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 THANKSGIVING.
 
 THE 
 
 ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 ON HIS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD ; 
 
 SHEWING 
 
 WHO ROBBED HIM, WHO HELPED HIM, AND WHO PASSED HIM BY: 
 
 TO WHICH IS NOW PREFIXED 
 
 A SHABBY GENTEEL STORY. 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY. 
 
 irjTH ILLUSTRA TIONS BY F. WALKER AND THE AUTHOR. 
 
 CHICAGO AND NEW YORK: 
 
 BELFORD, CLARKE & COMPANY, 
 
 Publishers.
 
 1257 
 
 TO 
 
 B. W. PROCTER 
 
 THIS STORY IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED 
 
 672724
 
 ADVERTISEMENT. 
 
 When the " Shabby Genteel Story " was first reprinted with 
 other stories and sketches by Mr. Thackeray, collected together 
 under the title of " Miscellanies," the following note was 
 appended to it : — 
 
 It was my intention to complete the little story, of which only the first 
 part is here written. Perhaps novel-readers will understand, even from 
 the above chapters, what was to ensue. Caroline was to be disowned and 
 deserted by her wicked husband : that abandoned man was to marry some- 
 body else : hence, bitter trials and grief, patience and virtue, for poor 
 little Caroline, and a melancholy ending — as how should it have been 
 gay ? The tale was interrupted at a sad period of the writer's own life. 
 The colors are long since dry ; the artistes hand is changed. It is best to 
 leave the sketch, as it was when first designed seventeen years ago. The 
 memory of the past is renewed as he looks at it — 
 
 die Bildcr fioher Tage 
 Und tnanchc Hebe Schatten stcigen auf 
 
 W. M. T. 
 
 London, April \oth, 1857. 
 
 Mr. Brandon, a principal character in this story, figures prom- 
 inently in "The Adventures of Philip," under his real name 
 of Brand Firmin ; Mrs. Brandon, his deserted wife, and hef 
 father, Mr. Gann, are also introduced ; therefore the " Shabby 
 Genteel Story " is now prefixed to " The Adventures of 
 Philip."
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 A SHABBY GENTEEL STORY. 
 
 CHAP. PAGB. 
 
 I 7 
 
 II. How Mrs. Gann received two Lodgers i8 
 
 III. A Shabby Genteel Dinner, and other Incidents of a 
 
 like Nature 28 
 
 IV, In which Mr. Fitch proclaims his Love, and Mr. Bran- 
 
 don prepares for War 42 
 
 V. Contains a great Deal of complicated Love-making 48 
 
 VI. Describes a Shabby Genteel Marriage and more Love- 
 making 62 
 
 VII. Which brings a great Number of People to Margate 
 
 by the Steamboat 69 
 
 VIII. Which treats of War and Love, and many Things that 
 
 are not to be understood in Chap. VII 75 
 
 IX Which threatens Death, but contains a great Deal of 
 
 Marrying 87 
 
 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILH^ 
 
 CHAP. PAGE. 
 
 I, Doctor Fell loi 
 
 II. At School and at Home no 
 
 III. A Consultation 119 
 
 IV. A Genteel Family 127 
 
 V. The Noble Kinsman I39 
 
 VI. Brandon's 1 55
 
 VI 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAP. PASS. 
 
 VII. Impletur Veteris Bacclii 167 
 
 VIII. Will be pronounced to be Cynical by the Benevo- 
 lent 182 
 
 IX. Contains one Riddle which is solved, and perhaps 
 
 some more 1 88 
 
 X. In which we visit " Admiral Byng" 198 
 
 XI. In which Philip is very ill-tempered 208 
 
 XII. Damocles 22? 
 
 XIII. Love me love my Dog 240 
 
 XIV. Contains twTD of Philip's Mishaps 252 
 
 XV. Samaritans 269 
 
 XVI. In which Philip shows his Mettle 276 
 
 XVII. Brevis esse Laboro 294 
 
 XVIII. Drum ist's so wohl mir in der Welt 304 
 
 XIX. Qu'on est bien a Vingt Ans 322 
 
 XX. Course of True Love 334 
 
 XXI. Treats of Dancing, Dining, Dying 349 
 
 XXII. Pulvis et Umbra sumus 367 
 
 XXIII. In which we still hover about the Elysian Fields.. . 376 
 
 XXIV. Nee dulces Amoressperne, Puer, neque tu Choreas. 393 
 
 XXV. Infandi Dolores 403 
 
 XXVI. Contains a Tug of War 418 
 
 XXVII. I charge you, Drop your Daggers 430 
 
 XXVIII. In which Mrs. MacWhirter "has a New Bonnet 443 
 
 XXIX. In the Departments of Seine, Loire, and Styx (In- 
 
 ferieur) 457 
 
 XXX. Returns to Old Friends 47i 
 
 XXXI. Narrates that Famous Joke about Miss Grigsby. . . 485 
 
 XXXII. Ways and Means : . . . 500 
 
 XXXIII. Describes a Situation interesting but not unex- 
 
 pected ... 509 
 
 XXXIV. In which I own that Philip tells an Untruth 517 
 
 XXXV. Res Angusta Domi . 535 
 
 XXXVI. In which the Drawing-rooms are not Furnished 
 
 after all 549 
 
 XXXVII. Nee plena Cruoris Hirudo. 562 
 
 XXXVIII. The Bearer of the Bowstring 574 
 
 XXXIX. In which several People have their Trials 589 
 
 XL. In which the Luck goes very much against us 595 
 
 XLI. In which we reach the Last Stage but one of this 
 
 Journey 6i(j 
 
 XLII. The Realms of Bliss 621
 
 SHABBY GENTEEL STORY. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 At that remarkable period when Louis XVHL was restored 
 a second time to the throne of his fathers, and all the English 
 who had money or leisure rushed over to the Continent, there 
 lived in a certain boarding-house at Brussels a genteel young 
 widow, who bore the elegant name of Mrs. Wellesley Macarty. 
 
 In the same house and room with the widow lived her 
 mamma, a lady who was called Mrs. Crabb. Both professed 
 to be rather fashionable people. The Crabbs were of a very 
 old English stock, and the Macartys were, as the world knows, 
 Country Cork people ; related to the Sheenys, Finnigans, 
 Clancys, and other distinguished families in their part of 
 Ireland. But Ensign Wellesley Mac, not having a shilling, ran 
 off with Miss Crabb, who possessed the same independence ; 
 and after having been married about six months to the lady, 
 was carried off suddenly, on the i8th of June, 1815, by a disease 
 very prevalent in those glorious times — the fatal cannon-shot 
 morbus. He, and many hundred young fellows of his regiment, 
 the Clonakilty Fencibles, were attacked by this epidemic on 
 the same day, at a place about ten miles from Brussels, and 
 there perished. The ensign's lady had accompanied her hus' 
 band to the Continent, and about five months after his death 
 brought into the world two remarkably fine female children. 
 
 Mrs. Wellesley's mother had been reconciled to her daughter 
 by this time — for, in truth, Mrs. Crabb had no other child but 
 her runaway Juliana, to whom she flew when she heard of her 
 destitute condition. And, indeed, it was high time that some 
 one should come to the young widow's aid ; for as her husband
 
 8 A SHABBY GENTEEL STOHV. 
 
 did not leave money, nor anything that represented money, 
 except a number of tailors' and bootmakers' bills, neatly 
 docketed, in his writing-desk, Mrs. Wellesley was in danger of 
 starvation, should no friendly person assist her. 
 
 Mrs. Crabb, then, came ofT to her daughter, whom the 
 Sheenys, Finnigans, and Clancys refused, with one scornful 
 voice, to assist. The fact is, that Mr. Crabb had once been 
 butler to a lord, and his lady a lady's-maid ; and at Crabb's 
 death, Mrs. Crabb disposed of the " Ram " hotel and posting- 
 house, where her husband had made three thousand pounds, 
 and was living in genteel ease in a country town, when Ensign 
 Macarty came, saw, and ran away with Juliana. Of such a 
 connection, it was impossible that the great Clancys and Fin- 
 nigans could take notice ; and so once more widow Crabb was 
 compelled to share with her daughter her small income of a 
 hundred and twenty a year. 
 
 Upon this, at a boarding-house in Brussels, the two managed 
 to live pretty smartly, and to maintain an honorable reputation. 
 The twins were put out, after the foreign fashion, to nurse, at a 
 village in the neighborhood ; for Mrs. Macarty had been too ill 
 to nurse them ; and Mrs. Crabb could not afford to purchase 
 that most expensive article, a private wet-nurse. 
 
 There had been numberless tiffs and quarrels between 
 mother and daughter when the latter was in her maiden state j 
 and Mrs. Crabb was, to tell the truth, in nowise sorrow when 
 her Jooly disappeared with the ensign, — for the old lady dearly 
 loved a gentleman, and was not a little flattered at being the 
 mother to Mrs. Ensign Macarty. Why ihe ensign should have 
 run away with his lady at all, as he might have had her for the 
 asking, is no business of ours ; nor are we going to rake up old 
 stories and village scandals, which insinuate that Miss Crabb 
 ran away with ///;«, for with these points the writer and the 
 reader have nothing to do. 
 
 Well, then, the reconciled mother and daughter lived once 
 more together, at Brussels. In the course of a year, Mrs. 
 Macarty's sorrow had much abated ; and having a great natural 
 love of dress, and a tolerably handsome face and person, she 
 was induced, without much reluctance, to throw her weeds aside, 
 and to appear in the most becoming and varied costumes which 
 her means and ingenuity could furnish. Considering, indeed, 
 the smallness of the former, it was agreed on all hands that 
 Mrs. Crabb and her daughter deserved wonderful credit, — 
 that is, they managed to keep up as respectable an appearance 
 as if they had five hundred a year ; and at church, at tea-parties.
 
 A SHABBY GENTEEL STORY. g 
 
 and abroad in the streets, to be what is called quite the gentle- 
 women. If they . starved at home, nobody saw it; if they 
 patched and pieced, nobody (it was to be hoped; knew it ; if 
 they bragged about their relations and property, could any one 
 say them nay ? Thus they lived, hanging on with desperate 
 energy to the skirts of genteel society; Mrs. Crabb, a sharp 
 woman, rather respected her daughter's superior rank ; and 
 Mrs. Macarty did not quarrel so much as heretofore with her 
 mamma, on whom herself and her two children were entirely 
 dependent. 
 
 While affairs were at this juncture, it happened that a 
 young Englishman, James Gann, Esq., of the great oil house of 
 Gann, Blubbery and Gann (as he took care to tell you before 
 you had been an hour in his company), — it happened, I say, 
 that James Gann, Esq., came to Brussels for a month, for the 
 purpose of perfecting himself in the French language ; and 
 while in that capital went to lodge at the very boarding-house 
 which contained Mrs. Crabb and her daughter. Gann was 
 young, weak, inflammable ; he saw and adored Mrs. Wellesley 
 Macarty ; and she, who was at this period all but engaged to a 
 stout old wooden-legged Scotch regimental surgeon, pitilessly 
 sent Dr. M'Lint about his business, and accepted the addresses 
 of Mr. Gann. How the young man arranged matters with his 
 papa the senior partner, I don't know ; but it is certain that 
 there was a quarrel, and afterwards a reconciliation ; and it is 
 also known that James Gann fought a duel with the surgeon, — 
 receiving the .Elsculapian fire, and discharging his own bullet 
 into the azure skies. About nine thousand times in the course 
 of his after-years did Mr. Gann narrate the history of the 
 combat ; it enabled him to go through life wdth the reputation 
 of a man of courage, and won for him, as he said with pride, 
 the hand of his Jutiana ; perhaps this was rather a questionable 
 benefit. 
 
 One part of the tale, however, honest James never did dare 
 to tell, except when peculiarly excited by wrath or liquor ; it 
 was this : that on the day after the wedding, and in the presence 
 of many friends who had come to offer their congratulations, a 
 stout nurse, bearing a brace of chubby little ones, made her 
 appearance ; and these rosy urchins, springing forward at the 
 sight of Mrs. James Gann, shouted affectionately, ^^ Mam an I 
 fnamanf" at which the lady, blushing rosy red, said, "James, 
 these two are yours ; " and poor James wellnigh fainted at this 
 sudden paternity so put upon him. " Children ! " screamed 
 he, aghast ; " whose children ? "' at which Mrs. Crabb, majesti-
 
 10 A Sr/ABBY GENTEEL STORY. 
 
 cally checking him, said, " These, my dear James, are the 
 daughters of the gallant and good Ensign Macarty, whose 
 widow you yesterday led to the altar. May you be happy with 
 her, and may these blessed ciiildren " (tears) " find in you a 
 father, who shall replace him that fell in the field of glory ! " 
 
 Mrs. Crabb, Mrs. James Gann, Mrs. Major Lolly, Mrs. 
 Piftier, and several ladies present, set up a sob immediately ; 
 and James Gann, a good-humored, soft-hearted man, was quite 
 taken aback. Kissing his lady hurriedly, he vowed that he 
 would take care of the poor little things, and proposed to kiss 
 them likewise ; which caress the darlings refused with many 
 roars. Gann's fate was sealed from that minute ; and he was 
 properly henpecked by his wife and mother-in-law during the 
 life of the latter. Indeed, it was to Mrs. Crabb that the strata- 
 gem of the infant concealment was due ; for when her daughter 
 innocently proposed to have or to see the children, the old lady 
 strongly painted out the folly of such an arrangement, which 
 might, perhaps, frighten away Mr. Gann from the delightful 
 matrimonial trap into which (lucky rogue !) he was about to 
 fall. 
 
 Soon after the marriage, the happy pair returned to Eng- 
 land, occupying the house in Thames Street, City, until the 
 death of Gann senior ; when his son, becoming head of the 
 firm of Gann and Elubbery, quitted the dismal precincts of 
 Billingsgate and colonized in the neighborhood of Putney \ 
 where a neat box, a couple of spare bedrooms, a good cellar, 
 and a smart gig to drive into and out from town, made a real 
 gentleman of him. Mrs. Gann treated him with much scorn, to 
 be sure, called him a sot, and abused hugely the male com- 
 panions that he brought down with him to Putney, Honest 
 James would listen meekly, would yield, and would bring down a 
 l^race more friends the next day, with whom he would discuss 
 his accustomed number of bottles of port. About this period, 
 a daughter was born to him, called Caroline Bradenburg Gann ; 
 so named after a large mansion near Hammersmith, and an 
 injured queen who lived there at the time of the little girl's 
 birth, and who was greatly compassioned and patronized by 
 Mrs. James Gann, and other ladies of distinction. Mrs. James 
 7oas a lady in those days, and gave evening-parties of the very 
 first order. 
 
 At this period of time, Mrs. James Gann sent the twins 
 Rosalind Clancy and Isabella Einnigan Wellesley Macarty, to 
 a boarding-school for young ladies, and grumbled much at the 
 amount of the half-vears' bills which her husband was called
 
 A SHABBY GENTEEL STORY. H 
 
 upon to pay for them ; for though James discharged them with 
 perfect good-humor, his lady began to entertain a mean opinion 
 indeed of her pretty young children. They could expect no 
 fortune, she said, from Mr. Gann, and she wondered that he 
 should think of bringing them up expensively, when he had a 
 darling child of his own, for whom he was bound to save all the 
 money that he could lay by. 
 
 Grandmamma, too, doted on the little Caroline Branden- 
 burg, and vowed that she would leave her three thousand pounds 
 to this dear infant ; for in this way does the world show its 
 respect for that most respectable thing prosperity. Who in 
 this life get the smiles, and the acts of friendship, and the pleas- 
 ing legacies ? — The rich. And I do, for my part, heartily wish 
 that some one would leave me a trifle — say twenty thousand 
 pounds — being perfectly confident that some one else would 
 leave me more ; and that I should sink into my grave worth a 
 plum at least. 
 
 Little Caroline then had her maid, her airy nursery, her 
 little carriage to drive in, the promise of her grandmamma's 
 consols, and that priceless treasure — her mamma's undivided 
 affection. Gann, too, loved her sincerely, in his careless, good- 
 humored way ; but he determined, notwithstanding, that his 
 step-daughters should have something handsome at his death, 
 but — but for a great But. 
 
 Gann and Blubbery were in the oil line, — have we not said 
 so ? Their profits arose from contracts for lighting a great 
 number of streets in London ; and about this period Gas came 
 into use. Gann and Blubbery appeared in the Gazette ; and, I 
 am sorry to say, so bad had been the management of Blubbery, 
 — so great the extravagance of both partners and their ladies, 
 — that they only paid their creditors fourteenpence halfpenny 
 in the pound. 
 
 When Mrs. Crabb heard of this dreadful accident — Mrs. 
 Crabb, who dined thrice a week with her son-in-law ; who never 
 would have been allowed to enter the house at all had not 
 honest James interposed his good nature between her quarrel- 
 some daughter and herself — Mrs. Crabb, I say, proclaimed 
 James Gann to be a swindler, a villain, a disreputable, tipsy, 
 vulgar man, and made over her money to the Misses Rosalind 
 Clancy and Isabella Finnigan Macarty ; leaving poor little 
 Caroline without one single maravedi. Half of one thousand 
 five hundred pounds allotted to each was to be paid at marriage, 
 the other half on the death of Mrs. James Gann, who was to 
 enjoy the interest thereof. Thus do we rise and fall in this
 
 12 A SHABBY GENTEEL STORY. 
 
 world — thus does P'ortune shake her swift whigs, and bid us 
 abruptly to resign the gifts (or rather loans) which we have had 
 from her. 
 
 How Gann and his family lived after their stroke of misfor- 
 tune, I know not ; but as the failing tradesman is going through 
 the process of bankruptcy, and for some months afterwards, it 
 may be remarked that he has usually some mysterious means of 
 subsistence — stray spars of the wreck of his property, on which 
 he manages to seize, and to float for a while. During his retire- 
 ment, in an obscure lodging in Lambeth, where the poor fellow 
 was so tormented by his wife as to be compelled to fly to the 
 public-house for refuge, Mrs. Crabb died ; a hundred a year 
 thus came into the possession of Mrs. Gann ; and some of 
 James's friends, who thought him a good fellow in his prosper- 
 ity, came forward, and furnished a house, in which they placed 
 him, and came to see and comfort him. Then they came to 
 see him not quite so often ; then they found out that Mrs. 
 Gann was a sad tyrant, and a silly woman ; then the ladies 
 declared her to be insupportable, and Gan/i to be a low, tipsy 
 fellow : and the gentlemen could but shake their heads, and 
 admit that the charge was true. Then they left off coming to 
 see him altogether ; for such is the way of the world, where 
 many of us have good impulses, and are generous on an occa- 
 sion, but are wearied by perpetual want, and begin to grow 
 angry at its importunities — being very properly vexed at the 
 daily recurrence of hunger, and the impudent unreasonableness 
 of starvation. Gann, then, had a genteel wife and children, a 
 furnished house, and a luindred pounds a year. How should 
 he live? The wife of James Gann, Esq., would never allow 
 him to demean himself by taking a clerk's place ; and James 
 himself, being as idle a fellow as ever was known, was fain to 
 acquiesce in this determination of hers, and to wait for some more 
 genteel employment. And a curious list of such genteel employ- 
 ments might be made out, were one inclined to follow this interest- 
 ing subject far ; shabby compromises with the world, into which 
 poor fellows enter, and still fondly talk of their " position,'' and 
 strive to imagine that they are really working for their bread. 
 
 Numberless lodging-houses are kept by the females, of fam- 
 ilies who have met with reverses : are not " l)oarding-houses, 
 with a select musical societ}-, in the neighborhood of the squares," 
 maintained by such .' Do not the gentlemen of the boarding 
 houses issue forth every morning to the City, or make believe 
 to go thither, on some mysterious business which they have ? 
 After a certain period, Mrs. James C}ann kept a lodging-house
 
 A SHABBY GENTEEL STORY. 13 
 
 (in her own words, received " two inmates into her family "), 
 and Mr, Gann had his mysterious business. 
 
 In the year 1835, when this story begins, there stood in a 
 certain back street in the town of Margate a house, on the door 
 of which might be read, in gleaming brass, the name of Mr. 
 Gann. It was the work of a single smutty servant-maid to 
 clean this brass plate every morning, and to attend, as far as 
 possible, to the wants of Mr. Gann, his family, and lodgers ; 
 and his house being not veiy far from the sea, and as you 
 might, by climbing up to the roof, get a sight, between two 
 chimneys, of that multitudinous element, Mrs. Gann set down 
 her lodgings as fashionable ; and declared on her cards that 
 her house commanded " a fine view of the sea." 
 
 On the wire window-blind of the parlor was written, in large 
 characters, the word Office; and here it was that Gann's 
 services came into play. He was very much changed, poor 
 fellow ! and humblecl ; and from two cards that hung outside 
 the blind, I am led to believe that he did not disdain to be 
 agent to the " London and Jamaica Ginger-Beer Company," 
 and also for a certain preparation called " Gaster's Infants' 
 Farinacio, or Mothers' Invigorating Substitute," — a damp, 
 black, mouldy, half-pound packet of which stood in permanence 
 at one end of the "office" mantel-piece; while a fly-blown 
 ginger-beer bottle occupied the other extremity. Nothing else 
 indicated that this ground-fioor chamber was an office, except a 
 huge black inkstand, in which stood a stumpy pen, richly crusted 
 with ink at the nib, and, to all appearance, for many montlis 
 enjoying a sinecure. 
 
 To this room you saw every day, at two o'clock, the employe 
 from the neighboring hotel bring two quarts of beer ; and if you 
 called at that hour, a tremendous smoke and smell of dinner 
 would gush out upon you from the " office," as you stumbled 
 over sundry battered tin dish-covers, which lay gaping at the 
 threshhold. Thus had that great bulwark of gentility, "the din- 
 ing at six o'clock, been broken in ; and the reader must there- 
 fore judge that the house of Gann was in a demoralized state. 
 
 Gann certainly was. After the ladies had retired to the 
 back-parlor (which, with yellow gauze round the frames, window 
 curtains, a red silk cabinet piano, and an album, was still toler- 
 ably genteel), Gann remained, to transact business in the oftice. 
 This took place in the presence of friends, and usually consisted 
 in the production of a bottle of gin from the corner cupboard, 
 or, mayhap, a litre of brandy, which was given by Gann with a 
 knowing wink, and a fat finger placed on a twinkling red nose ;
 
 14. A SHABBY GENTEEL STORY. 
 
 when Mrs. G. was out, James would also produce a number of 
 pipes, that gave this room a constant and agreeable odor of 
 shag tobacco. 
 
 In fact, Mr. Gann had nothing to do from morning till night. 
 He was now a fat, bald-headed man of fifty ; a dirty dandy on 
 week-days, with a shawl waistcoat, a tuft of hair to his great, 
 double-chin, a snuffy shirt-frill, and enormous breast-pin and 
 seals : he had a pilot-coat, with large mother-of-pearl buttons, 
 and always wore a great rattling telescope, with which he might 
 be seen for hours on the sea shore or the pier, examining the 
 ships, the bathing-machines, the ladies' schools as they paraded 
 up and down the esplanade, and all other objects which the 
 telescopic view might give him. He knew every person con- 
 nected with every one of the Deal and Dover coaches, and was 
 sure to be witness to the arrival or departure of several of 
 them in the course of the day ; he had a word for the ostler 
 about " that gray mare," a nod for the " shooter " or guard, and 
 a bow for the dragsman ; he could send parcels for nothing up 
 to town ; had twice had Sir Rumble Tumble (the noble driver 
 of the Flash-'o-lightning-light-four-inside-post-coach) "up at his 
 place," and took care to tell you that some of the party were 
 pretty considerably " sewn up," too. He did not frequent the 
 large hotels ; but in revenge he knew every person who entered 
 or left them ; and was a great man at the " Bag of Nails " and 
 the " Magpie and Punchbowl," where he was president of a 
 club ; he took the bass in " Mynheer Van Dunk," " The \\'olf," 
 and many other morsels of concerted song, and used to go 
 backwards and forwards to London in the steamers as often as 
 ever he liked, and have his " grub," too, on board. Such was 
 James Gann, Many people, when they wrote to him, addressed 
 him James Gann, Elsq. 
 
 His reverses and former splendors afforded a never-failing 
 theme of conversation to honest Gann and the whole of his 
 family ; and it may be remarked that such pecuniary misfor- 
 tunes, as they are called, are by no means misfortunes to people 
 of certain dispositions, but actual pieces of good luck. Gann, 
 for instance, used to drink liberally of port and claret, when the 
 house of Gann and Ijlubbery was in existence, and was hence^ 
 forth compelled to imbibe only brandy and gin. Now he loved 
 these a thousand times more tiian the wine ; and had the 
 advantage of talking about the latter, and of his great merit in 
 giving them up. In those prosperous days, too, being a gentle- 
 man, he could not frequent the public-house as he did at 
 present ; and the sanded tavern parlor was Gann's supreme
 
 A SHABBY GENTEEL STORY. 15 
 
 enjoyment. He was obliged to spend many hours daily in a 
 dark, unsavory room in an alley off Thames street ; and Gann 
 hated books and business, except of other people's. His tastes 
 were low; he loved public-house jokes and company ; and now 
 being fallen, was voted at the " Bag of Nails " and the " Magpie " 
 before mentioned a tip-top fellow and real gentleman, whereas 
 he had been considered an ordinary vulgar man by his fashion- 
 able associates at Putney. Many men are there who are made 
 to fall, and to profit by the tumble. 
 
 As for Mrs. G., or Jooly, as she was indifferently called by 
 her husband, she, too, had gained by her losses. She bragged 
 of her former acquaintances in the most extraordinary way, and 
 to hear her you would fancy that she was known to and con- 
 nected with half the peerage. Her chief occupation was taking 
 medicine, and mending and altering her gowns. She had a 
 huge taste for cheap finery, loved raffles, tea-parties, and walks 
 on the pier, where she flaunted herself and daughters as gay as 
 butterflies. She stood upon her rank, did not fail to tell her 
 lodgers that she was " a gentlewoman," and was mighty sharp 
 with Becky the maid, and poor Carry, her youngest child. 
 
 For the tide of affection had turned now, and the " Misses 
 Wellesley Macarty " were the darlings of their mother's heart, 
 as Caroline had been in the early days of Putney prosperity. 
 Mrs. Gann respected and lo\'ed her elder daughters, the stately 
 heiresses of 1,500/., and scorned poor Caroline, who was like- 
 wise scorned (like Cinderella in the sweetest of all stories) by 
 her brace of haughty, thoughtless sisters. These j^oung women 
 were tall, well-grown, black-browed girls, little scrupulous, fond 
 of fun, and having great health and spirits. Caroline was pale 
 and thin, and had fair hair and meek gray eyes ; nobody thought 
 her a beauty in her moping cotton gown ; whereas the sisters, 
 in flaunting printed muslins, with pink scarfs, and artificial 
 flowers, and brass fcrronnieres, and other fallals, were voted 
 very charming by the Ganns' circle of friends. They had pink 
 cheeks, white shoulders, and many glossy curls stuck about 
 their shining foreheads, as damp and as black as leeches. Such 
 charms, madam, cannot fail of having their effect ; and it was 
 ver}- lucky for Caroline that she did not possess them, for she 
 might have been rendered as vain, frivolous, and vulgar, as 
 these young ladies were. 
 
 While these enjoyed their pleasures and tea-parties abroad, 
 it was Carry's usual fate to remain at home, and help the ser- 
 vant in many duties which were required in Mrs. Gann's 
 establishment. She dressed that lady and her sisters, brought
 
 l6 A SHABBY GENTEEL STORY. 
 
 her papa his tea in bed, kept the lodgers' bills, bore their scold- 
 ings if they were ladies, and sometimes gave a hand in the 
 kitchen if any extra piecrust or cookery was required. At two 
 she made a little toilet for dinner, and was employed on num- 
 l)erless household darnings and mendings in the long even- 
 ings, while her sisters giggled over the jingling piano, mamma 
 sprawled on the sofa, and Gann was over his glass at the club. 
 A wear)^ lot, in sooth, was yours, poor little Caroline ! since the 
 days of your infancy, not one hour of sunshine, no friendship, 
 no cheery playfellows, no mother's love ; but that being dead, 
 the affections which would have crept round it, withered and 
 died too. Only James Gann, of all the household, had a good- 
 natured look for her, and a coarse word of kindness ; nor, in- 
 deed, did Caroline complain, nor shed many tears, nor call for 
 death, as she would if she had been brought up in genteeler 
 circles. The poor thing did not know her own situation ; her 
 misery was dumb and patient ; it is such as thousands and 
 thousands of women in our society bear, and pine, and die of \ 
 made up of sums of small tyrannies, and long indifference, and 
 bitter wearisome injustice, more dreadful to bear than any 
 tortures that we of the stronger sex are pleased to zxy AW A\\ 
 about. In our intercourse with the world (which is conducted 
 with that kind of cordiality that we see in Sir Harry and my 
 lady in a comedy — a couple of painted, grinning fools, talking 
 parts that they have learned out of a book,) — as we sit and 
 look at the smiling actors, we get a glimpse behind the scenes 
 from time to time ; and alas for the wretched nature that 
 appears there ! — among women especially, who deceive even 
 more than men, having more to hide, feeling more, living more 
 than we who have our business, pleasure, ambition, which 
 carries us abroad. Ours are the great strokes of misfortune, 
 as they are called, and theirs the small miseries. While the 
 male thinks, labors, and battles without, the domestic woes 
 and wrongs are the lot of the women ; and the little ills are so 
 bad, so infinitely fiercer and bitterer than the great, that I would 
 not change my condition — no, not to be Helen, Queen Eliza- 
 beth, Mrs. Coutts, or the luckiest she in history. 
 
 Well, then, in the manner we ha\e described lived the Gann 
 family. Mr. Gann all the better for his " misfortunes," Mrs. 
 Gann little the worse ; the two young ladies greatly improved 
 by the circumstances, having been cast thereby into a society 
 where their expected three thousand pounds made great 
 heiresses of them ; and poor Caroline, as luckless a being as 
 any that the wide sun shone upon. Better to be alone in the
 
 A SHABBY GENTEEL STOA'V. 
 
 17 
 
 world and utterly friendless, than to have sham friends and no 
 sympathy ; ties of kindred which bind one as it were to the 
 corpse of relationship, and oblige one to bear through life the 
 weight and the embraces of this lifeless, cold connection. 
 
 I do not mean to say that Caroline would ever have made 
 use of this metaphor, or suspected that her connection with her 
 mamma and sisters was anything so loathsome. She felt that 
 she was ill-treated, and had no companion ; but was not on that 
 account envious, only humble and depressed, not desiring so 
 much to resist as to bear injustice, and hardly venturing to 
 think for herself. This tyranny and humility served her in place 
 of education, and formed her manners, which were wonderfully 
 gentle and calm. It was strange to see such a person growing 
 up in such a family ; the neighbors spoke of her with much 
 scornful compassion. " A poor half-witted thing," they said, 
 " who would not say bo ! to a goose ; " and I think it is one 
 good test of gentility to be thus looked down on by vulgar 
 people. 
 
 It is not to be supposed that the elder girls had reached their 
 present age without receiving a number of offers of marriage, 
 and been warmly in love a great many times. But many un- 
 fortunate occurrences had compelled them to remain in their 
 virgin condition. There was an attorney who had proposed to 
 Rosalind ; but finding that she would receive only 750/. down, 
 instead of 1500/., the monster had jilted her pitilessly, handsome 
 as she was. An apothecary, too, had been smitten by her 
 charms ; but to live in a shop was beneath the dignity of a 
 Wellesley Macarty, and she waited for better things. Lieuten- 
 ant Swabber, of the coast-guard service, had lodged two months 
 at Gann's ; and if letters, long w^alks, and town-talk could settle 
 a match, a match between him and Isabella must have taken 
 place. Well, Isabella was not married ; and the lieutenant, a 
 colonel in Spain, seemed to have given up all thoughts of her. 
 She meanwhile consoled herself with a gay young wine-merchant, 
 who had lately established himself at Brighton, kept a gig, rode 
 out with the hounds, and was voted perfectly genteel ; and there 
 was a certain French marquess, with the most elegant black 
 mustaches, who had made a vast impression upon the heart of 
 Rosalind, having met her first at the circulating library, and 
 afterwards, by the most extraordinary series of chances, 
 coming upon her and her sister daily in their walks upon 
 the pier. 
 
 Meek little Caroline, meanwhile, trampled upon though she 
 was, was springing up to womanhood ; and though pale, freckled 
 
 2
 
 l8 A SHABBY GENTEEL STORY. 
 
 thin, meanly dressed, had a certain charm about lier which some 
 people might prefer to the cheap splendors and rude red and 
 white of tlie Misses Macarty. In fact we have now come to a 
 period of her history when, to the amaze of her mamma and 
 sisters, and not a little to the satisfaction of James Gann, Esquire, 
 she actually inspired a passion in the breast of a very respectable 
 young man. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 HOW MRS. GANN RECEIVED TWO LODGERS. 
 
 It was the winter season when the events recorded in this 
 history occurred ; and as at that period not one out of a thou- 
 sand lodging-houses in Margate are let, Mrs. Gann, who generally 
 submitted to occupy her own first and second floors during this 
 cheerless season, considered herself more than ordinarily lucky 
 when circumstances occurred which brought no less than two 
 lodgers to her establishment. 
 
 She had to thank her daughters for the first inmate ; for, as 
 these two young ladies were walking one day down their own 
 street, talking of the joys of the last season, and the delight of 
 the raffles and singing at the libraries, and the intoxicating 
 pleasures of the Vauxhall balls, they were remarked and 
 evidently admired by a young gentleman who was sauntering 
 listlessly up the street. 
 
 He stared, and it must be confessed that the fascinatinggirls 
 stared too, and put each other's head into each other's bonnet, 
 and giggled and said, " Lor ! " and then looked hard at the 
 young gentlemen again. Their eyes were black, their cheeks 
 were very red. Fancy how Miss Bella's and Miss Linda's 
 hearts beat when the gentleman, dropping his glass out of his 
 eye, actually stepped across the street, and said, " Ladies, I am 
 seeking for lodgings, and should be glad to look at those which 
 I see are to let in your house." 
 
 " How did the conjuror know it was our house "i " thought 
 Bella and Linda (they always thought in couples). From the 
 very simple fact that Miss Bella had just thrust into the door a 
 latch-key. 
 
 Most bitterly did Mrs. James Gann regret that she had not
 
 A SHABBY GENTEEL STORY. 
 
 19 
 
 on her best gown when a stranger — a stranger in February — 
 actually called to look at the lodgings. She made up, however, 
 for the slovenliness of her dress by the dignity of her demeanor ; 
 and asked the gentleman for references, informed him that she 
 was a gentlewoman, and that he would have peculiar advan- 
 tages in her establishment ; and finally, agreed to receive him 
 at the rate of twenty shillings per week. The bright eyes of the 
 young ladies had done the business ; but to this day Mrs. James 
 Gann is convinced that her peculiar dignity of manner, and 
 great fluency of brag regarding her family, have been the means 
 of bringing hundreds of lodgers to her house, who but for lier 
 would never have visited it. 
 
 " Gents," said Mr. James Gann, at the " Bag of Nails " that 
 very evening, " we have got a new lodger, and I'll stand glasses 
 round to his jolly good health !"' 
 
 The new lodger, who was remarkable for nothing except 
 very black eyes, a sallow face, and a habit of smoking cigars in 
 bed until noon, gave his name George Brandon, Esq. As to 
 liis temper and habits, when"humbly requested by Mrs. Gann to 
 pay in advance, he laughed and presented her with a bank-note, 
 never quarrelled with a single item in her bills, walked much, 
 and ate two mutton-chops per diem. The young ladies, who 
 examined all the boxes and letters of the lodgers, as young 
 ladies will, could not find one single document relative to their 
 new inmate, except a tavern-bill of the '* White Hart," to which 
 the name of George Brandon, Esquire, was prefixed. Any 
 other papers which might elucidate his history, were locked up 
 in a Bramah box, likewise marked G. B. ; and though these 
 were but unsatisfactory points by which to judge a man's char- 
 acter, there was a something about Mr. Brandon which caused 
 all the ladies at Mrs. Gann's to vote he was quite a gentleman. 
 
 When this was the case, I am happy to say it would not un- 
 frequently happen that Miss Rosalind or Miss Isabella would 
 appear in the lodger's apartments, bearing in the breakfast-cloth, 
 or blushingly appearing with the weekly bill, apologizing for 
 mamma's absence, " and hoping that everything was to the 
 gentleman's liking." 
 
 Both the Misses Wellesley Macarty took occasion to visit 
 Mr. Brandon in this manner, and he received both with such a 
 fascinating ease and gentleman-like freedom of manner, scan- 
 ning their points from head to foot, and fixing his great black 
 eyes so earnestly on their faces, that the blushing creatures 
 turned away abashed, and yet pleased, and had many conver- 
 sations about him.
 
 20 A SHABBY GENTEEL STORY. 
 
 " Law, Bell," said Miss Rosalind, "what a chap that Bran 
 don is ! I don't half like him, I do declare ! " Than which 
 there can be no greater compliment from a woman to a man. 
 
