon her when we married, as we did soon after.  It
+was not for some time that I was allowed to see the poor girl's
+face, or, indeed, was aware of the horrid loss she had sustained.
+Fancy my agony, my dear fellow, when I saw that beautiful wreck!"
+
+There was something not a little affecting to think, in the conduct
+of this brave fellow, that he never once, as he told his story,
+seemed to allude to the possibility of his declining to marry a
+woman who was not the same as the woman he loved; but that he was
+quite as faithful to her now, as he had been when captivated by the
+poor tawdry charms of the silly Miss of Leamington.  It was hard
+that such a noble heart as this should be flung away upon yonder
+foul mass of greedy vanity.  Was it hard, or not, that he should
+remain deceived in his obstinate humility, and continue to admire
+the selfish silly being whom he had chosen to worship?
+
+"I should have been appointed surgeon of the regiment," continued
+Dennis, "soon after, when it was ordered abroad to Jamaica, where it
+now is.  But my wife would not hear of going, and said she would
+break her heart if she left her mother.  So I retired on half-pay,
+and took this cottage; and in case any practice should fall in my
+way--why, there is my name on the brass plate, and I'm ready for
+anything that comes.  But the only case that ever DID come was one
+day when I was driving my wife in the chaise; and another, one
+night, of a beggar with a broken head.  My wife makes me a present
+of a baby every year, and we've no debts; and between you and me and
+the post, as long as my mother-in-law is out of the house, I'm as
+happy as I need be."
+
+"What! you and the old lady don't get on well?" said I.
+
+"I can't say we do; it's not in nature, you know," said Dennis, with
+a faint grin.  "She comes into the house, and turns it topsy-turvy.
+When she's here I'm obliged to sleep in the scullery.  She's never
+paid her daughter's income since the first year, though she brags
+about her sacrifices as if she had ruined herself for Jemima; and
+besides, when she's here, there's a whole clan of the Molloys,
+horse, foot, and dragoons, that are quartered upon us, and eat me
+out of house and home."
+
+"And is Molloyville such a fine place as the widow described it?"
+asked I, laughing, and not a little curious.
+
+"Oh, a mighty fine place entirely!" said Dennis.  "There's the oak
+park of two hundred acres, the finest land ye ever saw, only they've
+cut all the wood down.  The garden in the old Molloys' time, they
+say, was the finest ever seen in the West of Ireland; but they've
+taken all the glass to mend the house windows:  and small blame to
+them either.  There's a clear rent-roll of thirty-five hundred a
+year, only it's in the hand of receivers; besides other debts, for
+which there is no land security."
+
+"Your cousin-in-law, Castlereagh Molloy, won't come into a large
+fortune?"
+
+"Oh, he'll do very well," said Dennis.  "As long as he can get
+credit, he's not the fellow to stint himself.  Faith, I was fool
+enough to put my name to a bit of paper for him, and as they could
+not catch him in Mayo, they laid hold of me at Kingstown here.  And
+there was a pretty to do.  Didn't Mrs. Gam say I was ruining her
+family, that's all?  I paid it by instalments (for all my money is
+settled on Jemima); and Castlereagh, who's an honourable fellow,
+offered me any satisfaction in life.  Anyhow, he couldn't do more
+than THAT."
+
+"Of course not:  and now you're friends?"
+
+"Yes, and he and his aunt have had a tiff, too; and he abuses her
+properly, I warrant ye.  He says that she carried about Jemima from
+place to place, and flung her at the head of every unmarried man in
+England a'most--my poor Jemima, and she all the while dying in love
+with me!  As soon as she got over the small-pox--she took it at
+Fermoy--God bless her, I wish I'd been by to be her nurse-tender--as
+soon as she was rid of it, the old lady said to Castlereagh,
+'Castlereagh, go to the bar'cks, and find out in the Army List where
+the 120th is.'  Off she came to Cork hot foot.  It appears that
+while she was ill, Jemima's love for me showed itself in such a
+violent way that her mother was overcome, and promised that, should
+the dear child recover, she would try and bring us together.
+Castlereagh says she would have gone after us to Jamaica."
+
+"I have no doubt she would," said I.
+
+"Could you have a stronger proof of love than that?" cried Dennis.
+"My dear girl's illness and frightful blindness have, of course,
+injured her health and her temper.  She cannot in her position look
+to the children, you know, and so they come under my charge for the
+most part; and her temper is unequal, certainly.  But you see what a
+sensitive, refined, elegant creature she is, and may fancy that
+she's often put out by a rough fellow like me."
+
+Here Dennis left me, saying it was time to go and walk out the
+children; and I think his story has matter of some wholesome
+reflection in it for bachelors who are about to change their
+condition, or may console some who are mourning their celibacy.
