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<pre>
The Project Gutenberg eBook, Sketches of Young Gentlemen, by Charles
Dickens, Illustrated by Hablot Knight Browne
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
other parts of the world 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. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
Title: Sketches of Young Gentlemen
Author: Charles Dickens
Release Date: April 14, 2015 [eBook #918]
[This file was first posted on May 23, 1997]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SKETCHES OF YOUNG GENTLEMEN***
</pre>
<p>Transcribed from the 1903 Chapman and Hall <i>Sketches by
Boz</i> edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org</p>
<h1>SKETCHES OF YOUNG GENTLEMEN</h1>
<p style="text-align: center"><a name="page402"></a><span
class="pagenum">p. 402</span>TO THE YOUNG LADIES<br />
<span class="GutSmall">OF THE</span><br />
<b>United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland;</b><br />
<span class="GutSmall">ALSO</span><br />
THE YOUNG LADIES<br />
<span class="GutSmall">OF</span><br />
<span class="GutSmall"><b>THE PRINCIPALITY OF
WALES,</b></span><br />
<span class="GutSmall">AND LIKEWISE</span><br />
THE YOUNG LADIES<br />
<span class="GutSmall">RESIDENT IN THE ISLES OF</span><br />
<b>Guernsey, Jersey, Alderney, and Sark,</b><br />
<span class="GutSmall">THE HUMBLE DEDICATION OF THEIR DEVOTED
ADMIRER,</span></p>
<p><span class="smcap">Sheweth</span>,—</p>
<p><span class="smcap">That</span> your Dedicator has perused,
with feelings of virtuous indignation, a work purporting to be
‘Sketches of Young Ladies;’ written by Quiz,
illustrated by Phiz, and published in one volume, square
twelvemo.</p>
<p><span class="smcap">That</span> after an attentive and
vigilant perusal of the said work, your Dedicator is humbly of
opinion that so many libels, upon your Honourable sex, were never
contained in any previously published work, in twelvemo or any
other mo.</p>
<p><span class="smcap">That</span> in the title page and preface
to the said work, your Honourable sex are described and
classified as animals; and although your Dedicator is not at
present prepared to deny that you <i>are</i> animals, still he
humbly submits that it is not polite to call you so.</p>
<p><span class="smcap">That</span> in the aforesaid preface, your
Honourable sex are also described as Troglodites, which, being a
hard word, may, for aught your Honourable sex or your Dedicator
can say to the contrary, be an injurious and disrespectful
appellation.</p>
<p><span class="smcap">That</span> the author of the said work
applied himself to his task in malice prepense and with
wickedness aforethought; a fact which, your Dedicator contends,
is sufficiently demonstrated, by his assuming the name of Quiz,
which, your Dedicator submits, denotes a foregone conclusion, and
implies an intention of quizzing.</p>
<p><span class="smcap">That</span> in the execution of his evil
design, the said Quiz, or author of the said work, must have
betrayed some trust or confidence reposed in him by some members
of your Honourable sex, otherwise he never could have acquired so
much information relative to the manners and customs of your
Honourable sex in general.</p>
<p><span class="smcap">That</span> actuated by these
considerations, and further moved by various slanders and
insinuations respecting your Honourable sex contained in the said
work, square twelvemo, entitled ‘Sketches of Young
Ladies,’ your Dedicator ventures to produce another work,
square twelvemo, entitled ‘Sketches of Young
Gentlemen,’ of which he now solicits your acceptance and
approval.</p>
<p><span class="smcap">That</span> as the Young Ladies are the
best companions of the Young Gentlemen, so the Young Gentlemen
should be the best companions of the Young Ladies; and extending
the comparison from animals (to quote the disrespectful language
of the said Quiz) to inanimate objects, your Dedicator humbly
suggests, that such of your Honourable sex as purchased the bane
should possess themselves of the antidote, and that those of your
Honourable sex who were not rash enough to take the first, should
lose no time in swallowing the last,—prevention being in
all cases better than cure, as we are informed upon the
authority, not only of general acknowledgment, but also of
traditionary wisdom.</p>
<p><span class="smcap">That</span> with reference to the said
bane and antidote, your Dedicator has no further remarks to make,
than are comprised in the printed directions issued with Doctor
Morison’s pills; namely, that whenever your Honourable sex
take twenty-five of Number, 1, you will be pleased to take fifty
of Number 2, without delay.</p>
<p style="text-align: right">And your Dedicator shall ever pray,
&c.</p>
<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
<table>
<tr>
<td><p> </p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span
class="GutSmall">PAGE</span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>The Bashful Young Gentleman</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page403">403</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>The Out-and-out Young Gentleman</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page407">407</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>The Very Friendly Young Gentleman</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page410">410</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>The Military Young Gentleman</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page414">414</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>The Political Young Gentleman</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page418">418</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>The Domestic Young Gentleman</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page421">421</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>The Censorious Young Gentleman</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page424">424</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>The Funny Young Gentleman</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page427">427</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>The Theatrical Young Gentleman</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page431">431</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>The Poetical Young Gentleman</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page433">433</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>The ‘Throwing-off’ Young Gentleman</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page436">436</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>The Young Ladies’ Young Gentleman</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page439">439</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>Conclusion</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page443">443</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<h2><a name="page403"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 403</span>THE
BASHFUL YOUNG GENTLEMAN</h2>
<p><span class="smcap">We</span> found ourself seated at a small
dinner party the other day, opposite a stranger of such singular
appearance and manner, that he irresistibly attracted our
attention.</p>
<p>This was a fresh-coloured young gentleman, with as good a
promise of light whisker as one might wish to see, and possessed
of a very velvet-like, soft-looking countenance. We do not
use the latter term invidiously, but merely to denote a pair of
smooth, plump, highly-coloured cheeks of capacious dimensions,
and a mouth rather remarkable for the fresh hue of the lips than
for any marked or striking expression it presented. His
whole face was suffused with a crimson blush, and bore that
downcast, timid, retiring look, which betokens a man ill at ease
with himself.</p>
<p>There was nothing in these symptoms to attract more than a
passing remark, but our attention had been originally drawn to
the bashful young gentleman, on his first appearance in the
drawing-room above-stairs, into which he was no sooner
introduced, than making his way towards us who were standing in a
window, and wholly neglecting several persons who warmly accosted
him, he seized our hand with visible emotion, and pressed it with
a convulsive grasp for a good couple of minutes, after which he
dived in a nervous manner across the room, oversetting in his way
a fine little girl of six years and a quarter old—and
shrouding himself behind some hangings, was seen no more, until
the eagle eye of the hostess detecting him in his concealment, on
the announcement of dinner, he was requested to pair off with a
lively single lady, of two or three and thirty.</p>
<p>This most flattering salutation from a perfect stranger, would
have gratified us not a little as a token of his having held us
in high respect, and for that reason been desirous of our
acquaintance, if we had not suspected from the first, that the
young gentleman, in making a desperate effort to get through the
ceremony of introduction, had, in the bewilderment of his ideas,
shaken hands with us at random. This impression was fully
confirmed by the subsequent behaviour of the bashful young
gentleman in question, which we noted particularly, with the view
of ascertaining whether we were right in our conjecture.</p>
<p>The young gentleman seated himself at table with evident
misgivings, and turning sharp round to pay attention to some
observation of his loquacious neighbour, overset his bread.
There was nothing very bad in this, and if he had had the
presence of mind to let it go, and say nothing about it, nobody
but the man who had laid the cloth would have been a bit the
wiser; but the young gentleman in various semi-successful
attempts to prevent its fall, played with it a little, as
gentlemen in the streets may be seen to do with their hats on a
windy day, and then giving the roll a smart rap in his anxiety to
catch it, knocked it with great adroitness into a tureen of white
soup at some distance, to the unspeakable terror and disturbance
of a very amiable bald gentleman, who was dispensing the
contents. We thought the bashful young gentleman would have
gone off in an apoplectic fit, consequent upon the violent rush
of blood to his face at the occurrence of this catastrophe.</p>
<p>From this moment we perceived, in the phraseology of the
fancy, that it was ‘all up’ with the bashful young
gentleman, and so indeed it was. Several benevolent persons
endeavoured to relieve his embarrassment by taking wine with him,
but finding that it only augmented his sufferings, and that after
mingling sherry, champagne, hock, and moselle together, he
applied the greater part of the mixture externally, instead of
internally, they gradually dropped off, and left him to the
exclusive care of the talkative lady, who, not noting the
wildness of his eye, firmly believed she had secured a
listener. He broke a glass or two in the course of the
meal, and disappeared shortly afterwards; it is inferred that he
went away in some confusion, inasmuch as he left the house in
another gentleman’s coat, and the footman’s hat.</p>
<p>This little incident led us to reflect upon the most prominent
characteristics of bashful young gentlemen in the abstract; and
as this portable volume will be the great text-book of young
ladies in all future generations, we record them here for their
guidance and behoof.</p>
<p>If the bashful young gentleman, in turning a street corner,
chance to stumble suddenly upon two or three young ladies of his
acquaintance, nothing can exceed his confusion and
agitation. His first impulse is to make a great variety of
bows, and dart past them, which he does until, observing that
they wish to stop, but are uncertain whether to do so or not, he
makes several feints of returning, which causes them to do the
same; and at length, after a great quantity of unnecessary
dodging and falling up against the other passengers, he returns
and shakes hands most affectionately with all of them, in doing
which he knocks out of their grasp sundry little parcels, which
he hastily picks up, and returns very muddy and disordered.
The chances are that the bashful young gentleman then observes it
is very fine weather, and being reminded that it has only just
left off raining for the first time these three days, he blushes
very much, and smiles as if he had said a very good thing.