 "No more do I neither," says Bell. "The man stares so, 
 and says such things ! Just now, when Becky brought his paper 
 and sealing-wax — the silly girl brought black and red too — I 
 took them up to ask whicli he would ha\e, and what du you 
 think he said .? " 
 
 "Well, dear, what?" said Mrs. Gann. 
 
 " * Miss Bell,' says he, looking at me, and with such eyes ! 
 ' I'll keep everything: the red wax, because it's like your lips; 
 the black wax, because it's like your hair ; and the satin paper, 
 because it's like your skin ! ' Wasn't it genteel } " 
 
 " Law, now I " exclaimed Mrs. Gann. 
 
 " Upon my word, 1 think it's very rude ! " said Miss Lindy ; 
 " and if he'd said so to me, I'd have slapped his face for his 
 imperence ! " And much to her credit. Miss Lindy went to 
 his room ten minutes after to see if he luoiihl say anything to her. 
 What Mr. Brandon said, I never knew ; but the little pang of 
 envy which had caused Miss Lindy to retort sharply upon lier 
 sister, had given place to a pleased good-humor, and she al- 
 lowed Bella to talk about the new lodger as much as ever she 
 liked. 
 
 And now if the reader is anxious to know what was Mr. 
 Brandon's character, he had better read the following letter 
 from him. It was addressed to no less a person than a vis- 
 count ; and given, perhaps, with some little ostentation to 
 Becky, the maid, to carry to the post. Now Becky, before she 
 executed such errands, always showed the letters to her mis- 
 tress or one of the young ladies (it must not be supposed that 
 Miss Caroline was a whit less curious on these matters than her 
 sisters) ; and when the family beheld the name of Lord Vis- 
 count Cinqbars upon the superscription, their respect for their 
 lodger was greater than ever it had been : — 
 
 " Margate, February, 1835. 
 " My DEAR Viscount, — For a reason I have, on coming down to Margate, I with niuch 
 gravity informed the people of the ' White Hart' that my name was llrandon. and intend 
 to l)(_nr that lionorable appL-llatioii during my stay. For the same reason (I am a modest 
 man, and love to do good in secret), I left the iniblic hotel immediately, and am now 
 lioused in private lodgings, humble, and at a humbie jirice. 1 am here, thank heaven, quite 
 alone. Robinson Crusoe had as much society in his island, as I in this of Thanet. In 
 compensation I sleep a great deal, do nothing, and walk much, silent, by the side of the 
 roaring sea, like Calchas, priest of Apollo. 
 
 "The fact is, that until papa's wrath is appeased. I must live with the utmost meekness 
 and humility, and have barely enough money in my possession to jiay such small current 
 expenses as fall on me here, where strangers are many and credit does not exist. 1 pray 
 you, therefore, to tell Mr. Snipson the tailor, Mr. Jackson the bootmaker, honest Solomon- 
 son the discoimter of bills, and all such friends in London and Oxford as may make in. 
 quiries after me, that I am at this very moment at the city of Munich in Bavaria, from
 
 A SHABBY GENTEEL STORY. j, 
 
 which I sliall not return until my marriage with Miss Goldmore, the great Indian heiress; 
 who, upon my honor, will have me, I believe, any clay for the asking. 
 
 " Nothing else will satisfy my honored father, I know, whose i)urse has already bled 
 pretty freely for me, I must confess, and who has taken the great oath that never is broken, 
 to bleed no more unless this marriage is brought about. Come it must. I can't work, I 
 can't starve, and I can't live under a thousand a year. 
 
 " Here, to be sure, the charges are not enormous ; for your edification, read my week's 
 bill :- 
 
 ' George Brandon, Esquire, 
 
 ' To Mrs. James Gann. 
 
 £. s. d. 
 
 A week's lodging i o o 
 
 Breakfast, cream, eggs 090 
 
 Dinner (fourteen mutton-chops) . . . o 10 6 
 
 Fire, boot-cleaning, &c 036 
 
 £2 3 
 
 'Settled, Juliana Gann. 
 
 "Juliana Gann ! Is it not a sweet name? it sprawls over half the paper. Could you 
 but see the owner of the name, my dear fellow! I love to examine the customs of natives 
 of all countries, and upon my word there are some barbarians in our own less known, and 
 more worthy of being known, than Hottentots, wild Irish, Otaheiteans, or any such sav- 
 ages. If you could see the airs that this woman gives herself ; the rouge, ribands, rings, 
 and other female gimcracks that she wears ; if you could hear her reminiscences of past 
 times, 'when she and Mr. Gann moved in the very genteelest circles of society ; ' of the 
 peerage, which she knows by heart ; and of the fashionable novels, in every word of which 
 she believes, you would be proud of your order, and admire the intense respect which thi 
 canaille show towards it. There never was such an old woman, not even our tutor at 
 Christchurch. 
 
 "There is a he Gann, a vast, bloated old man, in a rough coat, who has met me once, 
 and asked me, with a grin, if my mutton-chops was to my liking? The satirical monster! 
 What can I eat in this place but mutton-chops? A great bleeding beef-steak, or a filthy, 
 x^e\s\vi^ gigot a Veau, with a turnip poultice ? I should die if 1 did. As for fish in a watering- 
 place, I never touch it ; it is sure to be bad. Nor care I for little sinewy, dry, black-legged 
 fowls. Cutlets are my only resource ; I have them nicely enough broiled by a little humble 
 companion of the family (a companion, ye gods, in this family!), who blushed hugely when 
 she confessed that the cooking was hers, and that her name was Caroline. For drink I in- 
 dulge in gin, of which I consume two wine-glasses daily, in two tumblers of cold water ; it 
 is the only liquor that one can be sure to find genuine in a common house in England. 
 
 "This Gann, I take it, has similar likings, for I hear him occasionally at midnight 
 floundering up the stairs (his boots lie dirty in the passage) — floimdering, I say, up the 
 stairs, and cursing the candlestick, whence escape now and anon the snuffers and extin- 
 guisher, and with brazen rattle disturb the silence of the night. Thrice a week, at least, 
 does Gann breakfast in bed — sure sign of pridian intoxication ; and thrice a week, in the 
 morning, I hear a hoarse voice roaring for ' my soda-water.' How long have the rogues 
 drunk soda-water ? 
 
 ' At nine, Mrs. Gann and daughters are accustomed to breakfast ; a handsome pair of 
 girls, truly, and much followed, as I hear, in the quarter. These dear creatures are always 
 j^aying me visits — visits with the tea-kettle, visits with the newspaper (one brings it, and 
 one comes for it) ; but the one is always at the other's heels, and so one cannot show one- 
 self to be that dear, gay seducing fellow that one has been, at home and on the Continent. 
 Do you remember ceite chere margitise at Pan? That cursed conjugal pistol-bullet still 
 plays the deuce with my shoulder. Do you remember Betty Bundy, the butcher's 
 daughter? A pretty race of fools are we to go mad after such women, and risk all — oaths, 
 prayers, promises, long wearisome courtships — for what ? — for vanity, truly. When the 
 battle is over, behold your conquest ! Betty Bundy is a vulgar country wench ; and cctte 
 belle ■>narquise is old, rouged, and has false hair. Vanitas vanitatunt ! what a moral man 
 I will be some day or other! 
 
 " I have found an old acquaintance (and be hanged to him !), who has come to lodge in 
 this very house. Do you recollect at Rome a young artist. Fitch by name, the handsome 
 gaby with the large beard, that mad Mrs. Carrickfergus was doubly mad about ? On the 
 second floor of Mrs. Gann's house dwells this youth- His beard brings the gamins of the 
 streets trooping and yelling about him ; his fine braided coats have grown somewhat 
 shabby now ; and the poor fellow is, like your humble servant (by the way, have you a 500 
 franc billet to spare?) — like your humble servant, I say, very low in pocket. The young 
 Andrea bears up gayly, however ; twangles his guitar, paints the worst pictures in the
 
 22 ^ SHABBY GENTEEL STORY. 
 
 world, and pens sonnets to liis imaginary mistress's eyebrow. Luckily the rogue did not 
 kn<iw my name, or I should have been compelled to unbosom to him ; and wlien I called 
 out to him, dubious as to my name, ' Don't you know me ? I met you in Rome. My name 
 is lirandon,' the painter was jjerfcctly satisfied, and majestically bade me welcome. 
 
 " Fancy the continence of this young Joseph — he has absolutely run away from Mrs. 
 Carrickfergus! 'Sir,' said he, with some hesitation and blushes, when I questioned him 
 about the widow, ' I was compelled to leave Rome in consequence of the fatal fondness of 
 that woman. I am an 'andsome man, sir — I know it — all the chaps in the Academy want 
 me for a model ; and that woman, sir, is sixty. Do you think 1 would ally myself with 
 her; sacrifice my happiness for the sake of a creature that's as hugly as an 'arpy ? I'd 
 rather starve, sir. I'd rather give up my hart and my 'opes of rising in it than do a haction 
 »o dis/zA/j/jonorable.' 
 
 "There is a stock of virtue for you! and the poor fellow half-starved. He lived at 
 Rome upon the seven portraits that the Carrickfergus ordered of him, and, as I fancy, now 
 does not make twenty pounds in a year, () rare chastity! O wondrous silly hopes ! O 
 tnotus ajiiiiwrutii, atqiie O ccrtaiitiiia tan/ii! — filthier is exigiii j'actn, in such an insignifi- 
 cant little lump of mud as this! Why the deuce does not the fool marry the widow? His 
 betters would. There was a captain of dragoons, an Italian prince, and four sons of Irisli 
 peers, all at her feet ; but the Cockney's beard and whiskers have overcome them all. 
 Here my paper has come to an end ; and I have the honour to bid your lordshiu-a respect- 
 ful farewell. / 
 
 "G. B." 
 
 Of the young gentleman who goes hy the name of Brandon, 
 the reader of the above letter will not be so misguided, we 
 trust as to have a very exalted opinion. The noble viscount 
 read this document to a supper-party in Christchurch, in 0.\- 
 ford, and left it in a bowl of milk-punch ; whence a scout ab- 
 stracted it, and handed it over to us. My lord was twenty 
 years of age when he received the epistle, and had spent a 
 couple of years abroad, before going to the university, under 
 the guardianship of the worthy individual who called himself 
 George Brandon. 
 
 Mr. Brandon was the son of a half-pay colonel, of good 
 family, who, honoring the great himself, thought his son would 
 vastly benefit by an acquaintance with them, and sent him to 
 Eton, at cruel charges upon a slender purse. From Eton the 
 lad went to Oxford, took honors there, frequented the best 
 society, followed with a kind of proud obsequiousness all the 
 tufts of the university, and left it owing exactly two thousand 
 pounds. I'hen there came storms at home; fury on the part of 
 the stern old "governor; " and final payment of the debt. But 
 while this settlement was pending. Master George had contract- 
 ed many more debts among bill-discounters, and was glad to 
 fly to the Continent as tutor to young Lord Cinqbars, in whose 
 company he learned every one of the vices in Europe ; and 
 having a good natural genius, and a heart not unkindly, had 
 used these qualities in such admirable manner as to be at 
 twenty-seven utterly ruined in i)urse and principle — an idkr, a 
 spendthrift, and a glutton. He was free of his money : would 
 spend his last guinea for a sensual gratification ; would borrow 
 from his neediest friend ; had no kind of conscience or remorse
 
 A SHABBY GEJVTEE/. STORY. 23 
 
 left, but believed himself to be a good-natured devil-may-care 
 fellov/ : had a good deal of wit, and indisputably good man- 
 ners, and a pleasing, dashing frankness in conversation with 
 men. I should like to know how many such scoundrels our 
 universities have turned out ; and how much ruin has been 
 caused by that accursed system which is called in England 
 "the education of a gentleman." Go, my son, for ten years to 
 a public school, that " world in miniature ; " " learn to fight for 
 yourself " against the time when your real struggles shall begin. 
 Begin to be selfish at ten years of age ; study for other ten 
 years ; get a competent knowledge of boxing, swimming, row- 
 ing, and cricket, with a pretty knack of Latin hexameters and 
 a decent smattering of Greek plays, — do this and a fond father 
 shall bless you — bless the two thousand povuids which he has 
 spent in acquiring all these benefits for you. And, besides, 
 what else have you not learned .'' You have been many hun- 
 dreds of times to chapel, and have learned to consider the re- 
 ligious service performed there as the vainest parade in the 
 world. If your father is a grocer, you have been beaten for 
 his sake, and have learned to be ashamed of him. You have 
 learned to forget (as how should you remember, being separ- 
 ated from them for three-fourths of your time ?) the ties and 
 natural affections of home. You have learned, if you have a 
 kindly heart and an open hand, to compete with associates 
 much more wealthy than yourself ; and to consider money as 
 not much, but honor — the honor of dining and consorting with 
 your betters — as a great deal. All this does the public-school 
 and college boy learn ; and woe be to his knowledge ! Alas, 
 what natural tenderness and kindly clinging filial affection is he 
 taught to trample on and despise ! My friend Brandon had gone 
 through this process of education, and had been irretrievably 
 ruined by it — his heart and his honesty had been ruined 
 by it, that is to say ; and he had received, in return for them, 
 a small quantity of classics and mathematics — pretty compen- 
 sation for all he had lost in gaining them ! 
 
 But I am wandering most absurdly from the point ; right 
 or wrong, so nature and education had formed Mr. Brandon, 
 who is one of a considerable class. Well, this young gentle- 
 man was established at Mrs. Gann's house ; and we are obliged 
 to enter into all these explanations concerning him, because 
 they are necessary to the right understanding of our story — • 
 Brandon not being altogether a bad man, nor much worse than 
 many a one who goes through a course of regular selfish swind- 
 ling all his life long, and dies religious, resigned, proud of him-
 
 24 
 
 A SHABBY GENTEEL STORY. 
 
 self, and universally respected by others ; for this eminent 
 advantage has the getling-and-keeping scoundrel over the ex- 
 travagant and careless one. 
 
 One day, then, as he was gazing from the window of his 
 lodging-house, a cart, containing a vast number of easels, port- 
 folios, wooden cases of jDictures, and a small carpet-bag that 
 might hold a change of clothes, stopped at the door. The 
 vehicle was accompanied by a remarkable young fellow — dressed 
 in a frock-coat covered over with frogs, a dirty turned-down 
 shirt-collar, with a blue satin cravat, and a cap placed wonder- 
 fully on one ear — who had evidently hired apartments at Mr. 
 Gann's. This new lodger was no other than Mr. Andrew Fitch ; 
 or, as he wrote on his cards, without the prefix, 
 
 Andrea Fitch. 
 
 Preparations had been made at Gann's for the reception of 
 Mr. Fitch, whose aunt (an auctioneer's lady in the town) had 
 made arrangements that he should board and lodge with the 
 Gann family, and have the apartments on the second floor as 
 his private rooms. In these, then, young Andrea was installed. 
 He was a youth of a poetic temperament, loving solitude ; and 
 where is such to be found more easily than on the storm-washed 
 shores of Margate in the winter ? Then the boarding-house keep- 
 ers have shut up their houses and gone away in anguish ; then 
 the taverns take their carpets up, and you can have your choice 
 of a hundred and twenty beds in any one of them ; then but one 
 dismal waiter remains to superintend this vast echoing pile of 
 loneliness, and the landlord pines for summer ; then the flys 
 for Ramsgate stand tenantless beside the pier ; and about four 
 sailors, in pea-jackets, are to be seen in the three principal 
 streets ; in tlie rest, silence, closed shutters, torpid chimneys 
 enjoying their unnatural winter sinecure — not the clack of a 
 patten echoing over the cold dry flags ! 
 
 This solitude had been chosen by Mr. Brandon for good 
 reasons of his own ; Gann and his family would haVe fled, but 
 that they had no otlier house wherein to take refuge ; and Mrs. 
 Hammerton, the auctioneer's lady, felt so keenly the kindness 
 which slie was doing to Mrs. Gann, in providing her with a 
 lodger at such a period, that she considered herself fully justi- 
 fied in extracting from the latter a bonus of two guineas,
 
 A SHABBY GEXTF.EL STORY. 
 
 25 
 
 threatening on refusal to send her darUng nephew to a rival 
 establishment over the way. 
 
 Andrea was here then, in the loneliness that he loved, — a 
 fantastic youth, who lived but for his art ; to whom the world 
 was like the Coburg Theatre, and he in a magnificent costume 
 acting a principal part. His art, and his beard and whiskers, 
 were the darlings of his heart. His long pale hair fell over a 
 high polished brow, which looked wonderfully thoughtful ; and 
 yel no man was more guiltless of thinking. He was always 
 putting himself into attitudes ; he never spoke the truth ; and 
 was so entirely affected and absurd, as to be quite honest at 
 last : for it is my belief that the man did not know truth from 
 falsehood any longer, and was when he was alone, when he 
 was in company, nay, when he was unconscious and sound 
 asleep snoring in bed, one complete lump of affectation. When 
 his apartments on the second floor w^ere arranged according to 
 his fancy, they made a tremendous show. He had a large 
 Gothic chest, in which he put his wardrobe (namely, two 
 velvet waistcoats, four varied satin under ditto, two pairs 
 braided trousers, two shirts, half-a-dozen false collars, and a 
 couple of pairs of dreadfully dilapidated Blucher boots). He 
 had some pieces of armor ; some China jugs and Venetian 
 glasses ; some bits of old damask rags, to drape his doors 
 and windows ; and a rickety lay figure, in a Spanish hat and 
 cloak, over which slung a long Toledo rapier, and a guitar, 
 with a ribbon of dirty sky-blue. 
 
 Such was our poor fellow's stock in trade. He had some 
 volumes of poems — " Lalla Rookh," and the sterner composi- 
 tions of Byron : for, to do him justice, he hated " Don Juan," 
 and a woman was in his eyes an angel ; a /;angel, alas ! he 
 would call her, for nature and the circumstances of his family 
 had taken sad Cockney advantages over Andrea's pronunciation. 
 
 The Misses Wellesley Macarty were not, however, very 
 squeamish with regard to grammar, and, in this dull season, 
 voted Mr. Fitch an elegant young fellow. His immense beard 
 and whiskers gave them the highest opinion of his genius ; and 
 before long the intimacy between the young people was con- 
 siderable, for Mr. Fitch insisted upon drawing the portraits of 
 the whole family. He painted Mrs. Gann in her rouge and 
 ribbons, as described by Mr. Brandon ; Mr. Gann, who said 
 that his picture would be very useful to the artist, as every soul 
 in Margate knew him ; and the Misses Macarty (a neat group, 
 representing Miss Bella embracing Miss Linda, who was point- 
 ing to a pianoforte).
 
 2 6 A SHABBY GENTEEL STORY. 
 
 '■ I suppose you'll do my Carry next? " said IMr. Gann, ex 
 pressing his approbalion of llie last picture. 
 
 " Law, sir," said Miss Linda, " Carry, with her red hair ! — • 
 it would be ojiis." 
 
 " Mr. Fitch might as well paint Becky, our maid," said Miss 
 Bella. 
 
 "Carry is quite impossible, Gann," said ]\trs. Gann ; "she 
 hasn't a gown fit to be seen in. She's not been at church for 
 thirteen Sundays in consequence." 
 
 " And more shame for you, ma'am," said Mr. Gann, who 
 liked his child ; " Carry s/ur// have a gown, and the best of 
 gowns." And jingling three and twenty shillings in his pocket, 
 Mr. Gann determined to spend them all in the purchase of a 
 robe for Carry. But alas, the gown never came ; half the money 
 was spent that very evening at the " Bag of Nails." 
 
 " Is that — that young lady, your daughter ? " said Mr. Fitch, 
 surprised, for he fancied Carry was a humble companion of the 
 family. 
 
 " Yes, she is, and a very good daughter, too, sir," answered 
 Mr. Gann. J^^eU/i and Carry 1 call her, or else Carryvan — she's 
 so useful. Ain't you. Carry ? " 
 
 " Fm very glad if I am, papa," said the young lady, who 
 was blushing violently, and in whose presence all this conver- 
 sation had been carried on. 
 
 " Hold your tongue. Miss," said her mother ; "you are very 
 expensive tons, that you are, and need not brag about the work 
 you do. You would not live on charity, would you, like some 
 folks } " (here she looked fiercely at Mr. Gann) " and if your 
 sisters and me starve to keep you and some folks, I presume 
 you are bound to make us some return." 
 
 When any allusion was made to Mr. Gann's idleness and 
 extravagance, or his lady showed herself in any way inclined to 
 be angry, it was honest James's habit not to answer, but to take 
 his hat and walk abroad to the public house ; or if haply she 
 scolded him at night, he would turn his back and fall a-snoring. 
 These were the only remedies he found for Mrs. James's bad 
 temper, and the first of them he adopted on hearing these words 
 of his lady, which we have just now transcribed. 
 
 Poor Caroline had not her father's refuge of flight, but was 
 obliged to stay and listen ; and a wondrous eloquence, God 
 wot ! had Mrs. Gann upon the subject of her daughter's ill- 
 conduct. The first lecture Mr. Fitch heard, he set down Caro- 
 line for a monster. Was she not idle, sulky, scornful, and a 
 sloven ? For these and many more of her daughter's vices Mrs.
 
 A SHABBY GENTEEL STORY. 
 
 27 
 
 Gann vouched, declaring that Caroline's misbehavior was has- 
 tening her own death, and finishing by a fainting-fit. In the 
 presence of all these charges, there stood Miss Caroline, dumb, 
 stupid, and careless ; nay, when the fainting-fit came on, and 
 Mrs. Gann fell back on the sofa, the unfeeling girl took the 
 opportunity to retire, and never offered to smack her mamma's 
 hands, to give her the smelling-bottle, or to restore her with a 
 glass of water. 
 
 One stood close at hand ; for Mr. Fitch, when this first fit 
 occurred, was sitting in the Gann parlor, painting that lady's 
 portrait ; and he was making towards her with this tumbler, 
 when Miss Linda cried out, '" Stop! the water's full of paint ;" 
 and straightway burst out laughing. Mrs. Gann jumped up at 
 this, cured suddenly, and left the room, looking somewhat fool- 
 ish. 
 
 " You don't know Ma," said Miss Linda, still giggling ; 
 " she's always fainting." 
 
 " Poor thing ! " cried Fitch ; " very nervous, I suppose ! " 
 
 " Oh, very ! " answered the lady, exchanging arch glances 
 with Miss Bella. 
 
 " Poor dear lady 1 " continued the artist ; " I pity her from 
 my hinmost soul. Doesn't the himmortal bard of Havon ob- 
 serve, how sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thank- 
 less child.? And is it true, ma'am, that that young woman has 
 been the ruin of her family ? " 
 
 " Ruin of her fiddlestick ! " replied Miss Bella. " Law, 
 INIr. Fitch, you don't know Ma yet ; she is in one of her tan- 
 
 trums." 
 
 " What, then, it isn'f true ? " cried simple-minded Fitch. 
 To which neither of the young ladies made any answer in 
 words, nor could the little artist comprehend why they looked 
 at each other, and burst out laughing. But he retired ponder- 
 ing on what he had seen and heard ; and being a very soft 
 young fellow, most implicitly believed the accusations of poor 
 dear Mrs. Gann, and thought her daughter Caroline was no 
 better than a Regan or Goneril. 
 
 A time, however, was to come when he should believe her to 
 be a most pure and gentle Cordelia ; and of this change in 
 Fitch's opinions we shall speak in Chapter IIL
 
 28 A SHABBY GENTEEL STORY. 
 
 CHAPTER HI. 
 
 LIKE NATURE. 
 
 Mr. Brandon's letter to Lord Cinqbars produced, as we 
 have said, a great impression upon the family of Gann ; an im- 
 pression which was considerably increased by their lodger's 
 subsequent behavior : for although the persons with whom he 
 now associated were of a very vulgar, ridiculous kind, they 
 were by no means so low or ridiculous that Mr. Brandon should 
 not wish to appear before them in the most advantageous light ; 
 and, accordingly, he gave himself the greatest airs when in 
 their company, and bragged incessantly of his acquaintance 
 and familiarity with the nobility. Mr. Brandon was a tuft- 
 hunter of the genteel sort ; his pride being quite as slavish, and 
 his haughtiness as mean and cringing, in fact, as poor Mrs. 
 Gann's stupid wonder and respect for all the persons whose 
 names are written with titles before them. O free and 
 happy Britons, what a miserable, truckling, cringing race ye 
 are ! 
 
 The reader has no doubt encountered a number of such 
 swaggerers in the course of his conversation with the world — 
 men of a decent middle rank, who affect to despise it, and herd 
 only with persons of the fashion. This is an offence in a man 
 which none of us can forgive ; we call him tuft-hunter, lick- 
 spittle, sneak, unmanly ; we hate, and profess to despise him. 
 1 fear it is no such thing. We envy Lickspittle, that is the 
 fact ; and therefore hate him. Were he to plague us with the 
 stories of Jones and Brown, our familiars, the man would be a 
 simple bore, his stories heard patiently ; but so soon as he 
 talks of my lord or the duke, we are in arms against him. I 
 have seen a whole merry party in Russell Square grow suddenly 
 gloomy and dumb, because a pert barrister, in a loud, shrill 
 voice, told a story of Lord This or the Marquis of That. We 
 all hated that man ; and I would lay a wager that every one of 
 the fourteen persons assembled round the boiled turkey and 
 saddle of mutton (not to mention side-dishes from the pastry- 
 cook's opposite the Britisli Museum) — I would wager, I say, 
 that every one was muttering inwardly, " A plague on that 
 fellow ! he knows a lord, and I never spoke to more than three
 
 A SHABBY GENTEEL STORY. 29 
 
 in the whole course of my life." To our betters we cau recon- 
 cile ourselves, if you please, respecting t'lem very sincerely, 
 laughing at their jokes, making allowance for their stupidities, 
 meekly suffering their insolence ; but we can't pardon our 
 equals going beyond us. A friend of mine who lived amicably 
 and happily among his friends and relatives at Hackne}^ was 
 on a sudden disowned by the latter, cut by the former, and 
 doomed in innumerable prophecies to ruin, because he kept a 
 footboy, — a harmless little blowsy-faced urchin, in light snuff- 
 colored clothes, glistening over with sugar-loaf buttons. There 
 is another man, a great man, a literary man, whom the public 
 loves, and who took a sudden leap from obscurity into fame 
 and wealth. This was a crime ; but he bore his rise with so 
 much modesty, that even his brethren of the pen did not envy 
 him. One luckless day he set up a one-horse chaise ; from that 
 minute he was doomed. 
 
 " Have you seen his new carriage ? " says Snarley. 
 
 "Yes," says Yow ; " he's so consumedly proud of it, that 
 he can't see his old friends while he drives." 
 
 " Ith it a donkey-cart," lisps Simper, " thith gwand cawwaige ? 
 I always thaid that the man, from hith thtile, wath fitted to be 
 a vewy dethent cothtermonger." 
 
 " Yes, yes," cries old Candour, " a sad pity indeed ! — dread- 
 fully extravagant, I'm told — bad health — expensive family — 
 works going down every day — and now he must set up a car- 
 riage forsooth ! " 
 
 Snarley, Yow, Simper, Candour, hate their brother. If he 
 is ruined, they will be kind to him and just \ but he is success- 
 ful, and woe be to him ! 
 
 "TV" TT TT TT 
 
 This trifling digression of half a page or so, although it seems 
 to have nothing to do with the story in hand, has, nevertheless, 
 the strongest relation to it ; and you shall hear what. 
 
 In one word, then, Mr. Brandon bragged so much, and as- 
 sumed such airs of superiority, that after a while he perfectly 
 disgusted Mrs. Gann and the Misses Macarty, who were gentle- 
 folks themselves, and did not at all like his way of telling them 
 that he was their better. Mr. Fitch was swallowed up in his 
 hart as he called it, and cared nothing for Brandon's airs. 
 Gann, being a low-spirited fellow, completely submitted to Mr. 
 Brandon, and looked up to him with deepest wonder. And poor 
 little Caroline followed her father's faith, and in six weeks after 
 Mr. Brandon's arrival at the lod'zings had grown to believe him 
 the most perfect, finished, pr;Ii-,!:ed, agreeable of mankind
 
 30 ^ SHABBY GENTEEL STORY. 
 
 Indeed, the poor girl had never seen a gentleman before, and 
 towards such her gentle heart turned instinctively. Brandon 
 never offended her by hard words ; insulted her by cruel scorn, 
 such as she met with from her mother and her sisters ; there 
 was a quiet manner about the man quite different to any that 
 she had before seen amongst the acquaintances of her family ; 
 and if he assumed a tone of superiority in his conversation w'ith 
 her and the rest, Caroline felt that he was their superior, and 
 as such admired and respected him. 
 
 What happens when in the innocent bosom of a girl of six- 
 teen such sensations arise ? W'liat has happened ever since the 
 world began 1, 
 
 I have said that Miss Caroline had no friend in the world 
 but her father, and must here take leave to recall that assertion ; 
 — a friend she most certainly had, and that was honest Becky, 
 the smutty maid, whose name has been mentioned before. Miss 
 C'arolipe had learned in the course of a life spent under the 
 tyranny of her mamma, some of the notions of the latter, and 
 w^ould have been very much offended to call Becky her friend ; 
 but friends, in fact, they were ; and a great comfort it was for 
 Caroline to descend to the calm kitchen from the stormy back 
 parlor, and there vent .some of her little woes to the compas- 
 sionate servant of all work. 
 
 When Mrs. Gann went out with her daughters, Becky would 
 take her work and come and keep Miss Caroline company ; 
 and if the truth must be told, the greatest enjoyment the pair 
 used to have was in these afternoons, when they read together 
 out of the precious, greasy, marble-covered volumes that Mrs, 
 Gann was in the habit of fetching from the library. Many 
 and many a tale had the pair so gone through. I can see them 
 over " Manfrone ; or the One-handed Monk "' — the room dark, 
 the street silent, the hour ten — the tall, red, lurid candlewick 
 waggling down, the flame flickering pale upon Miss Caroline's 
 pale face as she read out, and lighting up honest Becky's gog- 
 gling eyes, who sat silent, her work in her lap : she had not done 
 a stitch of it for an hour. As the trap-door slowly opens, and 
 the scowling Alonzo, licnding over the sleeping Tmoinda, draws 
 his pistol, cocks it, looks well if the priming be right, places it 
 then to the sleeper's ear, and — thnnder-undcr-undcj- — down fall 
 the snuffers ! P>ecky has had them in her hand for ten minutes, 
 afraid to use them. ITp starts Caroline, and flings the book 
 back into her mamma's basket. It is that lady returned with 
 her daughters from a tea-party, where two young gents from 
 London have been mighty genteel indeed.
 
 A SHABBY GENTEEL STORY. 
 
 31 
 
 For the sentimental, too, as well as for the terrible. Miss 
 Caroline and the cook had a strong predilection, and had wept 
 their poor eyes out over "Thaddeus of Warsaw " and the 
 " Scottish Chiefs." Fortified by the examples drawn from those 
 instructive volumes, Becky was firmly convinced that her young 
 mistress would meet with a great lord some day or other, or be 
 carried off, like Cinderella, by a brilliant prince, to the morti- 
 fication of her elder sisters, whom Becky hated. And when, 
 therefore, the new lodger came, lonely, mysterious, melancholy, 
 elegant, with the romantic name of George Brandon — when he 
 wrote a letter directed to a lord, and Miss Caroline and Becky 
 together exnmined the superscription, such a look passed be- 
 tween them as the pencil of Leslie or Maclise could alone 
 describe for os. Beckv's orbs were lighted up with a preter- 
 natural look of wondering wisdom ; whereas, after an instant, 
 Caroline dropped hers, and blushed, and said, " Nonsense, 
 Becky ! " 
 
 " Is it nonsense ? " said Becky, grinning and snapping her 
 fingers with a triumphant air ; " the cards comes true ; I knew 
 they would. Didn't you have king and queen of hearts three 
 deals running? What did you dream about last Tuesday, tell 
 me that > " 
 
 But Miss Caroline never did tell, for her sisters came 
 bouncing down the stairs, and examined the lodger's letter. 
 Caroline, however, went away musing much upon these points ; 
 and she began to think Mr. Brandon more wonderful and 
 beautiful every da\'. 
 
 In the meantime, while Miss Caroline was innocently in- 
 dulging in her inclination for the brilliant occupier of the first 
 floor, it came to pass that the tenant of the second was in- 
 flamed by a most romantic passion for her. 
 
 For, after partaking for about a fortnight of the family 
 dinner, and passing some evenings with Mrs. Gann and the 
 young ladies, Mr. Fitch, though by no means quick of compre- 
 hension, began to perceive that the nightly charges that were 
 brought against poor Caroline could not be founded upon truth. 
 " Let's see," mused he to himself. " Tuesday, the old lady 
 said her daughter was bringing her gray hairs with sorrow to 
 the grave, because the cook had not boiled the potatoes. 
 Wednesday, she said Caroline was an assassin, because she 
 could not find her own thimble. Thursday, she vows Caroline 
 has no religion, because that old pair of silk stockings were 
 not darned. And this can't be," reasoned Fitch, deeply. " A 
 gal haint a murderess because her Ma can't find her thimble.
 
 32 ^ SHABBY GENTEEL STORY. 
 
 A woman that goes to slap her grown-up daughter on the back 
 and before company too, for such a paltry thing as a hold pair 
 of stockings, can't be surely a-speaking the truth." And thuii 
 gradually his first impression against Caroline wore away. As 
 this disappeared, pity took possession of his soul — and we 
 know what pity is akin to ; and, at the same time, a corre- 
 sponding hatred for the oppressors of a creature so amiable. 
 
 To sum up, in six short weeks after the appearance of the 
 two gentlemen, we find our chief dramatis personce as follows : 
 
 Caroune, an innocent young woman, in love with Brandon. 
 Fitch, a celebrated painter, almost in love with Caroline. 
 Brandon, a young gentleman, in love with himself. 
 
 At first he was pretty constant in his attendance upon the 
 Misses Macarty when they went out to walk, nor were they dis- 
 pleased at his attentions ; but he found that there were a great 
 number of Margate beaux — ugly, vulgar fellows as ever were — • 
 who always followed in the young ladies' train, and made them 
 selves infinitely more agreeable than he was. These men Mr. 
 Brandon treated with a great deal of scorn : and, in return, they 
 hated him cordially. So did the ladies speedily : his haughty 
 manners, though quite as impertinent and free, were not half 
 so pleasant to them as Jones's jokes or Smith's charming 
 romjDS ; and the girls gave Brandon very shortly to understand 
 that they were much happier without him. " Ladies, your 
 humble," he heard Bob Smith say, as that little linendraper 
 came skipping to the door from which they were issuing. "The 
 sun's hup and trade is down ; if you're for a walk, I'm your 
 man." And Miss Linda and Miss Bella each took an arm of 
 Mr. Smith, and sailed down the street. " I'm glad you ain't 
 got that proud gent with the glass hi," said Mr. Smith • " he's 
 the most hillbred, supercilious beast I ever see." 
 
 " So he is," says Bella. 
 
 " Hush ! " says Linda. 
 
 The " proud gent with the glass hi " was at this moment loll- 
 ing out of the first-floor window, smoking his accustomed cigar; 
 and his eyeglass was fixed upon the ladies, to whom he made 
 a very low bow. It maybe imagined how fond he was of them 
 afterwards, and what looks he cast at Mr. Bob Smith the next 
 time he met him. Mr. Bob's heart beat for a day afterwards ; 
 and he found he had business in town. 
 
 I5ut the love of society is stronger than even pride ; and the 
 great Mr. Brandon was sometimes fain to descend from his 
 high station and consort with the vulgar family with whom he
 
 A SHABB Y GENTEEL STOR Y. 33 
 
 lodged. Piiit, as we have said, he always did this with a won- 
 derfully condescending air, giving his associates to understand 
 how great was the honor he did them. 
 
 One day, then, he was absolutely so kind as to accept of 
 an invitation from the ground-floor, which was delivered in the 
 passage by Mr. James Gann, who said, " It was hard to see a 
 gent eating mutton-chops from week's end to week's end ; and if 
 Mr. Brandon had a mind to meet a devilish good fellow as evc" 
 was, my friend Swigby, a man who rides his horse, and has his 
 five hundred a year to spend, and to eat a prime cut out of as 
 good a leg of pork (though he said it) as ever a knife was stuck 
 into, they should dine that day at three o'clock sharp, and Mrs. 
 G. and the gals would be glad of the honor of his company. 
 
 The person so invited was rather amused at the terms in 
 which Mr. Gann conveyed his hospitable message ; and at three 
 o'clock made his appearance in the back-parlor, whence he had 
 the honor of conducting Mrs. Gann (dressed in a sweet yellow 
 fnoiisselinc de iaint% with a large red turban, ?ifcrro7inierc, and a 
 smelling-bottle attached by a ring to a very damp, fat hand) to 
 the "office," where the repast was set out. The Misses Ma- 
 carty were in costumes equally tasty : one on the guest's right 
 hand ; one near the boarder, Mr. Fitch — who, in a large beard, 
 an amethyst velvet-waistcoat, his hair fresh wetted, and parted 
 accurately down the middle to fall in curls over his collar, would 
 have been irresistible if the collar had been a little, little whiter 
 than it was. 
 