+Marry, gentlemen, if you like; leave your comfortable dinner at the
+club for cold-mutton and curl-papers at your home; give up your
+books or pleasures, and take to yourselves wives and children; but
+think well on what you do first, as I have no doubt you will after
+this advice and example.  Advice is always useful in matters of
+love; men always take it; they always follow other people's
+opinions, not their own:  they always profit by example.  When they
+see a pretty woman, and feel the delicious madness of love coming
+over them, they always stop to calculate her temper, her money,
+their own money, or suitableness for the married life. . . .  Ha,
+ha, ha!  Let us fool in this way no more.  I have been in love
+forty-three times with all ranks and conditions of women, and would
+have married every time if they would have let me.  How many wives
+had King Solomon, the wisest of men?  And is not that story a
+warning to us that Love is master of the wisest?  It is only fools
+who defy him.
+
+I must come, however, to the last, and perhaps the saddest, part of
+poor Denny Haggarty's history.  I met him once more, and in such a
+condition as made me determine to write this history.
+
+In the month of June last I happened to be at Richmond, a delightful
+little place of retreat; and there, sunning himself upon the
+terrace, was my old friend of the 120th:  he looked older, thinner,
+poorer, and more wretched than I had ever seen him.  "What! you have
+given up Kingstown?" said I, shaking him by the hand.
+
+"Yes," says he.
+
+"And is my lady and your family here at Richmond?"
+
+"No," says he, with a sad shake of the head; and the poor fellow's
+hollow eyes filled with tears.
+
+"Good heavens, Denny! what's the matter?" said I.  He was squeezing
+my hand like a vice as I spoke.
+
+"They've LEFT me!" he burst out with a dreadful shout of passionate
+grief--a horrible scream which seemed to be wrenched out of his
+heart.  "Left me!" said he, sinking down on a seat, and clenching
+his great fists, and shaking his lean arms wildly.  "I'm a wise man
+now, Mr. Fitz-Boodle.  Jemima has gone away from me, and yet you
+know how I loved her, and how happy we were!  I've got nobody now;
+but I'll die soon, that's one comfort:  and to think it's she
+that'll kill me after all!"
+
+The story, which he told with a wild and furious lamentation such as
+is not known among men of our cooler country, and such as I don't
+like now to recall, was a very simple one.  The mother-in-law had
+taken possession of the house, and had driven him from it.  His
+property at his marriage was settled on his wife.  She had never
+loved him, and told him this secret at last, and drove him out of
+doors with her selfish scorn and ill-temper.  The boy had died; the
+girls were better, he said, brought up among the Molloys than they
+could be with him; and so he was quite alone in the world, and was
+living, or rather dying, on forty pounds a year.
+
+His troubles are very likely over by this time.  The two fools who
+caused his misery will never read this history of him; THEY never
+read godless stories in magazines:  and I wish, honest reader, that
+you and I went to church as much as they do.  These people are not
+wicked BECAUSE of their religious observances, but IN SPITE of them.
+They are too dull to understand humility, too blind to see a tender
+and simple heart under a rough ungainly bosom.  They are sure that
+all their conduct towards my poor friend here has been perfectly
+righteous, and that they have given proofs of the most Christian
+virtue.  Haggarty's wife is considered by her friends as a martyr to
+a savage husband, and her mother is the angel that has come to
+rescue her.  All they did was to cheat him and desert him.  And safe
+in that wonderful self-complacency with which the fools of this
+earth are endowed, they have not a single pang of conscience for
+their villany towards him, consider their heartlessness as a proof
+and consequence of their spotless piety and virtue.
+
+
+
+Footnotes:
+
+{1}  The words of this song are copyright, nor will the copyright be
+sold for less than twopence-halfpenny.
+
+{2}  A French proverbe furnished the author with the notion of the
+rivalry between the Barber and the Tailor.
+
+{3}  As it is very probable that many fair readers may not approve
+of the extremely forcible language in which the combat is depicted,
+I beg them to skip it and pass on to the next chapter, and to
+remember that it has been modelled on the style of the very best
+writers of the sporting papers.
+
+{4}  Every person who has lived abroad can, of course, point out a
+score of honourable exceptions to the case above hinted at, and
+knows many such unions in which it is the Frenchman who honours the
+English lady by marrying her.  But it must be remembered that
+marrying in France means commonly fortune-hunting:  and as for the
+respect in which marriage is held in France, let all the French
+novels in M. Rolandi's library be perused by those who wish to come
+to a decision upon the question.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of Men's Wives, by Thackeray
+
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