The young lady who was most anxious to speak, here inquires, with
an air of great commiseration, how his dear sister Harriet is
to-day; to which the young gentleman, without the slightest
consideration, replies with many thanks, that she is remarkably
well. ‘Well, Mr. Hopkins!’ cries the young
lady, ‘why, we heard she was bled yesterday evening, and
have been perfectly miserable about her.’ ‘Oh,
ah,’ says the young gentleman, ‘so she was. Oh,
she’s very ill, very ill indeed.’ The young
gentleman then shakes his head, and looks very desponding (he has
been smiling perpetually up to this time), and after a short
pause, gives his glove a great wrench at the wrist, and says,
with a strong emphasis on the adjective, ‘<i>Good</i>
morning, <i>good</i> morning.’ And making a great
number of bows in acknowledgment of several little messages to
his sister, walks backward a few paces, and comes with great
violence against a lamp-post, knocking his hat off in the
contact, which in his mental confusion and bodily pain he is
going to walk away without, until a great roar from a carter
attracts his attention, when he picks it up, and tries to smile
cheerfully to the young ladies, who are looking back, and who, he
has the satisfaction of seeing, are all laughing heartily.</p>
<p>At a quadrille party, the bashful young gentleman always
remains as near the entrance of the room as possible, from which
position he smiles at the people he knows as they come in, and
sometimes steps forward to shake hands with more intimate
friends: a process which on each repetition seems to turn him a
deeper scarlet than before. He declines dancing the first
set or two, observing, in a faint voice, that he would rather
wait a little; but at length is absolutely compelled to allow
himself to be introduced to a partner, when he is led, in a great
heat and blushing furiously, across the room to a spot where
half-a-dozen unknown ladies are congregated together.</p>
<p>‘Miss Lambert, let me introduce Mr. Hopkins for the next
quadrille.’ Miss Lambert inclines her head
graciously. Mr. Hopkins bows, and his fair conductress
disappears, leaving Mr. Hopkins, as he too well knows, to make
himself agreeable. The young lady more than half expects
that the bashful young gentleman will say something, and the
bashful young gentleman feeling this, seriously thinks whether he
has got anything to say, which, upon mature reflection, he is
rather disposed to conclude he has not, since nothing occurs to
him. Meanwhile, the young lady, after several inspections
of her <i>bouquet</i>, all made in the expectation that the
bashful young gentleman is going to talk, whispers her mamma, who
is sitting next her, which whisper the bashful young gentleman
immediately suspects (and possibly with very good reason) must be
about <i>him</i>. In this comfortable condition he remains
until it is time to ‘stand up,’ when murmuring a
‘Will you allow me?’ he gives the young lady his arm,
and after inquiring where she will stand, and receiving a reply
that she has no choice, conducts her to the remotest corner of
the quadrille, and making one attempt at conversation, which
turns out a desperate failure, preserves a profound silence until
it is all over, when he walks her twice round the room, deposits
her in her old seat, and retires in confusion.</p>
<p>A married bashful gentleman—for these bashful gentlemen
do get married sometimes; how it is ever brought about, is a
mystery to us—a married bashful gentleman either causes his
wife to appear bold by contrast, or merges her proper importance
in his own insignificance. Bashful young gentlemen should
be cured, or avoided. They are never hopeless, and never
will be, while female beauty and attractions retain their
influence, as any young lady will find, who may think it worth
while on this confident assurance to take a patient in hand.</p>
<h2><a name="page407"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 407</span>THE
OUT-AND-OUT YOUNG GENTLEMAN</h2>
<p><span class="smcap">Out-and-out</span> young gentlemen may be
divided into two classes—those who have something to do,
and those who have nothing. I shall commence with the
former, because that species come more frequently under the
notice of young ladies, whom it is our province to warn and to
instruct.</p>
<p>The out-and-out young gentleman is usually no great dresser,
his instructions to his tailor being all comprehended in the one
general direction to ‘make that what’s-a-name a
regular bang-up sort of thing.’ For some years past,
the favourite costume of the out-and-out young gentleman has been
a rough pilot coat, with two gilt hooks and eyes to the velvet
collar; buttons somewhat larger than crown-pieces; a black or
fancy neckerchief, loosely tied; a wide-brimmed hat, with a low
crown; tightish inexpressibles, and iron-shod boots. Out of
doors he sometimes carries a large ash stick, but only on special
occasions, for he prefers keeping his hands in his coat
pockets. He smokes at all hours, of course, and swears
considerably.</p>
<p style="text-align: center">
<a href="images/fpb.jpg">
<img alt=
"The out-and-out Young Gentleman"
title=
"The out-and-out Young Gentleman"
src="images/fps.jpg" />
</a></p>
<p>The out-and-out young gentleman is employed in a city
counting-house or solicitor’s office, in which he does as
little as he possibly can: his chief places of resort are, the
streets, the taverns, and the theatres. In the streets at
evening time, out-and-out young gentlemen have a pleasant custom
of walking six or eight abreast, thus driving females and other
inoffensive persons into the road, which never fails to afford
them the highest satisfaction, especially if there be any
immediate danger of their being run over, which enhances the fun
of the thing materially. In all places of public resort,
the out-and-outers are careful to select each a seat to himself,
upon which he lies at full length, and (if the weather be very
dirty, but not in any other case) he lies with his knees up, and
the soles of his boots planted firmly on the cushion, so that if
any low fellow should ask him to make room for a lady, he takes
ample revenge upon her dress, without going at all out of his way
to do it. He always sits with his hat on, and flourishes
his stick in the air while the play is proceeding, with a
dignified contempt of the performance; if it be possible for one
or two out-and-out young gentlemen to get up a little crowding in
the passages, they are quite in their element, squeezing,
pushing, whooping, and shouting in the most humorous manner
possible. If they can only succeed in irritating the
gentleman who has a family of daughters under his charge, they
are like to die with laughing, and boast of it among their
companions for a week afterwards, adding, that one or two of them
were ‘devilish fine girls,’ and that they really
thought the youngest would have fainted, which was the only thing
wanted to render the joke complete.</p>
<p>If the out-and-out young gentleman have a mother and sisters,
of course he treats them with becoming contempt, inasmuch as they
(poor things!) having no notion of life or gaiety, are far too
weak-spirited and moping for him. Sometimes, however, on a
birth-day or at Christmas-time, he cannot very well help
accompanying them to a party at some old friend’s, with
which view he comes home when they have been dressed an hour or
two, smelling very strongly of tobacco and spirits, and after
exchanging his rough coat for some more suitable attire (in which
however he loses nothing of the out-and-outer), gets into the
coach and grumbles all the way at his own good nature: his bitter
reflections aggravated by the recollection, that Tom Smith has
taken the chair at a little impromptu dinner at a fighting
man’s, and that a set-to was to take place on a
dining-table, between the fighting man and his brother-in-law,
which is probably ‘coming off’ at that very
instant.</p>
<p>As the out-and-out young gentleman is by no means at his ease
in ladies’ society, he shrinks into a corner of the
drawing-room when they reach the friend’s, and unless one
of his sisters is kind enough to talk to him, remains there
without being much troubled by the attentions of other people,
until he espies, lingering outside the door, another gentleman,
whom he at once knows, by his air and manner (for there is a kind
of free-masonry in the craft), to be a brother out-and-outer, and
towards whom he accordingly makes his way. Conversation
being soon opened by some casual remark, the second out-and-outer
confidentially informs the first, that he is one of the rough
sort and hates that kind of thing, only he couldn’t very
well be off coming; to which the other replies, that that’s
just his case—‘and I’ll tell you what,’
continues the out-and-outer in a whisper, ‘I should like a
glass of warm brandy and water just now,’—‘Or a
pint of stout and a pipe,’ suggests the other
out-and-outer.</p>
<p>The discovery is at once made that they are sympathetic souls;
each of them says at the same moment, that he sees the other
understands what’s what: and they become fast friends at
once, more especially when it appears, that the second
out-and-outer is no other than a gentleman, long favourably known
to his familiars as ‘Mr. Warmint Blake,’ who upon
divers occasions has distinguished himself in a manner that would
not have disgraced the fighting man, and who—having been a
pretty long time about town—had the honour of once shaking
hands with the celebrated Mr. Thurtell himself.</p>
<p>At supper, these gentlemen greatly distinguish themselves,
brightening up very much when the ladies leave the table, and
proclaiming aloud their intention of beginning to spend the
evening—a process which is generally understood to be
satisfactorily performed, when a great deal of wine is drunk and
a great deal of noise made, both of which feats the out-and-out
young gentlemen execute to perfection. Having protracted
their sitting until long after the host and the other guests have
adjourned to the drawing-room, and finding that they have drained
the decanters empty, they follow them thither with complexions
rather heightened, and faces rather bloated with wine; and the
agitated lady of the house whispers her friends as they waltz
together, to the great terror of the whole room, that ‘both
Mr. Blake and Mr. Dummins are very nice sort of young men in
their way, only they are eccentric persons, and unfortunately
<i>rather too wild</i>!’</p>
<p>The remaining class of out-and-out young gentlemen is composed
of persons, who, having no money of their own and a soul above
earning any, enjoy similar pleasures, nobody knows how.
These respectable gentlemen, without aiming quite so much at the
out-and-out in external appearance, are distinguished by all the
same amiable and attractive characteristics, in an equal or
perhaps greater degree, and now and then find their way into
society, through the medium of the other class of out-and-out
young gentlemen, who will sometimes carry them home, and who
usually pay their tavern bills. As they are equally
gentlemanly, clever, witty, intelligent, wise, and well-bred, we
need scarcely have recommended them to the peculiar consideration
of the young ladies, if it were not that some of the gentle
creatures whom we hold in such high respect, are perhaps a little
too apt to confound a great many heavier terms with the light
word eccentricity, which we beg them henceforth to take in a
strictly Johnsonian sense, without any liberality or latitude of
construction.</p>
<h2><a name="page410"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 410</span>THE
VERY FRIENDLY YOUNG GENTLEMAN</h2>
<p><span class="smcap">We</span> know—and all people
know—so many specimens of this class, that in selecting the
few heads our limits enable us to take from a great number, we
have been induced to give the very friendly young gentleman the
preference over many others, to whose claims upon a more cursory
view of the question we had felt disposed to assign the
priority.</p>
<p>The very friendly young gentleman is very friendly to
everybody, but he attaches himself particularly to two, or at
most to three families: regulating his choice by their dinners,
their circle of acquaintance, or some other criterion in which he
has an immediate interest. He is of any age between twenty
and forty, unmarried of course, must be fond of children, and is
expected to make himself generally useful if possible. Let
us illustrate our meaning by an example, which is the shortest
mode and the clearest.</p>
<p>We encountered one day, by chance, an old friend of whom we
had lost sight for some years, and who—expressing a strong
anxiety to renew our former intimacy—urged us to dine with
him on an early day, that we might talk over old times. We
readily assented, adding, that we hoped we should be alone.
‘Oh, certainly, certainly,’ said our friend,
‘not a soul with us but Mincin.’ ‘And who
is Mincin?’ was our natural inquiry. ‘O
don’t mind him,’ replied our friend,
‘he’s a most particular friend of mine, and a very
friendly fellow you will find him;’ and so he left us.</p>
<p>‘We thought no more about Mincin until we duly presented
ourselves at the house next day, when, after a hearty welcome,
our friend motioned towards a gentleman who had been previously
showing his teeth by the fireplace, and gave us to understand
that it was Mr. Mincin, of whom he had spoken. It required
no great penetration on our part to discover at once that Mr.
Mincin was in every respect a very friendly young gentleman.</p>
<p>‘I am delighted,’ said Mincin, hastily advancing,
and pressing our hand warmly between both of his, ‘I am
delighted, I am sure, to make your acquaintance—(here he
smiled)—very much delighted indeed—(here he exhibited
a little emotion)—I assure you that I have looked forward
to it anxiously for a very long time:’ here he released our
hands, and rubbing his own, observed, that the day was severe,
but that he was delighted to perceive from our appearance that it
agreed with us wonderfully; and then went on to observe, that,
notwithstanding the coldness of the weather, he had that morning
seen in the paper an exceedingly curious paragraph, to the
effect, that there was now in the garden of Mr. Wilkins of
Chichester, a pumpkin, measuring four feet in height, and eleven
feet seven inches in circumference, which he looked upon as a
very extraordinary piece of intelligence. We ventured to
remark, that we had a dim recollection of having once or twice
before observed a similar paragraph in the public prints, upon
which Mr. Mincin took us confidentially by the button, and said,
Exactly, exactly, to be sure, we were very right, and he wondered
what the editors meant by putting in such things. Who the
deuce, he should like to know, did they suppose cared about them?
that struck him as being the best of it.</p>
<p>The lady of the house appeared shortly afterwards, and Mr.
Mincin’s friendliness, as will readily be supposed,
suffered no diminution in consequence; he exerted much strength
and skill in wheeling a large easy-chair up to the fire, and the
lady being seated in it, carefully closed the door, stirred the
fire, and looked to the windows to see that they admitted no air;
having satisfied himself upon all these points, he expressed
himself quite easy in his mind, and begged to know how she found
herself to-day. Upon the lady’s replying very well,
Mr. Mincin (who it appeared was a medical gentleman) offered some
general remarks upon the nature and treatment of colds in the
head, which occupied us agreeably until dinner-time. During
the meal, he devoted himself to complimenting everybody, not
forgetting himself, so that we were an uncommonly agreeable
quartette.</p>
<p>‘I’ll tell you what, Capper,’ said Mr.