 Mr. Brandon, too, was dressed in his very best suit ; for 
 though he affected to despise his hosts very much, he wished 
 to make the most favorable impression upon them, and took 
 care to tell Mrs. Gann that he and Lord So-and-so were the 
 only two men in the world who were in possession of that par- 
 ticular waistcoat which she admired : for Mrs. Gann was very 
 gracious, and had admired the waistcoat, being desirous to im- 
 press with awe Mr. Gann's friend and admirer, Mr. Swigby — 
 who, man of fortune as he was, was a constant frequenter of 
 the club at the " Bag of Nails." 
 
 About this club and its supporters Mr. Gann's guest, Mr. 
 Swigby, and Gann himself, talked very gayly before dinner ; all 
 the jokes about all the club being roared over by the pair. 
 
 Mr. Brandon, who felt he was the great man of the party, 
 indulged himself in his great propensities without restraint, and 
 told Mrs. Gann stories about half the nobility. Mrs. Gann 
 conversed knowingly about the Opera ; and declared that she 
 thought Taglioni the sweetest singer in the world. 
 
 3
 
 34 
 
 A SHABBY GENTEEL STORY. 
 
 "■ Mr. — a — Swigby, have you ever seen Lablache dance ? " 
 asked Mr. Brandon of that gentleman, to whom he had been 
 formally introduced, 
 
 " At Vauxhall is he ? " said Mr. Swigby, who was just from 
 town. 
 
 " Yes, on the tight-rope ; a charming performer," 
 
 On which Mr, Gann told how he had been to Vauxhall when 
 fhe princes were in London ; and his lady talked of these 
 knowingly. And then they fell to conversing about fireworks 
 and rack-punch ; Mr. Brandon assuring the young ladies that 
 Vauxhall was the very pink of the fashion, and longing to have 
 ^the honor of dancing a quadrille with them there. Indeed, 
 Brandon was so very sarcastic, that not a single soul at tabla 
 understood him. 
 
 The table, from Mr. Brandon's plan of it, which was after- 
 wards sent to my Lord Cinqbars, was arranged as follows : — 
 
 s 
 
 B 
 a 
 O 
 
 Miss Caroline. 
 
 Mr. Fitch, 
 
 Miss L. Macarty. 
 
 !• 
 
 Potatoes. 
 
 
 3. 
 
 A roast leg of 
 liork, with sage and 
 onions. 
 
 Three shreds 
 of celery in a 
 
 glass. 
 
 Boiled haddock, 
 removed by hashed 
 mutton. 
 
 2. 
 
 Cabbage. 
 
 
 4- 
 
 Mr. Swigby. 
 
 Miss B. Macarty. 
 
 Mr. Brandon. 
 
 s 
 
 o 
 
 I and 2 are pots of porter ; 3, a quart of ale, Mrs, Gann's 
 favorite drink ; 4, a bottle of fine old golden sherry, the real 
 produce of the Uva grape, purchased at the " Bag of Nails " 
 Hotel for \s. cfd. by Mr, J. Gann. 
 
 Mr. Gann. " Taste "that sherry, sir. Your 'ealth, and my 
 services to you, sir. That wine, sir, is given me as a particular 
 favor by my — ahem ! — my wine-merchant, who only will part with 
 a small quantity of it, and imports it, direct, sir, from — ahem ! — 
 from " 
 
 Mr. Brandon. " From Xeres, of course. It is, I really 
 think, the finest wine I ever tasted in my life — at a commoner's 
 table, that is," 
 
 Mrs. Gann. " Oh, in course, a commoner's table ! — we 
 have no titles, sir, (Mr. Gann, I will trouble you for some more 
 crackling,) though my poor dear girls are related, by their blessed
 
 A SHABBY GENTEEL STORY. 
 
 35 
 
 father's side, to some of the first nobility in the land, I assure 
 you." 
 
 Mr. Gann. " Gammon, Jooly my dear. Them Irish no- 
 bility, you know, what are they ? And besides, it's my belief 
 that the gals are no more related to them than I am." 
 
 Aliss Bella (to Air. Brafidon, confidentially). " \'ou must 
 find that poor Par is sadly vulgar, Mr. Brandon." 
 
 Jfrs. Gann. " Mr. Brandon has never been accustomed to 
 such language, I am sure ; and I entreat you will excuse Mr. 
 Gann's rudeness, sir." 
 
 Miss Linda. " Indeed, I assure you, Mr. Brandon, that we've 
 high connections as well as low ; as high as some people's con- 
 nections, per'aps, though we are not always talking of the 
 nobility." This was a double shot : the first barrel of Miss 
 Linda's sentence hit her stepfather, the second part was levelled 
 directly at Mr. Brandon. "Don't vou think I'm right, Mr. 
 Fitch ? " 
 
 Mr. Brajidofi. " You are quite right, Miss Linda, in this as 
 in every other instance ; but I am afraid Mr. Fitch has not 
 paid proper attention to your excellent remark : for, if I don't 
 mistake the meaning of the beautiful design which he has made 
 with his fork upon the tablecloth, his soul is at this moment 
 wrapped up in his art." 
 
 This was exactly what Mr. Fitch wished that all the world 
 should suppose. He flung back his hair, and stared wildly for 
 a moment, and said, " Pardon me, madam ; it is true my 
 thoughts were at that moment far away in the regions of my 
 hart." He was really thinking that his attitude was a very 
 elegant one, and that a large garnet ring which he wore on 
 his forefinger must be mistaken by all the company for a ruby. 
 
 "Art is very well," said Mr. Brandon; "but with such 
 pretty natural objects before you, I wonder you were not con- 
 tent to think of them." 
 
 " Do you mean the mashed patotoes, sir ? " said Andrea 
 Fitch, wondering. 
 
 " I mean Miss Rosalind Macarty," answered Brandon, gal- 
 lantly, and laughing heartily at the painter's simplicity. But 
 this compliment could not soften Miss Linda, who had an un- 
 easy conviction that Mr. Brandon was laughing at her, and dis- 
 liked him accordingly. 
 
 At this juncture. Miss Caroline entered and took the place 
 marked as hers, to the left hand of Mr. Gann, vacant. An old 
 rickety wooden stool was placed for her, instead of that elegant 
 and commodious Windsor chair which supported every other
 
 36 A SHABBY GENTEEL STORY. 
 
 person at table ; and by the side of the plate stood a curious old 
 battered tin mug, on which the antiquarian might possibly dis- 
 cover the inscription of the word " Caroline." This, in truth, 
 was poor Caroline's mug and stool, having been appropriated 
 to her from childhood upwards ; and here it was her custom 
 meekly to sit, and eat her daily meal. 
 
 It was well that the girl was placed near her father, else I 
 do believe she would have been starved ; but Gann was much 
 too good-natured to allow that any difference should be made 
 between her and her sisters. There are some meannesses which 
 are too mean even for man — woman, lovely woman alone, can 
 venture to commit them. Well, on the present occasion, and 
 when the dinner was half over, poor Caroline stole gently into 
 the room and took her ordinary place. Caroline's pale face was 
 very red ; for the fact must be told that she had been in the 
 kitchen helping Becky, the universal maid ; and having heart 
 how the great Mr. Brandon was to dine with them upon that 
 day, the simple girl had been showing her respect for him, 
 by compiling, in her best manner, a certain dish, for the cooking 
 of which her papa had often praised her. She took her place, 
 blushing violently when she saw him, and if Mr. Gann had no 
 been making a violent clattering with his knife and fork, it is 
 possible that he might have heard Miss Caroline's heart thump, 
 which it did violently. Her dress was somehow a little smarter 
 than usual ; and Becky the maid, who brought in that remove 
 of hashed mutton which has been set down in the bill of fare, 
 looked at her young lady with a good deal of complacency, as, 
 loaded with plates, she quitted the room. Indeed, the poor 
 girl deserved to be looked at: there was an air of gentleness 
 and innocence about her that was apt to please some persons, 
 much more then the bold beauties of her sisters. The two 
 young men did not fail to remark this ; one of them, the little 
 painter, had long since observed it. 
 
 " You are very late, miss," cried Mrs. Gann, who affected 
 not to know what had caused her daughter's delay. " You're 
 always late ! " and the elder girls stared and grinned at each 
 other knowingly, as they always did when mamma made such 
 attacks upon Caroline, who only kept her eyes down upon the 
 tablecloth, and began to eat her dinner without saying a word. 
 
 " Come, my dear," cried honest Gann, " if she is late you 
 know why. A girl can't be here and there too, as I say ; can 
 they, Swigby ? " 
 
 " Impossible ! " said Swigby. 
 
 " Gents," continued Mr. Gann, " our Carry, you must know,
 
 A SHABBY GENTEEL STORY. 37 
 
 has been down stairs, making the pudding for her old pappy ; 
 and a good pudding she makes, I can tell you," 
 
 Miss Caroline blushed more vehemently than ever; the 
 artist stared her full in the face ; Mrs. Gann said, " Nonsense " 
 and " stuff " very majestically ; only Mr. Brandon interposed in 
 Caroline's favor, 
 
 " I would sooner that my wife should know how to make a 
 pudding," said he, " than how to play the best piece of music 
 in the world ! " 
 
 " Law, Mr, Brandon ! I, for my part wouldn't demean my- 
 self by any such kitchen work ! " cries Miss Linda. 
 
 " Make puddens, indeed ; its ojous ! " cries Bella. 
 
 " For you, my loves, of course ! " interposed their mamma, 
 " Young women of \o\.u family and circumstances is not expected 
 to perform any such work. It's different with Miss Caroline, 
 who, if she does make herself useful now and then, don't make 
 herself near so useful as she should, considering that she's not 
 a shilling, and is living on our charity, like some other folks." 
 
 Thus did this amiable woman neglect no opportunity to 
 give her opinions about her husband and daughter. The former, 
 however, cared not a straw ; and the latter, in this instance, was 
 perfectly happy. Had not kind Mr. Brandon approved of her 
 work ; and could she ask for more ? 
 
 " Mamma may say what she pleases to-day," thought Caro- 
 line. " I am too happy to be made angry by her," 
 
 " Poor little mistaken Caroline, to think you were safe 
 against three women ! The dinner had not advanced much 
 further, when Miss Isabella, who had been examining her 
 younger sister curiously for some short time, telegraphed Miss 
 Linda across the table, and nodded, and winked, and pointed 
 to her own neck ; a very white one, as I have before had the 
 honor to remark, and quite without any covering except a 
 smart necklace of twenty-four rows of the lightest blue glass 
 beads, finishing in a neat tassel. Linda had a similar orna- 
 ment of vermilion color ; whereas Caroline, on this occasion, 
 wore a handsome new collar up to the throat, and a brooch, 
 which looked all the smarter for the shabby frock over which 
 they were placed. As soon as she saw her sister's signals, the 
 poor little thing, who had only just done fluttering and blushing, 
 fell to this same work over again. Down went her eyes once 
 more, and her face and neck lighted up to the color of Miss 
 Linda's sham cornelian. 
 
 " What's the gals giggling and ogling about ? " said Mr, 
 Gann, innocently.
 
 38 ^ SHABBY GENTEEL STORY. 
 
 " What is it, my darling loves ? " says stately Mrs. Gann. 
 
 "•Why, don't you see, Ma?" said Linda, "Look at Miss 
 Carry! I'm blessed if she has not got on Becky's collar and 
 brooch that Sims the pilot gave her. 
 
 The young ladies fell back in uproarious fits of laughter, 
 and laughed all the time that their mamma was thundering out 
 a speech, in which she declared that her daughter's conduct was 
 unworthy a gentlewoman, and bid her leave the room and take 
 off those disgraceful ornaments. 
 
 I'here was no need to tell her; the poor little thing gave 
 one piteous look at her father, who was whistling, and seemed 
 indeed to think the matter a good joke ; and, after she had 
 managed to open the door and totter into the passage, you 
 might have heard her weeping there, weeping tears more bitter 
 than any of the many she had shed in the course of her life. 
 Down she went to the kitchen, and when she reached that 
 humble place of refuge, first pulled at her neck and made as if 
 she would take off Becky's collar and brooch, and then flung 
 herself into the arms of the honest scullion, where she cried 
 and cried till she brought on the first fit of hysterics that ever 
 she had had. 
 
 This crying could not at first be heard in the parlor, where 
 the young ladies, Mrs. Gann, Mr. Gann, and his friend from 
 the " Bag of Nails " were roaring at the excellence of the joke. 
 Mr. Brandon, sipping his sherry, sat by, looking ver}' sarcastic- 
 ally and slyly from one party to the other ; Mr. Fitch was 
 staring about him too, but with a very difi^erent expression, 
 anger and wonder inflaming his bearded countenance. At 
 last, as the laughing died away and a faint voice of weeping 
 came from the kitchen below, Andrew could bear it no longer, 
 but bounced up from his chair and rushed out of the room 
 exclaiming, — 
 
 " By Jove, it's too bad ! " 
 
 " What does the man mean ? " says Mrs. Gann. 
 
 He meant that he was from that moment over head and 
 ears in love with Caroline, and that he longed to beat, buffet, 
 pummel, thump, tear to pieces, those callous rufiians who so 
 pitilessly laughed at her. 
 
 " What's that chop wi' the beard in such tantrums about?" 
 said the gentleman from the " Bag of Nails." 
 
 Mr. Gann answered this query by some joke, intimating 
 that " per'aps Mr. Fitch's dinner did not agree with him," at 
 which these worthies roared ajrain. 
 
 The young ladies said, " Well, now, upon my word ! "
 
 A SHABBY GENTEEL STORY. ^c, 
 
 " Mighty genteel behavior truly ! " cried mamma ; " but 
 what can you expect from the poor thing ? " 
 
 Brandon only sipped more sherry, but he looked at Fitch 
 as the latter flung out of the room, and his countenance was 
 lighted up by a more unequivocal smile. 
 
 * ^ ^sL, a^ a^ 4^ 
 
 ■TV- Tt" "R" ^ ^ 
 
 These two little adventures were followed by a silence of 
 some few minutes, during which the meats remained on the 
 table, and no signs were shown of that pudding upon which 
 poor Caroline had exhausted her skill. The absence of this 
 delicious part of the repast was first remarked by Mr. Gann ; 
 and his lady, after jangling at the bell for some time in vain, at 
 last begged one of her daughters to go and hasten matters. 
 
 " Becky ! " shrieked Miss Linda from the hall, but Becky 
 replied not. " Becky, are we to be kept waiting all day ! " con- 
 tinued the lady in the same shrill voice. *' Mamma wants the 
 pudding ! " 
 
 " Tell her to fetch it herself ! " roared Becky, at which 
 remark Gann and his facetious friend once more went oft' into 
 fits of laughter. 
 
 "This is too bad !" said Mrs. G., starting up; "she shall 
 leave the house this instant ! " and so no doubt Becky would, 
 but that the lady owed her five quarters' wages ; which she, at 
 that period, did not feel inclined to pay. 
 
 Well, the dinner at last was at an end ; the ladies went 
 away to tea, leaving the gentlemen to their wine ; Brandon, 
 very condescendingly, partaking of a bottle of port, and listen- 
 ing with admiration to the toasts and sentiments with which it 
 is still the custom among persons of Mr. Gann's rank of life to 
 preface each glass of wine. As thus : — 
 
 Glass I. "Gents," says Mr. Gann, rising, "this glass I 
 need say nothink about. Here's the king, and long life to him 
 and the family ! " 
 
 Mr. Swigby, with his glass, goes knock, knock, knock on 
 the table; and saying gravely, "The king!" drinks oft' his 
 glass, and smacks his lips afterwards. 
 
 Mr. Brandon, who had drunk half his, stops in the midst 
 and says, " Oh, ' the king ! ' " 
 
 Mr. Swigby. " A good glass of wine that, Gann my boy ! " 
 
 Mr. Brando?i. "Capital, really; though, upon my faith, I'm 
 no judge of port." 
 
 Mr. Gann (smacks). " A fine fruity wine as ever I tasted. 
 I suppose you, Mr, B., are accustomed only to claret. I've 'ad 
 it, too, in my time, sir, as Swigby there very well knows. I
 
 40 
 
 A SHABBY GENTEEL STORY. 
 
 travelled, sir, sure le Continong, I assure you, and drank my 
 glass of claret with the best man in France, or England either. 
 I wasn't always what I am, sir." 
 
 Mr. Brandon. " You don't look as if you were." 
 
 Mr. Gann. " No, sir. Before that gas came in, I was 
 
 head, sir, of one of the fust 'ouses in the hoil-trade, Gann, 
 Blubbery & Gann, sir — Thames Street, City. I'd my box at 
 Putney, as good a gig and horse as my friend there drives." 
 
 Mr. Swigby. "Ay, and a better too, Gann, I make no 
 doubt.'" 
 
 Mr. Gann. " Well, say a better. I /tad a better, if money 
 could fetch it, sir ; and T didn't spare that, I warrant you. No, 
 no, James Gann didn't grudge his purse, sir; and had his 
 friends. around him, as he's 'appy to 'ave now, sir. Mr. Bran- 
 don, your 'ealth, sir, and may we hoften meet under this ma- 
 'ogany. Swigby, my boy, God bless you ! " 
 
 Afr. Brandon. " Your very good health." 
 
 Mr. Swigby. " Thank you, Gann. Here's to you, and long 
 life and prosperity and happiness to you and yours. Bless you, 
 Jim my boy ; heaven bless you ! I say this, Mr. Brandon — 
 Brandon — what's your name — there ain't a better fellow in all 
 Margate than James Gann, — no, nor in all England. Here's 
 Mrs. Gann, gents, and the family. Mrs. Gann ! " {drinks.) 
 
 Mr. Brandon. " Mrs. Gann. Hip, hip, hurrah ! " (drinks.) 
 
 Mr. Gann. " Mrs. Gann, and thank you,- gents. A fine 
 woman, Mr. ]>. ; ain't she now ? Ah, if you'd seen 'er when I 
 married 'er ! Gad, she 7c>as fine then — an out and outer, sir ! 
 Suc/i a figure ! " 
 
 Jlfr. Swigbv. " You'd choose none but a good "un, I war'nt. 
 Ha, hn, ha!""' 
 
 A/r. Gann. " Did I ever tell you of mj- duel along with the 
 regimental doctor ? No ! Then I will. I was a young chap, 
 you see, in those days ; and wheii I saw her at Brussels — 
 (Brnssc//, they call it) — I was right slick up over head and ears 
 in love with her at once. But what was to be done ? There 
 was another gent in the case — a regimental doctor, sir — a 
 reg'lar dragon. ' Faint heart,' says J, 'never won a fair lady,' 
 and so I made so bold. She took me, sent the doctor to the 
 right about. I met liim one morning in the park at Brussels, 
 and stood to him, sir, like a man. When the affair was over, 
 my second, a leftenant of dragoons, told me, 'Gann,' says he, 
 ' I've seen many a man under fire — I'm a Waterloo man,' 
 says he, — 'and have rode by Wellington many a long day; 
 but I never, for coolness, see such a man as you. Gents,
 
 A SHABBY GENTEEL STORY. 
 
 41 
 
 here's the Duke of Wellington and the British Army ! " (the 
 gefits drink.') 
 
 Air. Brandon. " Did you kill the doctor, sir ? " 
 Mr. Gann. " Why, no, sir ; I shot in the hair." 
 Mr. Brandon. " Shot him in the hair ! Egad, that was a 
 severe shot, and a very lucky escape the doctor had of it ? 
 Whereabout in the hair ? a whisker, sir ; or, perhaps, a pig-tail ? " 
 Mr. Stvigby. " Haw, haw, haw ! shot'n in the /latr — capital, 
 capital ! " 
 
 Mr. Gann, who has gro7vn very red. " No, sir, there may be 
 some mistake in my pronounciation, which I didn't expect to 
 have laughed at, at my hown table." 
 
 Mr. Brandon. " My dear sir ! I protest and vow " 
 
 Mr. Gann. " Never mind it, sir. I gave you my best, and 
 did my best to make you welcome. If you like better to make 
 fun of me, do, sir. That may be the genteel way, but hang me 
 if it's hoiir way ; is it. Jack .-* Our way ; I beg your pardon, 
 sir." 
 
 Mr. Stvigby. "Jim, Jim! for heaven's sake! — peace and 
 harmony of the evening — conviviality — social enjoyment — didn't 
 mean it — did you mean anything, Mr. What-d'-ye-call-'im ?" 
 ATr. Brandon. " Nothing, upon my honor as a gentleman ! " 
 Air. Gann. " Well, then, there's my hand ! " and good- 
 natured Gann tried to forget the insult, and to talk as if nothing 
 had occurred : but he had been wounded in the most sensitive 
 point in which a man can be touched by his superior, and never 
 forgot Brandon's joke. That night at the club, when dread- 
 fully tipsy, he made several speeches on the subject, and burst 
 into tears many times. The pleasure of the evening was quite 
 spoiled ; and, as the conversation became rapid and dull, we 
 shall refrain from reporting it. Mr. Brandon speedily took 
 leave, but had not the courage to face the ladies at tea ; to 
 whom, it appears, the reconciled Becky had brought that re- 
 freshing beverage.
 
 42 A SHABBY GENTEEL STORY. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 IN WHICH MR. FITCH PROCLAIMS HIS LOVE, AND MR. BRANDON 
 
 PREPARES FOR WAR. 
 
 From the splendid liall in which Mrs. Gann was dispensing 
 her hospitality, the celebrated painter, Andrea Fitch, rushed 
 forth in a state of mind even more delirious than that which he 
 usually enjoyed. He looked abroad into the street : all there 
 was dusk and lonely ; the rain falling heavily, the wind playing 
 Pandean pipes and whistling down the chimney-pots. " I love 
 the storm," said Fitch, solemnly ; and he put his great Spanish 
 cloak round him in the most approved manner (it was of so 
 prodigious a size that the tail of it, as it twirled over his shoul- 
 der, whisked away a lodging-card from the door of the house 
 opposite Mr. Gann's). " I love the storm and solitude," said 
 he, lighting a large pipe filled full of the fragrant Oronooko ; 
 and thus armed, he passed rapidly down the street, his hat 
 cocked over his ringlets. 
 
 Andrea did not like smoking, but he used a pipe as part of 
 his profession as an artist, and as one of the picturesque parts 
 of his costume ; in like manner, though he did not fence, he 
 always travelled about with a pair of foils ; and quite uncon- 
 scious of music, nevertlieless had a guitar constantly near at 
 hand. Without such properties a painter's spectacle is not 
 complete ; and now he determined to add to them another in- 
 dispensable requisite — a mistress. " What great artist was 
 ever without one ?" thought he. Long, long had he sighed for 
 some one whom he might love, some one to whom he might 
 address the poems which he was in the habit of making. 
 Hundreds of such fragments had he composed, addressed to 
 Leila, Ximena, Ada — imaginary beauties, whom he courted in 
 dreamy verse. With what joy would he replace all those by a 
 real charmer of flesh and blood ! Away he went, then, on this 
 evening — the tyranny of Mrs. Gann towards poor Caroline 
 having awakened all his sympathies in the gentle girl's favor — 
 determined now and for ever to make her the mistress of his 
 heart. Monna-Lisa, the Fornarina, Leonardo, RajDhael — he 
 thought of all these, and vowed that his C'aroline should be 
 made famous and live for ever on his canvas. While Mrs. 
 Gann was preparing for her friends, and entertaining them at
 
 A SHABBY GENTEEL STORY. 43 
 
 tea and whist ; while Caroline, all unconscious of the love she 
 inspired, was weeping up stairs in her little garret ; while Mr. 
 Brandon was enjoying the refined conversation of Gann and 
 Swigby, over their glass and pipe in the office, Andrea walked 
 abroad by the side of the ocean ; and, before he was wet through 
 walked himself into the most fervid affection for poor persecuted 
 Caroline. The reader might have observed him (had not the 
 night been very dark, and a great deal too wet to allow a sensi- 
 ble reader to go abroad on such an errand) at the sea-shore 
 standing on a rock, and drawing from his bosom a locket which 
 contained a curl of hair tied up in ribbon. He looked at it for a 
 moment, and then flung it away from him into the black boiling 
 waters below him. 
 
 " No other 'air but thine, Caroline, shall ever rest near this 
 'art ! " he said, and kissed the locket and restored it to its 
 place. Light-minded youth, whose hair was it that he thus 
 flung away ? How many times had Andrea shown that very 
 ringlet in strictest confidence to several brethren of the brush, 
 and declared that it was the hair of a dear girl in Spain whom 
 he loved to madness ? Alas ! 'twas but a fiction of his fevered 
 brain ; every one of his friends had a locket of hair, and Andrea, 
 who had no love until now, had clipped this precious token 
 from the wig of a lovely lay-figure, with cast-iron joints and a 
 card-board head, that had stood for some time in his atelier. 
 I don't know that he felt any shame about the proceeding, for 
 he was of such a warm imagination that he had grown to be- 
 lieve that the hair did actually come from a girl in Spain, and 
 only parted with it on yielding to a superior attachment. 
 
 This attachment being fixed on, the young painter came 
 home wet through ; passed the night in reading Byron ; mak- 
 ing sketches, and burning them ; writing poems to Caroline, 
 and expunging them with pitiless india-rubber. A romantic 
 man makes a point of sitting up all night, and pacing his cham- 
 ber ; and you may see many a composition of Andrea's dated 
 " Midnight, loth of March, A. P".," with his peculiar flourish over 
 the initials. He was not sorry to be told in the morning, by 
 the ladies at breakfast, that he looked dreadfully pale ; and an- 
 swered, laying his hand on his forehead and shaking his head 
 gloomily, that he could get no sleep : and then he would heave 
 a huge sigh; and Miss Bella and Miss Linda would -look at 
 each other, and grin according to their wont. He was glad, I 
 say, to have his woe remarked, and continued his sleeplessness 
 for two or three nights ; but he was certainly still more glad 
 when he heard Mr. Brandon, on the fourth morning, cry out,
 
 44 A SHABBY GENTEEL STORY. 
 
 in a shrill angry voice, to Becky the maid, to give the geiitle- 
 man up stairs his compliments — Mr. Brandon's compliments — 
 and tell him that he could not get a wink of sleep for the horrid 
 trampling he kept up. " I am hanged if I stay in the house a 
 night longer," added the first floor sharply, " if that Mr. Fitch 
 kicks up such a confounded noise 1 " Mr. Fitch's point was 
 gained, and henceforth he was as quiet as a mouse ; for his 
 wish was not only to be in love, but to let everybody know 
 that he was in love, or where is the use of a belle passion 1 
 
 So, whenever he saw Caroline, at meals, or in the passage, 
 he used to stare at her with the utmost power of his big eyes, 
 and fall to groaning most pathetically. He used to leave his 
 meals untasted, groan, heave sighs, and stare incessantly. Mrs. 
 Gann and her eldest daughters were astonished at these man- 
 ceuvres ; for they never suspected that any man could possibly 
 be such a fool as to fall in love with Caroline. At length the 
 suspicion came upon them, created immense laughter and de- 
 light ; and the ladies did not fail to rally Caroline in their 
 usual elegant way. Gann, too, loved a joke (much polite wag- 
 gery had this worthy man practised in select inn-parlors for 
 twenty years past), and would call poor Caroline " Mrs. F. ; " 
 and say that, instead of Fetch and Carry, as he used to name 
 her, he should style her Fitch and Carry for the future ; and 
 laugh at this great pun, and make many others of a similar sort, 
 that set Caroline blushing. 
 
 Indeed, the girl suffered a great deal more from this raillery 
 than at first may be imagined ; for after the first awe inspired 
 by Fitch's whiskers had passed away, and he had drawn the 
 young ladies' pictures, and made designs in their albums, and 
 in the midst of their jokes and conversation had remained per- 
 fectly silent, the Gann family had determined that the man was 
 an idiot : and, indeed, were not very wide of the mark. In 
 everything e.xcept his own peculiar art honest Fitch ivas an 
 idiot ; and as upon the subject of painting, the Ganns, like 
 most people of their class in P^ngland, were profoundly igno- 
 rant, it came to pass that he would breakfast and dine for 
 many days in their company, and not utter one single syllable. 
 So they looked upon him with extreme pity and contempt, as a 
 harmless, good-natured, crack-brained creature, quite below 
 them in the scale of intellect, and only to be endured because 
 he paid a certain number of shillings weekly to the Gann ex- 
 chequer. Mrs. Gann in all companies was accustomed to talk 
 about her idiot. Neighbors and children used to peer at him 
 as he strutted down the street ; and though every young lady,
 
 A SHABBY GENTEEL STORY. 45 
 
 including my dear Caroline, is flattered by having a lover, at least 
 they don't like such a lover as this. The Misses Macarty (after 
 having set their caps at him very fiercely, and quarrelled con- 
 cerning him on his first coming to lodge at their house) vowed 
 and protested now that he was no better than a chimpanzee ; 
 and Caroline and Becky agreed that this insult was as great as 
 any that could be paid to the painter. " He's a good creature, 
 too," said Becky, " crack-brained as he is. Do you know, miss, 
 he gave me half a sovereign to buy a new collar, after that 
 business t'other day ? " 
 
 " And did — Mr. , — did the first floor say anything ? " 
 
 asked Caroline. 
 
 " Didn't he ! he's a funny gentleman, that Brandon, sure 
 enough ; and when I took him up breakfast next morning, 
 asked about Sims the pilot, and what I gi'ed Sims for the 
 collar and brooch, — he, he ! " 
 
 And this was indeed a correct report of Mr. Brandon's 
 conversation with Becky ; he had been infinitely amused with 
 the whole transaction, and wrote his friend the viscount a 
 capital facetious account of the manners and customs of the 
 native inhabitants of the Isle of Thanet. 
 
 And now, when Mr. Fitch's passion was fully developed — 
 as far, that is, as sighs and ogles could give it utterance — a 
 curious instance of that spirit of contradiction for which our 
 race is remarkable was seen in the behavior of Mr. Brandon. 
 Although Caroline, in the depths of her little silly heart, had 
 set him down for her divinity, her wondrous fairy prince, who 
 was to deliver her from her present miserable durance, she had 
 never byword or deed acquainted Brandon with her inclination 
 for him, but had, with instinctive modesty, avoided him more 
 sedulously than before. He, too, had never bestowed a 
 thought upon her. How should such a Jove as Mr. Brandon, 
 from the cloudy summit of his fashionable Olympus, look 
 down and perceive such an humble, retiring being as poor 
 little Caroline Gann ? Thinking her at first not disagreeable, 
 he had never, until the day of the dinner, bestowed one smgle 
 further thought upon her ; and only when exasperated by the 
 Miss Macartys' behavior towards him, did he begin to think 
 how sweet it would be to make them jealous and unhappy. 
 
 " The uncouth grinning monsters," said he, " with their 
 horrible court of Bob Smiths and Jack Joneses, daring to look 
 down upon me, a gentleman, — me, the celebrated mangcur des 
 coeurs — a man of genius, fashion, and noble family ! If I 
 could but revenge myself on them ! What injury can \ 
 invent to wound them."
 
 46 A SHABBY GENTEEL STORY. 
 
 It is curious to what points n man in his passion will go. 
 Mr. Brandon had long since, in fact, tried to do the greatest 
 possible injury to the young ladies ; for it had been, at the first 
 dawn of his acquaintance, as we are bound with much sorrow 
 to confess, his fixed intention to ruin one or the other of them. 
 And when the young ladies had, by their coldness and indiffer- 
 ence to him, frustrated this benevolent intention, he straight- 
 way fancied that they had injured him severely, and cast about 
 for means to revenge himself upon them. 
 
 This point is, to be sure, a \exy delicate one to treat, — for 
 in words, at least, the age has grown to be wonderfully moral, 
 and refuses to hear discourses upon such subjects. But human 
 nature, as far as I am able to learn, has not much changed 
 since the time when Richardson wrote and Hogarth painted, 
 a century ago. There are wicked Lovelaces abroad, ladies, 
 now as then, when it was considered no shame to expose the 
 rogues ; and pardon us, therefore, for hinting that such there 
 be. Elegant acts of rouerie, such as that meditated by Mr. 
 Brandon, are often performed still by dashing young men of 
 the world, who think no sin of an amonrdte, but glory in it, 
 especially if the victim be a person of mean condition. Had 
 Brandon succeeded (such is the high moral state of our Brit- 
 ish youth), all his friends would have pronounced him, and 
 he would have considered himself, to be a very lucky, cap- 
 tivating dog ; nor, as I believe, would he have had a single 
 pang of conscience for the rascally action which he had com- 
 mitted. This supreme act of scoundrelism has man permitted 
 to himself — to deceive women. When we consider how he 
 has availed himself of the privilege so created by him, indeed 
 one may sympathize with the advocates of woman's rights who 
 point out this monstrous wrong. We have read of that 
 wretched woman of old whom the pious Pharisees were for 
 stoning incontinently ; but we don't hear that they made any 
 outcry against the man who was concerned in the crime. Where 
 was he ? Happy, no doubt, and easy in mind, and regaling 
 some choice friends over a bottle with the history' of his success. 
 
 Being thus injured then, Mr. Brandon longed for revenge. 
 How should he repay these impertinent young women for 
 slighting his addresses? " Pardi,^^ said he ; "just to punish 
 their pride and insolence, I have a great mind to make love to 
 their sister." 
 
 He did not, however, for some time condescend to perform 
 this threat. Eagles such as Brandon do not sail down from 
 the clouds in order to pounce upon small flies, and soar air-
 
 A SHABBY GENTEEL STORY. 47 
 
 wards again, contented with such an ignoble booty. In a word, 
 he never gave a minute's thouglit to Miss Caroline, until further 
 circumstances occurred which caused this great man to consider 
 her as an object somewhat worthy of his remark. 
 
 The violent affection suddenly exhibited by Mr. Fitch, the 
 painter, towards poor little Caroline was the point which de- 
 termined Brandon to begin to act. 
 
 " My Dear Viscount " (wrote he to the same Lord Cinqbars whom he formerly aH- 
 dressed) — " Give mi joy, for in a week's time it is my intention to be violently in love, — 
 and love is no small amusement in a watering-place in winter. 
 
 " 1 told you about the fair Juliana Gann and her family. I forgot whether I mentioned 
 how the Juliana had two fair daughters, the Rosalind and the Isabella ; and another, Caro- 
 line by name, not so good-looking as her half-sisters, but, nevertheless, a pleasing young 
 person. 
 
 " Well, when I came hither, I had nothing to do but to fall in love with the tvvo hand- 
 somest ; and did so, taking many walks with them, talking mucli nonsense ; passing long 
 dismal evenings over horrid tea with them and their mamma : iajring regular siege, in fact, 
 to tliese Margate beauties, who, according to the common rule in such cases, could not, I 
 thought, last long. 
 
 "Miserable deception! disgusting aristocratic blindness!" (Mr. Brandon always as- 
 sumed that his own high birth and eminent position were granted.) " Would you believe 
 it, that I, who have seen, fought, and conquered in so many places, should have been igno- 
 miniously defeated here? Just as American Jackson defeated our Peninsular veterans, I, 
 an old Continental conqueror too, have been overcome by this ignoble enemy. These 
 women have entrenched themselves so firmly in their vulgarity, that I have been beaten 
 back several times with disgrace, being quite unable to make an impression. The monsters, 
 too, keep up a dreadful fire from behind their intrenchments ; and besides have raised the 
 whole country against me : in a word, all the snobs of their acquaintance are in arms. 
 There is Bob Smith, the linendraper ; Harry Jones, who keeps the fancy tea-shop ; young 
 Glauber, the apothecary ; and sundry other persons, who are ready to eat me when they 
 see me in the streets ; and are all at the beck of the victorious Amazons. 
 
 "How is a gentleman to make head against %\.\q\\ s. canaille as this? — a regular /ac- 
 giierie. Once or twice I have thought of retreating ; but a retreat, for sundry reasons I 
 nave, is inconvenient. I can't go to London ; I am known at Dover ; I believe there is a 
 bill against me at Canterbury; at Chatham there are sundry quartered regiments whose 
 recognition I should be unwilling to risk. I must stay here — and be hanged to the place — 
 until my better star shall rise. 
 
 "But I am determined that my stay shall be to some purpose ; and so to show how per- 
 severing I am, I shall make one more trial upon the third daughter, — yes, upon the third 
 daughter, a family Cinderella, who shall, I am determined, make her sisters crevcr with 
 envy. I merely mean fun, you know — not mischief. — for Cinderella is but a little cliild : 
 and, besides, I am the most harmless fellow breathing, but must have my joke. Now Cin- 
 derella has a lover, the bearded painter of whom I spoke to you in a former letter. He has 
 lately plunged into the most extraordinary fits of passion for her, and is more mad than 
 ever he was before. Woe betide you, O painter I I have nothing to do : a month to do 
 that nothing in ; in that time, mark my words, I will laugh at that painter's beard. Should 
 you like a lock of it, or a sofa stuffed with it ? there is beard enough : or should yon like to 
 see a specimen of poor little Cinderella's golden ringlets? Command your slave. I wish I 
 had paper enough to write you an account of a grand Gann dinner at which I assisted, and 
 of a scene which there took place ; and how Cinderella was dressed out, not by a fairy, but 
 by a charitable kitchen-maid, and was turned out of the room by her indignant mamma, for 
 appearing in the scullion's finery. But my /orie does not lie in such descriptions of polite 
 life. We drank port, and toasts after dinner : here is the viemt; and the names and order 
 of the eaters." 
 
 The bill of fare has been given already, and need not, there- 
 fore, be again laid before the public. 
 
 " What a fellow that is ! " said young Lord Cinqbars, read- 
 ing the letter to his friends, and in a profound admiration of his 
 tutor's genius.
 
 48 A SHABBY GENTEEL STORY. 
 
 " And to think that he was a reading man too, and took a 
 double tirst," cried another; "why, the man's an Admirable 
 Crichton." 
 
 "Upon my life, though, he's a little too bad," said a third, 
 who was a moralist. And with this a fresh bowl of milk-punch 
 came reeking from the college butteries, and the jovial party 
 discussed that. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 CONTAINS A GREAT DEAL OF COMPLICATED LOVE-MAKING. 
 
 The Misses Macarty were excessively indignant that Mr. 
 Fitch should have had the audacity to fall in love with their sis- 
 ter ; and poor Caroline's life was not, as may be imagined, made 
 much the happier by the envy and passion thus excited. Mr. 
 Fitch's amour w-as the source of a great deal of pain to her. 
 Her mother would tauntingly say, that as both were beggars, 
 they could not do better than marry ; and declared, in the same 
 satirical way, that she should like nothing better than to see a 
 large family of grandchildren about her, to be plagues and 
 burdens upon her, as her daughter was. The short w-ay would 
 have been, when the young painter's intentions were manifest, 
 which they pretty speedily were, to have requested him imme- 
 diately to quit the house ; or, as Mr. Gann said, " to give him 
 the sack at once ; " to which measure the worthy man indig- 
 nantly avowed that he would have resort. But his lady would 
 not allow of any such rudeness ; although, for her part, she 
 professed the strongest scorn and contempt for the painter. 
 For the painful fact must be stated : Fitch had a short time 
 previously paid no less a sum than a whole quarter's board and 
 lodging in advance, at Mrs. Gann's humble request, and he 
 possessed his landlady's receipt for that sum ; the mention of 
 which circumstance silenced Gann's objections at once. And 
 indeed, it is pretty certain that, with all her taunts to her 
 daughter and just abuse of Fitch's poverty, Mrs. Gann in her 
 heart was not altogether averse to the match. In the first 
 place, she loved match-making ; next, she would be glad to be 
 rid of her daughter at any rate ; and besides. Fitch's aunt, the 
 auctioneer's wife, was rich, and had no children ; painters, as 
 she had heard, make often a great deal of money, and Fitch
 
 A SHABBY GENTEEL STORY. 
 
 49 
 
 might be a clever one, for aught she knew. So he was allowed 
 to remain in the house, an undeclared but very assiduous lover ; 
 and to sigh, and to moan, and make verses and portraits of his 
 beloved, and build castles in the air as best he might. Indeed 
 our humble Cinderella was in a very curious position. She 
 felt a tender passion for the first floor, and was adored by the 
 second floor, and had to wait upon both at the summons of the 
 bell of either ; and as the poor little thing was compelled not 
 to notice any of the sighs and glances which the painter be- 
 stowed upon her, she also had schooled herself to maintain a 
 quiet demeanor towards Mr. Brandon, and not allow him to 
 discover the secret which was laboring in her little breast. 
 
 I think it may be laid down as a pretty general rule, that 
 most romantic little girls of Caroline's age have such a budding 
 sentiment as this young person entertained ; quite innocent of 
 course ; nourished and talked of in delicious secrecy to the 
 confidante of the hour. Or else what are novels made for.^ 
 Had Caroline read of Valancourt and Emily for nothing, or 
 gathered no good example from those five tear-fraught volumes 
 which describe the loves of Miss Helen Mar and Sir William 
 Wallace ? Many a time had she depicted Brandon in a fancy 
 costume, such as the fascinating Valancourt wore ; or painted 
 herself as Helen, tying a sash round her knight's cuirass, and 
 watching him forth to battle. Silly fancies, no doubt ; but con- 
 sider, madam, the poor girl's age and education ; the only in- 
 struction she had ever received was from these tender, kind- 
 hearted, silly books : the only happiness which Fate had 
 allowed her was in this little silent world of fancy. It would 
 be hard to grudge the poor thing her dreams ; and many such 
 did she have, and impart blushingly to honest Becky, as they 
 sate by the humble kitchen-fire. 
 
 Although it cost her heart a great pang, she had once ven- 
 tured to implore her mother not to send her up stairs to the 
 lodgers' rooms, for she shrunk at the notion of the occurrence 
 that Brandon should discover her regard for him ; but this 
 point had never entered Mrs. Gann's sagacious head. She 
 thought her daughter wished to avoid Fitch, and sternly bade 
 her do her duty, and not give herself such impertinent airs ; 
 and, indeed, it can't be said that poor Caroline was very sorry 
 at being compelled to continue to see Brandon. To do both 
 gentlemen justice, neither ever said a word unfit for Caroline 
 to hear. Fitch would have been torn to pieces by a thousand 
 wild horses rather than have breathed a single syllable to hurt 
 her feelings ; and Brandon, though by no means so squeamisl 
 
 4
 
 ^o A SHABBY GENTEEL STORY 
 
 on ordinary occasions, was innately a gentleman, and from 
 taste rather tlian from virtue, was carefully respectful in his 
 behavior to her. 
 
 As for the Misses Macarty themselves, it has been stated 
 that they had already given away their hearts several times ; 
 Miss Isabella being at this moment attached to a certain young 
 wine-merchant, and to Lieutenant or Colonel Swabber of the 
 Spanish service ; and Miss Rosalind having a decided fondness 
 for a foreign nobleman, with black mustachios, who had paid a 
 visit to Margate. - Of Miss Bella's lovers, Swabber had disap- 
 peared ; but she still met the wine-merchant pretty often, and it 
 is believed had gone very nigh to accept him. As for Miss 
 Rosalind, I am sorry to say that the course of her true love ran 
 by no means smoothly : the Frenchman had turned out to be 
 not a marquess, but a billiard-marker ; and a sad, sore subject 
 the disappointment was with the neglected lady. 
 
 We should have spoken of it long since had the subject been 
 one that was much canvassed in the Gann family ; but once 
 when Gann had endeavored to rally his stepdaughter on this 
 unfortunate attachment (using for the purpose those delicate 
 terms of wit for which the honest gentleman was always famous). 
 Miss Linda had flown into such a violent fury, and comported 
 herself in a way so dreadful, that James Gann, Esquire, was 
 fairly frightened out of his wits by the threats, screams, and 
 imprecations which she uttered. Miss Bella, who was disposed 
 to be jocose likewise, was likewise awed into silence ; for her 
 dear sister talked of tearing her eyes out that minute, and 
 uttered some hints, too, regarding love-matters personally affect- 
 ing Miss Bella herself, which caused that young lady to turn 
 pale-red, to mutter something about "wicked lies," and to 
 leave the room immediately. Nor was the subject ever again 
 broached by the Ganns. Even when Mrs. Gann once talked 
 about that odious French impostor, she was stopped immediately, 
 not by the lady concerned, but by Miss Bell^i, who cried, sharply, 
 " Mamma, hold your tongue, and don't vex our dear Linda by 
 alluding to any such stuff." It is most probable that the young 
 ladies had liad a private conference, which, beginning a little 
 fiercely at first, had ended amicably : and so the marquess was 
 mentioned no more. 
 
 Miss Linda, then, was comparatively free (for Bob Smith, 
 the lincndraper, and young Glauber, the apothecary, went for 
 nothing) ; and, very luckily for her, a. successor was found for 
 the faithless Frenchman, almost immediately. 
 
 This gentleman was a connnoner, to be sure ; but had a
 
 A SHABBY GENTEEL STORY. 
 
 SI 
 
 good estate of five hundred a year, kept his horse and gig, and 
 was, as Mr. Gann remarked, as good a fellow as ever lived. 
 Let us say at once that the new lover was no other than Mr. 
 Svvigby. From the day when he had been introduced to the 
 family he appeared to be very much attracted by the two sisters ; 
 sent a turkey off his own farm, and six bottles of prime Hol- 
 lands, to Mr. and Mrs. Gann, in presents ; and, in ten short 
 days after his first visit, had informed his friend Gann that he 
 was violently in love with two women whose names he would 
 never — never breathe. The worthy Gann knew right well how 
 the matter was ; for he had not failed to remark Swigby's mel- 
 ancholy, and to attribute it to its right cause. 
 
 Swigby was forty-eight years of age, stout, hearty, gay, much 
 given to drink, and had never been a lady's man, or, indeed, 
 passed half-a-dozen evenings in ladies' society. He thought 
 Gann the noblest and finest fellow in the world. He never 
 heard any singing like James's, nor any jokes like his ; nor had 
 met with such an accomplished gentleman or man of the world. 
 " Gann has his faults," Swigby would say at the " Bag of 
 Nails ;" which of us has not? — but I "tell you what, he's the 
 greatest trump I ever see." Many scores of scores had he paid 
 for Gann, many guineas' and crown-pieces had he lent him, 
 since he came into his property some three years before. What 
 were Swigby's former pursuits I can't tell. What need we 
 care ? Hadn't he fi\^ hundred a year now, and a horse and 
 gig ? Ay, that he had. 
 
 Since his accession to fortune, this gay young bachelor had 
 taken his share (what he called " his whack ") of pleasure ; had 
 been at one — nay, perhaps, at two — public-houses every night ; 
 and had been tipsy, I make no doubt, nearly a thousand times 
 in the course of the three years. Many people had tried to 
 cheat him ; but, no, no ! he knew what was what, and in all 
 matters of money was simple and shrewd. Gann's gentility 
 won him ; his bragging, his ton, and the stylish tuft on his chin. 
 To be invited to his house was a proud moment ; and when he 
 went away, after the banquet described in the last chapter, he 
 was in a perfect ferment of love and liquor. 
 
 " What a stylish woman is that Mrs. Gann ! " thought he, 
 as he tumbled into bed at his inn ; fine she must have been as 
 a gal ! fourteen stone now, without saddle or bridle, and no 
 mistake. And them Miss Macart}s. Jupiter ! what spanking, 
 handsome, elegant creatures ! — real elegance in both on 'em ! 
 Such hair ! — black's the word — as black as my mare ; such 
 cheeks, such necks, and shoulders ! " At noon he repeated
 
 * 
 5 2 A SHABBY GENTEEL STORY. 
 
 these observations to Gann himself, as he walked up and down 
 the pier with that gentlemen, smoking Manilla cheroots. He 
 was in raptures with his evening. Gann received his praises 
 with much majestic good-humor. 
 
 " Blood, sir ! " said he, " blood's everything ! Them gals 
 have been brought up as few ever have. I don't speak of 
 myself ; but their mother — their mother's a lady, sir. Show me 
 a woman in England as is better bred or knows the world more 
 than my Juliana ! " 
 
 " It's impawssible," said Swigby. 
 
 " Think of the company we've kep', sir, before our misfor- 
 tunes — the fust in the land. Brandenburg House, sir, — 
 F.ngland's injured queen. Law bless you ! Juliana was always 
 there." 
 
 " I make no doubt, sir ; you can see it in her," said Swigby, 
 solemnlv. 
 
 " And as for those gals, why, ain't they related to the fust 
 families in Ireland, sir? — In course they are. As I said before, 
 blood's everything ; and those 3'oung women have the best of it ; 
 they are connected with the reg'lar old noblesse." 
 
 " They have the best of everythink, I'm sure," said Swigby, 
 " and deserve it, too," and relapsed itito his morning remarks. 
 " What creatures ! what elegance 1 what hair and eyes, sir ! — 
 black, and all's black, as I say. What complexion, sir ! — ay, 
 and what makes, too ! Such a neck and shoulders I never see ! " 
 
 Gann, who had his hands in his pockets (his friend's arm 
 being hooked into one of his), here suddenly withdrew his hand 
 from its hiding-place, clenched his fist, assumed a horrible 
 knowing grin, and gave Mr. Swigby such a blow in the ribs as 
 wellnigh sent him into the water. " You sly dog ! " said Mr. 
 Gann, with inexpressible emphasis ; "you've found that out, too, 
 have you ? Have a care, Joe, my iDoy, — have a care." 
 
 And herewith Gann and Joe burst into tremendous roars of 
 laughter, fresh explosions taking place at intervals of five 
 minutes during the rest of the walk. The two friends parted 
 exceedingly happy ; and when they met that evening at " The 
 Nails," Gann drew Swigby mysteriously into the bar, and thrust 
 into his hand a triangular piece of pink paper, which the latter 
 read : — 
 
 "Mrs. Gann and the Misses Macarly request the honor and pleasure of Mr. Swigby's 
 Company (if you liave no better engagement) to tea to-morrow evening, at half-past five. 
 " Margareita Cottage, Salamanca Road Xorlh, 
 Thursday evening.'''' 
 
 The faces of the two gentlemen were wonderfully expressive 
 of satisfaction as this communication jiassed between them.
 
 A SHABBY GENTEEL STORY. 53 
 
 And I am led to believe that Mrs. Gann had been unusually 
 pleased with her husband's conduct on that day : for honest 
 James had no less than thirteen and sixpence in his pocket, and 
 insisted, as usual, upon standing glasses all round. Joe Swigby, 
 left alone in the little parlor behind the bar, called for a sheet 
 of paper, a new pen and a wafer, and in the space of half an 
 hour concocted a very spirited and satisfactory answer to this 
 note ; which was carried olf by Gann, and duly delivered. 
 Punctually at half-past five, Mr. Joseph Swigby knocked at 
 Margaretta Cottage door, in his new coat with glistening brass 
 buttons, his face clean-shaved, and his great ears shining over 
 his great shirt-collar delightfully bright and red. 
 
 What happened at this tea-party it is needless here to say ; 
 but Swigby came away from it quite as much enchanted as 
 before, and declared that the duets, sung by the ladies in 
 hideous discord, were the sweetest music he had ever heard. 
 He sent the gin and the turkey the next day ; and, of course, 
 was invited to dine. 
 
 The dinner was followed up on his part by an offer to drive 
 all the young ladies and their mamma into the country ; and he 
 hired a very smart barouche to conduct them. The invitation 
 was not declined ; and Fitch, too, was asked by Mr. Swigby, in 
 the height of his good-humor, and accepted with the utmost 
 delight. " Me and Joe will go on the box," said Gann. " You 
 four ladies and Mr. Fitch shall go inside. Carry must go 
 bodkin ; but she ain't very big." 
 
 " Carry, indeed, will stop at home," said her mamma ; " she's 
 not fit to go out." 
 
 At which poor Fitch's jaw fell ; it was in order to ride with 
 her that he had agreed to accompany the party ; nor could he 
 escape now, having just promised so eagerly. 
 
 " Oh, don't let's have that provid Brandon," said the young 
 ladies", when the good-natured Mr. Swigby proposed to ask that 
 gentleman ; and therefore he was not invited to join them in 
 their excursion ; but he stayed at home very unconcernedly, 
 and saw the barouche and its load drive off. Somebody else 
 looked at it from the parlor-window with rather a heavy heart ; 
 and that some one was poor Caroline. The day was bright and 
 sunshiny ; the spring was beginning early ; it would have been 
 pleasant to have been a lady for once, and to have driven along 
 in a carriage with prancing horses. Mr. Fitch looked after her 
 in a very sheepish, melancholy way ; and was so dismal and 
 silly during the first part of the journey, that Miss Linda, who 
 was next to him, said to her papa that she would change places
 
 54 
 
 A STJABBY CF.ATTEEL STORY. 
 
 witli him ; and aclually mounted the box by the side of the 
 liappy, trembling Mr. Swigljy. How proud he was, to be sure ! 
 How knowingly did lie spank the horses along, and fling out 
 the shillings at the turnpikes ! 
 
 " Bless you, he don't care for change ! " said Gann, as one 
 of the toll-takers offered to render some coppers ; and Joe 
 felt infinitely obliged to his friend for setting off his amiable 
 qualities in such a way. 
 
 O mighty Fate, that over us miserable mortals rulest supreme, 
 with what small means are thy ends effected ! — with what scorn- 
 ful ease and mean instruments does it please thee to govern 
 mankind ! Let each man think of the circumstances of his life, 
 and how its lot has been determined. The getting up a little 
 earlier or later, the turning down this street or that, the eating 
 of this dish or the other, may influence all the years and actions 
 of a future life. Mankind walks down the left-hand side of 
 Regent Street instead of the right, and meets a friend who asks 
 him to dinner, and goes, and finds the turtle remarkably good, 
 and the iced punch very cool and pleasant ; and, being in a 
 merry, jovial, idle mood, has no objection to a social rubber of 
 whist — nay, to a few more glasses of that cool punch. In the 
 most careless, good-humored way, he loses a few points ; and 
 still feels thirsty, and loses a few more points ; and, like a man 
 of spirit, increases his stakes, to be sure, and just by that walk 
 down Regent Street is ruined for life. Or he walks down the 
 right-hand side of Regent Street instead of the left, and, good 
 heavens! who is that charming young creature who has just 
 stepped into her carriage from Mr, Fraser's shop, and to whom 
 and her mamma Mr. Fraser has made the most elegant bow in 
 the world.? It is the lovely Miss Moidore, with a hundred 
 thousand pounds, who has remarked your elegant figure, and 
 regularly drives to town on the first of the month, to purchase 
 her darling Magazine. You drive after her as fast as the hack- 
 cab will carry you. She reads the Magazine the whole way. 
 She stops at her papa's elegant villa at Hampstead, with a con- 
 servatory, a double coach-house, and a park-like paddock. As 
 the lodge-gate separates you from that dear girl, she looks back 
 just once, and blushes. Enibiiit, sahui est res. She has blushed, 
 and you are all right. In a week j'ou are introduced to the family, 
 and pronounced a charming young fellow of high principles. In 
 three weeks you have danced twenty-nine quadrilles with her, 
 and whisked her through several miles of w-altzes. In a month 
 Mrs. O'Flaherty has flung herself into the arms of her mother, 
 just having come from a visit to the village of Gretna, near
 
 A. SHABBY GENTEEL STORY. 
 
 55 
 
 Carlisle ; and you have an account at your banker's ever after. 
 What is the cause of all this good fortune ? — a walk on a par- 
 ticular side of Regent Street. And so true and indisputable is 
 this fact, that there's a young north-country gentleman with 
 whom 1 am acquainted, that daily paces up and down the above- 
 named street for many hours, fully expecting that such an ad- 
 venture will happen to him ; for which end he keeps a cab in 
 readiness at the corner of Vigo Lane. 
 
 Now, after a dissertation in this history, the reader is pretty 
 sure to know that a moral is coming ; and the facts connected 
 with our tale, which are to be drawn from the above little essay 
 on fate, are simply these : i. If Mr. Fitch had not heard Mr. 
 Swigby invite all the ladies, he would have refused Swigby's in- 
 vitation, and stayed at home. 2. If he had not been in the 
 carriage, it is quite certain that Miss Rosalind Macarty would 
 not have been seated by hini on the back seat. 3. If he had 
 not been sulky, she never would have asked her papa to let her 
 take his place on the box. 4. If she had not taken her papa's 
 place on the box, not one of the circumstances would have 
 happened which did happen ; and which were as follows : — 
 
 1. Miss Bella remained inside. 
 
 2. Mr. Swigby, who was wavering between the two, like a 
 certain animal between two bundles of hay, was determined by 
 this circumstance, and made proposals to Miss Linda, whisper- 
 ing to Miss Linda : " Miss, I ain't equal to the like of you ; but 
 I'm hearty, healthy, and have five hundred a year. Will you 
 marry me ? " In fact, this very speech had been taught him by 
 cunning Gann, who saw well enough that Swigby would speak 
 to one or other of his daughters. And to it the young lady re- 
 plied, also in a whispering, agitated tone, " Law, Mr. S. ! What 
 an odd man ! How can you ? " And, after a little pause, added, 
 " Speak to nianwiaT 
 
 3. (And this is the main point of my story.) If little Caro- 
 line had been allowed to go out, she never would have been 
 left alone with Brandon at Margate. When Fate wills that 
 something should come to pass, she sends forth a million of 
 little circumstances to clear and prepare the way. 
 
 In the month of April (as indeed in a half-a-score of other 
 months of the year) the reader may have remarked that the 
 cold north-east wind is prevalent ; and that when, tempted by 
 a glimpse of sunshine, he issues forth to take the air, he receives 
 not only it, but such a quantity of it as is enough to keep him 
 shivering through the rest of the miserable month. On one of 
 these happy days of English weather (it was the very day before
 
 5 6 A SHABBY GENTEEL STORY. 
 
 the pleasure-party described in the last chapter) Mr. Brandon 
 cursing heartily his country, and thinking how infinitely more 
 congenial to him were the winds and habits prevalent in other 
 nations, was marching over the cliffs near Margate, in the 
 midst of a storm of shrill east wind which no ordinary mortal 
 could bear, when he found perched on the cliff, his hngers blue 
 with cold, the celebrated Andrea Fitch, employed in sketching 
 a land or a sea scape on a sheet of gray paper. 
 
 "You have chosen a fine day for sketching," said Mr. Bran- 
 don, bitterly, his thin aquiline nose peering out livid from the 
 fur collar of his coat. 
 
 Mr. Fitch smiled, understanding the allusion, 
 
 "An hartist, sir," said he, "doesn't mind the coldness of 
 the weather. There was a chap in the Academy who took 
 sketches twenty degrees below zero in Hiceland — Mount 'Ecla, 
 sir ! E was the man that gave the first hidea of Mount 'Ecla for 
 the Surrey Zoological Gardens." 
 
 " He must have been a wonderful enthusiast ! " said Mr. 
 Brandon ; " I fancy that most would prefer to sit at home, and 
 not numb their fingers in such a freezing storm as this ! " 
 
 " Storm, sir ! " replied Fitch, majestically ; " I live in a storm, 
 sir ! A true hartist is never so 'appy as when he can have the 
 advantage to gaze upon yonder tempestuous hocean in one of 
 its hangry moods." 
 
 " A)', there comes the steamer," answered Mr. Brandon ; 
 " I can fancy that there are a score of unhappy people on board 
 who are not artists, and would wish to behold your ocean 
 quiet." 
 
 " They are not poets, sir : the glorious hever-changing ex- 
 pression of the great countenance of Nature is not seen by 
 them. I should consider myself unworthy of my hart, if I could 
 not bear a little privation of cold or 'eat for its sake. And be- 
 sides, sir, whatever their hardships may be, such a sight hamply 
 repays me ; for, although my private sorrows may be (has they 
 are) tremendous, I never can look abroad upon the green 
 hearth and hawful sea, without in a measure forgetting my per- 
 sonal woes and wrongs ; for what right has a poor creature like 
 me to think of his affairs in the presence of such a spectacle as 
 this .'' I can't, sir ; I feel ashamed of myself ; I bow my 'ead 
 and am quiet. When I set myself to examining hart, sir (by 
 which I mean nature), I don't dare to think of anything else." 
 
 " You worship a very charming and consoling mistress." 
 answered Mr. Brandon, with a supercilious air, lighting and be- 
 ginning to smoke a cigar ; " your enthusiasm does you credit."
 
 A SHABBY GENTEEL STORY. 57 
 
 "If you have another," said Andrea Fitch, " I should hke 
 to smoke one, for you seem to have a real feeling about hart, 
 and I was a-getting so deucedly cold here, that really there was 
 scarcely any bearing of it." 
 
 "The cold is very severe," replied Mr. Brandon. 
 
 " No, no, it's not the weather, sir ! " said Mr. Fitch ; " it's 
 here, sir, here " (pointing to the left side of his waistcoat). 
 
 " What ! you, too, have had sorrows .'' " 
 
 " Sorrows, sir ! hagonies — hagonies, which I have never un- 
 folded to any mortal ! I have hendured halmost hevery thing. 
 Poverty, sir, 'unger, hobloquy, 'opeiess love ! but for my hart, 
 sir, I should be the most miserable wretch in the world ! " 
 
 And herewith Mr. Fitch began to pour forth into Mr. 
 Brandon's ears the history of some of those sorrows under 
 which he labored, and which he communicated to every single 
 person who would listen to him. 
 
 Mr. Brandon was greatly amused by Fitch's prattle, and the 
 latter told him under what privations he had studied his art : 
 how he had starved for three years in Paris and Rome, while 
 laboring at his profession ; how meanly jealous the Royal 
 Academy was which would never exhibit a single one of his 
 pictures ; how he had been driven from the Heternal City by 
 the attentions of an immense fat Mrs. Carrickfergus, who abso- 
 lutely proposed marriage to him ; and how he was at this 
 moment (a fact of which Mr. Brandon was already quite aware) 
 madly and desperately in love with one of the most beautiful 
 maidens in this world. For Fitch, having a mistress to his 
 heart's desire, was boiling with impatience to have a confidant ; 
 what, indeed, would be the joy of love, if one were not allowed 
 to speak of one's feelings to a friend who could know how to 
 sympathize with them ? Fitch was sure Brandon did, because 
 Brandon was the very first person with whom the painter had 
 talked since he had come to the resolution recorded in the last 
 chapter. 
 
 " I hope she is as rich as that unlucky Mrs. Carrickfergus, 
 whom you treated so cruelly ? " said the confidant, affecting 
 entire ignorance. 
 
 " Rich, sir ? no, I thank heaven, she has not a penny ! " 
 said Fitch. 
 
 " I presume, then, you are yourself independent," said 
 Brandon, smiling ; "for in the marriage state, one or the other 
 of the parties concerned should bring a portion of the filthy 
 lucre." 
 
 " Haven't I my profession, sir ? " said Fitch, majestically,
 
 58 
 
 J SHABBY GENTEEL STORY. 
 
 having declared five minutes before that he starved in his pro- 
 fession. "Do you suppose a painter gets nothing? Haven't 
 I ])orders from the first people in Europe ? — commissions, sir, 
 to hexecute 'istory-pieces, battle-pieces, haltar-pieces ? " 
 
 " Master-pieces, I am sure," said Brandon, bowing politely ; 
 "for a gentleman of your astonishing genius can do no other." 
 
 The" delighted artist received this compliment with many 
 blushes, and vowed and protested that his performances were 
 not really worthy of such high praise ; but he fancied Mr. 
 Brandon a great connoisseur, nevertheless, and unburdened 
 his mind to him in a manner still more open. Fitch's sketch 
 was by this time finished ; and, putting his drawing implements 
 together, he rose, and the gentlemen walked away. The sketch 
 was hugely admired by Mr. Brandon, and when they came 
 home, Fitch, culling it dexterously out of his book, presented it 
 in a neat speech to his friend, " the gifted hamateur." 
 
 " The gifted hamateur " received the drawing with a pro- 
 fusion of thanks, and so much did he value it, that he had 
 actually torn oH a piece to light a cigar with, when he saw that 
 words were written on the other side of the paper, and de- 
 ciphered the following : — 
 
 " SONG OF THE VIOLET. 
 
 *' A humble flower long time I pined, 
 
 Upon the solitary plain. 
 And trembled .it the angry wind, 
 
 And shrimk before the bitter rain. 
 And, oh ! 'twas in a blessed hour, 
 
 A passing wanderer chanced to se« 
 And, pitying the lonely flower, 
 
 To stoop and gather me. 
 
 " I fear no more the tempest rude, 
 
 On dreary heath no more I pine, 
 But left my cheerless solitude. 
 
 To deck the breast of Caroline. 
 Alas! our days are brief at best, 
 
 Nor long ) fear will mine endure, 
 Though shelter'd here upon a breast 
 
 So gentle and so pure. 
 
 " It draws the fragrance from my leaves, 
 It robs me of my sweetest breath ; 
 And every time it falls and heaves, 
 It warns me of my coming death. 
 l?ut one I know would glad forego 
 
 All joys of life to be as I ; 
 An hour to rest on that sweet breast, 
 And then, contented, to die. 
 
 ■' Andrea." 
 
 When Mr. Brandon had finished the perusal of these verses, 
 he laid them down with an air of considerable vexation. 
 " Egad ! " said he, " this fellow, fool as he is, is not so great a
 
 A SHABBY GENTEEL STORY. 
 
 59 
 
 tool as he seems ; and if he goes on tliis way, may finish by 
 turning the girl's head. They can't resist a man if he but 
 presses hard enough — I know they can't ! " And here Mr. 
 Brandon mused over his various experience, which confirmed 
 his observation, that be a man ever so silly, a gentlewoman 
 will yield to him out of sheer weariness. And he thought of 
 several cases in which, by the persevering application of copies 
 of verses, young ladies had been brought from dislike to suf- 
 ferance of a man, from sufferance to partiality, and from 
 partiality to St. George's, Hanover Squafe. " A rufifian who 
 murders his h's to carry off such a delicate little creature as 
 that ! " cried he in a transport : '* it shall never be if I can 
 prevent it ! " He thought Caroline more and more beautiful 
 every instant, and was himself by this time almost as much in 
 love with her as Fitch himself. 
 
 Mr. Brandon, then, saw Fitch depart in Swigby's carriage 
 with no ordinary feelings of pleasure. Miss Caroline was not 
 with them. " Now is my time ! " thought Brandon ; and, ring- 
 ing the bell, he inquired with some anxiety, from Becky, where 
 Miss Caroline was .-' It must be confessed that mistress and 
 maid were at their usual occupation, working and reading 
 novels in the back-parlor. Poor Carry ! what other pleasure 
 had she ? 
 
 She had not gone through many pages, or Becky advanced 
 many stitches in the darning of that table-cloth which the good 
 housewife, Mrs. Gann, had confided to her charge, when an 
 humble knock was heard at the door of the sitting-room, that 
 caused the blushing Caroline to tremble and drop her book, as 
 Miss Lydia Languish does in the play. 
 
 Mr. George Brandon entered with a very demure air. He 
 held in his hand a black satin neck-scarf, of which a part had 
 come to be broken. He could not wear it in its present con- 
 dition, that was evident ; but Miss Caroline was blushing and 
 trembling a great deal too much to suspect that this wicked 
 Brandon had himself torn his own scarf with his own hands one 
 moment before he entered the room. I don't know whether 
 Becky had any suspicions of this fact, or whether it was only 
 the ordinary roguish look which she had when anything pleased 
 her, that now lighted up her eyes and caused her mouth to ex- 
 pand smilingly, and her fat red cheeks to gather up into 
 wrinkles. 
 
 " I have had a sad misfortune," said he, " and should be 
 very much obliged indeed to Miss Caroline to repair it." 
 (Caroline was said with a kind of tender hesitation that caused
 
 6o A SHABBY GENTEEL STORY. 
 
 the young woman, so named, to blush more than ever.) " It is 
 the only stock 1 have in the world, and I can't go barenecked 
 into the streets ; can I, Mrs. Becky ? " 
 
 " No, sure," said Becky. 
 
 " Not unless I was a celebrated painter, like Mr. Fitch," 
 added Mr. Brandon, with a smile, which was reflected speedily 
 upon the face of the lady whom he wished to interest. " Those 
 great geniuses," he added, " may do anything." 
 
 "For," says Becky, "hee's got enough beard on hees faze 
 to keep hees neck warm ! " At which remark, though Miss 
 Caroline very properly said, " For shame, Becky ! " Mr. 
 Brandon was so convulsed with laughter, that he fairly fell 
 down upon the sofa on which Miss Caroline was seated. How 
 she startled and trembled, as he flung his arm upon the back 
 of the couch ! Mr. Brandon did not attempt to apologize for 
 what was an act of considerable impertinence, but continued 
 mercilessly to make many more jokes concerning poor Fitch, 
 which were so cleverly suited to the comprehension of the maid 
 and the young mistress, as to elicit a great number of roars of 
 laughter from the one, and to cause the other to smile in spite 
 of herself. Indeed, Brandon had gained a vast reputation with 
 Becky in his morning colloquies with her, and she was ready 
 to laugh at any single word which it pleased him to utter. How 
 many of his good things had this honest scullion carried down 
 stairs to Caroline ? and how pitilessly had she contrived to 
 estropier them in their passage from the drawing-room to the 
 kitchen ? 
 
 Well, then, while Mr, Brandon "was a-going on," as Becky 
 said, Caroline had taken his stock, and her little fingers were 
 occupied in repairing the damage he had done to it. Was it 
 clumsiness on her part .'' Certain it is that the rent took several 
 minutes to repair : of them the mangeur de cmurs did not fail 
 to profit, conversing in an easy, kindly, confidential way, which 
 set our fluttering" heroine speedily at rest, and enabled her to 
 reply to his continual queries, addressed with much adroitness 
 and an air of fraternal interest, by a number of those pretty 
 little timid whispering yeses and noes, and those gentle, quick 
 looks of the eyes, wherewith young and modest maidens are 
 wont to reply to the questions of seducing young bachelors. 
 Dear yeses and noes, how beautiful you are when gently 
 whispered by pretty lips ! — glances of quick innocent eyes how 
 charming are you ! — and how charming the soft blush that steals 
 over the cheek, towards which the dark lashes are drawing the 
 blue-veined eyelids down. And here let the writer of this
 
 A SHABBY GENTEEL STORY. 6 1 
 
 solemnly declare, upon his veracity, that he means nothing but 
 what is right and moral. But look, T pray you, at an innocent, 
 bashful girl of sixteen : if she be but good, she must be pretty. 
 She is a woman now, but a girl still. How delightful all her 
 ways are ! How exquisite her instinctive grace ! All the arts 
 of all the Cleopatras are not so captivating as her nature. 
 Who can resist her confiding simplicity, or fail to be touched 
 and conquered by her gentle appeal to protection ? 
 
 All this Mr. Brandon saw and felt, as many a gentleman 
 educated in this school will. It is not because a man is a rascal 
 himself, that he cannot appreciate virtue and purity very keen- 
 ly ; and our hero did feel for this simple, gentle, tender, artless 
 creature, a real respect and sympathy — a sympathy so fresh 
 and delicious, that he was but too glad to yield to it and indulge 
 in it, and which he mistook, probably, for a real love of virtue 
 and a return to the days of his innocence. 
 
 Indeed, Mr. Brandon, it was no such thing. It was only 
 because vice and debauch were stale for the moment, and this 
 pretty virtue new. It was only because your cloyed appetite 
 was long unused to this simple meat that you felt so keen a 
 relish for it ; and I thought of you only the last blessed Sat- 
 urday, at Mr. Lovegrove's, "West India Tavern," Blackwall, 
 where a company of fifteen epicures, who had scorned the turtle, 
 pooh-poohed the punch, and sent away the whitebait, did 
 suddenly and simultaneously make a rush upon — a dish of 
 beans and bacon. And if the assiduous reader of novels will 
 think upon some of the most celebrated works of that species, 
 which have lately appeared in this and other countries, he will, 
 find, amidst much debauch of sentiment and enervating dissipa- 
 tion of intellect, that the writers have from time to time a return- 
 ing appetite for innocence and freshness, and indulge us with 
 occasional repasts of beans and bacon. How long Mr. Bran- 
 don remained by Miss Caroline's side I have no means of 
 judging ; it is probable, however, that he stayed a much longer 
 time than was necessary for the mending of his black satin 
 stock. I believe, indeed, that he read to the ladies a great 
 part of the " Mysteries of Udolpho," over which they were 
 engaged ; and interspersed his reading with many remarks of 
 his own, both tender and satirical. Whether he was in her 
 company half-an-hour or four hours, this is certain, that the time 
 slipped away very swiftly with poor Caroline ; and when a 
 carriage drove up to the door, and shrill \oices were heard 
 crying, " Becky ! " " Carry ! " and Rebecca the maid starting 
 up, cried, " Lor', here's missus ! " and Brandon jumped rather
 
 62 '4 SHABBY GENTEEL STOKY. 
 
 suddenly off the sofa, and fled up the stairs — when all these 
 events took place, I know Caroline felt very sad indeed, and 
 opened the door for her parents with a very heavy heart. 
 
 Swigby helped Miss Linda off the box with' excessive 
 tenderness. Papa was bustling and roaring in high good- 
 humor, and called for " hot water and tumblers immediately." 
 Mrs. Gann was gracious ; and Miss Bell sulky, as she had good 
 reason to be, for she insisted upon taking the front seat in the 
 carriage before her sister, and had lost a husband by that very 
 piece of obstinacy. 
 
 Mr. Fitch, as he entered, bestowed upon Caroline a heavy 
 sigh and a deep stare, and silently ascended to his own apart- 
 ment. He was lost in thought. The fact is, he was trying to 
 remember some verses regarding a violet, which he had made 
 five years before, and which he had somehow lost from among 
 his papers. So he went up stairs, muttering, 
 
 " A humble flower long since I pined 
 Upon a solitary plain " 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 DESCRIBES A SHABBY GENTEEL MARRIAGE, AND MORE LOVE- 
 MAKING. 
 