Mincin to our host, as he closed the room door after the lady had
retired, ‘you have very great reason to be fond of your
wife. Sweet woman, Mrs. Capper, sir!’
‘Nay, Mincin—I beg,’ interposed the host, as we
were about to reply that Mrs. Capper unquestionably was
particularly sweet. ‘Pray, Mincin,
don’t.’ ‘Why not?’ exclaimed Mr.
Mincin, ‘why not? Why should you feel any delicacy
before your old friend—<i>our</i> old friend, if I may be
allowed to call you so, sir; why should you, I ask?’
We of course wished to know why he should also, upon which our
friend admitted that Mrs. Capper <i>was</i> a very sweet woman,
at which admission Mr. Mincin cried ‘Bravo!’ and
begged to propose Mrs. Capper with heartfelt enthusiasm,
whereupon our host said, ‘Thank you, Mincin,’ with
deep feeling; and gave us, in a low voice, to understand, that
Mincin had saved Mrs. Capper’s cousin’s life no less
than fourteen times in a year and a half, which he considered no
common circumstance—an opinion to which we most cordially
subscribed.</p>
<p>Now that we three were left to entertain ourselves with
conversation, Mr. Mincin’s extreme friendliness became
every moment more apparent; he was so amazingly friendly, indeed,
that it was impossible to talk about anything in which he had not
the chief concern. We happened to allude to some affairs in
which our friend and we had been mutually engaged nearly fourteen
years before, when Mr. Mincin was all at once reminded of a joke
which our friend had made on that day four years, which he
positively must insist upon telling—and which he did tell
accordingly, with many pleasant recollections of what he said,
and what Mrs. Capper said, and how he well remembered that they
had been to the play with orders on the very night previous, and
had seen Romeo and Juliet, and the pantomime, and how Mrs. Capper
being faint had been led into the lobby, where she smiled, said
it was nothing after all, and went back again, with many other
interesting and absorbing particulars: after which the friendly
young gentleman went on to assure us, that our friend had
experienced a marvellously prophetic opinion of that same
pantomime, which was of such an admirable kind, that two morning
papers took the same view next day: to this our friend replied,
with a little triumph, that in that instance he had some reason
to think he had been correct, which gave the friendly young
gentleman occasion to believe that our friend was always correct;
and so we went on, until our friend, filling a bumper, said he
must drink one glass to his dear friend Mincin, than whom he
would say no man saved the lives of his acquaintances more, or
had a more friendly heart. Finally, our friend having
emptied his glass, said, ‘God bless you,
Mincin,’—and Mr. Mincin and he shook hands across the
table with much affection and earnestness.</p>
<p>But great as the friendly young gentleman is, in a limited
scene like this, he plays the same part on a larger scale with
increased <i>éclat</i>. Mr. Mincin is invited to an
evening party with his dear friends the Martins, where he meets
his dear friends the Cappers, and his dear friends the Watsons,
and a hundred other dear friends too numerous to mention.
He is as much at home with the Martins as with the Cappers; but
how exquisitely he balances his attentions, and divides them
among his dear friends! If he flirts with one of the Miss
Watsons, he has one little Martin on the sofa pulling his hair,
and the other little Martin on the carpet riding on his
foot. He carries Mrs. Watson down to supper on one arm, and
Miss Martin on the other, and takes wine so judiciously, and in
such exact order, that it is impossible for the most punctilious
old lady to consider herself neglected. If any young lady,
being prevailed upon to sing, become nervous afterwards, Mr.
Mincin leads her tenderly into the next room, and restores her
with port wine, which she must take medicinally. If any
gentleman be standing by the piano during the progress of the
ballad, Mr. Mincin seizes him by the arm at one point of the
melody, and softly beating time the while with his head,
expresses in dumb show his intense perception of the delicacy of
the passage. If anybody’s self-love is to be
flattered, Mr. Mincin is at hand. If anybody’s
overweening vanity is to be pampered, Mr. Mincin will surfeit
it. What wonder that people of all stations and ages
recognise Mr. Mincin’s friendliness; that he is universally
allowed to be handsome as amiable; that mothers think him an
oracle, daughters a dear, brothers a beau, and fathers a
wonder! And who would not have the reputation of the very
friendly young gentleman?</p>
<h2><a name="page414"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 414</span>THE
MILITARY YOUNG GENTLEMAN</h2>
<p><span class="smcap">We</span> are rather at a loss to imagine
how it has come to pass that military young gentlemen have
obtained so much favour in the eyes of the young ladies of this
kingdom. We cannot think so lightly of them as to suppose
that the mere circumstance of a man’s wearing a red coat
ensures him a ready passport to their regard; and even if this
were the case, it would be no satisfactory explanation of the
circumstance, because, although the analogy may in some degree
hold good in the case of mail coachmen and guards, still general
postmen wear red coats, and <i>they</i> are not to our knowledge
better received than other men; nor are firemen either, who wear
(or used to wear) not only red coats, but very resplendent and
massive badges besides—much larger than epaulettes.
Neither do the twopenny post-office boys, if the result of our
inquiries be correct, find any peculiar favour in woman’s
eyes, although they wear very bright red jackets, and have the
additional advantage of constantly appearing in public on
horseback, which last circumstance may be naturally supposed to
be greatly in their favour.</p>
<p>We have sometimes thought that this phenomenon may take its
rise in the conventional behaviour of captains and colonels and
other gentlemen in red coats on the stage, where they are
invariably represented as fine swaggering fellows, talking of
nothing but charming girls, their king and country, their honour,
and their debts, and crowing over the inferior classes of the
community, whom they occasionally treat with a little gentlemanly
swindling, no less to the improvement and pleasure of the
audience, than to the satisfaction and approval of the choice
spirits who consort with them. But we will not devote these
pages to our speculations upon the subject, inasmuch as our
business at the present moment is not so much with the young
ladies who are bewitched by her Majesty’s livery as with
the young gentlemen whose heads are turned by it. For
‘heads’ we had written ‘brains;’ but upon
consideration, we think the former the more appropriate word of
the two.</p>
<p style="text-align: center">
<a href="images/p414b.jpg">
<img alt=
"The Military Young Gentleman"
title=
"The Military Young Gentleman"
src="images/p414s.jpg" />
</a></p>
<p>These young gentlemen may be divided into two
classes—young gentlemen who are actually in the army, and
young gentlemen who, having an intense and enthusiastic
admiration for all things appertaining to a military life, are
compelled by adverse fortune or adverse relations to wear out
their existence in some ignoble counting-house. We will
take this latter description of military young gentlemen
first.</p>
<p>The whole heart and soul of the military young gentleman are
concentrated in his favourite topic. There is nothing that
he is so learned upon as uniforms; he will tell you, without
faltering for an instant, what the habiliments of any one
regiment are turned up with, what regiment wear stripes down the
outside and inside of the leg, and how many buttons the Tenth had
on their coats; he knows to a fraction how many yards and odd
inches of gold lace it takes to make an ensign in the Guards; is
deeply read in the comparative merits of different bands, and the
apparelling of trumpeters; and is very luminous indeed in
descanting upon ‘crack regiments,’ and the
‘crack’ gentlemen who compose them, of whose
mightiness and grandeur he is never tired of telling.</p>
<p>We were suggesting to a military young gentleman only the
other day, after he had related to us several dazzling instances
of the profusion of half-a-dozen honourable ensign somebodies or
nobodies in the articles of kid gloves and polished boots, that
possibly ‘cracked’ regiments would be an improvement
upon ‘crack,’ as being a more expressive and
appropriate designation, when he suddenly interrupted us by
pulling out his watch, and observing that he must hurry off to
the Park in a cab, or he would be too late to hear the band
play. Not wishing to interfere with so important an
engagement, and being in fact already slightly overwhelmed by the
anecdotes of the honourable ensigns afore-mentioned, we made no
attempt to detain the military young gentleman, but parted
company with ready good-will.</p>
<p>Some three or four hours afterwards, we chanced to be walking
down Whitehall, on the Admiralty side of the way, when, as we
drew near to one of the little stone places in which a couple of
horse soldiers mount guard in the daytime, we were attracted by
the motionless appearance and eager gaze of a young gentleman,
who was devouring both man and horse with his eyes, so eagerly,
that he seemed deaf and blind to all that was passing around
him. We were not much surprised at the discovery that it
was our friend, the military young gentleman, but we <i>were</i>
a little astonished when we returned from a walk to South Lambeth
to find him still there, looking on with the same intensity as
before. As it was a very windy day, we felt bound to awaken
the young gentleman from his reverie, when he inquired of us with
great enthusiasm, whether ‘that was not a glorious
spectacle,’ and proceeded to give us a detailed account of
the weight of every article of the spectacle’s trappings,
from the man’s gloves to the horse’s shoes.</p>
<p>We have made it a practice since, to take the Horse Guards in
our daily walk, and we find it is the custom of military young
gentlemen to plant themselves opposite the sentries, and
contemplate them at leisure, in periods varying from fifteen
minutes to fifty, and averaging twenty-five. We were much
struck a day or two since, by the behaviour of a very promising
young butcher who (evincing an interest in the service, which
cannot be too strongly commanded or encouraged), after a
prolonged inspection of the sentry, proceeded to handle his boots
with great curiosity, and as much composure and indifference as
if the man were wax-work.</p>
<p>But the really military young gentleman is waiting all this
time, and at the very moment that an apology rises to our lips,
he emerges from the barrack gate (he is quartered in a garrison
town), and takes the way towards the high street. He wears
his undress uniform, which somewhat mars the glory of his outward
man; but still how great, how grand, he is! What a happy
mixture of ease and ferocity in his gait and carriage, and how
lightly he carries that dreadful sword under his arm, making no
more ado about it than if it were a silk umbrella! The lion
is sleeping: only think if an enemy were in sight, how soon
he’d whip it out of the scabbard, and what a terrible
fellow he would be!</p>
<p>But he walks on, thinking of nothing less than blood and
slaughter; and now he comes in sight of three other military
young gentlemen, arm-in-arm, who are bearing down towards him,
clanking their iron heels on the pavement, and clashing their
swords with a noise, which should cause all peaceful men to quail
at heart. They stop to talk. See how the
flaxen-haired young gentleman with the weak legs—he who has
his pocket-handkerchief thrust into the breast of his coat-glares
upon the fainthearted civilians who linger to look upon his
glory; how the next young gentleman elevates his head in the air,
and majestically places his arms a-kimbo, while the third stands
with his legs very wide apart, and clasps his hands behind
him. Well may we inquire—not in familiar jest, but in
respectful earnest—if you call that nothing. Oh! if
some encroaching foreign power—the Emperor of Russia, for
instance, or any of those deep fellows, could only see those
military young gentlemen as they move on together towards the
billiard-room over the way, wouldn’t he tremble a
little!</p>
<p>And then, at the Theatre at night, when the performances are
by command of Colonel Fitz-Sordust and the officers of the
garrison—what a splendid sight it is! How sternly the
defenders of their country look round the house as if in mute
assurance to the audience, that they may make themselves
comfortable regarding any foreign invasion, for they (the
military young gentlemen) are keeping a sharp look-out, and are
ready for anything. And what a contrast between them, and
that stage-box full of grey-headed officers with tokens of many
battles about them, who have nothing at all in common with the
military young gentlemen, and who—but for an old-fashioned