 It will not be necessary to describe the particulars of the 
 festivities which took place on the occasion of Mr. Swigby's 
 marriage to Miss Macarty. The happy pair went off in a post- 
 chaise and four to the bridegroom's country-seat, accompanied 
 by the bride's blushing sister ; and when the first week of their 
 matrimonial bliss was ended, that worthy woman, Mrs. Gann, 
 wilh her excellent husband, went to visit the young couple. 
 Miss Caroline was left, therefore, sole mistress of the house, 
 and received special cautions from her mamma as to prudence, 
 economy, the proper management of the lodgers' bills, and the 
 necessity of staying at home. 
 
 Considering that one of the gentlemen remaining in the 
 house was a declared lo\er of Miss Caroline, I think it is a 
 little surprising that her mother should leave her unprotected ; 
 but in this matter the poor are not so particular as the rich ; 
 and so this young lady was consigned to the guardianship of
 
 A SHABBY GENTEEL STORY. 6^ 
 
 her own innocence, and the lodgers' loyalty : nor was there any 
 reason why Mrs. Gann should doubt the latter. As for Mr, 
 Fitch, he would have far preferred to be torn to pieces by ten 
 thousand wild horses, rather than to offer to the young woman 
 any unkindness or insult ; and how was IMrs. Gann to suppose 
 that her other lodger was a whit less loyal 'i that he had any 
 partiality for a person of whom he always spoke as a mean, 
 insignificant little baby .' So, without any misgivings, and in 
 a one-horse fly with Mr. Gann by her side, with a bran new 
 green coat and gilt buttons, Juliana Gann went forth to visit 
 her beloved child, and console her in her married state. 
 
 And here, were I allowed to occupy the reader with ex- 
 traneous matters, I could give a very curious and touching 
 picture of the Swigby menage. Mrs. S., I am very sorry to 
 say, quarrelled with her husband on the third day after their 
 marriage, — and for what, pr'thee 1 Why, because he would 
 smoke, and no gentleman ought to smoke. Swigby, therefore, 
 patiently resigned his pipe, and with it one of the quietest, 
 happiest, kindest companions of his solitude. He was a dif- 
 ferent man after this ; his pipe was as a limb of his body. 
 Having on Tuesday conquered the pipe, Mrs, Swigby on 
 Thursday did battle with her husband's rum-and-water, a drink 
 of an odious smell, as she very properly observed ; and the 
 smell was doubly odious, now that the tobacco-smoke no longer 
 perfumed the parlor-breeze, and counteracted the odors of the 
 juice of West India sugar-canes. On Thursday, then, Mr. Swigby 
 and rum held out pretty bravely. Mrs. S. attacked the punch 
 with some sharp-shooting, and fierce charges of vulgarity ; to 
 which S. replied, by opening the battery of oaths (chiefly directed 
 to his own eyes, however), and loud protestations that he would 
 never surrender. In three days more, however, the rum-and- 
 water was gone. Mr. Swigby, defeated and prostrate, had given 
 up that stronghold ; his young wife and sister were triumphant ; 
 and his poor mother, who occupied her son's house, and had 
 till now taken her place at the head of his table, saw that her 
 empire was for ever lost, and was preparing suddenly to suc- 
 cumb to the imperious claims of the mistress of the mansion. 
 
 All this, I say, I wish I had the liberty to describe at large, 
 as also to narrate the arrival of majestic Mrs. Gann ; and a 
 battle-royal which speedily took place between the two worthy 
 mothers-in-law. Noble is the hatred of ladies who stand in this 
 relation to each other; each sees what injury the other is in- 
 flicting upon her darling child ; each mistrusts, detests, and to 
 her offspring privily abuses the arts and crimes of the other.
 
 64 
 
 A SHABBY GENTEEL STORY. 
 
 A house with a wife is often warm enough ; a house with a wife and 
 her mother is rather warmer than any spot on the known globe ; 
 a house with two mothers-in-law is so excessively hot, that it can 
 be likened to no place on earth at all,i)ut one must go lower 
 for a simile. Think of a wife who despises her husband, and 
 teaches him manners ; of an elegant sister, who joins in rallying 
 him (this was almost the only point of union between Bella and 
 Linda now, — for since the marriage, Linda hated her sister 
 consumedly). Think, I say, of two mothers-in-law, — one, large, 
 pompous, and atrociously genteel, — another coarse and shrill, 
 determined not to have her son put upon, — and you may see 
 what a happy fellow Joe Swigby was, and into what a piece of 
 good luck he had fallen. 
 
 What would have become of him without his father-in-law? 
 Indeed one shudders to think ; but the consequence of that 
 gentleman's arrival and intervention was speedily this : — About 
 four o'clock, when the dinner was removed, and the quarrelling 
 used commonly to set in, the two gents took their hats, and 
 sallied out ; and as one has found when the body is inflamed 
 that the application of a stringent medicine may cause the ill 
 to disappear for a while, only to return elsewhere with greater 
 force ; in like manner, Mrs. Swigby's sudden victory over the 
 pipe and rum-and-water, although it had caused a temporary 
 cessation of the evil of which she complained, was quite unable 
 to stop it altogether ; it disappeared from one spot only to rage 
 with more violence elsewhere. In Swigby's parlor, rum and 
 tobacco odors rose no more (except, indeed, when Mrs. Gann 
 would partake of the former as a restorative) ; but if you could 
 have seen the " Half-Moon and Snuffers " down the village ; 
 if you could have seen the good dry skittle-ground which stretched 
 at the back of that inn, and the window of the back parlor 
 which superintended that skittle-ground ; if the hour at which 
 you beheld these objects was evening, what time the rustics 
 from their toils released, trolled the stout ball amidst the rattling 
 pins (the oaken pins that standing in the sun did cast long 
 shadows on the golden sward) ; if you had remarked all this, I 
 say, you would have also seen in the back parlor a tallow candle 
 twinkling in the shade, and standing on a little greasy table. 
 Upon the greasy table was a pewter porter-pot, and to the left 
 a teaspoon glittering in a glass of gin ; close to each of these 
 two delicacies was a pipe of tobacco ; and behind the pipes sat 
 Mr. Gann and Swigby, who now made the " Half-Moon and 
 Snuffers " their usual place of resort, and forgot their married 
 cares.
 
 A SIlAUb ) GEXTEEL STOR Y. 6$ 
 
 In spite of all our promises of brevity, these things have 
 taken some space to describe ; and the reader must also know 
 that some short interval elapsed ere they occurred. A month at 
 least passed away before Mr. Swigby had decidedly taken up his 
 position at the little inn : all this time, Gann was staying with 
 his son-in-law, at the latter's most earnest request ; and Mrs. 
 Gann remained under the same roof at her own desire. Not 
 the hints of her daughter, nor the broad questions of the dow- 
 ager ^Nlrs. Swigby, could induce honest Mrs. Gann to stir from 
 her quarters. She had had her lodgers' money in advance, as 
 was the worthy woman's custom ; she knew Margate in April 
 was dreadfully dull, and she determined to enjoy the country 
 until the jovial town season arrived. The Canterbury coach- 
 man, whom Gann knew, and who passed through the village, 
 used to take her cargo of novels to and fro ; and the old lady 
 made herself as happy as circumstances would allow. Should 
 anything of importance occur during her mamma's absence, 
 Caroline w^as to make use of the same conveyance, and inform 
 Mrs. Gann in a letter. 
 
 Miss Caroline looked at her papa and mamma, as the ve- 
 hicle which was to bear them to the newly-married couple moved 
 up the street ; but, strange to say, she did not feel that heavi- 
 ness of heart which she before had experienced when forbidden 
 to share the festivities of her family, but was on this occasion 
 more happy than any one of them, — so happy that the young 
 woman felt quite ashamed of herself ; and Becky was fain to 
 remark how her mistress's cheek flushed, and her eyes sparkled 
 (_and turned perpetually to the door), and her whole little frame 
 was in a flutter. 
 
 " I wonder if he will come," said the little heart ; and the 
 eyes turned and looked at that well-known sofa-corner, where 
 he had been placed a fortnight before. He looked exactly like 
 Lord Byron, that he did, with his pale brow, and his slim bare 
 neck ; only not half so wicked — no, no. She was sure that 
 
 her — her Mr. B. , her Bran , her George, was as good 
 
 as he was beautiful. Don't let us be angry with her for calling 
 him George : the girl was bred in an humble sentimental 
 school ; she did not know enough of society to be squeamish ; 
 she never thought that she could be his really, and gave way 
 in the silence of her fancv to the full extent of her affection 
 for him. 
 
 She had not looked at the door above twenty-five times — 
 that is to say, her parents had not quitted the house ten min- 
 utes — when, sure enough, the latch did rattle, the door opened,
 
 66 A SlfABHY GENTEEL STORY. 
 
 and^ with a faint blush on his cheek, divine George entered. 
 He was going to make some excuse, as on the former occasion ; 
 but he looked first into Caroline's face, which was beaming 
 with joy and smiles ; and the little thing, in return, regarded 
 him, and — made room for him on the sofa. O sweet instinct 
 of love ! Brandon had no need of excuses, but sate down, and 
 talked away as easily, happily, and confidentially, and neither 
 took any note of time. Andrea Fitch (the sly dog ! ) witnessed 
 the Gann departure with feelings of exultation, and had laid 
 some deep plans of his own with regard to Miss Caroline. So 
 strong was his confidence in his friend on the first floor, that 
 Andrea actually descended to those apartments, on his way to 
 Mrs. Gann's parlor, in order to consult Mr. Brandon, and make 
 known to him his plan of operations. 
 
 It would have made your heart break, or, at the very least, 
 your sides ache, to behold the countenance of poor Mr. Fitch, as 
 he thrust his bearded head in at the door of the parlor. There 
 was Brandon lolling on the sofa, at his ease ; Becky in full 
 good humor ; and Caroline, always absurdly inclined to blush, 
 blushing at Fitch's appearance more than ever ! She could 
 not help looking from him slyly and gently into the face of Mr. 
 Brandon. That gentleman saw the look, and did not fail to 
 interpret it. It was a confession of love — an appeal for pro- 
 tection. A thrill of delightful vanity shot through Brandon's 
 frame, and made his heart throb, as he noticed this look of 
 poor Caroline. He answered it with one of his own that was 
 cruelly wrong, cruelly triumphant, and sarcastic ; and he shouted 
 out to Mr. Fitch, with a loud, disconcerted tone, which only 
 made that young painter feel more awkward than ever he had 
 been. Fitch made some clumsy speech regarding his dinner, 
 — whether that meal was to be held, in the absence of the 
 parents, at the usual hour, and then took his leave. 
 
 The poor fellow had been pleasing himself with the notion 
 of taking this daily meal tcte-d-tcte with Caroline. What pro- 
 gress would he make in her heart during the absence of her 
 parents ! Did it not seem as if the first marriage had been 
 arranged on purpose to facilitate his own .'' He determined 
 thus his plan of cam])aign. He would make, in the first place, 
 the most beautiful drawing of Caroline that ever was seen. 
 "The conversations I'll 'ave with her during the sittings," says 
 he, " will carry me a pretty long way ; the drawing itself will 
 be so beautiful, that she can't resist that. I'll write her verses 
 in her halbum, and make designs hallusi\e of my pas'-ion for 
 iicr." And so our pictorial Alnaschar dreamed and dreamed.
 
 A SHABBY GENTEEL STORY. 67 
 
 He had, ere long, established himself in a house in Newman 
 Street, with a footman to open the door. Caroline was up 
 stairs, his wife, and her picture the crack portrait of the Ex- 
 hibition. Witli her by his side, Andrea Fitch felt he could do 
 anything. Half-a-dozen carriages at his door, — a hundred 
 guineas for a Kit-Cat portrait. Lady Fitch, Sir Andrew Fitch, 
 the President's chain, — all sorts of bright visions floated before 
 his imagination ; and as Caroline was the first precious condi- 
 tion of his preferment, he determined forthwith to begin, and 
 realize that. 
 
 But O disappointment ! on coming down to dinner at three 
 o'clock to that charming tete-a-tete, he found no less than four 
 covers laid on the table. Miss Caroline blushing (according to 
 custom) at the head of it ; Becky, the maid, grinning at the 
 foot ; and Mr. Brandon sitting quietly on one side, as much at 
 home, forsooth, as if he had held that position for a year. 
 
 The fact is, that the moment after Fitch retired, Brandon, 
 inspired by jealousy, had made the same request which had 
 been brought forward by the painter ; nor must the ladies be 
 too angry with Caroline, if, after some scruples and struggles, 
 she yielded to the proposal. Remember that the girl was the 
 daughter of a boarding-house, accustomed to continual dealings 
 with her mamma's lodgers, and up to the present moment 
 thinking herself as safe among them as the young person who 
 walked through Ireland with a bright gold wand, in the song 
 of Mr. Thomas Moore. On the point, however, of Brandon's 
 admission, it must be confessed, for Caroline's honor, that she 
 did hesitate. She felt that she entertained very different feel- 
 ings towards him to those with which any other lodger or man 
 had inspired her, and made a little movement of resistance at 
 first. But the poor girl's modesty overcame this, as well as 
 her wish. Ought she to avoid him .-* Ought she not to stifle 
 any preference which she might feel towards him, and act 
 towards him with the same indifference which she would show 
 to any other person in a like situation .^ Was not Mr. Fitch to 
 dine at table as usual, and had she refused him ? So reasoned 
 she in her heart. Silly little cunning heart ! it knew that all 
 these reasons were lies, and that she should avoid the man \ 
 but she was willing to accept of any pretext for meeting, and 
 so made a kind of compromise with her conscience. Dine he 
 should ; but Becky should dine too, and be a protector to her. 
 Becky laughed loudly at the idea of tins, and took her place 
 with huge delight. 
 
 It is needless to say a word about this dinner, as we have
 
 68 A SHABBY GENTEEL STORY. 
 
 already described a former meal ; suffice it to say, that the 
 presence of Brandon caused the painter to be excessively sulky 
 and uncomfortable ; and so gave his rival, who was gay, 
 triumphant, and at his ease, a decided advantage over him. 
 Nor did Brandon neglect to use this to the utmost. When 
 Fitch retired to his own apartments — not jealous as yet, for 
 the simple fellow believed every word of Brandon's morning 
 conversation with him — but vaguely annoyed and disappointed, 
 Brandon assailed him with all the force of ridicule ; at all his 
 manners, words, looks, he joked mercilessly ; laughed at his 
 low birth, (Miss Gann, be it remembered, had been taught to 
 pique herself upon her own famil\',) and invented a series of 
 stories concerning his past life which made the ladies — for 
 Becky, being in the parlor, must be considered as such — con- 
 ceive the greatest contempt and pity for the poor painter. 
 
 After this, Mr. Brandon would expatiate with much elo- 
 quence upon his own superior attractions and qualities. He 
 talked of his cousin, Lord So-and-so, with the easiest air 
 imaginable ; told Caroline what princesses he had danced with 
 at foreign courts ; frightened her with accounts of dreadful 
 duels he had fought ; in a word, *' posed " before her as a hero 
 of the most sublime kind. How the poor little thing drank in 
 all his tales ; and how she and Becky (for they now occupied 
 the same bedroom) talked over them at night ! 
 
 Miss Caroline, as Mr. Fitch has already stated, had in her 
 possession, like almost every young lady in England, a little 
 square book called an album, containing prints from annuals ; 
 hideous designs of tiowers ; old pictures of faded fashions, cut 
 out and pasted into the leaves ; and small scraps of verses 
 selected from Byron, Landon, or Mrs. Hemans ; and written 
 out in the girlish hand of the owner of the book. Brandon 
 looked over this w'ork with a good deal of curiosity — for he 
 contended, always, that a girl's disposition might be learned 
 from the character of this museum of hers — and found here 
 several sketches by Mr. Fitch, for which, before that gentleman 
 had declared his passion for her, Caroline had begged. These 
 sketches the sentimental painter had illustrated with poetry, 
 which, 1 must confess, Caroline thought charming, until now, 
 when Mr. Brandon took occasion to point out how wretchedly 
 poor the verses were (as indeed was the fact), and to parody 
 them all. He was not unskilful at this kind of exercise, and 
 at the drawing of caricatures, and had soon made a dozen of 
 both parodies and drawings, which reflected cruelly upon the 
 person and the talents of the painter.
 
 A SirABBY GENTEEL STORY. 69 
 
 What now did ihis wicked Mr. Brandon do? He, in the 
 first place, drew a caricature of Fitch ; and, secondly, having 
 gone to a gardener's near the town, and purchased there a 
 bunch of violets, he presented them to Miss Caroline, and 
 wrote Mr. Fitch's own verses before given into her album. He 
 signed them with his own initials, and thus declared open war 
 with the painter. 
 
 CHAPTER VH. 
 
 WHICH BRINGS A GREAT NUMBER OF PEOPLE TO MARGATE BY 
 
 THE STEAMBOAT. 
 
 The events which this history records began in the month 
 of February. Times had now passed, and April had arrived, 
 and with it that festive season so loved by schoolboys, and 
 called the Easter holidays. Not only schoolboys, but men, 
 profit by this period of leisure, — such men, especially as have 
 just come into enjoyment of their own cups and saucers, and 
 are in daily expectation of their whiskers — college men, I mean, 
 — who are persons more anxious than any others to designate 
 themselves and each other by the manly title. 
 
 Among other men, then, my Lord Viscount Cinqbars, of 
 Christ Church, Oxon, received a sum of money to pay his 
 quarter's bill, and having written to his papa that he was busily 
 engaged in reading for the " little-go," and must, therefore, 
 decline the delight he had promised himself of passing the 
 vacation at Cinqbars Hall, — and having, the day after his letter 
 was despatched, driven to town tandem with young Tom 
 Tufthunt, of the same university, — and having exhausted the 
 pleasures of the metropolis — the theatres, the Cider-cellars, the 
 Finish, the station-houses, and other places which need by no 
 means be here particularized, — Lord Cinqbars, I say, growing 
 tired of London at the end of ten days, quitted the metropolis 
 somewhat suddenly : nor did he pay his hotel bill at Long's 
 before his departure ; but he left that document in possession 
 of the landlord, as a token of his (my Lord Cinqbars') con- 
 fidence in his host. 
 
 Tom Tufthunt went with my lord, of course (although of an 
 aristocratic turn in politics, Tom loved and respected a lord as
 
 70 
 
 A SlIABJiV GENTEEL STORY. 
 
 much as any democrat in England). And whither do you think 
 this worthy pair of young gentlemen were bound ? To no less 
 a place than Margate ; for Cinqbars was filled with a longing 
 to go and see his old friend Brandon, and determined, to use 
 his own elegant words, " to knock the old buck up." 
 
 There was no adventure of consequence on board the 
 steamer which brought Lord Cinqbars and his friend from 
 London to Margate, and very few passengers besides. A 
 wandering Jew or two were set down at Gravesend j the Rev. 
 Mr. Wackerbart, and six unhappy little pupils whom the 
 reverend gentleman had pounced upon in London, and was 
 carrying back to his academy near Heme Bay ; some of those 
 inevitable persons of dubious rank who seem to have free 
 tickets, and always eat and drink hugely with the captain ; and 
 a lady and her party, formed the whole list of passengers. 
 
 The lady — a ver)'fat lady — had evidenly just returned from 
 abroad. Her great green travelling-chariot was on the deck, 
 and on all her imperials were pasted fresh large bills, with the 
 words Ince's British Hotel, Boulogne-sur-Mer ; for it is the 
 custom of that worthy gentleman to seize upon and plaster all 
 the luggage of his guests with tickets, on which his name and 
 residence are inscribed, — by which simple means he keeps 
 himself perpetually in their recollection, and brings himself to 
 the notice of all other persons who are in the habit of peering 
 at their fellow-passengers' trunks, to find out their names, I 
 need not say what a large class this is. 
 
 Well ; this fat lady had a courier, a tall whiskered man, who 
 spoke all languages, looked like a field-marshal, went by the 
 name of Donnerwetter, and rode on the box ; a French maid, 
 Mademoiselle Augustine ; and a little black page, called 
 Saladin, who rode in the rumble. Saladin's whole business 
 was to attend a wheezy, fat, white poodle, who usually travelled 
 inside with his mistress and her fair co7npagnon de voyage, whose 
 name was Miss Runt. This fat lady was evidently a person of 
 distinction. During the first part of the voyage, on a windy, 
 sunshiny April day, she paced the deck stoutl}^, leaning on the 
 arm of poor little Miss Runt ; and after they had passed 
 Gravesend, when the vessel began to pitch a good deal, retired 
 to her citadel, the travelling-chariot, to and from which the 
 steward, the stewardess, and the whiskered courier were con- 
 tinually running with supplies — of sandwiches first, and after- 
 wards of very hot brandy-and-water : for the truth must be told, 
 it was rather a rough afternoon, and the poodle was sick ; 
 Saladin was as bad ; the French maid, like all French maids,
 
 A SHABBY GENTEEL STORY. 7 1 
 
 was outrageously ill ; the lady herself was very unwell indeed ; 
 and poor dear sympathizing Runt was qualmish. 
 
 " Ah, Runt ! " would the fat lady say in the intervals, " what 
 a thing this malady de mare is ! Oh, mong jew ! Oh — oh ! " 
 
 " It is, indeed, dear madam," said Runt, and went "Oh — 
 oh ! " in chorus. 
 
 " Ask the steward if we are near Margate, Runt." And 
 Runt did, and asked this question every five minutes, as 
 people do on these occasions. 
 
 " Issy Monsieur Donnerwetter ; ally dimandy ung pew d'o 
 sho poor mwaw." 
 
 " Et de I'eau de fie afec, n'est-ce-bas, Matame } " said Mr. 
 Donnerwetter. 
 
 " Wee, wee, comme vous vouly." 
 
 And Donnerwetter knew verv well what " comme vous 
 vouly " meant, and brought the liquor exactly in the wished-for 
 state. 
 
 '• Ah, Runt, Runt ! there's something even worse than sea- 
 sickness. Heigh-ho ! " 
 
 " Dear, dear Marianne, don't flutter yourself," cries Runt, 
 squeezing a fat paw of her friend and patroness between her 
 own bony fingers. " Don't agitate your nerves, dear. I know 
 you're miserable ; but haven't you got a friend in your faithful 
 Runty > " 
 
 " You're a good creater, that you are," said the fat lady, 
 who seemed herself to be a good-humored old soul ; " and I 
 don't know what I should have done without you. Heigh-ho ! '' 
 
 " Cheer up, dear ! you'll be happier when you get to Mar- 
 gate : you know you will," cried Runt, very knowingly. 
 
 " What do you mean, Elizabeth ? " 
 
 " You know very well, dear Marianne. I mean that there's 
 some one there will make you happy ; though he's a nasty 
 wretch, that he is, to hive treated my darling, beautiful Mari- 
 anne so." 
 
 " Runt, Runt, don't abuse that best of men. Don't call me 
 beautiful — I'm not. Runt ; I have been, but I ain't now ; and 
 oh 1 no woman in the world is assy bong poor lui." 
 
 " But an angel is ; and you are, as you always was, an 
 angel, — as good as an angel, as kind as an angel, as beautiful 
 as one." 
 
 " Ally dong," said her companion, giving her a push ; " you 
 flatter me, Runt, you know you do." 
 
 " May I be struck down dead if 1 don't say the truth ; and 
 if he refuses you, as he did at Rome, — that is, after all his in-
 
 72 A SHABBY GENTEEL STORY. 
 
 IciUions and vows, lie's faithless to you, — I say he's a wretch, 
 that he is ; and 1 wiH say he's a wretch, and he is a wretch — a 
 nasty, wicked wretch ! " 
 
 " Elizabeth, if you say that, you'll break my heart, you will ! 
 Vous casserez mong pover cure." 15ut Elizabeth swore, on 
 the contrary, that she would die for her Marianne, which con- 
 soled the fat lady a little. 
 
 A great deal more of this kind of conversation took place 
 during the voyage ; but as it occurred inside a carriage, so that 
 to hear it was very difficult, and as jxjssibly it was not of thai 
 edifying nature which would induce the reader to relish many 
 chaptiers of it, we shall give no further account of the ladies' 
 talk : suffice it to say, that about half-past four o'clock the 
 journey ended, by the vessel bringing up at Margate Pier. 
 The passengers poured forth, and hied to their respective 
 homes or inns. My lord Cinqbars and his companion (of whom 
 we have said nothing, as they on their sides had scarcely spoken 
 a word the whole way, except " deuce-ace," " quater-tray," 
 " sizes," and so on, — being occupied ceaselessly in drinking 
 bottled stout and playing backgammon,) ordered their luggage 
 to be conveyed to "Wright's Hotel," whither the fat lady and 
 suite followed them. The house was vacant, and the' best 
 rooms in it were placed, of course, at the service of the new- 
 comers. The fat lady sailed out of her bedroom towards her 
 saloon, just as Lord Cinqbars, cigar in mouth, was swaggering 
 out of his parlor. They met in the passage ; when, to the 
 young lord's surprise, the fat lady dropped him a low curtsey, 
 and said, — 
 
 " Munseer le Vecomte de Cinqbars, sharmy de vous voir. 
 Vous vous rappelez de mwaw, n'est-ce pas .? Je vous ai vew a 
 Rome — shay I'ambassadure, vous savy." 
 
 Lord Cinqbars stared her in the face, and pushed by her 
 without a word, leaving the fat lady rather disconcerted. 
 
 " Well, Runt, I'm sure," said she, " he need not be so proud ; 
 I've met him twenty times at Rome, when he was a young chap 
 with his tutor." 
 
 " Who the devil can that fat foreigner be } " mused Lord 
 Cinqbars. " Hang her, I've seen her somewhere ; but I'm 
 cursed if I understand a word of her jabber." And so, dis- 
 missing the subject, he walked on to Brandon's. 
 
 " Dang it, it's a strange thing ! " says the landlord of the 
 hotel ; " but both my lord and the fat woman in number nine 
 have asked their way to Mother Gann's lodging," for so did 
 he dare to call that respectable woman 1
 
 A SHABBY GENTEEL STORY. 
 
 73 
 
 It was true : as soon as number nine had eaten her dinner, 
 she asked the question mentioned by the landlord ; and, as 
 this meal occupied a considerable time, the shades of evening 
 had by this time fallen upon the quiet city ; the silver moon 
 lighted up the bay, and, supported by a numerous and well- 
 appointed train of gas-lamps, illuminated the streets of a town, 
 — of autumn eves so crowded and so gay; of gusty April 
 nights, so desolate. At this still hour (it might be half-past 
 seven) two ladies passed the gates of "Wright's Hotel," "in 
 shrouding mantle wrapped, and velvet cap." Up the deserted 
 High Street toiled they, by gaping rows of empty bathing-houses, 
 by melancholy Jolly's French bazaar, by mouldy pastrycooks, 
 blank reading-rooms, by fishmongers who never sold a fish, 
 mercers who vended not a yard of ribbon — because, as yet, the 
 season was not come, — and Jews and Cockneys still remained 
 in town. At High Street's corner, near to Hawley Square, they 
 passed the house of Mr. Fincham, chemist, who doth not only 
 healthful drugs supply, but likewise sells cigars — the worst 
 cigars that ever mortal man gave threepence for. 
 
 Up to this point, I say, I have had a right to accompany 
 the fat lady and Miss Runt ; but whether, on arriving at Mr, 
 Fincham's, they turned to the left, in the direction of the 
 "Royal Hotel," or to the right, by the beach,, the bathing- 
 machines, and queer rickety old row of houses, called Buenos 
 Ayres, no power on earth shall induce me to say ; suffice it, 
 they went to Mrs. Gann's. Why should we set all the world 
 gadding to a particular street, to know where that lady lives ? 
 They arrived before that lady's house at about eight o'clock. 
 Every house in the street had bills on it except hers (bitter 
 mockery, as if anybody came down at Easter !) and at Mrs. 
 Gann's house there was a light in the garret, and another in 
 the two-pair front. I believe I have not mentioned before, 
 that all the front windows were bow or bay-windows ; but so 
 much the reader may know. 
 
 The two ladies, who had walked so far, examined wistfully 
 the plate on the door, stood on the steps for a short time, re- 
 treated, and conversed with one another. 
 
 " Oh, Runty ! " said the stouter of the two, " he's here — I 
 know he's here, mong cure le dee — my heart tells me so." 
 And she put a large hand upon a place on her left side, where 
 there once had been a waist. 
 
 " Do you think he looks front or back, dear? " asked Runt. 
 " P'raps he's not at home." 
 
 " That — that's his croisy," said the stout person ; " 1 know
 
 24 A SHABBY' GENTEEL STORY. 
 
 it iii ; " and she pointed witli instinctive justice to tlie two-pair. 
 " Kcouty ! " she added, "he's coming; there's some one at 
 that window. Oh, mong jew, mong jew ! c'est Andre, c'est 
 hii ! " 
 
 The moon was shining full on the face of the bow-windows 
 of Mrs. Gann's house ; and the two fair spies, who were watch- 
 ing on the other side, were, in consequence, completely in 
 shadow. As the lady said, a dark form was seen in the two- 
 pair front ; it paced the room for a while, for no blinds were 
 drawn. It then flung itself on a chair ; its head on its hands ; 
 it then began to beat its brows wildly, and paced the room 
 again. Ah ! how the fat lady's heart throbbed as she looked 
 at all this ! 
 
 She gave a piercing shriek — almost fainted ! and little 
 Runt's knee's trembled under her, as with all her might she 
 supported, or rather pushed up, the falling figure of her stout 
 patroness, — who saw at that instant Fitch come to the candle 
 with an immense pistol in his hand, and give a most horrible 
 grin as he looked at it, and clasped it to his breast. 
 
 " Unhand me. Runt ; he's going to kill himself! It's for 
 me ! I know it is — I will go to him ! Andrea, my Andrea ! " 
 And the fat lady was pushing for the opposite side of the way, 
 when suddenly the second-floor window went clattering up, and 
 Fitch's pale head was thrust out. 
 
 He had heard a scream, and had possibly been induced to 
 open the window in consequence ; but by the time he had 
 opened it he had forgotten everything, and put his head va- 
 cantly out of the window, and gazed, the moon shining cold on 
 his pale features. 
 
 '• Pallid horb ! " said Fitch, " shall I ever see thy light 
 again ? Will another night see me on this hearth, or view me, 
 stark and cold, a lifeless corpse ? He took his pistol up, and 
 slowly aimed it at a chimney-pot opposite. Fancy the fat 
 lady's sensations, as she beheld her lover standing in the 
 moonlight, and exercising this deadly weapon. 
 
 " Make ready — present — fire ! " shouted Fitch, and did in- 
 stantaneously, not fire off, but lower his weapon. " 'ilie bolt of 
 death is sped ! " continued he, clapping his hand on his side. 
 "The poor painter's life is over! Caroline, Caroline, I die for 
 thee ! " 
 
 " Runt, Runt, I told you so ! " shrieked the fat lady. " He 
 is dying for me, and Caroline's my second name." 
 
 What the fat lady would have done more, I can't say ; for 
 Fitch, disturbed out of his reverie by her talking below, looked
 
 A SHABBY GENTEEL STORY. 75 
 
 out, trowning vacantly, and saying, " Ulloh ! we've hinterlopers 
 ere ! " suddenly banged down the window, and pulled down the 
 blinds. 
 
 This gave a check to the fat lady's projected rush, and dis- 
 concerted her a little. But she was consoled by Miss Runt, 
 promised to return on the morrow, and went home happy in 
 the idea that her Andrea was faithful to her, 
 
 Alas, poor fat lady ! little did you know the truth. It was 
 Caroline Gann Fitch was raving about ; and it was a part of 
 his last letter to her, to be delivered after his death, that he 
 was spouting out of the window. 
 
 Was the crazy painter going to fight a duel, or was he going 
 to kill himself ? This will be explained in the next chapter. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 WHICH TREATS OF WAR AND LOVE, AND MANY THINGS THAT 
 ARE NOT TO BE UNDERSTOOD IN CHAP. VII. 
 
 Fitch's verses, inserted in a previous chapter of this story, 
 (and of which lines, by the way, the printer managed to make 
 still greater nonsense than the ingenious bard ever designed,) 
 had been composed many years before ; and it was with no 
 small trouble and thought that the young painter called the 
 greater part of them to memory again, and furbished up a copy 
 for Caroline's album. Unlike the love of most men, Andrea's 
 passion was not characterized by jealousy and watchfulness, 
 otherwise he would not have failed to perceive certain tokens 
 of intelligence passing from time to time between Caroline and 
 Brandon, and the lady's evident coldness to himself. The fact 
 is, the painter was in love with being in love, — entirely absorbed 
 in the consideration of the fact that he, Andrea Fitch, was at 
 last enamored ; and he did not mind his mistress much more 
 than Don Quixote did Dulcinea del Toboso. 
 
 Having rubbed up his verses, then, and designed a pretty 
 emblematical outline which was to surround them, representing 
 an arabesque of violets, dewdrops, fairies, and other objects, he 
 came down one morning, drawing in hand ; and having informed 
 Caroline, who was sitting very melancholy in the parlor, pre- 
 occupied, with a pale face and red eyes, and not caring twopence
 
 76 -'^ SHABBY GEjVTEEL STORV. 
 
 for the finest drawing in the world, — having informed her tliat 
 he was going to make in her halbum a Iiumble hoftering of liis 
 hart, poor Fitch was just on the point of sticking in the draw- 
 ing with gum, as painters know very well how to do, when liis 
 eye lighted upon a page of the album, in which nestled a few 
 dried violets and — his own verses, signed with the name of 
 George Brandon. 
 
 " Miss Caroline — Miss Gann, mam ! " shrieked Fitch, in a 
 tone of voice which made the young lady start out of a profound 
 reverie, and cry, nervously, — " What in heaven is the matter ? " 
 
 "These verses, madam — a faded violet — word for word, 
 gracious 'eavens ! every word ! " roared Fitch, advancing with 
 the book. 
 
 She looked at him rather vacantly, and as the violets caught 
 her eye, put out her hand, and took them. " Do you know the 
 hawthor, Miss Gann, of 'The faded Violets.-"" 
 
 "Author? O yes; they are — they are George's!" She 
 burst into tears as she said that word ; and, pulling the little 
 faded flowers to pieces, went sobbing out of the room. 
 
 Dear, dear little Caroline ! she has only been in love two 
 months, and is already beginning to feel the woes of it ! 
 
 It cannot be from want of experience — for I have felt the 
 noble passion of love many times these forty years, since 1 was 
 a boy of twelve (by which the reader may form a pretty good 
 guess of my age), — it cannot be, I say, from want of experience 
 that I am unable to describe, step by step the progress of a 
 love-affair ; nay, 1 am perfectly certain that I could, if I chose, 
 make a most astonishing and heart-rending liber amoris ; hni, 
 nevertheless, I always feel a vast repugnance to the following 
 out of a subject of this kind, which I attribute to a natural 
 difBdence and sense of shame that prevent me from enlarging 
 on a theme that has in it something sacred — certain arcana 
 which an honest man, although initiated into them, should not 
 divulge. 
 
 If such coy scruples and blushing delicacy prevent one from 
 passing the threshold even of an honorable love, and setting 
 down, at so many guineas or shillings per page, the pious emo 
 tions and tenderness of two persons chastely and legally en- 
 gaged in sighing, ogling, hand-squeezing, kissing, and so forth 
 (for with such outward signs I believe that the passion of love is 
 expressed), — if a man feel, I say, squeamish about describing 
 an innocent love, he is doubly disinclined to describe a guilty 
 one ; and I have always felt a kind of loathing for the skill of 
 such genuises as Rousseau or Richardson, who could paint with
 
 A SHABBY GENTEEL STORY. 77 
 
 such painful accuracy all the struggles and woes of Eloise and 
 Clarissa, — all the wicked arts and triumphs of such scoundrels 
 as Lovelace. 
 
 We have in this history a scoundrelly Lovelace in the person 
 going by the name of George Brandon, and a dear, tender, in- 
 nocent, yielding creature on whom he is practising his infernal 
 skill ; and whether the public feel any sympathy for her or not, 
 the writer can only say, for his part, that he heartily loves and 
 respects poor little Caroline, and is quite unwilling to enter into 
 any of the slow, painful, wicked details of the courtship which 
 passed between her and her lover. 
 
 Not that there was any wickedness on her side, poor girl ! or 
 that she did anything but follow the natural and beautiful im- 
 pulses of an honest little female heart, that leads it to trust and 
 love, and worship a being of the other sex, whom the eager fancy 
 invests with all sorts of attributes of superiority. There was 
 no wild, conceited tale that Brandon told Caroline which she 
 did not believe, — no virtue which she could conceive or had 
 read of in novels with which she did not endow him. Many 
 long talks had they, and many sweet, stolen interviews, during 
 the periods in which Caroline's father and mother were away 
 making merry at the house of their son-in-law ; and while she 
 was left under the care of her virtue and of Becky the maid. 
 Indeed, it was a blessing that the latter was left in the joint 
 guardianship. For Becky, who had such an absurd opinion of 
 her young lady's merit as to fancy that she was a fit wife for 
 any gentleman of the land, and that any gentleman might be 
 charmed and fall in love with her, had some instinct, or possibly 
 some experience, as to the passions and errors of youth, and 
 warned Caroline accordingly. " If he's really in love, Miss, 
 and I think he be, he'll marry you ; if he won't marry you, he's 
 a rascal, and you're too good for him, and must have nothing 
 to do with him." To which Caroline replied, that she was sure 
 Mr. Brandon was the most angelic, high-principled of human 
 beings, and that she was sure his intentions were of the most 
 honorable description. 
 