kind of manly dignity in their looks and bearing—might be
common hard-working soldiers for anything they take the pains to
announce to the contrary!</p>
<p>Ah! here is a family just come in who recognise the
flaxen-headed young gentleman; and the flaxen-headed young
gentleman recognises them too, only he doesn’t care to show
it just now. Very well done indeed! He talks louder
to the little group of military young gentlemen who are standing
by him, and coughs to induce some ladies in the next box but one
to look round, in order that their faces may undergo the same
ordeal of criticism to which they have subjected, in not a wholly
inaudible tone, the majority of the female portion of the
audience. Oh! a gentleman in the same box looks round as if
he were disposed to resent this as an impertinence; and the
flaxen-headed young gentleman sees his friends at once, and
hurries away to them with the most charming cordiality.</p>
<p>Three young ladies, one young man, and the mamma of the party,
receive the military young gentleman with great warmth and
politeness, and in five minutes afterwards the military young
gentleman, stimulated by the mamma, introduces the two other
military young gentlemen with whom he was walking in the morning,
who take their seats behind the young ladies and commence
conversation; whereat the mamma bestows a triumphant bow upon a
rival mamma, who has not succeeded in decoying any military young
gentlemen, and prepares to consider her visitors from that moment
three of the most elegant and superior young gentlemen in the
whole world.</p>
<h2><a name="page418"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 418</span>THE
POLITICAL YOUNG GENTLEMAN</h2>
<p><span class="smcap">Once</span> upon a time—<i>not</i>
in the days when pigs drank wine, but in a more recent period of
our history—it was customary to banish politics when ladies
were present. If this usage still prevailed, we should have
had no chapter for political young gentlemen, for ladies would
have neither known nor cared what kind of monster a political
young gentleman was. But as this good custom in common with
many others has ‘gone out,’ and left no word when it
is likely to be home again; as political young ladies are by no
means rare, and political young gentlemen the very reverse of
scarce, we are bound in the strict discharge of our most
responsible duty not to neglect this natural division of our
subject.</p>
<p>If the political young gentleman be resident in a country town
(and there <i>are</i> political young gentlemen in country towns
sometimes), he is wholly absorbed in his politics; as a pair of
purple spectacles communicate the same uniform tint to all
objects near and remote, so the political glasses, with which the
young gentleman assists his mental vision, give to everything the
hue and tinge of party feeling. The political young
gentleman would as soon think of being struck with the beauty of
a young lady in the opposite interest, as he would dream of
marrying his sister to the opposite member.</p>
<p>If the political young gentleman be a Conservative, he has
usually some vague ideas about Ireland and the Pope which he
cannot very clearly explain, but which he knows are the right
sort of thing, and not to be very easily got over by the other
side. He has also some choice sentences regarding church
and state, culled from the banners in use at the last election,
with which he intersperses his conversation at intervals with
surprising effect. But his great topic is the constitution,
upon which he will declaim, by the hour together, with much heat
and fury; not that he has any particular information on the
subject, but because he knows that the constitution is somehow
church and state, and church and state somehow the constitution,
and that the fellows on the other side say it isn’t, which
is quite a sufficient reason for him to say it is, and to stick
to it.</p>
<p>Perhaps his greatest topic of all, though, is the
people. If a fight takes place in a populous town, in which
many noses are broken, and a few windows, the young gentleman
throws down the newspaper with a triumphant air, and exclaims,
‘Here’s your precious people!’ If
half-a-dozen boys run across the course at race time, when it
ought to be kept clear, the young gentleman looks indignantly
round, and begs you to observe the conduct of the people; if the
gallery demand a hornpipe between the play and the afterpiece,
the same young gentleman cries ‘No’ and
‘Shame’ till he is hoarse, and then inquires with a
sneer what you think of popular moderation <i>now</i>; in short,
the people form a never-failing theme for him; and when the
attorney, on the side of his candidate, dwells upon it with great
power of eloquence at election time, as he never fails to do, the
young gentleman and his friends, and the body they head, cheer
with great violence against <i>the other people</i>, with whom,
of course, they have no possible connexion. In much the
same manner the audience at a theatre never fail to be highly
amused with any jokes at the expense of the public—always
laughing heartily at some other public, and never at
themselves.</p>
<p>If the political young gentleman be a Radical, he is usually a
very profound person indeed, having great store of theoretical
questions to put to you, with an infinite variety of possible
cases and logical deductions therefrom. If he be of the
utilitarian school, too, which is more than probable, he is
particularly pleasant company, having many ingenious remarks to
offer upon the voluntary principle and various cheerful
disquisitions connected with the population of the country, the
position of Great Britain in the scale of nations, and the
balance of power. Then he is exceedingly well versed in all
doctrines of political economy as laid down in the newspapers,
and knows a great many parliamentary speeches by heart; nay, he
has a small stock of aphorisms, none of them exceeding a couple
of lines in length, which will settle the toughest question and
leave you nothing to say. He gives all the young ladies to
understand, that Miss Martineau is the greatest woman that ever
lived; and when they praise the good looks of Mr. Hawkins the new
member, says he’s very well for a representative, all
things considered, but he wants a little calling to account, and
he is more than half afraid it will be necessary to bring him
down on his knees for that vote on the miscellaneous
estimates. At this, the young ladies express much
wonderment, and say surely a Member of Parliament is not to be
brought upon his knees so easily; in reply to which the political
young gentleman smiles sternly, and throws out dark hints
regarding the speedy arrival of that day, when Members of
Parliament will be paid salaries, and required to render weekly
accounts of their proceedings, at which the young ladies utter
many expressions of astonishment and incredulity, while their
lady-mothers regard the prophecy as little else than
blasphemous.</p>
<p>It is extremely improving and interesting to hear two
political young gentlemen, of diverse opinions, discuss some
great question across a dinner-table; such as, whether, if the
public were admitted to Westminster Abbey for nothing, they would
or would not convey small chisels and hammers in their pockets,
and immediately set about chipping all the noses off the statues;
or whether, if they once got into the Tower for a shilling, they
would not insist upon trying the crown on their own heads, and
loading and firing off all the small arms in the armoury, to the
great discomposure of Whitechapel and the Minories. Upon
these, and many other momentous questions which agitate the
public mind in these desperate days, they will discourse with
great vehemence and irritation for a considerable time together,
both leaving off precisely where they began, and each thoroughly
persuaded that he has got the better of the other.</p>
<p>In society, at assemblies, balls, and playhouses, these
political young gentlemen are perpetually on the watch for a
political allusion, or anything which can be tortured or
construed into being one; when, thrusting themselves into the
very smallest openings for their favourite discourse, they fall
upon the unhappy company tooth and nail. They have recently
had many favourable opportunities of opening in churches, but as
there the clergyman has it all his own way, and must not be
contradicted, whatever politics he preaches, they are fain to
hold their tongues until they reach the outer door, though at the
imminent risk of bursting in the effort.</p>
<p>As such discussions can please nobody but the talkative
parties concerned, we hope they will henceforth take the hint and
discontinue them, otherwise we now give them warning, that the
ladies have our advice to discountenance such talkers
altogether.</p>
<h2><a name="page421"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 421</span>THE
DOMESTIC YOUNG GENTLEMAN</h2>
<p><span class="smcap">Let</span> us make a slight sketch of our
amiable friend, Mr. Felix Nixon. We are strongly disposed
to think, that if we put him in this place, he will answer our
purpose without another word of comment.</p>
<p>Felix, then, is a young gentleman who lives at home with his
mother, just within the twopenny-post office circle of three
miles from St. Martin-le-Grand. He wears Indiarubber
goloshes when the weather is at all damp, and always has a silk
handkerchief neatly folded up in the right-hand pocket of his
great-coat, to tie over his mouth when he goes home at night;
moreover, being rather near-sighted, he carries spectacles for
particular occasions, and has a weakish tremulous voice, of which
he makes great use, for he talks as much as any old lady
breathing.</p>
<p>The two chief subjects of Felix’s discourse, are himself
and his mother, both of whom would appear to be very wonderful
and interesting persons. As Felix and his mother are seldom
apart in body, so Felix and his mother are scarcely ever separate
in spirit. If you ask Felix how he finds himself to-day, he
prefaces his reply with a long and minute bulletin of his
mother’s state of health; and the good lady in her turn,
edifies her acquaintance with a circumstantial and alarming
account, how he sneezed four times and coughed once after being
out in the rain the other night, but having his feet promptly put
into hot water, and his head into a flannel-something, which we
will not describe more particularly than by this delicate
allusion, was happily brought round by the next morning, and
enabled to go to business as usual.</p>
<p>Our friend is not a very adventurous or hot-headed person, but
he has passed through many dangers, as his mother can testify:
there is one great story in particular, concerning a hackney
coachman who wanted to overcharge him one night for bringing them
home from the play, upon which Felix gave the aforesaid coachman
a look which his mother thought would have crushed him to the
earth, but which did not crush him quite, for he continued to
demand another sixpence, notwithstanding that Felix took out his
pocket-book, and, with the aid of a flat candle, pointed out the
fare in print, which the coachman obstinately disregarding, he
shut the street-door with a slam which his mother shudders to
think of; and then, roused to the most appalling pitch of passion
by the coachman knocking a double knock to show that he was by no
means convinced, he broke with uncontrollable force from his
parent and the servant girl, and running into the street without
his hat, actually shook his fist at the coachman, and came back
again with a face as white, Mrs. Nixon says, looking about her
for a simile, as white as that ceiling. She never will
forget his fury that night, Never!</p>
<p>To this account Felix listens with a solemn face, occasionally
looking at you to see how it affects you, and when his mother has
made an end of it, adds that he looked at every coachman he met
for three weeks afterwards, in hopes that he might see the
scoundrel; whereupon Mrs. Nixon, with an exclamation of terror,
requests to know what he would have done to him if he <i>had</i>
seen him, at which Felix smiling darkly and clenching his right
fist, she exclaims, ‘Goodness gracious!’ with a
distracted air, and insists upon extorting a promise that he
never will on any account do anything so rash, which her dutiful
son—it being something more than three years since the
offence was committed—reluctantly concedes, and his mother,
shaking her head prophetically, fears with a sigh that his spirit
will lead him into something violent yet. The discourse
then, by an easy transition, turns upon the spirit which glows
within the bosom of Felix, upon which point Felix himself becomes
eloquent, and relates a thrilling anecdote of the time when he
used to sit up till two o’clock in the morning reading
French, and how his mother used to say, ‘Felix, you will
make yourself ill, I know you will;’ and how <i>he</i> used
to say, ‘Mother, I don’t care—I will do
it;’ and how at last his mother privately procured a doctor
to come and see him, who declared, the moment he felt his pulse,
that if he had gone on reading one night more—only one
night more—he must have put a blister on each temple, and
another between his shoulders; and who, as it was, sat down upon
the instant, and writing a prescription for a blue pill, said it
must be taken immediately, or he wouldn’t answer for the
consequences. The recital of these and many other moving
perils of the like nature, constantly harrows up the feelings of
Mr. Nixon’s friends.</p>
<p style="text-align: center">
<a href="images/p422b.jpg">
<img alt=
"The Domestic Young Gentleman"
title=
"The Domestic Young Gentleman"
src="images/p422s.jpg" />
</a></p>
<p>Mrs. Nixon has a tolerably extensive circle of female
acquaintance, being a good-humoured, talkative, bustling little
body, and to the unmarried girls among them she is constantly
vaunting the virtues of her son, hinting that she will be a very
happy person who wins him, but that they must mind their
P’s and Q’s, for he is very particular, and terribly
severe upon young ladies. At this last caution the young
ladies resident in the same row, who happen to be spending the
evening there, put their pocket-handkerchiefs before their
mouths, and are troubled with a short cough; just then Felix
knocks at the door, and his mother drawing the tea-table nearer
the fire, calls out to him as he takes off his boots in the back
parlour that he needn’t mind coming in in his slippers, for
there are only the two Miss Greys and Miss Thompson, and she is
quite sure they will excuse <i>him</i>, and nodding to the two
Miss Greys, she adds, in a whisper, that Julia Thompson is a
great favourite with Felix, at which intelligence the short cough
comes again, and Miss Thompson in particular is greatly troubled
with it, till Felix coming in, very faint for want of his tea,
changes the subject of discourse, and enables her to laugh out
boldly and tell Amelia Grey not to be so foolish. Here they
all three laugh, and Mrs. Nixon says they are giddy girls; in
which stage of the proceedings, Felix, who has by this time
refreshened himself with the grateful herb that ‘cheers but
not inebriates,’ removes his cup from his countenance and
says with a knowing smile, that all girls are; whereat his
admiring mamma pats him on the back and tells him not to be sly,
which calls forth a general laugh from the young ladies, and
another smile from Felix, who, thinking he looks very sly indeed,
is perfectly satisfied.</p>
<p>Tea being over, the young ladies resume their work, and Felix
insists upon holding a skein of silk while Miss Thompson winds it
on a card. This process having been performed to the
satisfaction of all parties, he brings down his flute in
compliance with a request from the youngest Miss Grey, and plays
divers tunes out of a very small music-book till supper-time,
when he is very facetious and talkative indeed. Finally,
after half a tumblerful of warm sherry and water, he gallantly
puts on his goloshes over his slippers, and telling Miss
Thompson’s servant to run on first and get the door open,
escorts that young lady to her house, five doors off: the Miss
Greys who live in the next house but one stopping to peep with
merry faces from their own door till he comes back again, when
they call out ‘Very well, Mr. Felix,’ and trip into
the passage with a laugh more musical than any flute that was
ever played.</p>
<p>Felix is rather prim in his appearance, and perhaps a little
priggish about his books and flute, and so forth, which have all
their peculiar corners of peculiar shelves in his bedroom; indeed
all his female acquaintance (and they are good judges) have long
ago set him down as a thorough old bachelor. He is a
favourite with them however, in a certain way, as an honest,
inoffensive, kind-hearted creature; and as his peculiarities harm
nobody, not even himself, we are induced to hope that many who
are not personally acquainted with him will take our good word in
his behalf, and be content to leave him to a long continuance of
his harmless existence.</p>
<h2><a name="page424"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 424</span>THE
CENSORIOUS YOUNG GENTLEMAN</h2>
<p><span class="smcap">There</span> is an amiable kind of young
gentleman going about in society, upon whom, after much
experience of him, and considerable turning over of the subject
in our mind, we feel it our duty to affix the above
appellation. Young ladies mildly call him a
‘sarcastic’ young gentleman, or a
‘severe’ young gentleman. We, who know better,
beg to acquaint them with the fact, that he is merely a
censorious young gentleman, and nothing else.</p>
<p>The censorious young gentleman has the reputation among his
familiars of a remarkably clever person, which he maintains by
receiving all intelligence and expressing all opinions with a
dubious sneer, accompanied with a half smile, expressive of
anything you please but good-humour. This sets people about
thinking what on earth the censorious young gentleman means, and
they speedily arrive at the conclusion that he means something
very deep indeed; for they reason in this way—‘This
young gentleman looks so very knowing that he must mean
something, and as I am by no means a dull individual, what a very
deep meaning he must have if I can’t find it
out!’ It is extraordinary how soon a censorious young
gentleman may make a reputation in his own small circle if he
bear this in his mind, and regulate his proceedings
accordingly.</p>
<p>As young ladies are generally—not curious, but laudably
desirous to acquire information, the censorious young gentleman
is much talked about among them, and many surmises are hazarded
regarding him. ‘I wonder,’ exclaims the eldest
Miss Greenwood, laying down her work to turn up the lamp,
‘I wonder whether Mr. Fairfax will ever be
married.’ ‘Bless me, dear,’ cries Miss
Marshall, ‘what ever made you think of him?’
‘Really I hardly know,’ replies Miss Greenwood;
‘he is such a very mysterious person, that I often wonder
about him.’ ‘Well, to tell you the
truth,’ replies Miss Marshall, ‘and so do
I.’ Here two other young ladies profess that they are
constantly doing the like, and all present appear in the same
condition except one young lady, who, not scrupling to state that
she considers Mr. Fairfax ‘a horror,’ draws down all
the opposition of the others, which having been expressed in a
great many ejaculatory passages, such as ‘Well, did I
ever!’—and ‘Lor, Emily, dear!’ ma takes
up the subject, and gravely states, that she must say she does
not think Mr. Fairfax by any means a horror, but rather takes him
to be a young man of very great ability; ‘and I am quite
sure,’ adds the worthy lady, ‘he always means a great
deal more than he says.’</p>
<p>The door opens at this point of the disclosure, and who of all
people alive walks into the room, but the very Mr. Fairfax, who
has been the subject of conversation! ‘Well, it
really is curious,’ cries ma, ‘we were at that very
moment talking about you.’ ‘You did me great
honour,’ replies Mr. Fairfax; ‘may I venture to ask
what you were saying?’ ‘Why, if you must
know,’ returns the eldest girl, ‘we were remarking
what a very mysterious man you are.’ ‘Ay,
ay!’ observes Mr. Fairfax, ‘Indeed!’ Now
Mr. Fairfax says this ay, ay, and indeed, which are slight words
enough in themselves, with so very unfathomable an air, and
accompanies them with such a very equivocal smile, that ma and
the young ladies are more than ever convinced that he means an
immensity, and so tell him he is a very dangerous man, and seems
to be always thinking ill of somebody, which is precisely the
sort of character the censorious young gentleman is most desirous
to establish; wherefore he says, ‘Oh, dear, no,’ in a
tone, obviously intended to mean, ‘You have me
there,’ and which gives them to understand that they have
hit the right nail on the very centre of its head.</p>
<p>When the conversation ranges from the mystery overhanging the
censorious young gentleman’s behaviour, to the general
topics of the day, he sustains his character to admiration.
He considers the new tragedy well enough for a new tragedy, but
Lord bless us—well, no matter; he could say a great deal on
that point, but he would rather not, lest he should be thought
ill-natured, as he knows he would be. ‘But is not Mr.
So-and-so’s performance truly charming?’ inquires a
young lady. ‘Charming!’ replies the censorious
young gentleman. ‘Oh, dear, yes, certainly; very
charming—oh, very charming indeed.’ After this,
he stirs the fire, smiling contemptuously all the while: and a
modest young gentleman, who has been a silent listener, thinks
what a great thing it must be, to have such a critical
judgment. Of music, pictures, books, and poetry, the
censorious young gentleman has an equally fine conception.
As to men and women, he can tell all about them at a
glance. ‘Now let us hear your opinion of young Mrs.
Barker,’ says some great believer in the powers of Mr.
Fairfax, ‘but don’t be too severe.’
‘I never am severe,’ replies the censorious young
gentleman. ‘Well, never mind that now. She is
very lady-like, is she not?’ ‘Lady-like!’
repeats the censorious young gentleman (for he always repeats
when he is at a loss for anything to say). ‘Did you
observe her manner? Bless my heart and soul, Mrs. Thompson,
did you observe her manner?—that’s all I
ask.’ ‘I thought I had done so,’ rejoins
the poor lady, much perplexed; ‘I did not observe it very
closely perhaps.’ ‘Oh, not very closely,’
rejoins the censorious young gentleman, triumphantly.
‘Very good; then <i>I</i> did. Let us talk no more
about her.’ The censorious young gentleman purses up
his lips, and nods his head sagely, as he says this; and it is
forthwith whispered about, that Mr. Fairfax (who, though he is a
little prejudiced, must be admitted to be a very excellent judge)
has observed something exceedingly odd in Mrs. Barker’s
manner.</p>
<h2><a name="page427"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 427</span>THE
FUNNY YOUNG GENTLEMAN</h2>
<p><span class="smcap">As</span> one funny young gentleman will
serve as a sample of all funny young Gentlemen we purpose merely
to note down the conduct and behaviour of an individual specimen
of this class, whom we happened to meet at an annual family
Christmas party in the course of this very last Christmas that
ever came.</p>
<p>We were all seated round a blazing fire which crackled
pleasantly as the guests talked merrily and the urn steamed
cheerily—for, being an old-fashioned party, there
<i>was</i> an urn, and a teapot besides—when there came a
postman’s knock at the door, so violent and sudden, that it
startled the whole circle, and actually caused two or three very
interesting and most unaffected young ladies to scream aloud and
to exhibit many afflicting symptoms of terror and distress, until
they had been several times assured by their respective adorers,
that they were in no danger. We were about to remark that
it was surely beyond post-time, and must have been a runaway
knock, when our host, who had hitherto been paralysed with
wonder, sank into a chair in a perfect ecstasy of laughter, and
offered to lay twenty pounds that it was that droll dog
Griggins. He had no sooner said this, than the majority of
the company and all the children of the house burst into a roar
of laughter too, as if some inimitable joke flashed upon them
simultaneously, and gave vent to various exclamations of—To
be sure it must be Griggins, and How like him that was, and What
spirits he was always in! with many other commendatory remarks of
the like nature.</p>
<p>Not having the happiness to know Griggins, we became extremely
desirous to see so pleasant a fellow, the more especially as a
stout gentleman with a powdered head, who was sitting with his
breeches buckles almost touching the hob, whispered us he was a
wit of the first water, when the door opened, and Mr. Griggins
being announced, presented himself, amidst another shout of
laughter and a loud clapping of hands from the younger
branches. This welcome he acknowledged by sundry
contortions of countenance, imitative of the clown in one of the
new pantomimes, which were so extremely successful, that one
stout gentleman rolled upon an ottoman in a paroxysm of delight,
protesting, with many gasps, that if somebody didn’t make
that fellow Griggins leave off, he would be the death of him, he
knew. At this the company only laughed more boisterously
than before, and as we always like to accommodate our tone and
spirit if possible to the humour of any society in which we find
ourself, we laughed with the rest, and exclaimed, ‘Oh!
capital, capital!’ as loud as any of them.</p>
<p>When he had quite exhausted all beholders, Mr. Griggins
received the welcomes and congratulations of the circle, and went
through the needful introductions with much ease and many
puns. This ceremony over, he avowed his intention of
sitting in somebody’s lap unless the young ladies made room
for him on the sofa, which being done, after a great deal of
tittering and pleasantry, he squeezed himself among them, and
likened his condition to that of love among the roses. At
this novel jest we all roared once more. ‘You should
consider yourself highly honoured, sir,’ said we.