 We have before described what Mr. Brandon's character 
 was. He was not a man of honorable intentions at all. But 
 he was a gentlemen of so excessively eager a temperament, that 
 if properly resisted by a practised coquette, or by a woman of 
 strong principles, he would sacrifice anything to obtain his ends, 
 — nay, marry to obtain them ; and, consider his disposition, it 
 is only a wonder that he had not been married a great number 
 of times already ; for he had been in love perpetually since his
 
 78 // SHABBY GEXTEEL STORY. 
 
 seventeenth year. By which the reader may pretty well appre- 
 ciate the virtue or the prudence of the ladies with whom hitherto 
 our inliammable young gentleman had had to do. 
 
 The fruit, then, of all his stolen interviews, of all his prayers, 
 vows, and protestations to Caroline, had been only this, — that 
 she loved him ; but loved him as an honest girl should, and 
 was ready to go to the altar with him when he chose. He 
 talked about his family, his peculiar circumstances, his proud 
 father's curse. Little Caroline only sighed, and said her dearest 
 George must wait until he could obtain his parent's consent. 
 When pressed harder, she would burst into tears, and wonder 
 how one so good and affectionate as he could propose to her 
 anything unworthy of them both. It is clear to see that the 
 young lady had read a vast number of novels, and knew some- 
 thing of the nature of love ; and that she had a good principle 
 and honesty in her own, which set her lover's schemes at 
 naught : indeed, she had both these advantages, — her educa- 
 tion, such as it was, having given her the one, and her honest 
 nature having endowed her with the other. 
 
 On the day when Fitch came down to Caroline with his 
 verses, Brandon had pressed these unworthy propositibns upon 
 her. She had torn herself violently away from him, and rushed 
 to the door ; but the poor little thing fell before she could 
 reach it, screaming in a fit of hysterics, which brought Becky 
 to her aid, and caused Brandon to leave her, abashed. He 
 went out ; she watched him go, and stole up into his room, and 
 laid on his table the first letter she had ever written to him. 
 It was written in pencil, in a trembling, school-girl hand, and 
 contained simply the following words : — 
 
 " George, you have almost broken my lieart. Leave me if you will, and if you dare not 
 act like an honestman. If ever you speak to me so again as you did this morning, I declare 
 solemnlv before heaven, I will take poison. 
 
 " C." 
 
 Indeed, the poor thing had read romances to some purpose ; 
 without them, it is probable, she never would have thought of 
 such a means of escape from a lover's persecutions ; and there 
 was something in the girl's character that made Brandon feel 
 sure that she would keep her promise. How the words agitated 
 him ! He felt a violent mixture of raging disappointment and 
 admiration, and loved the girl ten thousand times more than 
 ever. 
 
 Mr. Brandon had scarcely finished the reading of this docu- 
 ment, and was yet agitated by the various passions which the 
 perusal of it created, when the door of his apartment was
 
 A SHABBY GENTEEL STORY. 79 
 
 violently flung open, and some one came in. Brandon started, 
 (ind turned round, with a kind of dread that Caroline had 
 already executed her threat, and that a messenger was come to 
 infonn him of her death. Mr. Andrea Fitch was the intruder. 
 His hat was on — his eyes were glaring • and if the beards of 
 men did stand on end anywhere but in poems and romances, 
 his, no doubt, would have formed round his countenance a 
 bristling auburn halo. As it was, Fitch only looked astonish- 
 ingly fierce, as he stalked up to the table, his hands behind his 
 back. When he had arrived at this barrier between himself 
 and Mr. Brandon, he stopped, and, speechless, stared that 
 gentleman in the face. 
 
 " May I beg, Mr. Fitch, to know what has procured me the 
 honor of this visit ? '" exclaimed Mr. Brandon, after a brief 
 pause of wonder. 
 
 " Honor ! — ha, ha, ha ! " growled Mr. Fitch, in a most 
 sardonic, discordant way — '' /lonor .'" 
 
 " Well, sir, honor or no honor, I can tell you, my good man, 
 it certainly is no pleasure ! " said Brandon, testily. " In plain 
 English, then, what the devil has brought you here .? " 
 
 Fitch plumped the album down on the table close to Mr. 
 Brandon's nose, and said, " That has brought me, sir — that hal- 
 bum, sir ; or, I ask your pardon, that a— album— -ha, ha, ha ! " 
 " Oh, I see ! " said Mr. Brandon, who could not refrain from 
 a smile. " It was a cruel trick of mine, Fitch, to rob you of 
 your verses ; but all's fair in love." 
 
 " Fitch, sir ! don't Fitch me, sir ! I wish to be hintimate 
 honly with men of h-honor, not with forgers, sir ; not with 
 'artless miscreants ! Miscreants, sir, I repeat ; vipers, sir ; 
 b — b — b — blackguards, sir ! " 
 
 " Blackguards, sir ! " roared Mr. Brandon, bouncing up ; 
 " blackguards, you dirty cockney mountebank ! Quit the room, 
 sir, or I'll fling you out of the window ! " 
 
 " Will you, sir ? try, sir ; I wish you may get it, sir. I'm a 
 hartist, sir, and as good a man as you. Miscreant, forger, 
 traitor, come on ! " 
 
 And Mr. Brandon would ha\-e come on, but for a circum- 
 stance that deterred him ; and this was, that Mr. Fitch drew 
 from his bosom a long, sharp, shining, waving poniard of the 
 middle ages, that formed a part of his artistical properties, and 
 with which he had armed himself for this encounter. 
 
 "Come on, sir !" shrieked Fitch, brandishing this fearful 
 weapon. " Lay a finger on me, and I bury this blade in youf 
 treacherous 'art. Ha ! do you tremble ? "
 
 8o A SriAPBY GENTEEL STORY. 
 
 Indeed, the aristocratic Mr. Brandon turned somewhat 
 pale. 
 
 "Well, well," said he, "what do you want? Do you sup- 
 pose I am to be bullied by your absurd melodramatic airs ! It 
 was, after all, but a joke, sir, and I am sorry that it has offended 
 you. Can I say more ? — what shall I do ? " 
 
 " You shall hapologize ; not only to me, sir, but you shall 
 tel/ Miss Caroline, in my presence, that you stole those verses 
 from me, and used them quite unauthorized by me." 
 
 " Look you, Mr. Fitch, I will make you another set of verses 
 quite as good, if you like ; but what you ask is impossible." 
 
 " I will 'asten myself, then, to Miss Caroline, and acquaint 
 her with your dastardly forgery, sir. I will hopen her heyes, 
 sir ! " 
 
 " You may hopen her heyes, as you call them, if you please : 
 but I tell you fairly, that the young lady will credit me rather 
 than you ; and if you swear ever so much that the verses are 
 yours, I must say that " 
 
 " Say what, sir ? " 
 
 " Say that you lie, sir ! " said Mr. Brandon, stamping on the 
 ground. " I'll make you other verses, I repeat ; but this is all 
 I can do, and now go about your business ! " 
 
 " Curse your verses, sir ! liar and forger yourself ! Hare 
 you a coward as well, sir ? A coward ! yes, I believe you are ; 
 or will you meet me to-morrow morning like a man, and give me 
 satisfaction for this hinfamous hinsult .-' " 
 
 " Sir," said Mr. Brandon, with the utmost stateliness and 
 scorn, " If you wish to murder me as you do the king's English, 
 I won't balk you. Although a man of my rank is not called 
 upon to meet a blackguard of your condition, I will, neverthe- 
 less, grant you your will. But have a care ; by heavens, I won't 
 spare you, and I can hit an ace of hearts at twenty paces ! " 
 
 " Two can play at that," said Mr. Fitch, calmly ; " and if I 
 can't hit a hace of 'arts at twenty paces, I can hit a man at 
 twelve, and to-morrow I'll try." With which, giving Mr. Bran- 
 don a look of the highest contempt, the young painter left the 
 room. 
 
 What were Mr. Brandon's thoughts as his antagonist left 
 him ? Strange to say, rather agreeable. He had much too 
 great a contempt for Mtch to suppose that so low a fellow would 
 ever think seriously of fighting him, and reasoned with himself 
 thus : — 
 
 " This Fitch, I know, will go off to Caroline, tell her the 
 whole transaction, frighten her with the tale of a duel, and then
 
 A SHABBY GEXTEEL STORY. 8 J 
 
 she and I shall have a scene. [ will tell her the truth about 
 those infernal verses, menace death, blood, and danger, and 
 then " 
 
 Here he fell back into a charming reverie ; the wily fellow 
 knew what power such a circumstance would give him over a 
 poor weak girl, who would do anything rather than that her 
 beloved should risk his life. And with this dastardly speculation 
 as to the price he should ask for refraining from meeting Fitch, 
 he was entertaining himself ; when, much to his annoyance, that 
 gentleman again came into the room. 
 
 "Mr. Brandon," said he, "you have insulted me in the 
 grossest and cruellest way." 
 
 " Well, sir, are you come to apologize ? " said Brandon 
 sneeringly. 
 
 " No, I'm not come to apologize, Mr. Aristocrat : it's past 
 that. I'm come to say this, sir, that I take you for a coward ; 
 and that, unless you will give me your solemn word of honor 
 not to mention a word of this quarrel to Miss Gann, which 
 might prevent our meeting, I will never leave you till we do 
 fight ! " 
 
 " This is outrageous, sir ! Leave the room, or by heavens 
 I'll not meet you at all ! " 
 
 " Heasy, sir ; easy I beg your pardon, I can force you to 
 that ! " 
 
 " And how, pray, sir ? " 
 
 "Why, in the first place, here's a stick, and I'll 'orsewhip 
 you ; and here are a pair of pistols, and we can fight now ! " 
 
 "Well, sir, I give you my honor," said Mr. Brandon, in a 
 diabolical rage ; and added, " I'll meet you to-morrow, not now ; 
 and you need not be afraid that I'll miss you ! " 
 
 " Hadew, sir," said the chivalrous little Fitch ; " bon giorno, 
 sir, as we used to say at Rome." And so, for the second time, 
 he left Mr. Brandon, who did not like very well the extraordi- 
 nary courage he had displayed. 
 
 " What the deuce has exasperated the fellow so ? " thought 
 Brandon. 
 
 Why, in the first place, he had crossed Fitch in love ; and, 
 in the second, he had sneered at his pronunciation and his 
 gentility, and Fitch's little soul was in a fury which nothing but 
 blood would allay : he was determined, for the sake of his hart 
 and his lady, to bring this proud champion down. 
 
 So Brandon was at last left to his cogitations ; when, con- 
 fusion ! about five o'clock came another knock at his door. 
 
 " Come in ! " growled the owner of the lodgings. 
 
 6
 
 $2 A SHABBY GEXTEEL STORY. 
 
 A sallow, blear-eyed, rickety, undersized creature, tottering 
 upon a pair of high-heeled lacquered boots, and supporting 
 himself upon an immense gold-knobbed cane, entered the room 
 with his hat on one side and a jaunty air. It was a white hat 
 with a broad brim, and under it fell a great deal of greasy lank 
 hair, that shrouded the cheek-bones of the wearer. The little 
 man had no beard to his chin, appeared about twenty years of 
 age, and might weigh, stick and all, some seven stone. If you 
 wish to know how this exquisite was dressed, I have the pleasure 
 to inform you that he wore a great sky-blue embroidered satin 
 stock, in the which figured a carbuncle that looked like a lam- 
 bent gooseberry. He had a shawl-waistcoat of many colors ; 
 a pair of loose blue trousers, neatly strapped to show his little 
 feet : a brown cut-away coat with brass buttons, that fitted tight 
 round a spider waist ; and over all a white or drab surtout, 
 with a sable collar and cuffs, from which latter on each hand 
 peeped five little fingers covered with lemon-colored kid gloves. 
 One of these hands he held constantly to his little chest : and, 
 with a hoarse thin voice, he piped ©ut, 
 
 " George, my buck ! how goes it ? " 
 
 We have been thus particular in our description of the 
 costume of this individual (whose inward man strongly cor- 
 responded with his manly and agreeable exterior), because he 
 was the person whom Mr. Brandon most respected in the 
 world. 
 
 " CiNQBARS ! " exclaimed our hero ; "why, what the deuce 
 has brought vou to Margate ? "' 
 
 " Fwendship, my old cock ! '' said the Honorable Augustus 
 Frederick Ringwood, commonly called Viscount Cinqbars, for 
 indeed it was he. " Fwendship and the City of Canierlnnvy 
 steamer ! " and herewith his lordship held out his right-hand 
 forefinger to Brandon, who enclosed it most cordially in all his. 
 " Wathn't it good of me, now, George, to come down and con- 
 tliole you in thith curthed, thtupid place — hay, now ? " said my 
 lord, after these salutations. 
 
 Brandon swore he was very glad to see him, which was very 
 true, for he had no sooner set his eyes upon his lordship, than 
 he had determined to borrow as much money from him as ever 
 he could induce the young nobleman to part with. 
 
 " ril tell you how it wath, my boy : you thee I wath thtop- 
 ping at Long'th, when I found, by Jove, that the governor wath 
 come to town ! Cuth me 1 if didn't meet the infarnal old 
 family dwag, with my mother, thithterth, and all, ath 1 wath 
 dwiving a hack-cal) witli Poll}- Tomkinth in the Pawk I Tlio
 
 A SHABBY GENTEEL STORY. 83 
 
 when I got home, ' Hang it ! ' thayth I to Tufthunt, ' Tom, my 
 boy,' thaith I, ' I've just theen the governor, and must be off ! ' 
 ' What, back to Ockthford ? ' thaith Tom. ' No,' thaith I, ' that 
 won't do. Abroad — to Jewicho — anywhere. Egad, I have it. 
 I'll go down to Margate and thee old George, that I will.' 
 And tho off I came the very next day ; and here I am, and 
 thereth dinner waiting for uth at the hotel, and thixth bottleth 
 of champagne in ithe, and thum thalmon : tho you mutht 
 come."' 
 
 To this proposition Mr. Brandon readily agreed, being glad 
 enough of the prospect of a good dinner and some jovial 
 society, for he was low and disturbed in spirits, and so promised 
 to dine with his friend at the " Sun." 
 
 The two gentlemen conversed for some time longer. Mr. 
 Brandon was a shrewd fellow, and knew perfectly well a fact of 
 which, no doubt, the reader has a notion — namely, that Lord 
 Cinqbars was a ninny ; but, nevetheless, Brandon esteemed 
 him highly as a lord. We pardon stupidity in lords ; nature or 
 instinct, however sarcastic a man may be among ordinary per- 
 sons, renders him towards men of quality benevolently blind ; a 
 divinity hedges not only the king, but the whole peerage. . 
 
 " That's the girl, I suppose," said my lord, knowingly wink- 
 ing at Brandon : " that little pale girl, who let me in, I mean, 
 A nice little filly, upon my honor, Georgy my buck ! " 
 
 " Oh — that — yes — I wrote, I think, something about her," 
 said Brandon, blushing slightly ; for, indeed, he now began to 
 wish that his friend should make no comments upon a young 
 lady with whom he was so much in love. 
 
 " I suppose it's all up now ? " continued my lord, looking 
 still more knowing. " All over with her, hay ? I saw it was 
 by her looks, in a minute." 
 
 " Indeed you do me a great deal too much honor. Miss — 
 ah, — Miss Gann is a very respectable young person, and I 
 would not for the world have you to suppose that I would do 
 anything that should the least injure her character." 
 
 At this speech. Lord Cinqbars was at first much puzzled ; 
 but, in considering it, was fully convinced that Brandon was a 
 deeper dog than ever. Boiling with impatience to know the 
 particulars of this delicate intrigue, this cunning diplomatist 
 determined he would pump the whole story out of Brandon by 
 degrees ; and so, in the course of half an hour's conversation 
 that the young men had together, Cinqbars did not make less 
 than forty allusions to the subject that interested him. At last 
 Brandon cut him short rather haughtily, by begging that he
 
 §4 A SHABBY GENTEEL STORY. 
 
 would make no further allusions to the subject, as it was one 
 that was excessively disagreeable to him. 
 
 " In fact, there was no mistake about it now. George 
 Brandon was in love with Caroline. He felt that he was while 
 he blushed at his friend's alluding to her, while he grew indig- 
 nant at the young lord's coarse banter about her. 
 
 Turning the conversation to another point, he asked Cinq- 
 bars about his voyage, and whether he had brought any com- 
 panion with him to Margate ; whereupon my lord related all 
 his feats in London, how he had been to the watch-house, how- 
 many bottles of champagne he had drunk, how he had " milled " 
 a policeman, &c., &c. ; and he concluded by saying that he had 
 come down with Tom Tufthunt, who was at the inn at that very 
 moment smoking a cigar. 
 
 This did not increase Brandon's good-humor ; and when 
 Cinqbars mentioned his friend's name, Brandon saluted it men- 
 tally with a hearty curse. These two gentlemen hated each 
 other of old. Tufthunt was a small college man of no family, 
 with a foundation fellowship ; and it used to be considered that 
 a sporting fellow of a small college was a sad, raffish, disrepu- 
 table character. Tufthunt, then, was a vulgar fellow, and Bran- 
 don a gentleman, so they hated each other. They were both 
 toadies of the same nobleman, so they hated each other. They 
 had had some quarrel at college about a disputed bet, which 
 Brandon knew he owed, and so they hated each other ; and in 
 their words about it Brandon had threatened to horsewhip Tuft- 
 hunt, and called him a " sneaking, swindling, small college 
 snob ; " and so little Tufthunt, who had not resented the words, 
 hated Brandon far more than Brandon hated him. The latter 
 only had a contempt for his rival, and voted him a profound 
 bore and vulgarian. 
 
 So, although Mr. Tufthunt did not choose to frequent Mr. 
 Brandon's rooms, he was very anxious that his friend, the young 
 lord, should not fall into his old bear-leader's hands again, and 
 came down to Margate to counteract any influence which the 
 arts of Brandon might acquire. 
 
 " Curse the fellow ! " thought Tufthunt in his heart (there 
 was a fine reciprocity of curses between the two men) ; " he has 
 drawn ('inqbars already for fifty pounds this year, and will have 
 some half of his last remittance, if I don't keep a look-out, the 
 swindling thief ! " 
 
 And so frightened was 'I ufthunt at the notion of Brandon's 
 return to power and dishonest use of it, that he was at the 
 time on the point of writing to Lord Ringwood to tell him of
 
 A SHABBY GENTEEL STORY. 85 
 
 fiis son's doings, only he wanted some money deucedly himself. 
 Of Mr. Tufthunt's physique and history it is necessary merely 
 to say, that he was the son of a country attorney who was 
 agent to a lord ; he had been sent to a foundation-school, where 
 he distinguished himself for ten years, by fighting and being 
 flogged more than any boy of the five hundred. From the 
 foundation-school he went to college with an exhibition, which 
 was succeeded by a fellowship, which was to end in a living. 
 In his person Mr. Tufthunt was short and bow-legged ; he wore 
 a sort of clerico-sporting costume, consisting of a black straight- 
 cut coat and light drab breeches, with a vast number of buttons 
 at the ankles ; a sort of dress much affectioned by sporting 
 gentlemen of the university in the author's time. 
 
 Well, Brandon said he had some letters to write, and prom- 
 ised to follow his friend, which he did ; but, if the truth must 
 be told, so infatuated was the young man become with his pas- 
 sion, with the resistance he had met with, and so nervous from 
 the various occurrences of the morning, that he passed the half 
 hour during which he was free from Cinqbars' society in kneel- 
 ing, imploring, weeping at Caroline's little garret door, which 
 had remained piteously closed to him. He was wild with dis- 
 appointment, mortification — mad, longing to see her. The 
 cleverest coquette in Europe could not have so inflamed him. 
 His first act on entering the dinner-room was to drink off a 
 large tumbler of champagne ; and when Cinqbars, in his elegant 
 way, began to rally him upon his wildness, Mr. Brandon only 
 growled and cursed with frightful vehemency, and applied again 
 to the bottle. His face, which had been quite white, grew a 
 bright red ; his tongue, which had been tied, began to chatter 
 vehemently ; before the fish was ofif the table, Mr. Brandon 
 showed strong symptoms of intoxication ; before the dessert 
 appeared, Mr. Tufthunt, winking knowingly to Lord Cinqbars, 
 had begun to draw him out ; and Brandon, with a number of 
 shrieks and oaths, was narrating the history of his attachment. 
 
 " Look you, Tufthunt," said he, wildly ; " hang you, I hate 
 you, but I must talk ! I've been, for two months now, in this 
 cursed hole ; in a rickety lodging, with a vulgar family ; as vul- 
 gar, by Jove, as you are yourself ! " 
 
 Mr. Tufthunt did not like this style of address half so much 
 as Lord Cinqbars, who was laughing immoderately, and to 
 whom Tufthunt whispered rather sheepishly, " Pooh, pooh, he's 
 drunk ! " 
 
 " Drunk ! no, sir," yelled out Brandon ; " I'm mad, though, 
 with the prudery of a little devil of fifteen, who has cost me
 
 86 ^ SHABBY GENTEEL STORY. 
 
 more trouble than it would take me to seduce every one of 
 your sisters — ha, ha ! every one of the Miss Tufthunts, by Jove 1 
 Miss Suky Tufthunt, Miss Dolly Tufthunt, Miss Anna-Maria 
 Tufthunt, and the whole bunch. Come, sir, don't sit scowling 
 at me., or I'll brain you with the decanter." (Tufthunt was 
 down again on the sofa.) " I've borne with the girl's mother, 
 and her father, and her sisters, and a cook in the house, and a 
 scoundrel of a painter, that I'm going to fight about her ; and 
 for what i* — why, for a letter, which says, 'George, I'll kill my- 
 self ! George,' I'll kill myself ! ' — ha, ha ! a little devil like that 
 killing herself — ha, ha ! and I — I who — who adore her, wlio am 
 mad for " 
 
 " Mad, I believe he is," said Tufthunt ; and at this moment 
 Mr. Brandon was giving the most unequivocal signs of mad- 
 ness ; he plunged his head into the corner of the sofa, and was 
 kicking his feet violently into the cushions. 
 
 " You don't understand him, Tufty, my boy," said Lord 
 Cinqbars, with a very superior air. " You ain't up to these 
 things, I tell you ; and I suspect, by J ove, that you never were 
 in love in your life. / know what it is, sir. And as for Bran- 
 don, heaven bless you ! I've often seen him in that way when 
 we were abroad. When he has an intrigue, he's mad about it. 
 Let us see, there was the Countess Fritzch, at Baden-Baden ; 
 there was the woman at Pau ; and that girl at Paris, was it ? — 
 no, at Vienna. He went on just so about them all ; but I'll tell 
 you what, when we do the thing, we do it easier, my boy, hay ? " 
 
 And so sa)ang, my lord cocked up his little sallow, beardless 
 face into a grin, and then fell to eyeing a glass of execrable 
 claret across a candle. An intrigue, as he called it, was the 
 little creature's delight ; and until the time should arrive when 
 he could have one himself, he loved to talk of those of his friends. 
 
 As for Tufthunt, we may fancy how that gentleman's 
 previous affection for Brandon was increased by the latter's 
 Ijrutal addresses to him. Brandon continued to drink and to 
 talk, though not always in the sentimental way in which he had 
 spoken about his loves and injuries. Growing presently madly 
 jocose as he had before been madly melancholy, he narrated to 
 the two gentlemen the particulars of his quarrel with Fitch, 
 mimicking the little painter's manner in an excessively comic 
 way, and giving the most ludicrous account of his person, kept 
 his companions in a roar of laughter. Cinqbars swore that 
 he would see the fun in the morning, and agreed that if the 
 painter wanted a second, either he or Tufthunt would act foi 
 him.
 
 A SHABBY GENTEEL STORY. 
 
 87 
 
 Now my Lord Cinqbars had an excessively clever servant, a 
 merry rogue, whom he had discovered in the humble capacity 
 of scout's assistant at Christchurch, and raised to be his valet. 
 The chief duties of the valet were to black his lord's beautiful 
 boots, that we have admired so much, and put his lordship to 
 bed when overtaken with liquor. He heard every word of the 
 young men's talk (it being his habit, much encouraged by his 
 master, to join occasionally in the conversation) ; and in the 
 course of the night, when at supper with Monsieur Donner- 
 wetter and Mdlle. Augustine, he related every word of the talk 
 above stairs, mimicking Brandon quite as cleverly as the latter 
 had mimicked Fitch. When then, after making his company 
 laugh by describing Brandon's love-agonies, Mr. Tom informed 
 them how that gentleman had a rival, with whom he was going 
 to fight a duel the next morning — an artist-fellow with an 
 immense beard, whose name was Fitch, to his surprize Mdlle. 
 Augustine burst into a scream of laughter, and exclaimed, 
 " Feesh, Feesh I cest notrc hotnnie ; — it is our man, sare ! Saladin, 
 remember you Mr. Fish ? " 
 
 Saladin said gravely, " Missa Fis, Missa Fis ! know 'um 
 quite well, Missa Fis ! Painter-man, big beard, gib Saladin bit 
 injyrubby, Missus lub Missa Fis ! " 
 
 It was too true, the fat lady was the famous Mrs. Carrick- 
 FERGUS, and she had come all the way from Rome in pursuit of 
 her adored painter. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 WHICH THREATENS DEATH, BUT CONTAINS A GREAT DEAL OF 
 
 MARRYING. 
 
 As the morrow was to be an eventful day in the lives of all 
 the heroes and heroines of this history, it will be as well to state 
 how they passed the night previous. Brandon, like the English 
 before the battle of Hastings, spent the evening in feasting and 
 carousing ; and Lord Cinqbars, at twelve o'clock, his usual 
 time after his usual quantity of drink, was carried up to bed by 
 the servant kept by his lordship for that purpose. Mr. Tuft- 
 hunt took this as a hint to wish Brandon good-night, at the same 
 time promising that he and Cinqbars would not fail him in the 
 morning about the duel.
 
 88 A SHABBY CENTRE I. STORY. 
 
 Shall we confess that Mr. liiandon, whose excitement now 
 began to wear off, antl who had a dieadful headache, did not at 
 all relish the idea of the morrow's combat. 
 
 " If," said he, " I shoot this crack-brained painter, all the 
 world will cry out, ' Murder ! ' If he shoot me, all the world 
 will laugh at me ! And yet, confound him ! he seems so bent 
 upon blood, that there is no escaping a meeting." 
 
 " At any rate," Brandon thought, " there will be no harm 
 in a letter to Caroline." So, on arriving at home, he sat down 
 and wrote a very pathetic one ; saying that he fought in her 
 cause, and if he died, his last breath should be for her. So 
 having written, he jumped into bed, and did not sleep one 
 single wink all night. 
 
 As Brandon passed his night like the English, Fitch went 
 through his like the Normans, in fasting, and mortification, and 
 meditation. The poor fellow likewise indited a letter to Caro- 
 line : a very long and strong one, interspersed with pieces of 
 poetry, and containing the words we have just heard him utter 
 out of the window. Then he thought about making his will ; 
 but he recollected, and, indeed, it was a bitter thought to the 
 young man, that there was not one single soul in the wide world 
 cared for him — except, indeed, thought he, after a pause, that 
 poor Mrs. Carrickfergus at Rome, who did like me, and was 
 the only person who ever bought my drawings. So he made 
 over all his sketches to her, regulated his little property, found 
 that lie had money enough to pay his washer-woman ; and so, hav- 
 ing disposed of his worldly concerns, Mr. Fitch also jumped 
 into bed, and speedily fell into a deep sleep. Brandon could 
 hear him snoring all night, and did not feel a bit the more com- 
 fortable because his antagonist took matters so unconcernedly. 
 
 Indeed, our poor painter had no guilty thoughts in his 
 breast, nor any particular revenge against Brandon, now that 
 the first pangs of mortified vanity were over. P>ut, with all his 
 vagaries, he was a man of spirit ; and after what had passed 
 in the morning, the treason that had been done him, and the 
 insults heaped upon him, he felt that the duel was irrevocable. 
 He had a misty notion, imbibed somewhere, that it was the 
 part of a gentleman's duty to fight duels, and had long been 
 seeking for an opportunity. " Suppose I do die," said he, 
 " what's the odds ? Caroline doesn't care for me. Dr. Wacker- 
 bart's boys won't have their drawing-lesson next Wednesday ; 
 and no more will be said of poor Andrea." 
 
 And now for the garret. Caroline was wrapped up in her 
 own woes, poor little soul ! and in the arms of the faithful
 
 A SHABBY GENTEEL STORY. 89 
 
 Becky cried herself to sleep. But the slow hours passed on 
 and the tide, which had been out, now came in ; and the lamps 
 waxed fainter and fainter ; and the watchman cried six o'clock ; 
 and the sun arose and gilded the minarets of Margate ; and 
 Becky got up and scoured the steps, and kitchen, and made 
 ready the lodgers' breakfasts ; and at half-past eight there came 
 a thundering rap at the door, and two gentlemen, one with a 
 mahogany case under his arm, asked for Mr. Brandon, and 
 were shown up to his room by the astonished Becky, who was 
 bidden by Mr. Brandon to get breakfast for three. 
 
 The thundering rap awakened Mr. Fitch, who rose and 
 dressed himself in his best clothes, gave a twist of the curling- 
 tongs to his beard, and conducted himself throughout with 
 perfect coolness. Nine o'clock struck, and he wrapped his 
 cloak round him, and put under his cloak that pair of foils which 
 we have said he possessed, and did not know in the least how 
 to use. However, he had heard his iamarades cratelicr, at Paris 
 and Rome, say that they were the best weapons for duelling ; 
 and so forth he issued. 
 
 Becky was in the passage as he passed down ; she was 
 always scrubbing there. " Becky," said Fitch, in a hollow 
 voice, " here is a letter ; if I should not return in half an hour, 
 give it to Miss Gann, and promise on your honor that she shall 
 not have it sooner." Becky promised. She thought the painter 
 was at some of his mad tricks. He went out of the door sa 
 luting her gravely. 
 
 But he went only a few steps and came back again. 
 "Becky," said he, "you — you've always been a good girl to 
 me, and here's something for you ; per'aps we sha'n't — we sha'n't 
 see each other for some time." The tears were in his eyes as 
 he spoke, and he handed her over seven shillings and four- 
 pence halfpenny, being every farthing he possessed in the 
 world. 
 
 " Well, Fm sure ! " said Becky ; and that was all she said, 
 for she pocketed the money, and fell to scrubbing again. 
 
 Presently the three gentlemen up stairs came clattering 
 down. " Lock bless you, don't be in such a 'urry ! " exclaimed 
 Becky; "it's full herly yet, and the water's not biling." 
 
 "We'll come back to breakfast, my dear," said one, a little 
 gentleman in high-heeled boots ; "• and, I thay, mind and have 
 thum thoda-water." And he walked out, twirling his cane. 
 His friend with the case followed him. Mr. Brandon came 
 last. 
 
 He too turned back after he had gone a few paces. " Becky,"
 
 QO SHABBY GENTEEL STORY. 
 
 said he, in a grave voice, " if 1 am not back in half-an-hour, 
 give that to Miss Gann." 
 
 Becky was fairly flustered by this ; and after turning the 
 letters round and round, and peeping into the sides, and look- 
 ing at the seals very hard, she like a fool determined that she 
 would not wait half-an-hour, but carry them up to Miss Caroline ; 
 and so up she mounted, iuiding pretty Caroline in the act of 
 lacing her stays. 
 
 And the consequences of Becky's conduct was that little 
 Carry left off lacing her stays (a sweet little figure the poor 
 thing looked in them ; but that is neither here nor there), took 
 the letters, looked at one which she threw down directly ; at 
 the other, which she eagerly opened, and having read a line or 
 two, gave a loud scream, and fell down dead in a fainting fit ! 
 * * * * * 
 
 Waft us, O Muse ! to Mr. Wright's hotel, and quick narrate 
 what chances there befel. Very early in the morning Mdlle. 
 Augustine made her appearance in the apartment of Miss 
 Runt, and with great glee informed the lady of the event which 
 was about to take place. " Figurez-vous, mademoiselle, que 
 notre homme va se battre — oh, but it will be droll to see him 
 sword in hand ! " 
 
 " Don't plague me with your ojous ser\'ants' quarrels, Au- 
 gustine ; that horrid courier is always quarrelling and tipsy." 
 
 " Mon Dieu, qu'elle est bete ! " exclaimed Augustine : " but 
 I tell you it is not the courier ; it is he, I'objet, le peintre dont 
 madame s'est amourache'e, IMonsieur Feesh." 
 
 " Mr. Fitch ! " cried Runt, jumping up in bed. " Mr. Fitch 
 going to fight ! Augustine, my stockings — quick, my robe-de- 
 chambre — tell me when, how, where ? " 
 
 And so Augustine told her that the combat was to take 
 place at nine that morning, behind the Windmill, and that the 
 gentleman with whom Mr. Fitch was to go out, had been dining 
 at the hotel the night previous, in company with the little milor, 
 who was to be his second. 
 
 Quick as lightning flew Runt to the chamber of her pa- 
 troness. That lady was in a profound sleep ; and I leave you 
 to imagine what were her sensations on awaking and hearing 
 this dreadful tale. 
 
 Such is the force of love, that although, for many years, Mrs. 
 Carrickfergus had never left her bed before noon, although in 
 all her wild wanderings after the painter she, nevertheless, 
 would have her tea and cutlet in bed, and her doze likewise, 
 before she set forth on a journey — she now started up in an
 
 A SHABJiV CENTEEL STORY. 
 
 91 
 
 instant, forgetting her nap, mutton-chops, everything, and be- 
 gan dressing with a promptitude which can only be equalled by 
 Harlequin when disguising himself in a pantomime. She would 
 have had an attack of nerves, only she knew there was no time 
 for it ; and I do believe that twenty minutes were scarcely ovei 
 her head, as the saying is, when her bonnet and cloak were on, 
 and with her whole suite, and an inn-waiter or two whom she 
 pressed into her service, she was on full trot to the field of 
 action. For twenty years before, and from that to this, Ma- 
 rianne Carrickfergus never had or has walked so quickly. 
 
 " Hullo, here'th a go ! " exclaimed Lord Viscount Cinqbars. 
 as they arrived on the ground behind the Windmill ; " cuth me 
 there 'th only one man ! " 
 
 This was indeed the case ; Mr. Fitch, in his great cloak, 
 was pacing slowly up and down the grass, his shadow stretch- 
 ing far in the sunshine. Mr. Fitch was alone too ; for the 
 fact is, he had never thought about a second. This he admitted 
 frankly, bowing with much majesty to the company as they 
 came up. " But that, gents," said he, " will make no difference, 
 I hope, nor prevent fair play from being done." And, flinging 
 off his cloak, he produced the foils, from which the buttons had 
 been taken off. He went up to Brandon, and was for offering 
 him one of the weapons, just as they do at the theatre. Bran- 
 don stepped back, rather abashed : Cinqbars looked posed ; 
 Tufthunt delighted. "Ecod," said he, "I hope the bearded 
 fellow will give it him." 
 
 " Excuse me, sir," said Mr. Brandon ; " as the challenged 
 party, I demand pistols." 
 
 Mr. Fitch, with great presence of miod and gracefulness, 
 stuck the swords into the grass. 
 
 " Oh, pithtolth of courth," lisped my lord ; and presently 
 called aside Tufthunt, to whom he whispered something in 
 great glee ; to which Tufthunt objected at first, saying, " No, 
 him, let him fight." " And your fellowship and li\ing. 
 
 Tufty my boy ? " interposed my lord j and then they walked 
 on. After a couple of minutes, during which Mr. Fitch was 
 employed in examining Mr. Brandon from the toe upwards to 
 the crown of his head, or hat, just as Mr. Widdicombe does 
 Mr. Cartlich, before those two gentlemen proceed to join in 
 combat on the boards of Astley's Amphitheatre (indeed poor 
 Fitch had no other standard of chivalry) — when Fitch had con- 
 cluded this examuiation, of which Brandon did not know what
 
 g2 A SHABBY GENTEEL STORY. 
 
 the deuce to make, Lord Cinqbars came back to the painter, 
 and gave him a nod. 
 
 " Sir," said he, " as you have come unprovided with a 
 second, I, with your leave, will act as one. My name is Cinq- 
 bars — Lord Cinqbars ; and though I had come to the ground 
 to act as the friend of my friend here, Mr. Tufthunt will take 
 that duty upon him ; and as it appears to me there can be no 
 other end to this unhappy affair, we will proceed at once." 
 