‘Sir,’ replied Mr. Griggins, ‘you do me
proud.’ Here everybody laughed again; and the stout
gentleman by the fire whispered in our ear that Griggins was
making a dead set at us.</p>
<p>The tea-things having been removed, we all sat down to a round
game, and here Mr. Griggins shone forth with peculiar brilliancy,
abstracting other people’s fish, and looking over their
hands in the most comical manner. He made one most
excellent joke in snuffing a candle, which was neither more nor
less than setting fire to the hair of a pale young gentleman who
sat next him, and afterwards begging his pardon with considerable
humour. As the young gentleman could not see the joke
however, possibly in consequence of its being on the top of his
own head, it did not go off quite as well as it might have done;
indeed, the young gentleman was heard to murmur some general
references to ‘impertinence,’ and a
‘rascal,’ and to state the number of his lodgings in
an angry tone—a turn of the conversation which might have
been productive of slaughterous consequences, if a young lady,
betrothed to the young gentleman, had not used her immediate
influence to bring about a reconciliation: emphatically declaring
in an agitated whisper, intended for his peculiar edification but
audible to the whole table, that if he went on in that way, she
never would think of him otherwise than as a friend, though as
that she must always regard him. At this terrible threat
the young gentleman became calm, and the young lady, overcome by
the revulsion of feeling, instantaneously fainted.</p>
<p style="text-align: center">
<a href="images/p428b.jpg">
<img alt=
"The Funny Young Gentleman"
title=
"The Funny Young Gentleman"
src="images/p428s.jpg" />
</a></p>
<p>Mr. Griggins’s spirits were slightly depressed for a
short period by this unlooked-for result of such a harmless
pleasantry, but being promptly elevated by the attentions of the
host and several glasses of wine, he soon recovered, and became
even more vivacious than before, insomuch that the stout
gentleman previously referred to, assured us that although he had
known him since he was <i>that</i> high (something smaller than a
nutmeg-grater), he had never beheld him in such excellent
cue.</p>
<p>When the round game and several games at blind man’s
buff which followed it were all over, and we were going down to
supper, the inexhaustible Mr. Griggins produced a small sprig of
mistletoe from his waistcoat pocket, and commenced a general
kissing of the assembled females, which occasioned great
commotion and much excitement. We observed that several
young gentlemen—including the young gentleman with the pale
countenance—were greatly scandalised at this indecorous
proceeding, and talked very big among themselves in corners; and
we observed too, that several young ladies when remonstrated with
by the aforesaid young gentlemen, called each other to witness
how they had struggled, and protested vehemently that it was very
rude, and that they were surprised at Mrs. Brown’s allowing
it, and that they couldn’t bear it, and had no patience
with such impertinence. But such is the gentle and
forgiving nature of woman, that although we looked very narrowly
for it, we could not detect the slightest harshness in the
subsequent treatment of Mr. Griggins. Indeed, upon the
whole, it struck us that among the ladies he seemed rather more
popular than before!</p>
<p>To recount all the drollery of Mr. Griggins at supper, would
fill such a tiny volume as this, <a name="citation429"></a><a
href="#footnote429" class="citation">[429]</a> to the very bottom
of the outside cover. How he drank out of other
people’s glasses, and ate of other people’s bread,
how he frightened into screaming convulsions a little boy who was
sitting up to supper in a high chair, by sinking below the table
and suddenly reappearing with a mask on; how the hostess was
really surprised that anybody could find a pleasure in tormenting
children, and how the host frowned at the hostess, and felt
convinced that Mr. Griggins had done it with the very best
intentions; how Mr. Griggins explained, and how everybody’s
good-humour was restored but the child’s;—to tell
these and a hundred other things ever so briefly, would occupy
more of our room and our readers’ patience, than either
they or we can conveniently spare. Therefore we change the
subject, merely observing that we have offered no description of
the funny young gentleman’s personal appearance, believing
that almost every society has a Griggins of its own, and leaving
all readers to supply the deficiency, according to the particular
circumstances of their particular case.</p>
<h2><a name="page431"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 431</span>THE
THEATRICAL YOUNG GENTLEMAN</h2>
<p><span class="smcap">All</span> gentlemen who love the
drama—and there are few gentlemen who are not attached to
the most intellectual and rational of all our amusements—do
not come within this definition. As we have no mean relish
for theatrical entertainments ourself, we are disinterestedly
anxious that this should be perfectly understood.</p>
<p>The theatrical young gentleman has early and important
information on all theatrical topics. ‘Well,’
says he, abruptly, when you meet him in the street,
‘here’s a pretty to-do. Flimkins has thrown up
his part in the melodrama at the Surrey.’—‘And
what’s to be done?’ you inquire with as much gravity
as you can counterfeit. ‘Ah, that’s the
point,’ replies the theatrical young gentleman, looking
very serious; ‘Boozle declines it; positively declines
it. From all I am told, I should say it was decidedly in
Boozle’s line, and that he would be very likely to make a
great hit in it; but he objects on the ground of Flimkins having
been put up in the part first, and says no earthly power shall
induce him to take the character. It’s a fine part,
too—excellent business, I’m told. He has to
kill six people in the course of the piece, and to fight over a
bridge in red fire, which is as safe a card, you know, as can
be. Don’t mention it; but I hear that the last scene,
when he is first poisoned, and then stabbed, by Mrs. Flimkins as
Vengedora, will be the greatest thing that has been done these
many years.’ With this piece of news, and laying his
finger on his lips as a caution for you not to excite the town
with it, the theatrical young gentleman hurries away.</p>
<p>The theatrical young gentleman, from often frequenting the
different theatrical establishments, has pet and familiar names
for them all. Thus Covent-Garden is the garden, Drury-Lane
the lane, the Victoria the vic, and the Olympic the pic.
Actresses, too, are always designated by their surnames only, as
Taylor, Nisbett, Faucit, Honey; that talented and lady-like girl
Sheriff, that clever little creature Horton, and so on. In
the same manner he prefixes Christian names when he mentions
actors, as Charley Young, Jemmy Buckstone, Fred. Yates, Paul
Bedford. When he is at a loss for a Christian name, the
word ‘old’ applied indiscriminately answers quite as
well: as old Charley Matthews at Vestris’s, old Harley, and
old Braham. He has a great knowledge of the private
proceedings of actresses, especially of their getting married,
and can tell you in a breath half-a-dozen who have changed their
names without avowing it. Whenever an alteration of this
kind is made in the playbills, he will remind you that he let you
into the secret six months ago.</p>
<p>The theatrical young gentleman has a great reverence for all
that is connected with the stage department of the different
theatres. He would, at any time, prefer going a street or
two out of his way, to omitting to pass a stage-entrance, into
which he always looks with a curious and searching eye. If
he can only identify a popular actor in the street, he is in a
perfect transport of delight; and no sooner meets him, than he
hurries back, and walks a few paces in front of him, so that he
can turn round from time to time, and have a good stare at his
features. He looks upon a theatrical-fund dinner as one of
the most enchanting festivities ever known; and thinks that to be
a member of the Garrick Club, and see so many actors in their
plain clothes, must be one of the highest gratifications the
world can bestow.</p>
<p>The theatrical young gentleman is a constant half-price
visitor at one or other of the theatres, and has an infinite
relish for all pieces which display the fullest resources of the
establishment. He likes to place implicit reliance upon the
play-bills when he goes to see a show-piece, and works himself up
to such a pitch of enthusiasm, as not only to believe (if the
bills say so) that there are three hundred and seventy-five
people on the stage at one time in the last scene, but is highly
indignant with you, unless you believe it also. He
considers that if the stage be opened from the foot-lights to the
back wall, in any new play, the piece is a triumph of dramatic
writing, and applauds accordingly. He has a great notion of
trap-doors too; and thinks any character going down or coming up
a trap (no matter whether he be an angel or a demon—they
both do it occasionally) one of the most interesting feats in the
whole range of scenic illusion.</p>
<p>Besides these acquirements, he has several veracious accounts
to communicate of the private manners and customs of different
actors, which, during the pauses of a quadrille, he usually
communicates to his partner, or imparts to his neighbour at a
supper table. Thus he is advised, that Mr. Liston always
had a footman in gorgeous livery waiting at the side-scene with a
brandy bottle and tumbler, to administer half a pint or so of
spirit to him every time he came off, without which assistance he
must infallibly have fainted. He knows for a fact, that,
after an arduous part, Mr. George Bennett is put between two
feather beds, to absorb the perspiration; and is credibly
informed, that Mr. Baker has, for many years, submitted to a
course of lukewarm toast-and-water, to qualify him to sustain his
favourite characters. He looks upon Mr. Fitz Ball as the
principal dramatic genius and poet of the day; but holds that
there are great writers extant besides him,—in proof
whereof he refers you to various dramas and melodramas recently
produced, of which he takes in all the sixpenny and three-penny
editions as fast as they appear.</p>
<p>The theatrical young gentleman is a great advocate for
violence of emotion and redundancy of action. If a father
has to curse a child upon the stage, he likes to see it done in
the thorough-going style, with no mistake about it: to which end
it is essential that the child should follow the father on her
knees, and be knocked violently over on her face by the old
gentleman as he goes into a small cottage, and shuts the door
behind him. He likes to see a blessing invoked upon the
young lady, when the old gentleman repents, with equal
earnestness, and accompanied by the usual conventional forms,
which consist of the old gentleman looking anxiously up into the
clouds, as if to see whether it rains, and then spreading an
imaginary tablecloth in the air over the young lady’s
head—soft music playing all the while. Upon these,
and other points of a similar kind, the theatrical young
gentleman is a great critic indeed. He is likewise very
acute in judging of natural expressions of the passions, and
knows precisely the frown, wink, nod, or leer, which stands for
any one of them, or the means by which it may be converted into
any other: as jealousy, with a good stamp of the right foot,
becomes anger; or wildness, with the hands clasped before the
throat, instead of tearing the wig, is passionate love. If
you venture to express a doubt of the accuracy of any of these
portraitures, the theatrical young gentleman assures you, with a
haughty smile, that it always has been done in that way, and he
supposes they are not going to change it at this time of day to
please you; to which, of course, you meekly reply that you
suppose not.</p>
<p>There are innumerable disquisitions of this nature, in which
the theatrical young gentleman is very profound, especially to
ladies whom he is most in the habit of entertaining with them;
but as we have no space to recapitulate them at greater length,
we must rest content with calling the attention of the young
ladies in general to the theatrical young gentlemen of their own
acquaintance.</p>
<h2><a name="page433"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 433</span>THE
POETICAL YOUNG GENTLEMAN</h2>
<p><span class="smcap">Time</span> was, and not very long ago
either, when a singular epidemic raged among the young gentlemen,
vast numbers of whom, under the influence of the malady, tore off
their neckerchiefs, turned down their shirt collars, and
exhibited themselves in the open streets with bare throats and
dejected countenances, before the eyes of an astonished
public. These were poetical young gentlemen. The
custom was gradually found to be inconvenient, as involving the
necessity of too much clean linen and too large washing bills,
and these outward symptoms have consequently passed away; but we
are disposed to think, notwithstanding, that the number of
poetical young gentlemen is considerably on the increase.</p>
<p>We know a poetical young gentleman—a very poetical young
gentleman. We do not mean to say that he is troubled with
the gift of poesy in any remarkable degree, but his countenance
is of a plaintive and melancholy cast, his manner is abstracted
and bespeaks affliction of soul: he seldom has his hair cut, and
often talks about being an outcast and wanting a kindred spirit;
from which, as well as from many general observations in which he
is wont to indulge, concerning mysterious impulses, and yearnings
of the heart, and the supremacy of intellect gilding all earthly
things with the glowing magic of immortal verse, it is clear to
all his friends that he has been stricken poetical.</p>
<p>The favourite attitude of the poetical young gentleman is
lounging on a sofa with his eyes fixed upon the ceiling, or
sitting bolt upright in a high-backed chair, staring with very
round eyes at the opposite wall. When he is in one of these
positions, his mother, who is a worthy, affectionate old soul,
will give you a nudge to bespeak your attention without
disturbing the abstracted one, and whisper with a shake of the
head, that John’s imagination is at some extraordinary work
or other, you may take her word for it. Hereupon John looks
more fiercely intent upon vacancy than before, and suddenly
snatching a pencil from his pocket, puts down three words, and a
cross on the back of a card, sighs deeply, paces once or twice
across the room, inflicts a most unmerciful slap upon his head,
and walks moodily up to his dormitory.</p>
<p>The poetical young gentleman is apt to acquire peculiar
notions of things too, which plain ordinary people, unblessed
with a poetical obliquity of vision, would suppose to be rather
distorted. For instance, when the sickening murder and
mangling of a wretched woman was affording delicious food
wherewithal to gorge the insatiable curiosity of the public, our
friend the poetical young gentleman was in ecstasies—not of
disgust, but admiration. ‘Heavens!’ cried the
poetical young gentleman, ‘how grand; how
great!’ We ventured deferentially to inquire upon
whom these epithets were bestowed: our humble thoughts
oscillating between the police officer who found the criminal,
and the lock-keeper who found the head. ‘Upon
whom!’ exclaimed the poetical young gentleman in a frenzy
of poetry, ‘Upon whom should they be bestowed but upon the
murderer!’—and thereupon it came out, in a fine
torrent of eloquence, that the murderer was a great spirit, a
bold creature full of daring and nerve, a man of dauntless heart
and determined courage, and withal a great casuist and able
reasoner, as was fully demonstrated in his philosophical
colloquies with the great and noble of the land. We held
our peace, and meekly signified our indisposition to controvert
these opinions—firstly, because we were no match at
quotation for the poetical young gentleman; and secondly, because
we felt it would be of little use our entering into any
disputation, if we were: being perfectly convinced that the
respectable and immoral hero in question is not the first and
will not be the last hanged gentleman upon whom false sympathy or
diseased curiosity will be plentifully expended.</p>
<p>This was a stern mystic flight of the poetical young
gentleman. In his milder and softer moments he occasionally
lays down his neckcloth, and pens stanzas, which sometimes find
their way into a Lady’s Magazine, or the
‘Poets’ Corner’ of some country newspaper; or
which, in default of either vent for his genius, adorn the
rainbow leaves of a lady’s album. These are generally
written upon some such occasions as contemplating the Bank of
England by midnight, or beholding Saint Paul’s in a
snow-storm; and when these gloomy objects fail to afford him
inspiration, he pours forth his soul in a touching address to a
violet, or a plaintive lament that he is no longer a child, but
has gradually grown up.</p>
<p style="text-align: center">
<a href="images/p434b.jpg">
<img alt=
"The Poetical Young Gentleman"
title=
"The Poetical Young Gentleman"
src="images/p434s.jpg" />
</a></p>
<p>The poetical young gentleman is fond of quoting passages from
his favourite authors, who are all of the gloomy and desponding
school. He has a great deal to say too about the world, and
is much given to opining, especially if he has taken anything
strong to drink, that there is nothing in it worth living
for. He gives you to understand, however, that for the sake
of society, he means to bear his part in the tiresome play,
manfully resisting the gratification of his own strong desire to
make a premature exit; and consoles himself with the reflection,
that immortality has some chosen nook for himself and the other
great spirits whom earth has chafed and wearied.</p>
<p>When the poetical young gentleman makes use of adjectives,
they are all superlatives. Everything is of the grandest,
greatest, noblest, mightiest, loftiest; or the lowest, meanest,
obscurest, vilest, and most pitiful. He knows no medium:
for enthusiasm is the soul of poetry; and who so enthusiastic as
a poetical young gentleman? ‘Mr. Milkwash,’
says a young lady as she unlocks her album to receive the young
gentleman’s original impromptu contribution, ‘how
very silent you are! I think you must be in
love.’ ‘Love!’ cries the poetical young
gentleman, starting from his seat by the fire and terrifying the
cat who scampers off at full speed, ‘Love! that burning,
consuming passion; that ardour of the soul, that fierce glowing
of the heart. Love! The withering, blighting
influence of hope misplaced and affection slighted. Love
did you say! Ha! ha! ha!’</p>
<p>With this, the poetical young gentleman laughs a laugh
belonging only to poets and Mr. O. Smith of the Adelphi Theatre,
and sits down, pen in hand, to throw off a page or two of verse
in the biting, semi-atheistical demoniac style, which, like the
poetical young gentleman himself, is full of sound and fury,
signifying nothing.</p>
<h2><a name="page436"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 436</span>THE
‘THROWING-OFF’ YOUNG GENTLEMAN</h2>
<p><span class="smcap">There</span> is a certain kind of
impostor—a bragging, vaunting, puffing young
gentleman—against whom we are desirous to warn that fairer
part of the creation, to whom we more peculiarly devote these our
labours. And we are particularly induced to lay especial
stress upon this division of our subject, by a little dialogue we
held some short time ago, with an esteemed young lady of our
acquaintance, touching a most gross specimen of this class of
men. We had been urging all the absurdities of his conduct
and conversation, and dwelling upon the impossibilities he
constantly recounted—to which indeed we had not scrupled to
prefix a certain hard little word of one syllable and three
letters—when our fair friend, unable to maintain the
contest any longer, reluctantly cried, ‘Well; he certainly
has a habit of throwing-off, but then—’ What
then? Throw him off yourself, said we. And so she
did, but not at our instance, for other reasons appeared, and it
might have been better if she had done so at first.</p>
<p>The throwing-off young gentleman has so often a father
possessed of vast property in some remote district of Ireland,
that we look with some suspicion upon all young gentlemen who
volunteer this description of themselves. The deceased
grandfather of the throwing-off young gentleman was a man of
immense possessions, and untold wealth; the throwing-off young
gentleman remembers, as well as if it were only yesterday, the
deceased baronet’s library, with its long rows of scarce
and valuable books in superbly embossed bindings, arranged in
cases, reaching from the lofty ceiling to the oaken floor; and
the fine antique chairs and tables, and the noble old castle of
Ballykillbabaloo, with its splendid prospect of hill and dale,
and wood, and rich wild scenery, and the fine hunting stables and
the spacious court-yards, ‘and—and—everything
upon the same magnificent scale,’ says the throwing-off
young gentleman, ‘princely; quite princely.
Ah!’ And he sighs as if mourning over the fallen
fortunes of his noble house.</p>
<p>The throwing-off young gentleman is a universal genius; at
walking, running, rowing, swimming, and skating, he is
unrivalled; at all games of chance or skill, at hunting,
shooting, fishing, riding, driving, or amateur theatricals, no
one can touch him—that is <i>could</i> not, because he
gives you carefully to understand, lest there should be any
opportunity of testing his skill, that he is quite out of
practice just now, and has been for some years. If you
mention any beautiful girl of your common acquaintance in his
hearing, the throwing-off young gentleman starts, smiles, and
begs you not to mind him, for it was quite involuntary: people do
say indeed that they were once engaged, but no—although she
is a very fine girl, he was so situated at that time that he
couldn’t possibly encourage the—‘but it’s
of no use talking about it!’ he adds, interrupting
himself. ‘She has got over it now, and I firmly hope
and trust is happy.’ With this benevolent aspiration
he nods his head in a mysterious manner, and whistling the first
part of some popular air, thinks perhaps it will be better to
change the subject.</p>
<p>There is another great characteristic of the throwing-off
young gentleman, which is, that he ‘happens to be
acquainted’ with a most extraordinary variety of people in
all parts of the world. Thus in all disputed questions,
when the throwing-off young gentleman has no argument to bring
forward, he invariably happens to be acquainted with some distant
person, intimately connected with the subject, whose testimony
decides the point against you, to the great—may we say
it—to the great admiration of three young ladies out of
every four, who consider the throwing-off young gentleman a very
highly-connected young man, and a most charming person.</p>
<p>Sometimes the throwing-off young gentleman happens to look in
upon a little family circle of young ladies who are quietly
spending the evening together, and then indeed is he at the very
height and summit of his glory; for it is to be observed that he
by no means shines to equal advantage in the presence of men as
in the society of over-credulous young ladies, which is his
proper element. It is delightful to hear the number of
pretty things the throwing-off young gentleman gives utterance
to, during tea, and still more so to observe the ease with which,
from long practice and study, he delicately blends one compliment
to a lady with two for himself. ‘Did you ever see a
more lovely blue than this flower, Mr. Caveton?’ asks a
young lady who, truth to tell, is rather smitten with the
throwing-off young gentleman. ‘Never,’ he
replies, bending over the object of admiration, ‘never but
in your eyes.’ ‘Oh, Mr. Caveton,’ cries
the young lady, blushing of course. ‘Indeed I speak
the truth,’ replies the throwing-off young gentleman,
‘I never saw any approach to them. I used to think my
cousin’s blue eyes lovely, but they grow dim and colourless
beside yours.’ ‘Oh! a beautiful cousin, Mr.
Caveton!’ replies the young lady, with that perfect
artlessness which is the distinguishing characteristic of all
young ladies; ‘an affair, of course.’
‘No; indeed, indeed you wrong me,’ rejoins the
throwing-off young gentleman with great energy. ‘I
fervently hope that her attachment towards me may be nothing but
the natural result of our close intimacy in childhood, and that
in change of scene and among new faces she may soon overcome
it. <i>I</i> love her! Think not so meanly of me,
Miss Lowfield, I beseech, as to suppose that title, lands,
riches, and beauty, can influence <i>my</i> choice. The
heart, the heart, Miss Lowfield.’ Here the
throwing-off young gentleman sinks his voice to a still lower
whisper; and the young lady duly proclaims to all the other young
ladies when they go up-stairs, to put their bonnets on, that Mr.
Caveton’s relations are all immensely rich, and that he is
hopelessly beloved by title, lands, riches, and beauty.</p>
<p>We have seen a throwing-off young gentleman who, to our
certain knowledge, was innocent of a note of music, and scarcely
able to recognise a tune by ear, volunteer a Spanish air upon the
guitar when he had previously satisfied himself that there was
not such an instrument within a mile of the house.</p>
<p>We have heard another throwing-off young gentleman, after
striking a note or two upon the piano, and accompanying it
correctly (by dint of laborious practice) with his voice, assure
a circle of wondering listeners that so acute was his ear that he
was wholly unable to sing out of tune, let him try as he
would. We have lived to witness the unmasking of another
throwing-off young gentleman, who went out a visiting in a
military cap with a gold band and tassel, and who, after passing
successfully for a captain and being lauded to the skies for his
red whiskers, his bravery, his soldierly bearing and his pride,
turned out to be the dishonest son of an honest linen-draper in a
small country town, and whom, if it were not for this fortunate
exposure, we should not yet despair of encountering as the
fortunate husband of some rich heiress. Ladies, ladies, the
throwing-off young gentlemen are often swindlers, and always
fools. So pray you avoid them.</p>
<h2><a name="page439"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 439</span>THE
YOUNG LADIES’ YOUNG GENTLEMAN</h2>
<p><span class="smcap">This</span> young gentleman has several
titles. Some young ladies consider him ‘a nice young
man,’ others ‘a fine young man,’ others
‘quite a lady’s man,’ others ‘a handsome
man,’ others ‘a remarkably good-looking young
man.’ With some young ladies he is ‘a perfect
angel,’ and with others ‘quite a love.’
He is likewise a charming creature, a duck, and a dear.</p>
<p>The young ladies’ young gentleman has usually a fresh
colour and very white teeth, which latter articles, of course, he
displays on every possible opportunity. He has brown or
black hair, and whiskers of the same, if possible; but a slight
tinge of red, or the hue which is vulgarly known as <i>sandy</i>,
is not considered an objection. If his head and face be
large, his nose prominent, and his figure square, he is an
uncommonly fine young man, and worshipped accordingly.