 It is a marvel how Lord Cinqbars ever made such a gentle- 
 manly speech. When P'itch heard that he was to have a lord 
 for a second, he laid his hand on his chest, and vowed it was 
 the greatest h-honor of his life, and was turning round to walk 
 towards his ground, when my lord, gracefully thrusting his 
 tongue into his cheek, and bringing his thumb up to his nose, 
 twiddled about his fingers for a moment, and said to Brandon, 
 " Gammon ! " 
 
 Mr. Brandon smiled, and heaved a great, deep, refreshing 
 sigh. The truth was, a great load was taken off his mind, of 
 which he was very glad to be rid ; for there was something in 
 the coolneH of that crazy painter that our fashionable gentle- 
 man did not at all approve of. 
 
 " I think, Mr. Tufthunt," said Lord Cinqbars, very loud, 
 " that considering the gravity of the case — threatening horse- 
 whipping, you know, lie on both sides, and lady in the case — I 
 think we must have the barrier-duel." 
 
 " What's that >. " asked Fitch. 
 
 " The simplest thing in the world ; and," in a whisper, " let 
 me add, the best for you. Look here. We shall put you at 
 twenty paces, and a hat between you. You walk forward and 
 fire when you like. When you fire, you stop ; and you both 
 have the liberty of walking up to the hat. Nothing can be 
 more fair than that." 
 
 " Very well," said Fitch ; and, with a great deal of prepa- 
 ration, the pistols were loaded. 
 
 " I tell you what," whispered Cinqbars to Fitch, "if I hadn't 
 chosen this way you were a dead man. If he fires he hits you 
 dead. You must not let him fire, but have him down first." 
 
 " I'll try," said Fitch, who was a little pale, and thanked his 
 noble friend for his counsel. The hat was placed and the men 
 took their places. 
 
 "Are you all ready?" 
 
 " Ready," said Brandon, 
 
 " Advance when I drop my handkerchief. And presently 
 down it fell. Lord Cinqbars crying, •* Now ! "
 
 A SHABBY GENTEEL STORY. 93 
 
 The combatants both advanced, each covering his man. 
 When he had gone six paces, Fitch stopped, fired, and — missed. 
 He grasped his pistol tightly, for he was very near dropping it ; 
 and then stood biting his lips, and looking at Brandon, who 
 grinned savagely, and walked up to the hat. 
 
 " Will you retract what you said of me yesterday, you 
 villain?" said Brandon. 
 
 " I can't." 
 
 " Will you beg for life ? " 
 
 ♦' No." 
 
 " Then take a minute, and make your peace with God, for 
 you are a dead man." 
 
 Fitch dropped his pistol to the ground, shut his eyes for a 
 moment, and flinging up his chest and clenching his fists, said, 
 '■'•Now I'm ready. '" 
 
 Brandon fired — and strange to say, Andrea Fitch, as he 
 gasped and staggered backwards, saw, or thought he saw, Mr. 
 Brandon's pistol flying up in the air, where it went off, and 
 heard that gentleman yell out an immense oath in a very 
 audible voice. When he came to himself, a thick stick was 
 lying at Brandon's feet ; Mr. Brandon was capering about the 
 ground, and cursing and shaking a maimed elbow, and a whole 
 posse of people were rushing upon them. The first was the 
 great German courier, who rushed upon that gentleman, and 
 shouted, " Schelm ! spitzbube ! blagard! goward ! " in his ear. 
 " If I had not drown my stick and brogen his damt arm, he 
 wod have murdered dat boor young man." 
 
 The German's speech contained two unfounded assertions ; 
 in the first place Brandon would not have murdered Fitch ; and, 
 secondly, his arm was not broken — he had merely received a 
 blow on that part which anatomists call the funny-bone : a 
 severe blow, which sent the pistol spinning into the air, and 
 caused the gentleman to scream with pain. Two waiters seized 
 upon the murderer, too ; a baker, who had been brought from 
 his rounds, a bellman, several boys, — were yelling round him, 
 and shouting out, " Pole-e-eace ! " 
 
 Next to these came, panting and blowing, some women. 
 Could Fitch believe his eyes .' — that fat woman in red satin ! — 
 yes — no — yes — he was, he was in the arms of Mrs. Carrick- 
 
 fergus ! 
 
 * * * * # # * 
 
 The particulars of this meeting are too delicate to relate. 
 Suffice it that somehow matters were explained, Mr. Bran- 
 don was let loose, and a fly was presently seen to drive u].-
 
 g^ A SHABBY GENTEEL STORY. 
 
 into which j\Ir. Filch consented to enter with his new-found 
 friend. 
 
 Brandon had some good movements in him. As Fitch was 
 getting into the carriage, he wali^ed up to him, and held out his 
 left hand : " I can't offer you my right hand, Mr. Fitch, for that 
 cursed courier's stick has maimed it ; but 1 hope you will allow 
 me to apologize for my shameful conduct to you, and to say that 
 I never in my life met a more gallant fellow than yourself." 
 
 " That he is, by Jove ! " said my Lord Cinqbars. 
 
 Fitch blushed as red as a peony, and trembled very much. 
 " And yet," said he, " you would have murdered me just now, 
 Mr. Brandon. I can't take your 'and, sir." 
 
 " Why, you great flat," said my lord wisely, " he couldn't 
 have hurt you, nor yoii him. There wath no ballth in the 
 pithtolth." 
 
 " What," said Fitch, starting back, " do you gents call that a 
 joke ? Oh, my lord, my lord ! " And here poor Fitch actually 
 burst into tears on the red satin bosom of Mrs. Carrickfergus : 
 she and Miss Runt were crying as hard as they could. And so, 
 amidst much shouting and huzzaing, the fly drove awa)'. 
 
 " What a blubbering, abthurd donkey 1 " said Cinqbars, with 
 his usual judgment ; " ain't he, Tufthunt ? " 
 
 Tufthunt, of course, said yes ; but Brandon was in a vir- 
 tuous mood. " By heavens ! 1 think his tears do the man 
 honor. When I came out with him this morning, I intended to 
 act fairly by him. And as for Mr. Tufthunt, who calls a man 
 a coward because he cries — Mr. Tufthunt knows well w.hat a 
 pistol is, and that some men don't care to face it, brave 
 as they are." 
 
 Mr. Tufthunt understood the hint, and bit his lips and 
 walked on. And as for that worthy moralist, Mr. Brandon, I 
 am happy to say that there was some good fortune in store for 
 him, which, though similar in kind to that bestowed lately upon 
 Mr. Fitch, was superior in degree. 
 
 It was no other than this, that forgetting all maidenly de- 
 cency and decorum, before Lord Viscount Cinqbars and his 
 friend, that silly little creature, Caroline Gann, rushed out from 
 the parlor into the passage — she had been at the window ever 
 since she was rid of her fainting fit ! and ah ! what agonies of 
 fear had that little panting heart endured during the half-hour 
 of her lover's absence ! — Caroline Gann, I say, rushed into the 
 passage, and leaped upon the neck of Brandon, and kissed him, 
 and called him her dear, dear, dear, darling George, and sobbed, 
 and laughed, until (ieorge, taking her round the waist gentljr,
 
 A SHABBY GENTEEL STORY. g^ 
 
 carried her into the little dingy parlor, and closed the door 
 behind him." 
 
 " Egad," cried Cinqbars, " this is quite a thme ! Hullo, 
 Becky, Polly, what's your name ? — bring uth up the breakfatht ; 
 and I hope you've remembered the thoda-water. Come along 
 up thtairth, Tufty my boy." 
 
 T^ tP ^ TV TlF ^ 
 
 When Brandon came up stairs and joined them, which he did 
 m a minute or two, consigning Caroline to Becky's care, his 
 eyes were full of tears ; and when Cinqbars began to rally him 
 in his usual delicate way, Brandon said gravely, " No laughing, 
 sir, if you please ; for I swear that that lady before long shall 
 be my wife." 
 
 " Your wife ! — and what will your father say, and what will 
 your duns say, and what will Miss Goldmore say, with her 
 hundred thousand pounds .'' " cried Cinqbars. 
 
 " Miss Goldmore be hanged," said Brandon, " and the duns 
 too ; and my father may reconcile it to himself as he can." 
 And here Brandon fell into a reverie. 
 
 " It's no use thinking," he cried, after a pause. " You see 
 what a girl it is, Cinqbars. I love her — by heavens, I'm mad 
 with love for her ! She shall be mine, let what will come of it. 
 And besides,"' he added, in a lower tone of voice, " why need 
 my father know anything about it .'' " 
 
 "O flames and furies, what a lover it is ! " exclaimed his 
 friend. " But, by Jove, I like your spirit ; and hang all Gov- 
 ernors says I. Stop — a bright thought ! If you must marry, 
 why here's Tom Tufthunt, the very man to do your business." 
 Little Lord Cinqbars was delighted with the excitement of the 
 affair, and thought to himself, " By Jove, this is an intrigue." 
 
 " What, is Tufthunt in orders .-' " said Brandon. 
 
 " Yes," replied that reverend gentleman : " don't you see 
 my coat ? I took orders six weeks ago, on my fellowship, 
 Cinqbars' governor has promised me a living." 
 
 " And you shall marry George here, so you shall." 
 
 " What, without a licence ? " 
 
 " Hang the licence ! — we won't peach, will we, George ? 
 
 " Her family must know nothing of it," said George, " ot 
 they would." 
 
 " Why should they t Why shouldn't Tom marry you in this 
 very room, without any church or stuff at all t " 
 
 Tom said : " You'll hold me out, my lord, if anything comes 
 of it ; and, if Brandon likes, why, I will. He's done for if he 
 does," muttered Tufthunt, " and I have had my revenge on him, 
 the bullying, supercilious blacklee"."
 
 q6 a shabby genteel story. 
 
 And so on that very day, in Brandon's room, without a 
 Jicense, and by that worthy clergyman the Rev. Thomas Tuft- 
 hunt, with my Lord Cinqbars for the sole witness, poor Caroline 
 Gann, who knew no better, who never heard of licences, and 
 did not know what banns meant, was married in a manner to 
 the person calling himself George Brandon ; George Brandon 
 not being his real name. 
 
 No writings at all were made, and the ceremony merely read 
 through. Becky, Caroline's sole guardian, when the poor girl 
 kissed her, and, blushing, showed her gold ring, thought all was 
 in order : and the happy couple set off for Dover that day, with 
 fifty pounds which Cinqbars lent the bridegroom. 
 
 Becky received a little letter from Caroline, which she 
 promised to carry to her mamma at Swigby's : and it was 
 agreed that she was to give warning, and come and live with her 
 young lady. Next morning Lord Cinqbars and Tufthunt took 
 the boat for London ; the latter uneasy in mind, the former 
 vowing that " he'd never spent such an exciting day in his life, 
 and loved an intrigue of all things." 
 
 Next morning, too, the great travelling-chariot of Mrs. 
 Carrickfergus rolled away with a bearded gentleman inside. 
 Poor Fitch had been back to his lodgings to try one more 
 chance with Caroline, and he arrived in time — to see her get 
 into a post-chaise alone with Brandon. 
 
 Six weeks afterwards Galignani's Messenger contained the 
 following announcement : — 
 
 "Married, at the British embassy, by Hishop Luscombe, Andrew Fitch, Esq., to Mari- 
 anne Caroline Matilda, widow of the late Antony Carrickfergus, of Lombard Street and 
 Gloucester Place, Esquire. The happy pair, after a magnificent dijettni, set off for the 
 south in their splendid carriage-and-four. Miss Runt officiated as bride's-maid ; and we 
 remarked among the company liarl and Countess Crabs, General Sir R'ce Curry, K.C.B., 
 Colonel Wapshot, Sir Charles Swang, the Hon- Algernon Percy Deuceace and his lady, 
 Count Punter, and others of the elite of the fashionables now in Paris. The bridegroom 
 was attended by his friend Michael Angelo Titmarsh, Esquire ; and the lady was given 
 away by the Right Hon. the Earl of Crabs. On the departure of the bride and bridegroom 
 the festivities were resumed, and many a sjjarkling bumper i>f Meurice's champagne was 
 quaffed to the health of the hospitable and interesting couple." 
 
 And with one more marriage this chapter shall conclude. 
 About this time the British Auxiliary Legion came home from 
 Spain ; and Lieut.-General Swabber, a knight of San Fernando, 
 of the order of Isabella the Catholic, of the Tower and Sword, 
 who, as plain Lieutenant Swabber, had loved Miss Isabella 
 Macarty, as a general now actually married her. I leave you to 
 suppose how glorious Mrs. (iann was. and how Gann got tipsy 
 at the " Bag of Nails ; " but as her daughters each insisted upon
 
 A SHABBY GENTEEL STORY. gy 
 
 their 30/. a year income, and Mrs. Gann had so only 60/. left, 
 she was obhged still to continue the lodging-house at Margate, 
 in which have occurred the most interesting passages of this 
 
 SHARBY GENTEEL STORY. 
 
 Becky never went to her young mistress, who was not heard 
 of after she wrote the letter to her parent, saying that she was 
 married to Mr. Brandon ; but, for particular reasons, her dear 
 husband wished to keep his marriage secret, and for the present 
 her beloved parents must be content to know she was happy. 
 Gann missed his little Carry at first a good deal, but spent more 
 and more of his time at the ale-house, as his house with only 
 Mrs. Gann in it was too hot for him. Mrs. Gann talked un- 
 ceasingly of her daughter the squire's lady, and her daughter 
 the general's wife ; but never once mentioned Caroline after the 
 first burst of wonder and wrath at her departure, 
 
 God bless thee, poor Caroline ! Thou art happy now, for 
 some short space at least; and here, therefore, let us leave 
 thee.
 
 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 ON HIS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD; 
 
 SHOWING 
 
 WHO ROBBED HIM, WHO HELPED HIM. AND WHO 
 
 PASSED HIM BY. 
 
 in>
 
 TO 
 
 M. I. HIGGINS, 
 
 IN GRATEFUL REMEMBRANCE OF OLD FRIENDSHIP AND 
 
 KINDNESS. 
 
 Kensington, July, 1S62. 
 
 (IM)
 
 THE 
 
 ADVENTURES OF PHILIP. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 DOCTOR FELL. 
 
 ' " Not attend her own son when he is ill ! " said my mother. 
 " She does not deserve to have a son ! " And Mrs. Pendennis 
 looked towards her own only darling whilst uttering this indig- 
 nant exclamation. As she looked, I know what passed through 
 her mind. She nursed me, she dressed me in little caps and 
 long-clothes, she attired me in my first jacket and trousers. 
 She watched at my bedside through my infantile and juvenile 
 ailments. She tended me through all my life, she held me to 
 her heart with infinite prayers and blessings. She is no longer 
 with us to bless and pray ; but from heaven, where she is, I 
 know her love pursues me ; and often and often I think she is 
 here, only invisible. 
 
 " Mrs. Firmin would be of no good," growled Dr. Good- 
 enough. " She would have hysterics, and the nurse would have 
 two patients to look after." 
 
 " Don't tell me'' cries my mother, with a flush on her cheeks. 
 " Do you suppose if that child " (meaning, of course, her para- 
 gon) " were ill, I would not go to him ? " 
 
 " My dear, if that child were hungry, you would chop off 
 your head to make him broth," says the doctor, sipping his tea. 
 
 " Potage dj la bonne fejjune" says Mr. Pendennis. " Mother, 
 we have it at the club. You would be done with milk, eggs, 
 and a quantity of vegetables. You would be put to simmer for 
 many hours in an earthen pan, and " 
 
 " Don't be horrible, Arthur ! " cries a young lady, who was 
 my mother's companion of those happy days.
 
 102 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 " And people when they knew you would like you very 
 much." 
 
 My uncle looked as if he did not understand the allegory. 
 
 " What is this you are talking about ? potage d. la — what 
 d'ye-call-'im ? " says he. " I thought we were speaking of Mrs. 
 Firmin, of Old Parr Street. Mrs. Firmin is a doosid delicate 
 woman," interposed the Major. "All the females of that 
 family are. Her mother died early. Her sister, Mrs. Twys- 
 den, is very delicate. She would be of no more use in a sick- 
 room than a — than a bull in a china-shop, begad ! and she 
 might catch the fever, too." 
 
 " And so might you. Major ! " cries the doctor. " Aren't 
 you talking to me, who have just come from the boy .'' Keep 
 your distance, or I shall bite you." 
 
 The old gentleman gave a little backward movement with 
 his chair. 
 
 "Gad, it's no joking matter," says he ; " I've known fellows 
 catch fevers at — at ever so much past my age. At any rate, 
 the boy is no boy of mine, begad ! I dine at Firmin's house, 
 who has married into a good family, though he is only a doctor 
 and " 
 
 " And pray what was my husband ? " cried Mrs. Pendennis. 
 
 " Only a doctor, indeed ! " calls out Goodenough. " My 
 dear creature, I have a great mind to give him the scarjet fever 
 this minute ! " 
 
 " My father was a surgeon and apothecary, I have heard," 
 says the widow's son. 
 
 " And what then ? And I should like to know if a man of 
 one of the most ancient families in the kingdom — in the empire, 
 begad ! — hasn't a right to pursoo a learned, a useful, an honor- 
 able profession. My brother John was " 
 
 '' A medical practitioner ! " I say, with a sigh. 
 
 And my uncle arranges his hair, puts his handkerchief to 
 his teeth, and says — 
 
 " Stuff ! nonsense — no patience with these personalities, 
 begad ! Firmin is a doctor, certainly — so are you — so are 
 others. But Firmin is a university man, and a gentleman. 
 Firmin has travelled. Firmin is intimate with some of the 
 best people in England, and has married into one of the first 
 families. Gad, sir, do you suppose that a woman bred up in 
 the lap of luxury — in the very lap, sir — at Ringwood and 
 \Miipham, and at Ringwood House in Walpole Street, where 
 she was absolute mistress, begad — do you suppose such a 
 woman is fit to be nurse tender in a sick-room ? She never was
 
 ON ins WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. ^03 
 
 fit for that, or for anything except — " (here the Major saw 
 smiles on the countenances of some of his audience) — " except, 
 I say, to preside at Ringvvood House and — and adorn society, 
 and that sort of thing. And if such a woman chooses to run 
 away with her uncle's doctor, and marry below her rank — why, 
 /don't think it's a laughing matter, hang me if I do." 
 
 " And so she stops at the Isle of Wight, whilst the poor 
 boy remains at school," sighs my mother. 
 
 " Firmin can't come away. He is in attendance on the 
 Grand Dook, The prince is never easy without Firmin. He 
 has given him his Order of the Swan. They are moving 
 heaven and earth in high quarters ; and I bet you even. Good- 
 enough, that that boy whom you have been attending will be a 
 baronet — if you don't kill him off with your confounded 
 potions and pills, begad ! " 
 
 Dr. Gooclenough only gave a humph and contracted his 
 great eyebrows. 
 
 My uncle continued — 
 
 " I know what you mean. Firmin is a gentlemanly man — a 
 handsome man. I remember his father, Brand Firmin, at 
 Valenciennes with the Dook of York — one of the handsomest 
 men in Europe. Firebrand Firmin they used to call him — a 
 red-headed fellow — a tremendous duellist : shot an Irishman — 
 became serious in after life, and that sort of thing — quarrelled 
 with his son, who was doosid wild in early days. Gentlemanly 
 man, certainly, Firmin. Black hair : his father had red. So 
 much the better for the doctor ; but — but — we understand each 
 other, I think, Goodenough ? and you and I have seen some 
 queer fishes in our time." 
 
 And the old gentleman winked and took his snuff graciously, 
 and, as it were, puffed the Firmin subject away. 
 
 " Was it to show me a queer fish that you took me to Dr. 
 Firmin's house in Parr Street ? " asked Mr. Pendennis of his 
 uncle. " The house was not very gay, nor the mistress very 
 wise, but they were all as kind as might be ; and I am very 
 fond of the boy." 
 
 " So did Lord Ringwood, his mother's uncle, like him," 
 cried Major Pendennis. " That boy brought about a reconcilia- 
 tion between his mother and his uncle, after her runaway match. 
 I suppose you know she ran away with Firmin, my dear ?" 
 
 My mother said " she had heard something of the story." 
 And the major once more asserted that Dr. Firmin was a wild 
 fellow twenty years ago. At the time of which I am writing he 
 tvas Physician to the Plethoric Hospital, Physician to the Grand
 
 104 
 
 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 Duke of Groningen, and knight of his order of the Black Sv an, 
 member of many learned societies, the husband of a rich wife 
 and a person of no small consideration. 
 
 As for his son, whose name figures at the head of these 
 pages, you may suppose he did not die of the illness about which 
 we had just been talking. A good nurse waited on him, though 
 his mamma was in the country. Though his papa was absent, 
 a very competent physician was found to take charge of the 
 young patient, and preserve his life for the benefit of his family, 
 and the purposes of this history. 
 
 We pursued our talk about Philip Firmin and his father, and 
 his grand-uncle the Earl, whom Major Pendennis knew in- 
 timately well, untill Dr. Goodenough's carriage was announced, 
 and our kind physican took leave of us, and drove back to Lon- 
 don. Some who spoke on that summer evening are no longer 
 here to speak or listen. Some who were young then have 
 topped the hill and are descending towards the valley of the 
 shadows. "Ah," says old Major Pendennis, shaking his brown 
 curls, as the Doctor went away ; " did you see, my good soul, 
 when I spoke about his confrere, how glum Goodenough looked ? 
 They don't love each other, my dear. Two of a trade don't 
 agree, and besides I have no doubt the other doctor-fellows are 
 jealous of Firmin, because he lives in the best society. A man of 
 good family, my dear. There has already been a great i-approche- 
 ment ; and if Lord Ringwood is quite reconciled to him, there's 
 no knowing what luck that boy of Firmin's may come to." 
 
 Although Dr. Goodenough might think but lightly of his 
 confrere, a great portion of the public held him in much higher 
 estimation : and especially in the little community of Grey 
 Friars, of which the kind reader has heard in previous works 
 of the present biographer, Dr. Brand Firmin was a very great 
 favorite, and received with much respect and honor. When- 
 ever the boys at school were afflicted with the common ailments 
 of youth, Mr. Spratt, the school apothecar}', provided for them ; 
 and by the simple, though disgusting remedies which were in 
 use in those times, generally succeeded in restoring his young 
 patients to health. But if young Lord Egham (the Marquis of 
 Ascot's son, as my respected reader very likely knows) hap- 
 j^ened to be unwell, as was frequently the case, from his lord- 
 v'hip's great command of pocket-money and imprudent fondness 
 for the contents of the pastry-cook's shop ; or if any very grave 
 case of illness occurred in the school, then, quick, the famous 
 Dr. Firmin, of Old Parr Street, Burlington Gardens, was sent
 
 ON HIS WA Y THROUGH THE WORLD. 
 
 »05 
 
 for ; and an illness must have been very severe, if he could not 
 cure it. Dr. Firniin had been a school-fellow, and remained a 
 special friend of the head-master. When young Lord Egham, 
 before mentioned, (he was our only lord, and therefore we 
 were a little proud and careful of our darling youth,) got the 
 erysipelas, which swelled his head to the size of a pumpkin, the 
 doctor triumphantly carried him through his illness, and was 
 complimented by the head-boy in his Latin oration on the an- 
 nual speech-day for his superhuman skill and godlike delight 
 salutem ho7ninibus da?ido. The head-master turned towards 
 Dr. Firmin, and bowed : the governors and bigwigs buzzed to 
 one another, and looked at him : the boys looked at him : the 
 physician held his handsome head down towards his shirt-frill. 
 His modest eyes would not look up from the spotless lining of 
 the broad-brimmed hat on his knees. A murmur of applause 
 hummed through the ancient hall, a scuffling of young feet, a 
 rustling of new cassocks among the masters, and a refreshing 
 blowing of noses ensued, as the orator polished off his period, 
 and then passed to some other theme. 
 
 Amidst the general enthusiasm, there was one member of 
 the auditory scornful and dissentient. This gentleman whis- 
 pered to his comrade at the commencement of the phrase con- 
 cerning the doctor the, I believe of Eastern derivation, mono- 
 syllable " Bosh ! " and he added sadly, looking towards the 
 object of all his praise, " He can't construe the Latin — though 
 it is all a parcel of humbug." 
 
 " Hush, Phil ! " said his friend ; and Phil's face flushed 
 red, as Dr. Firmin, lifting up his eyes, looked at him for one 
 noment ; for the recipient of all this laudation was no other 
 vihan Phil's father. 
 
 The illness of which we spoke had long since passed away. 
 Philip was a schoolboy no longer, but in his second year at the 
 university, and one of half-a-dozen young men, ex-pupils of the 
 school, who had come up for the annual dinner. The honors 
 of this year's dinner were for Dr. Firmin, even more than for 
 Lord Ascot in his star and ribbon, who walked with his arm in 
 the doctor's into chapel. His lordship faltered when, in his 
 after-dinner speech, he alluded to the inestimable services and 
 skill of his tried old friend, whom he had known as a fellow- 
 pupil in those walls — (loud cheers) — whose friendship had been 
 the delight of his life — a friendship which he prayed might be 
 the inheritance of their children. (Immense applause ; after 
 which Dr. Firmin spoke.) 
 
 The Doctor's speech was perhaps a little commonplace ;
 
 io6 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 the Latin quotations which he used were not exactly novel ; 
 but Phil need not have been so an^ry or ill-behaved. He went 
 on sipping sherry, glaring at his father, and muttering obser- 
 vations that were anything but complimentary to his parent. 
 " Now look," says he, " he is going to be overcome by his feel- 
 ings. He will put his handkerchief up to his mouth, and show 
 his diamond ring. I told you so! It's too much. I can't 
 swallow this * * * this sherry. I say, you fellows, let us 
 come out of this, and have a smoke somewhere." And Phil 
 rose up and quitted the dining-room, just as his father was 
 declaring what a joy, and a pride, and a delight it was to him 
 to think that the friendship which his noble friend honored 
 him was likely to be transmitted to their children, and that 
 when he had passed away from this earthly scene (cries of 
 "No, no ! " _" May you live a thousand years ! ") it would be 
 his joy to think that his son would always find a friend and pro- 
 tector in the noble, the princely house of Ascot. 
 
 We found the carriages waiting outside Grey Friars' Gate, 
 and Philip Firman, pushing me into his father's, told the foot- 
 man to drive home, and that the doctor would return in Lord 
 Ascot's carriage. Home then to Old Parr Street we went, 
 where many a time as a boy I had been welcome. And we 
 retired to Phil's private den in the back buildings of the gieat 
 house : and over our cigars we talked of the Founder 's-day 
 Feast, and the speeches delivered ; and of the old Cistercians 
 of our time, and how Thompson was married, and Johnson was 
 in the army, and Jackson (not red-haired Jackson, pig-eyed 
 Jackson,) was first in his year, and so forth ; and in this twaddle 
 were most happily engaged, when Phil's father flung open the 
 tall door of the study. * 
 
 " Here's the governor ! " growled Phil ; and in an undertone, 
 " What does he \yant ? " 
 
 " The governor," as I looked up, was not a pleasant object 
 to behold. Dr. Firmin had very white false teeth, which 
 perhaps were a little too large for his mouth, and these grinned 
 in the gas-light very fiercely. On his cheeks were black whisk- 
 ers, and over his glaring eyes fierce black eyebrows, and his 
 bald head glittered like a billiard-ball. You would hardly have 
 known that he was the original of that melancholy philosophic 
 portrait which all the patients admired in the doctor's waiting- 
 room. 
 
 " I find, Philip, that you took my carriage," said the father ; 
 " and Lord Ascot and T had to walk ever so far for a cab ! " 
 
 " Hadn't he got his own carriage 1 I thought, of course, he
 
 ON HIS WA Y THROUGH THE WORLD. 
 
 107 
 
 would have his carriage on a State-day, and that you would 
 come home with the lord," said Philip. 
 
 " I had promised to bring ///;;/ home, sir ! " said the father. 
 
 " Well, sir, I'm very sorry," continued the son, curtly. 
 
 " Sorry ! " screams the other. 
 
 " I can't say any more, sir, and I am very sorry," answers 
 Phil ; and he knocked the ash of his cigar into the stove. 
 
 The stranger within the house hardly knew how to look on 
 its master or his son. There was evidently some dire quarrel 
 between them. The old man glared at the young one, who 
 calmly looked his father in the face. Wicked rage and hate 
 seemed to flush from the doctor's eyes, and anon came a look 
 of wild pitiful supplication towards the guest, which was most 
 painful to bear. In the midst of what dark' family mystery was 
 I ? What meant this cruel spectacle of the father's terrified 
 anger, and the son's scorn? 
 
 " I — I appeal to you, Pendennis," says the doctor, with a 
 choking utterance and a ghastly face. 
 
 " Shall we begin ab ovo, sir ? " says Phil. Again the ghastly 
 look of terror comes over the father's face. 
 
 " I — I promise to bring one of the first noblemen in Eng- 
 land," gasps the doctor, "from a public dinner, in my carriage ; 
 and my son takes it, and leaves me and Lord Ascot to walk ! — 
 Is it fair, Pendennis ? Is it the conduct of a gentleman to a 
 gentleman ; of a son to a father? " 
 
 " No, sir," I said, gravely, " nothing can excuse it." Indeed 
 I was shocked at the young man's obduracy and undutifulness. 
 
 " I told you it was a mistake ! " cries Phil, reddening. " I 
 heard Lord Ascot order his own carriage ; I made no doubt he 
 would bring my father home. To ride in a chariot with a foot- 
 man behind me, is no pleasure to me, and I would far rather 
 have a Hansom and a cigar. It was a blunder, and I am sorry 
 for it — there ! And if I live to a hundred I can't say more." 
 
 " If you are sorry, Philip," groans the father, " it is enough." 
 *' You remember, Pendennis, when — when my son and I were 
 not on this — on this footing," and he looked up for a moment 
 at a picture which was hanging over Phil's head — a portrait of 
 Phil's mother ; the lady of whom my own mother spoke, on that 
 evening when we had talked of the boy's illness. Both the 
 ladies had passed from the world now, and their images were 
 but painted shadows on the wall. 
 
 The father had accepted an apology, though the son had 
 made none. I looked at the elder Firmin's face, and the char- 
 acter written on it. I remembered such particulars of his early
 
 xo8 THE ADV^ENTURES OE PHILIP 
 
 history as had been told to me ; and I perfectly recalled that 
 feeling of doubt and misliking which came over my mind when 
 I first saw the doctor's handsome- face some few years pre- 
 viously, when my uncle first took me to the doctor's in Old Parr 
 Street ; litde Phil being then a flaxen-headed, pretty child, who 
 had just assumed his first trousers, and I a fifth-form boy at school. 
 My father and Dr. Pirmin were members of the medical 
 profession. They had been bred up as boys at the same school, 
 whither families used to send tlieir sons from generation to 
 generation, and long before people had ever learned that the 
 place was unwholesome. Grey Friars was smoky, certainly ; I 
 think in the time of the Plague great numbers of people were 
 buried there. But had the school been situated in the most 
 picturesque swamp in England, the general health of the boys 
 could not have been better. We boys used to hear of epidem- 
 ics occurring in other schools, and were almost sorry that they 
 did not come to ours, so that we might shut up, and get longer 
 vacations. Even that illness which subsequently befell Phil 
 Firmin himself attacked no one else — the boys all luckily going 
 home for the holidays on the very day of poor Phil's seizure ; 
 but of this illness more anon. When it was determined that 
 little Phil Firmin was to go to Grey Friars, Phil's father 
 bethought him that Major Pendennis, whom he met in the world 
 and society, had a nephew at the place, who might protect the 
 little fellow, and the Major took his nephew to see Dr. and Mrs. 
 Firmin one Sunday after church, and we had lunch at Old Parr 
 Street, and their little Phil was presented to me, whom I 
 promised to take under my protection. He was a simple little 
 man ; an artless child, who had not the least idea of the dignity 
 of a fifth-form boy. He was quite unabashed in talking to me 
 and other persons, and has remained so ever since. He asked 
 my uncle how he came to have such odd hair. He partook freely 
 of the delicacies on the table. I remember he hit me with his 
 little fist once or twice, which liberty at first struck me with a 
 panic of astonishment, and then with a sense of the ridiculous 
 so exquisitely keen, that I burst out into a fit of laughter. It 
 was, you see, as if a stranger were to hit the Pope in the ribs, 
 and call him "Old boy ;" as if Jack were to tweak one of the 
 giants by the nose ; or Ensign Jones to ask the Duke of Wel- 
 lington to take wine. I had a strong sense of humor, even in 
 those early days, and enjoyed this joke accordingly. 
 
 " Philip ! " cries mamma, "you will hurt Mr. Pendennis.' 
 " I will knock him down ! " shouts Phil. Fancy knocking 
 me down, — me, a fifth-form boy !
 
 ON ins WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. 
 
 log 
 
 " The child is a perfect Hercules," remarks the mother. 
 
 " He strangled two snakes in his cradle," says the doctor, 
 looking at me. (It was then, as I remember, I felt Dr. Fell 
 towards him.) 
 
 " La, Dr. Firmin ! " cries mamma, " I can't bear snakes. I 
 remember there was one at Rome, when we were walking one 
 day, a great, large snake, and I hated it, and I cried out, and I 
 nearly fainted ; and my uncle Ringwood said I ought to like 
 snakes, for one might be an agreeable rattle ; and I have read 
 of them being charming in India, and I dare say you have, Mr. 
 Pendennis, for I am told you are very clever ; and I am not in 
 the least ; I wish I were ; but my husband is, very — and so 
 Phil will be. Will you be a very clever boy, dear ? He was 
 named after my dear Papa, who was killed at Busaco when I 
 was quite, quite a little thing, and we wore mourning, and we 
 went to live with my uncle Ringwood afterwards ; but Maria 
 and I had both our own fortunes ; and I am sure I little thought 
 I should marry a physician — la, one of uncle Ringwood's 
 grooms, I should as soon have thought of marr}dng him ! — but, 
 you know, my husband is one of the cleverest men /;/ the world. 
 Don't tell me, — you are, dearest, and you know it ; and when 
 a man is clever, I don't value his rank in life ; no, not if he was 
 that fender ; and I always said to uncle Ringwood, ' Talent I 
 will marry, for talent I adore ; ' and I did marry you, Dr. Fir- 
 min, you know I did, and this child is your image. And you 
 will be kind to him at school," says the poor lady, turning to 
 me, her eyes filling with tears, "for talent is always kind, ex- 
 cept uncle Ringwood, and he was very " 
 
 " A little more wine, Mr. Pendennis ? " said the doctor — 
 Dr. Fell still, though he was most kind to me. " I shall put 
 my little man under your care, and I know you will keep him 
 from harm. I hope you will do us the favor to come to Parr 
 Street whenever you are free. In my father's time we used to 
 come home of a Saturday from school, and enjoyed going to 
 the play." And the Doctor shook me cordially by the hand, 
 and, I must say, continued his kindness to me as long as ever 
 I knew him. When we went away, my uncle Pendennis told 
 me many stories about the great earl and family of Ringwood, 
 and how Dr. Firmin had made a match — a match of the affec- 
 tions — with this lady, daughter of Philip Ringwood, who was 
 killed at Busaco ; and how she had been a great beauty, and 
 was a perfect grande da?ne always ; and, if not the cleverest, 
 certainly one of the kindest and most amiable women in the 
 world.
 
 1 1 o THE A D I 'ENTURES OF PHI LIP 
 
 In those clays I was accustomed to receive the opinions of 
 my informant with such respect that I at once accepted this 
 statement as authentic. Mrs. Firmin's portrait, indeed, was 
 beautiful : it was painted by young Mr. Harlowe, that year he 
 was at Rome, and when in eighteen days he completed a copy 
 of the "Transfiguration," to the admiration of all the Academy; 
 but I, for my part, only remember a lady weak, and thin, and 
 faded, who never came out of her dressing-room until a late 
 hour in the afternoon, and whose superannuated smiles and 
 grimaces used to provoke my juvenile sense of humor. She 
 used to kiss Phil's brow ! and, as she held the boy's hand in 
 one of her lean ones, would say, " Who would suppose such a 
 great boy as that could be my son ? " " Be kind to him when 
 I am gone," she sighed to me, one Sunday evening, when I was 
 taking leave of her, as her eyes filled with tears, and she placed 
 the thin hand in mine for the last time. The doctor, reading 
 by the fire, turned round and scowled at her from under his tall 
 shining forehead. " You are nervous, Louisa, and had better 
 go to your room, I told j'ou you had," he said, abruptly. 
 " Young gentlemen, it is time for you to be off to Grey Friars. 
 Is the cab at the door, Brice .■' " And he took out his watch — 
 his great shining watch, by which he had felt the pulses of so 
 many famous personages, whom his prodigious skill had rescued 
 from disease. And at parting, Phil flung his arms round his 
 poor mother, and kissed her under the glossy curls ; the bor- 
 rowed curls ! and he looked his father resolutely in the face 
 (whose own glance used to fall before that of the boy), and 
 bade him a gruff good-night, ere we set forth for Grey Friars. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 AT SCHOOL AND AT HOME. 
 