Should his whiskers meet beneath his chin, so much the better,
though this is not absolutely insisted on; but he must wear an
under-waistcoat, and smile constantly.</p>
<p>There was a great party got up by some party-loving friends of
ours last summer, to go and dine in Epping Forest. As we
hold that such wild expeditions should never be indulged in, save
by people of the smallest means, who have no dinner at home, we
should indubitably have excused ourself from attending, if we had
not recollected that the projectors of the excursion were always
accompanied on such occasions by a choice sample of the young
ladies’ young gentleman, whom we were very anxious to have
an opportunity of meeting. This determined us, and we
went.</p>
<p>We were to make for Chigwell in four glass coaches, each with
a trifling company of six or eight inside, and a little boy
belonging to the projectors on the box—and to start from
the residence of the projectors, Woburn-place, Russell-square, at
half-past ten precisely. We arrived at the place of
rendezvous at the appointed time, and found the glass coaches and
the little boys quite ready, and divers young ladies and young
gentlemen looking anxiously over the breakfast-parlour blinds,
who appeared by no means so much gratified by our approach as we
might have expected, but evidently wished we had been somebody
else. Observing that our arrival in lieu of the unknown
occasioned some disappointment, we ventured to inquire who was
yet to come, when we found from the hasty reply of a dozen
voices, that it was no other than the young ladies’ young
gentleman.</p>
<p>‘I cannot imagine,’ said the mamma, ‘what
has become of Mr. Balim—always so punctual, always so
pleasant and agreeable. I am sure I can-<i>not</i>
think.’ As these last words were uttered in that
measured, emphatic manner which painfully announces that the
speaker has not quite made up his or her mind what to say, but is
determined to talk on nevertheless, the eldest daughter took up
the subject, and hoped no accident had happened to Mr. Balim,
upon which there was a general chorus of ‘Dear Mr.
Balim!’ and one young lady, more adventurous than the rest,
proposed that an express should be straightway sent to dear Mr.
Balim’s lodgings. This, however, the papa resolutely
opposed, observing, in what a short young lady behind us termed
‘quite a bearish way,’ that if Mr. Balim didn’t
choose to come, he might stop at home. At this all the
daughters raised a murmur of ‘Oh pa!’ except one
sprightly little girl of eight or ten years old, who, taking
advantage of a pause in the discourse, remarked, that perhaps Mr.
Balim might have been married that morning—for which
impertinent suggestion she was summarily ejected from the room by
her eldest sister.</p>
<p style="text-align: center">
<a href="images/p441b.jpg">
<img alt=
"The Young Ladies’ Young Gentleman"
title=
"The Young Ladies’ Young Gentleman"
src="images/p441s.jpg" />
</a></p>
<p>We were all in a state of great mortification and uneasiness,
when one of the little boys, running into the room as airily as
little boys usually run who have an unlimited allowance of animal
food in the holidays, and keep their hands constantly forced down
to the bottoms of very deep trouser-pockets when they take
exercise, joyfully announced that Mr. Balim was at that moment
coming up the street in a hackney-cab; and the intelligence was
confirmed beyond all doubt a minute afterwards by the entry of
Mr. Balim himself, who was received with repeated cries of
‘Where have you been, you naughty creature?’
whereunto the naughty creature replied, that he had been in bed,
in consequence of a late party the night before, and had only
just risen. The acknowledgment awakened a variety of
agonizing fears that he had taken no breakfast; which appearing
after a slight cross-examination to be the real state of the
case, breakfast for one was immediately ordered, notwithstanding
Mr. Balim’s repeated protestations that he couldn’t
think of it. He did think of it though, and thought better
of it too, for he made a remarkably good meal when it came, and
was assiduously served by a select knot of young ladies. It
was quite delightful to see how he ate and drank, while one pair
of fair hands poured out his coffee, and another put in the
sugar, and another the milk; the rest of the company ever and
anon casting angry glances at their watches, and the glass
coaches,—and the little boys looking on in an agony of
apprehension lest it should begin to rain before we set out; it
might have rained all day, after we were once too far to turn
back again, and welcome, for aught they cared.</p>
<p>However, the cavalcade moved at length, every coachman being
accommodated with a hamper between his legs something larger than
a wheelbarrow; and the company being packed as closely as they
possibly could in the carriages, ‘according,’ as one
married lady observed, ‘to the immemorial custom, which was
half the diversion of gipsy parties.’ Thinking it
very likely it might be (we have never been able to discover the
other half), we submitted to be stowed away with a cheerful
aspect, and were fortunate enough to occupy one corner of a coach
in which were one old lady, four young ladies, and the renowned
Mr. Balim the young ladies’ young gentleman.</p>
<p>We were no sooner fairly off, than the young ladies’
young gentleman hummed a fragment of an air, which induced a
young lady to inquire whether he had danced to that the night
before. ‘By Heaven, then, I did,’ replied the
young gentleman, ‘and with a lovely heiress; a superb
creature, with twenty thousand pounds.’ ‘You
seem rather struck,’ observed another young lady.
‘’Gad she was a sweet creature,’ returned the
young gentleman, arranging his hair. ‘Of course
<i>she</i> was struck too?’ inquired the first young
lady. ‘How can you ask, love?’ interposed the
second; ‘could she fail to be?’ ‘Well,
honestly I think she was,’ observed the young
gentleman. At this point of the dialogue, the young lady
who had spoken first, and who sat on the young gentleman’s
right, struck him a severe blow on the arm with a rosebud, and
said he was a vain man—whereupon the young gentleman
insisted on having the rosebud, and the young lady appealing for
help to the other young ladies, a charming struggle ensued,
terminating in the victory of the young gentleman, and the
capture of the rosebud. This little skirmish over, the
married lady, who was the mother of the rosebud, smiled sweetly
upon the young gentleman, and accused him of being a flirt; the
young gentleman pleading not guilty, a most interesting
discussion took place upon the important point whether the young
gentleman was a flirt or not, which being an agreeable
conversation of a light kind, lasted a considerable time.
At length, a short silence occurring, the young ladies on either
side of the young gentleman fell suddenly fast asleep; and the
young gentleman, winking upon us to preserve silence, won a pair
of gloves from each, thereby causing them to wake with equal
suddenness and to scream very loud. The lively conversation
to which this pleasantry gave rise, lasted for the remainder of
the ride, and would have eked out a much longer one.</p>
<p>We dined rather more comfortably than people usually do under
such circumstances, nothing having been left behind but the
cork-screw and the bread. The married gentlemen were
unusually thirsty, which they attributed to the heat of the
weather; the little boys ate to inconvenience; mammas were very
jovial, and their daughters very fascinating; and the attendants
being well-behaved men, got exceedingly drunk at a respectful
distance.</p>
<p>We had our eye on Mr. Balim at dinner-time, and perceived that
he flourished wonderfully, being still surrounded by a little
group of young ladies, who listened to him as an oracle, while he
ate from their plates and drank from their glasses in a manner
truly captivating from its excessive playfulness. His
conversation, too, was exceedingly brilliant. In fact, one
elderly lady assured us, that in the course of a little lively
<i>badinage</i> on the subject of ladies’ dresses, he had
evinced as much knowledge as if he had been born and bred a
milliner.</p>
<p>As such of the fat people who did not happen to fall asleep
after dinner entered upon a most vigorous game at ball, we
slipped away alone into a thicker part of the wood, hoping to
fall in with Mr. Balim, the greater part of the young people
having dropped off in twos and threes and the young ladies’
young gentleman among them. Nor were we disappointed, for
we had not walked far, when, peeping through the trees, we
discovered him before us, and truly it was a pleasant thing to
contemplate his greatness.</p>
<p>The young ladies’ young gentleman was seated upon the
ground, at the feet of a few young ladies who were reclining on a
bank; he was so profusely decked with scarfs, ribands, flowers,
and other pretty spoils, that he looked like a lamb—or
perhaps a calf would be a better simile—adorned for the
sacrifice. One young lady supported a parasol over his
interesting head, another held his hat, and a third his
neck-cloth, which in romantic fashion he had thrown off; the
young gentleman himself, with his hand upon his breast, and his
face moulded into an expression of the most honeyed sweetness,
was warbling forth some choice specimens of vocal music in praise
of female loveliness, in a style so exquisitely perfect, that we
burst into an involuntary shout of laughter, and made a hasty
retreat.</p>
<p>What charming fellows these young ladies’ young
gentlemen are! Ducks, dears, loves, angels, are all terms
inadequate to express their merit. They are such amazingly,
uncommonly, wonderfully, nice men.</p>
<h2><a name="page443"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
443</span>CONCLUSION</h2>
<p><span class="smcap">As</span> we have placed before the young
ladies so many specimens of young gentlemen, and have also in the
dedication of this volume given them to understand how much we
reverence and admire their numerous virtues and perfections; as
we have given them such strong reasons to treat us with
confidence, and to banish, in our case, all that reserve and
distrust of the male sex which, as a point of general behaviour,
they cannot do better than preserve and maintain—we say, as
we have done all this, we feel that now, when we have arrived at
the close of our task, they may naturally press upon us the
inquiry, what particular description of young gentlemen we can
conscientiously recommend.</p>
<p>Here we are at a loss. We look over our list, and can
neither recommend the bashful young gentleman, nor the
out-and-out young gentleman, nor the very friendly young
gentleman, nor the military young gentleman, nor the political
young gentleman, nor the domestic young gentleman, nor the
censorious young gentleman, nor the funny young gentleman, nor
the theatrical young gentleman, nor the poetical young gentleman,
nor the throwing-off young gentleman, nor the young ladies’
young gentleman.</p>
<p>As there are some good points about many of them, which still
are not sufficiently numerous to render any one among them
eligible, as a whole, our respectful advice to the young ladies
is, to seek for a young gentleman who unites in himself the best
qualities of all, and the worst weaknesses of none, and to lead
him forthwith to the hymeneal altar, whether he will or no.
And to the young lady who secures him, we beg to tender one short
fragment of matrimonial advice, selected from many sound passages
of a similar tendency, to be found in a letter written by Dean
Swift to a young lady on her marriage.</p>
<p>‘The grand affair of your life will be, to gain and
preserve the esteem of your husband. Neither good-nature
nor virtue will suffer him to <i>esteem</i> you against his
judgment; and although he is not capable of using you ill, yet
you will in time grow a thing indifferent and perhaps
contemptible; unless you can supply the loss of youth and beauty
with more durable qualities. You have but a very few years
to be young and handsome in the eyes of the world; and as few
months to be so in the eyes of a husband who is not a fool; for I
hope you do not still dream of charms and raptures, which
marriage ever did, and ever will, put a sudden end to.’</p>
<p>From the anxiety we express for the proper behaviour of the
fortunate lady after marriage, it may possibly be inferred that
the young gentleman to whom we have so delicately alluded, is no
other than ourself. Without in any way committing ourself
upon this point, we have merely to observe, that we are ready to
receive sealed offers containing a full specification of age,
temper, appearance, and condition; but we beg it to be distinctly
understood that we do not pledge ourself to accept the highest
bidder.</p>
<p>These offers may be forwarded to the Publishers, Messrs.
Chapman and Hall, London; to whom all pieces of plate and other
testimonials of approbation from the young ladies generally, are
respectfully requested to be addressed.</p>
<h2>FOOTNOTES</h2>
<p><a name="footnote429"></a><a href="#citation429"
class="footnote">[429]</a> [In its original form.]</p>
<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SKETCHES OF YOUNG GENTLEMEN***</p>
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