 I DINED yesterday with three gentlemen, whose time of life 
 may be guessed by their conversation, a great part of which 
 consisted of Eton reminiscences and lively imitations of Dr. 
 Keate. Each one, as he described how he had been flogged, 
 mimicked to the best of his power the manner and the mode 
 of operating of the famous doctor. His little parenthetical 
 remarks during the ceremony were recalled with great face-
 
 ON HIS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. m 
 
 tiousness : the very hwhish of the rods were parodied with 
 thrilling fidelity, and after a good hour's conversation, the sub- 
 ject was brought to a climax by a description of that awful 
 night when the doctor called up squad after squad of boys from 
 their beds in their respective boarding-houses, whipped through 
 the whole night, and castigated I don't know how many hun- 
 dred rebels. All these mature men laughed, prattled, rejoiced, 
 and became young again, as they recounted their stories ; and 
 each of them heartily and eagerly bade the stranger to under- 
 stand how Keate was a thorough gentleman. Having talked 
 about their floggings, I say, for an hour at least, they apologized 
 to me for dwelling upon a subject which after all was strictly 
 local : but, indeed, their talk greatly amused and diverted me, 
 and I hope, and am quite ready, to hear all their jolly stories 
 over again. 
 
 Be not angr)'', patient reader of former volumes by the 
 author of the present history, if I am garrulous about Grey 
 Friars, and go back to that ancient place of education to find 
 the heroes of our tale. We are but young once. When we 
 remember that time of youth, we are still young. He over 
 whose head eight or nine lustres have passed, if he wishes to 
 write of boys, must recall the time when he himself was a boy. 
 Their habits change ; their waists are longer or shorter ; their 
 shirt-collars stick up more or less ; but the boy is the boy in 
 King George's time as in that of his royal niece — once our 
 maiden queen, now the anxious mother of many boys. And 
 young fellows are honest, and merry, and idle, and mischievous, 
 and timid, and brave, and studious, and selfish, and generous, 
 and mean, and false, and truth-telling, and affectionate, and 
 good, and bad, now as in former days. He with whom we have 
 mainly to do is a gentleman of mature age now walking the 
 street v.'ith boys of his own. He is not going to perish in the 
 last chapter of these memoirs — to die of consumption with his 
 love weeping by his bedside, or to blow his brains out in de- 
 spair, because she has been married to his rival, or killed out 
 of a gig, or otherwise done for in the last chapter but one. No, 
 no ; we will have no dismal endings. Philip Firmin is well and 
 hearty at this minute, owes no man a shilling, and can enjoy 
 his glass of port in perfect comfort. So, my dear miss, if you 
 want a pulmonary romance, the present won't suit you. So, 
 young gentleman, if you are for melancholy, despair, and sar- 
 donic satire, please to call at some other shoiD. That Philip 
 shall have his trials is a matter of course — may they be inter- 
 esting, though they do not end dismally ! That he shall fall
 
 1 1 2 THE AD VENTURES OF PlflLrP 
 
 and trip in his course sometimes is pretty certain. Ah, who 
 does not upon this life-journey of ours ? Is not our want the 
 occasion of our brother's charity, and thus does not good come 
 out of that evil ? When the traveller (of whom the Master 
 spoke) fell among the thieves, his mishap was contrived to tr^ 
 many a heart beside his own — the Knave's who robbed him, the 
 Levite's and Priest's who passed him by as he lay bleeding, the 
 humble Samaritan's whose hand poured oil into his wound, and 
 held put its pittance to relieve him. 
 
 So little Philip Firmin was brought to school by his mamma 
 in her carriage, who entreated the housekeeper to have a special 
 charge of that angelic child ; and as soon as the poor lady's 
 back was turned, Mrs. Bunce emptied the contents of the boy's 
 trunk into one of sixty or seventy little cupboards, wherein re- 
 posed other boys' clothes and haberdashery : and then Mrs. 
 Firmin requested to see the Rev. Mr. X., in whose house Philip 
 was to board, and besought him, and explained many things to 
 him, such as the exceeding delicacy of the child's constitution, 
 &c., &c. ; and Mr. X.,who was very good-natured, patted the boy 
 kindly on the head, and sent for the other Philip, Philip Ring- 
 wood, Phil's cousin, who had arrived at Grey Friars an hour 
 or two before ; and Mr. X. told Ringwood to take care of the 
 little fellow ; and Mrs. Firmin, choking behind her pocket- 
 handkerchief, gurgled out a blessing on the grinning youth, and 
 at one time had an idea of giving Master Ringwood a sove- 
 reign, but paused, thinking he was too big a boy, and that she 
 might not take such a liberty, and presently she was gone ; and 
 little Phil Firmin was introduced to the long-room and his 
 schoolfellows of Mr. X.'s house ; and having plenty of money, 
 and naturally finding his way to the pastrycook's the next day, 
 after school, he was met by his cousin Ringwood and robbed 
 of half the tarts which he had purchased. A fortnight after- 
 wards, the hospitable doctor and his wife asked their young 
 kinsman to Old Parr Street, Burlington Gardens, and the two 
 boys went ; but Phil never mentioned anything to his parents 
 regarding the robber)^ of tarts, being deterred, perhaps, from 
 speaking by awful threats of punishment which his cousin prom- 
 ised to administer when they got back to school, in case of 
 the little boy's confession. Subsequently, Master Ringwood 
 was asked once in every term to Old Parr Street ; but neither 
 Mrs. Firmin, nor the doctor, nor Master Firmin liked the bar- 
 onet's son, and Mrs. Firmin pronounced him a violent, rude 
 boy. 
 
 I, for my part, left school suddenly and early, and my little
 
 ON HIS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. 113 
 
 protege behind me. His poor mother, who had promised her- 
 self to come for him every Saturday, did not keep her promise. 
 Smithfield is a long way from Piccadilly ; and an angry cow 
 once scratched the panels of her carriage, causing her footman 
 to spring from his board into a pig-pen, and herself to feel 
 such a shock, that no wonder she was afraid of visiting the 
 City afterwards. The circumstances of this accident she often 
 narrated to us. Her anecdotes were not numerous, but she 
 told them repeatedly. In imagination, sometimes, I can hear 
 her ceaseless, simple cackle ; see her faint eyes, as she prattles 
 on unconsciously, and watch the dark looks of her handsome, 
 silent husband, scowling from under his eyebrows and smiling 
 behind his teeth. I dare say he ground those teeth with sup- 
 pressed rage sometimes. I dare say to bear with her endless 
 volubility must have tasked his endurance. He may have 
 treated her ill, but she tried him. She, on her part, may have 
 been a not very wise woman, but she was kind to me. Did 
 not her housekeeper make me the best of tarts, and keep 
 goodies from the company dinners for the young gentlemen 
 when they came home .-• Did not her husband give me of his 
 fees .'' I promise you, after I had seen Dr. Fell a few times, 
 that first unpleasing impression produced by his darkling coun- 
 tenance and sinister good looks wore away. He was a gentle- 
 man. He had lived in the great world, of which he told anec- 
 dotes delightful to boys to hear ; and he passed the bottle to 
 me as if I was a man. 
 
 I hope and think I remembered the injunction of poor Mrs. 
 Firmin to be kind to her boy. As long as we stayed together 
 at Grey Friars, I was Phil's champion whenever he needed my 
 protection, though of course I could not always be present to 
 guard the little scapegrace from all the blows which were aimed 
 at his young face by pugilists of his own size. There were 
 seven or eight years' difference between us (he says ten, which 
 is absurd, and which I deny) ; but I was always remarkable for 
 my affability, and, in spite of our disparity of age, would often 
 graciously accept the general invitation I had from his father 
 for any Saturday and Sunday when I would like to accompany 
 Philip home. 
 
 Such an invitation is welcome to any schoolboy. To get 
 away from Smithfield, and show our best clothes in Bond Street, 
 was always a privilege. To strut in the Park on Sunday, and 
 nod to the other fellows who were strutting there too, was better 
 than remaining at school, " doing ' Diates aron,'" as the phrase 
 ased to be, having that endless roast-beef for dinner, and hear
 
 1 1 4 THE A D VENTURES OF THTLIP 
 
 ing two sermons in cliapcl. Tliere may have been more lively 
 streets in London than Old Parr Street ; but it was pleasanter 
 to be there than to look at Goswell Street over Grey Friars' 
 wall ; and so the present biographer and reader's very humble 
 servant found Dr. Firmin's house an agreeable resort. Mamma 
 was often ailing, or if well, went out into the world with her 
 husband ; in either case, we boys had a good dinner provided 
 for us, with the special dishes which Phil loved ; and after din- 
 ner we adjourned to the play, not being by any means too proud 
 to sit in the pit with Mr, Price, the doctor's confidential man. 
 On Sunday we went to church at Lady Whittlesea's, and back 
 to school in the evening ; when the doctor almost always gav& 
 us a fee. If he did not dine at home (and I own his absence 
 did not much damp our pleasure). Price would lay a small en- 
 closure on the young gentleman's coats, which we transferred 
 to our pockets. I believe schoolboys disdain fees in the present 
 disinterested times. 
 
 Everything in Dr. Firmin's house was as handsome as might 
 be, and yet somehow the place was not cheerful. One's step 
 fell noiselessly on the faded Turkey carpet ; the room was large, 
 and all save the dining-table in a dingy t\vilight. The picture 
 of Mrs. Firniin, looked at us from the wall, and followed us 
 about with wild violet eyes. Philip Firmin had the same violet 
 odd bright eyes, and the same colored hair of an auburn tinge ; 
 in the picture it fell in long wild masses over the lady's back as 
 she leaned with bare arms on a harp. Over the sideboard was 
 the doctor, in a black velvet coat and a fur collar, his hand on 
 a skull, like Hamlet. Skulls of oxen, horned, with wreaths, 
 formed the cheerful ornaments of the cornice. On the side- 
 table glittered a pair of cups, given by grateful patients, looking 
 like receptacles rather for funereal ashes than for festive flowers 
 or wine. Price, the butler, wore the gravity and costume of an 
 undertaker. The footman stealthily moved hither and thither, 
 bearing the dinner to us ; we always spoke under our breath 
 whilst we were eating it. " The room don't look more cheerful 
 of a morning when the patients are sitting here, I can tell you," 
 Phil would say ; indeed, we could well fancy that it was dismal. 
 The drawing-room had a rhubarb-colored flock paper (on account 
 of the governor's attachment to the shop. Master Phil said), a 
 great piano, a harp smothered in a leather bag in a corner, 
 which the languid owner now never touched ; and everybody's 
 face seemed scared and pale in the great looking-glasses, which 
 reflected you over and over again into tlie distance, so that you 
 seemed to twinkle off right through the Albany into Piccadilly,
 
 ON HIS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. n^ 
 
 Old Parr Street has been a habitation for generations of 
 surgeons and physicians. I suppose the noblemen for whose 
 use the street was intended in the time of the early Georges 
 fled, finding the neighborhood too dismal, and the gentlemen 
 in black coats came and took possession of the gilded, gloom)- 
 chambers which the sacred mock vacated. These mutations of 
 fashion have always been matters of profound speculation to me. 
 Why shall not one moralize over London, as over Rome, or 
 Baalbec or Troy town ? I like to walk among the Hebrews of 
 Wardour Street, and fancy the place, as it once was, crowded 
 with chairs and gilt chariots, and torches flashing in the hands 
 of the running footmen. I have a grim pleasure in thinking 
 that Golden Square was once the resort of the aristocracy, and 
 Monmouth Street the delight of the genteel world. What shall 
 prevent us Londoners from musing over the decline and fall of 
 city sovereignties, and drawing our cockney morals ? As the 
 late Mr. Gibbon meditated his history leaning against a column 
 in the Capitol, why should not I muse over mine, reclining un- 
 der an arcade of the Pantheon ? Not the Pantheon at Rome, 
 in the Cabbage Market by the Piazza Navona, where the 
 immortal Gods were worshipped, — the immortal gods who are 
 now dead ; but the Pantheon in Oxford Street, ladies, where you 
 purchase feeble pomatums, music, glassware, and baby-linen ; 
 and which has its history too. Have notSelwyn, and Walpole, 
 and March, and Carlisle figured there ? Has not Prince 
 Florizel flounced through the hall in his rustling domino, and 
 danced there in powdered splendor ? and when the ushers 
 refused admission to lovely Sophy Baddeley, did not the 
 young men, her adorers, draw their rapiers and vow to slay 
 the doorkeepers ; and crossing the glittering blades over the 
 enchantress' head, make a warlike triumphal arch for her to 
 pass under, all flushed, and smiling, and perfumed, and 
 painted ? The lives of streets are as the lives of men, and 
 shall not the street-preacher if so minded, take for the text of 
 his sermon the stones in the gutter ? That you were once the 
 resort of the fashion, O Monmouth Street ! by the invocation 
 of blessed St. Giles shall I not improve that sweet thought 
 into a godly discourse, and make the ruin edifying ? O mcs 
 freres ! There were splendid thoroughfares, dazzling com- 
 pany, bright illuminations, in our streets when our hearts were 
 young : we entertained in them a noble youthful company of 
 chivalrous hopes and lofty ambitions ; of blushing thoughts 
 in snowy robes spotless and virginal. See in the embrasure of 
 the window, where you sat looking to the stars, and nestling by
 
 1 1 6 THE A D VENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 the soft side of your first love, hang Mr, Moses' bargains of 
 turned old clothes, very cheap ; of worn old boots, bedraggled 
 in how much and how man)'^ people's mud ; a great bargain. 
 See ! along the street, strewed with llowers once mayhap — a 
 figlit of beggars for the refuse of an apple-stall, or a tipsy basket- 
 woman reeling shrieking to the station. O me ! Omy beloved 
 congregation ! I have preached this stale sermon to you for 
 ever so many years. O my jolly companions, I have drunk 
 many a bout with you, and always found vanitas vanitatum 
 written on the bottom of the pot ! 
 
 I choose to moralize now when I pass the place. The 
 garden has run to seed, the walks are mildewed, the statues 
 have broken noses, the gravel is dank with green moss, the 
 roses are withered, and the nightingales have ceased to make 
 love. It is a funereal street. Old Parr Street, certainly ; the 
 carriages which drive there ought to have feathers on the roof, 
 and the butlers who open the doors should wear weepers — so 
 the scene strikes you now as you pass along the spacious empty 
 pavement. You are bilious, my good man. Go and pay a 
 guinea to one of the doctors in those houses ; there are still 
 doctors there. He will prescribe taraxacum for you, or pil : 
 hydrarg : Bless you ! in my time, to us gentlemen of the fifth 
 forin, the place was bearable. The yellow fogs didn't damp 
 our spirits — and we never thought them too thick to keep us 
 away from the play : from the chivalrous Charles Kemble, I tell 
 you, my Mirabel, my Mercutio, my princely Falconbridge : from 
 his adorable daughter (O my distracted heart !) : from the 
 classic Young : from the glorious Long Tom Coffin : from the 
 unearthly Vanderdecken — " Return, O my love, and we'll 
 never, never part " (where art thou, sweet singer of that most 
 thrilling ditty of my youth ?) : from the sweet, sweet Vidorhu 
 and the Bottle Imp. Oh, to see that Bottle Imp again, and hear 
 that song about the " Pilgrim of Love ! " Once, but — hush ; — 
 this is a secret — we had private boxes, the doctor's grand friends 
 often sending him these ; and finding the opera rather slow, we 
 went to a concert in M-d-n Lane, near Covent Garden, and 
 heard the most celestial glees, over a supper of fizzing sausages 
 and mashed potatoes, such as the world has never seen since. 
 We did no harm ; but I dare say it was very wrong. Price, 
 the butler, ought not to have taken us. We bullied him, and 
 made him take us where we liked. We had rum-shrub in the 
 housekeeper's room, where we used to be diverted by the 
 society of other butlers of the neighboring nobility and gentry, 
 who would step in. Perhaps it was wrong to leave us so to the
 
 ON ins WA Y ril ROUGH THE WORLD. i , 7 
 
 company of servants. Dr. Firmin used to go to his grand 
 parties, Mrs. Firmin to bed. " Did we enjoy tlie performance 
 last night ? " our host would ask at breakfast. " Oh, yes, we 
 enjoyed the performance ! " But my poor Mrs. Firmin fancied 
 that we enjoyed Semiramide or the Donna del Lago ; whereas we 
 had been to the pit at the Adelphi (out of our own money), and 
 seen that jolly John Reeve, and laughed — laughed till we were 
 fit to drop — and stayed till the curtain was down. And then 
 we would come home, and, as aforesaid, pass a delightful hour 
 over supper, and hear the anecdotes of Mr. Brice's friends, the 
 other butlers. Ah, that was a time indeed ! There never was 
 any liquor so good as rum-shrub, never ; and the sausages had 
 a flavor of Elysium. How hushed we were when Dr. Firmin, 
 coming home from his parties, let himself in at the street door ! 
 Shoeless, we crept up to our bedrooms. And we came down 
 to breakfast with innocent young faces — and let Mrs. Firmin, 
 at lunch, prattle about the opera ; and there stood Brice and 
 the footman behind us, looking quite grave, the abominable 
 hypocrites ! 
 
 Then, sir, there was a certain way, out of the study window, 
 or through the kitchen, and over the leads, to a building, 
 gloomy indeed, but where I own to have spent delightful hours 
 of the most flagitious and criminal enjoyment of some delicious 
 little Havanas, ten to the shilling. In that building there 
 were stables once, doubtless occupied by great Flemish horses 
 and rumbling gold coaches of Walpole's time \ but a celebrated 
 surgeon, when he took possession of the house, made a lecture- 
 room of the premises, — " And this door," says Phil, pointing 
 to one leading into the mews, " was very convenient for having 
 the bodies in and out " — a cheerful reminiscence. Of this kind 
 of furniture there was now very little in the apartment, except 
 a dilapidated skeleton in a corner, a few dusty casts of heads, 
 and bottles of preparations on the top of an old bureau, and 
 some mildewed harness hanging on the walls. This apartment 
 became Mr. Phil's smoking-room when, as he grew taller, he 
 felt himself too dignified to ^t in the kitchen regions : the 
 honest butler and housekeeper themselves pointing out to their 
 young master that his place w^as elsewhere than among the 
 servants. So there, privately and with great delectation, we 
 smoked many an abominable cigar in that dreary back room, 
 the gaunt walls and twilight ceilings of which were by no means 
 melancholy to us, who found forbidden pleasures the sweetest, 
 after the absurd fashion of boys. Dr. Firmin was an enemy to 
 smoking, and ever accustomed to speak of the practice with
 
 , 1 8 THE ADVENTURES OF PirTLTP 
 
 eloquent indignation. " It was a low practice — the habit of 
 cabmen, pot-house frequenters, and Irish apple-woiiien," the 
 doctor would say, as Phil and his friend looked at each other 
 with a stealthy joy. Phil's father was ever scented and neat, 
 the pattern of handsome propriety. Perhaps he had a cleare; 
 perception regarding manners than respecting morals ; perhaps 
 his conversation was full of platitudes, his talk (concerning 
 people of fashion chiefly) mean and uninstructive, his behavior 
 to young Lord Egham rather fulsome and lacking of dignity. 
 Perhaps, I say, the idea may have entered into young Mr. Pen- 
 dennis's mind that his hospitable entertainer and friend. Dr. 
 Firmin, of Old Parr Street, was what at the present day might 
 be denominated an old humbug ; but modest young men do not 
 come quickly to such unpleasant conclusions regarding their 
 seniors. Dr. Firmin's manners were so good, his forehead was 
 so high, his frill so fresh, his hands so white and slim, that for 
 some considerable time we ingenuously admired him ; and it 
 was not without a pang that we came to view him as he actually 
 was — no, not as he actually was — no man whose early nurture 
 was kindly can judge quite impartially the man who has been 
 kind to him in boyhood. 
 
 I quitted school suddenly, leaving my little Phil behind me, 
 a brave little handsome boy, endearing himself to old and 
 young by his good looks, his gayety, his courage, and his gen- 
 tlemanly bearing. Once in a way a letter would come from 
 him, full of that artless affection and tenderness which fills 
 boys' hearts, and is so touching in their letters. It was an- 
 swered with proper dignity and condescension on the senior 
 boy's part. Our modest little country home kept up a friendly 
 intercourse with Dr. Firmin's grand London mansion, of which, 
 in his visits to us, my uncle, Major Pendennis, did not fail to 
 bring news. A correspondence took place between the ladies 
 of each house. We supplied Mrs. Firmin with little country 
 presents, tokens of my mother's good-will and gratitude towards 
 the friends who had been kind to her son. I went my way to 
 the university, having occasional glimpses of Phil at school. I 
 took chambers in the Temple, which he found great delight in 
 visitmg ; and he liked our homely dinner from Dick's, and a 
 bed on the sofa, better than the splendid entertainments in 
 Old Parr Street and his great gloomy chamber there. He had 
 grown by this time to be ever so much taller than his senior, 
 though he always persists in looking up to me unto the present 
 day. 
 
 A very few weeks after my poor mother passed that judg-
 
 ON HIS WA Y THROUGH THE WORLD. i jg 
 
 ment on Mrs. Firmin, she saw reason to regret and revoke it 
 Phil's mother, who was afraid, or perhaps was forbidden, to 
 attend her son in his illness at school, was taken ill herself. 
 
 Phil returned to Grey Friars in a deep suit of black ; the 
 servants on the carriage wore black too ; and a certain tyrant 
 of the place, beginning to laugh and jeer because Firmin's eyes 
 filled with tears at some ribald remark, was gruffly rebuked by 
 Sampson Major, the cock of the whole school ; and with the 
 question, " Don't you see the poor beggar's in mourning, you 
 great brute 1 " was kicked about his business. 
 
 When Philip Firmin and I met again, there was crape on 
 both our hats. I don't think either could see the other's face 
 very well. I went to see him in Parr Street, in the vacant, mel- 
 ancholy house, where the poor mother's picture was yet hanging 
 in her empty drawing-room. 
 
 " She was always fond of you, Pendennis," said Phil. " God 
 bless you for being so good to her. You know what it is to lose 
 — to lose what loves you best in the world. I didn't know how 
 — how I loved her, till I had lost her." And many a sob broke 
 his words as he spoke. 
 
 Her picture was removed from the drawing-room presently 
 into Phil's own little study — the room in which he sat and defied 
 his father. What had passed between them ? The young man 
 was very much changed. The frank looks of old days were 
 gone, and Phil's face was haggard and bold. The doctor would 
 not let me have a word more with his son after he had found 
 us together, but with dubious appealing looks, followed me to 
 the door, and shut it upon me. I felt that it closed upon two 
 unhappy men. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 A CONSULTATION. 
 
 Should I peer into Firmin's privacy, and find the key to 
 that secret ? What skeleton was there in the closet ? In the 
 Cornhill Afagaziue,* you may remember, there were some verses 
 about a portion of a skeleton. Did you remark how the poet 
 and present proprietor of the human skull at once settled the 
 sex of it, and determined off-hand that it must have belonged 
 
 * No. 12 : December i860.
 
 1 2 o THE A D VEN TURES OF PHILIP 
 
 to a woman ? .Such skulls are locked up in many gentlemen's 
 hearts and memories. Bluebeard, you know, had a whole mu- 
 seum of them — as that imprudent little last wife of his found out 
 to her cost. And, on the other hand, a lady, we suppose, would 
 select hers of the sort which had carried beards when in the 
 flesh. Given a neat locked skeleton cupboard, belonging to a 
 man of a certain age, to ascertain the sex of the original owner 
 of the bones, you have not much need of a picklock or a black- 
 smith. There is no use in forcing the hinge, or scratching the 
 pretty panel. We know what is inside — we arch rogues and men 
 of the world. Murders, I suppose, are not many — enemies and 
 victims of our hate and anger, destroyed and trampled out of 
 life by us, and locked out of sight : but corpses of our dead 
 loves, my dear sir — my dear madam — have we not got them 
 stowed away in cupboard after cupboard, in bottle after bottle ? 
 Oh, fie ! And young people ! What doctrine is this to preach 
 to thevi, who spell your book by papa's and mamma's knees ? 
 Yes, and how wrong it is to let them go to church, and see and 
 hear papa and mamma publicly on their knees, calling out, and 
 confessing to the whole congregation, that they are sinners ! 
 So, though I had not the key, I could see through the panel and 
 the glimmering of the skeleton inside. 
 
 Although the elder Firmin followed me to the door, and his 
 eyes only left me as I turned the corner of the street, I felt 
 sure that Phil ere long would open his mind to me, or give me 
 some clue to that mystery. I should hear from him why his 
 bright cheeks had become hollow, why his fresh voice, which I 
 remember so honest and cheerful, was now harsh and sarcas- 
 tic, with tones that often grated on the hearer, and laughter 
 that gave pain. It was about Philip himself that my anxieties 
 were. The young fellow had inherited from his poor mother a 
 considerable fortune — some eight or nine hundred a year, we 
 always understood. He was living in a costly, not to say ex- 
 travagant manner. I thought Mr. Philip's juvenile remorses 
 were locked up in the skeleton closet, and was grieved to think 
 he had fallen in mischief's way. Hf.nce, no doubt, might arise 
 the anger between him and his father. The boy was extrav- 
 agant and headstrong ; and the parent remonstrant and irritated. 
 
 I met my old friend Dr. Goodenough at the club one even- 
 ing ; and as we dined together I discoursed with him about his 
 former patient, and recalled to him that day, years back, when 
 the boy was ill at school, and when my poor mother and Phil's 
 own were yet alive. 
 
 Goodenough looked very grave.
 
 ON HIS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. 121 
 
 " Yes," he said, " the boy was very ill ; he was nearly gone 
 at that time — at that time — when his mother was in the Isle of 
 Wight, and his father dangling after a prince. We thought 
 one day it was all over with him ; but " 
 
 "But a good doctor interposed between him zvlA pallida 
 mors." 
 
 " A good doctor ? a good nurse ! The boy was delirious, 
 and had a fancy to walk out of window, and would have done 
 so, but for one of my nurses. You know her." 
 
 "What! the Little Sister?" 
 
 " Yes, the Little Sister." 
 
 " And it was she who nursed Phil through his fever, and 
 saved his life 1 I drink her health. She is a good little soul." 
 
 " Good ! " said the doctor, with his gruffest voice and frown. 
 — (He was always most fierce when he was most tender-hearted.) 
 " Good, indeed ! " Will you have some more of this duck ? — 
 Do. You have had enough already, and it's very unwholesome. 
 Good, sir ? But for women, fire and brimstone ought to come 
 down and censume this world. Your dear mother was one of 
 the good ones. I was attending you when you were ill, at those 
 horrible chambers you had in the Temple, at the same time 
 when young Firmin was ill at Grey Friars. And I suppose I 
 must be answerable for keeping two scrapegraces in the world." 
 
 " Why didn't Dr. Firmin come to see him ? " 
 
 " Hm ! his nerves were too delicate. Besides, he did come. 
 Talk of the * * * " 
 
 The personage designated by asterisks was Phil's father, 
 who was also a member of our club, and who entered the dining- 
 room, tall, stately, and pale, with his stereotyped smile, and 
 wave of his pretty hand. By the way, that smile of Firmin's 
 was a vQxy queer contortion of the handsome features. As you 
 came up to him, he would draw his lips over his teeth, causing 
 his jaws to wrinkle (or dimple if you will) on either side. 
 Meanwhile his eyes looked out from his face, quite melancholy 
 and independent of the little transaction in which the mouth 
 engaged. Lips said, " I am a gentleman of fine manners and 
 fascinating address, and I am supposed to be happy to see you. 
 How do you do ? " Dreary, sad, as into a great blank desert, 
 looked the dark eyes. I do know one or two, but only one or 
 two faces of men, when oppressed with care, which can yet 
 smile all over. 
 
 Goodenough nods grimly to the smile of the other doctor, who 
 blandly looks at our table, holding his chin in one of his pretty 
 hands.
 
 122 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 " How do ? " growls Goodenougli. " Young hopeful well ? " 
 
 " Young hopeful sits smoking cigars till morning with some 
 friends of his," says Firmin, with the sad smile directed to- 
 wards me this time. " Boys will be boys." And he pensively 
 walks away from us with a friendly nod towards me ; examines 
 the dinner-card in an attitude of melancholy grace ; points with 
 the jewelled hand to the dishes which he will ha\'e served, and 
 "s off, and simpering to another acquaintance at a distant 
 table, 
 
 *' I thought he would take that table," says Firmin 's cynical 
 C07ifrere. 
 
 "In the draught of the door? Don't you see how the 
 candle flickers ? It is the worst place in the room ! " 
 
 " Yes ; but don't you see who is sitting at the next table ? " 
 
 Now at the next table was a n-blem-n of vast wealth, who 
 was growling at the quality of the mutton cutlets, and the half- 
 pint of sherry which he had ordered for his dinner. But as his 
 lordship has nothing to do with the ensuing history, of course 
 we shall not violate confidence by mentioning his name. We 
 could see Firmin smiling on his neighbor with his blandest 
 melancholy, and the waiters presently bearing up the dishes 
 which the doctor had ordered for his own refection. He was 
 no lover of mutton-chops and coarse sherrj^, as I knew, who 
 had partaken of many a feast at his board. I could see the 
 diamond twinkle on his pretty hand, as it daintily poured out 
 creaming wine from the ice-pail by his side — the liberal hand 
 that had given me many a sovereign when I was a boy. 
 
 "I can't help liking him," said I to my companion, whose 
 scornful eyes were now and again directed towards his colleague. 
 
 " This port is very sweet. Almost all port is sweet now," 
 remarks the doctor. 
 
 " He was very kind to me in my school-days ; and Philip 
 was a fine little fellow," 
 
 " Handsome a boy as ever I saw. Does he keep his beauty ? 
 Father was a handsome man — very. Quite a lady-killer — I 
 mean out of his practice I " adds the grim doctor, " What is 
 the boy doing? " 
 
 " He is at the university. He has his mother's fortune. 
 He is wild and unsettled, and I fear he is going to the bad a 
 little." 
 
 " Is he ? Shouldn't wonder ! " grumbles Goodenough. 
 
 We had talked very frankly and pleasantly until the appear- 
 ance of the other doctor, but with Firmin's arrival Goodenough 
 seemed to button up his con versa tion. He quickly stumped
 
 ON I//S WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. 
 
 123 
 
 away from the dining-room to the drawing-room, and sat over 
 a novel there until time came when he was to retire to his 
 patients or his home. 
 
 That there was no liking between the doctors, that there 
 was a difference between Philip and his father, was clear enough 
 to me : but the causes of these differences I had yet to learn. 
 The story came to me piecemeal ; from confessions here, 
 admissions there, deductions of my own. I could not, of 
 course, be present at many of the scenes which I shall have to 
 relate as though I had witnessed them ; and the posture, lan- 
 guage, and inward thoughts of Philip and his friends, as here 
 related, no doubt are the fancies of the narrator in many cases ; 
 but the story is as authentic as many histories, and the reader 
 need only give such an amount of credence to it as he may 
 judge that its verisimilitude warrants. 
 
 Well, then, we must not only revert to that illness which 
 befell when Philip Firmin was a boy at Grey Friars, but go 
 back yet farther in time to a period which I cannot precisely 
 ascertain. 
 
 The pupil's of old Gandish's painting academy may remem- 
 ber a ridiculous little man, with a great deal of wild talent, 
 about the ultimate success of which his friends were divided. 
 \\'hether Andrew was a genius, or whether he was a zany, was 
 always a moot question among the frequenters of the Greek 
 Street billiard-rooms, and the noble disciples of the Academy 
 and St. Martin's Lane. He may have been crazy and absurd \ 
 he may have had talent too : such characters are not unknown 
 in art or in literature. He broke the Queen's English ; he was 
 ignorant to a wonder ; he dressed his little person in the most 
 fantastic raiment and queerest cheap finery ; he wore a beard, 
 bless my soul ! twenty years before beards were known to wag 
 in Britain. He was the most affected little creature, and, if 
 you looked at him, would pose in attitudes of such ludicrous 
 dirty dignity, that if you had had a dun waiting for money in 
 the hall of your lodging-house, or your picture refused at the 
 Academy — if you were suffering under ever so much calamity — 
 you could not help laughing. He was the butt of all his 
 acquaintances, the laughing-stock of high and low, and he had 
 as loving, gentle, faithful, honorable a heart as ever beat 
 in a little bosom. He is gone to his rest now ; his palette and 
 easel are waste timber ; his genius, which made some little 
 flicker of brightness, never shone much, and is extinct. In an 
 old album that dates back for more than a score of years, I 
 sometimes look at poor Andrew's strange wild sketches. He
 
 124 
 
 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 might have done something had he continued to remain poor; 
 but a rich widow, whom he met at Rome, fell in love with the 
 strange errant painter, j^ursued him to England, and married 
 him in spite of himself. His genius drooped under the servi- 
 tude : he lived but a few short years, and died of consumption, 
 of which the good Goodenough's skill could not cure him. 
 
 One day, as he was driving with his wife in her splendid 
 barouche through the Haymarket, he suddenly bad^ ' .t coach- 
 man stop, sprang over the side of the carriage before ..le steps 
 could be let fall, and his astonished wife saw him shaking the 
 hand of a shabbily dressed little woman who was passing, — 
 shaking both her hands, and weeping, and gesticulating, and 
 twisting his beard and mustaches, as his wont was when 
 agitated. Mrs. Montlitchet (the wealthy Mrs. Carrickfergus 
 she had been, before she married the painter), the owner 
 of a young husband, who had sprung from her side, and out of 
 her carriage, in order to caress a young woman passing in the 
 street, might well be disturbed by this demonstration ; but she 
 was a kind-hearted woman, and when Montfitchet, on reascend- 
 ing into the family coach, told his wife the history of the per- 
 son of whom he had just taken leave, she cried plentifully too. 
 She bade the coachman drive straightway to her own house : 
 she rushed up to her own apartment, whence she emerged, 
 bearing an immense bag full of wearing apparel, and followed 
 by a panting butler, carrying a bottle-basket and a pie : and she 
 drove off, with her pleased Andrew by her side, to a court in 
 St. Martin's Lane, where dwelt the poor woman with whom I.e 
 had ju^t been conversing. 
 
 It had pleased heaven, in the midst of dreadful calamity, to 
 send her friends and succor. She was suffering under misfor- 
 tune, poverty, and cowardly desertion. A man who had called 
 himself Brandon when he took lodgings in her father's house, 
 married her, brought her to London, tired of her, and left her. 
 She had reason to think he had given a false name when he 
 lodged with her father : he fled, after a few months, and his 
 real name she never knew. When he deserted her, she went back 
 to her father, a weak man married to a domineering woman, who 
 pretended to disbelie\e the story of her marriage, and drove 
 her from the door. Desperate, and almost mad, she came back 
 to London, where she still had some little relics of property 
 that her fugitive husband left behind him. He promised, when 
 he left her, to remit her money ; but he sent none, or she re- 
 fused it — or, in her wilderness and despair, lost the dreadful 
 paper which announced his desertion, and that he was married
 
 WHAT NATHAN SAID T'NTO DAVID.
 
 ON ins WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. 125 
 
 before, and that to pursue him would ruin him, and he knew 
 she never would do that — no, however much he might have 
 wronged her. 
 
 She was penniless then, — deserted by all, — having made 
 away with the last trinket of her brief days of love, having sold 
 the last little remnant of her poor little stock of clothing, alone 
 in the great wilderness of London, when it pleased God to send 
 her succor in the person of an old friend who had known her, 
 and even loved her, in happier days. When the Samaritans 
 came to this poor child, they found her sick and shuddering 
 with fever. They brought their doctor to her, who is never so 
 eager as when he runs up a poor man's stair. And, as he 
 watched by the bed where her kind friends came to help her, 
 he heard her sad little story of trust and desertion. 
 
 Her father was a humble person who had seen better days ; 
 and poor little Mrs. Brandon had a sweetness and simplicity of 
 manner which exceedingly touched the good doctor. She had 
 little education, except that which silence, long-suffering, se- 
 clusion, will sometimes give. When cured of her illness, there 
 was the great and constant evil of poverty to meet and over- 
 come. How was she to live ? He got to be as fond of her as 
 of a child of his own. She was tidy, thrifty, gay at times, with 
 a little simple cheerfulness. The little flowers began to bloom 
 as the sunshine touched them. Her whole iife hitherto had 
 been cowering under neglect, and tyranny, and gloom. 
 
 Mr. Montfitchet was for coming so often to look after the 
 little outcast whom he had succored that I am bound to say 
 Mrs. M. became hysterically jealous, and waited for him on 
 the stairs as he came down swathed in his Spanish cloak, 
 pounced on him, and called him a monster. Goodenough was 
 also, I fancy, suspicious of Montfitchet, and Montfitchet of 
 Goodenough. Howbeit, the doctor vowed that he never had 
 other than the feeling of a father towards his poor little pro- 
 tegee, nor could any father be more tender. He did not try to 
 take her out of her station in life. He found, or she found 
 for herself, a work which she could do. " Papa used to say 
 no one ever nursed him so nice as I did," she said. " I think 
 I could do that better than anything, except my needle, but 
 I like to be useful to poor sick people best. I don't think 
 about myself then, sir." And for this business good Mr. 
 Goodenough had her educated and employed. 
 
 The widow died in course of time whom Mrs. Brandon's 
 father had married, and her daughters refused to keep him, 
 speaking very disrespectfully of this old Mr. Gann, who was,
 
 126 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 indeed, a weak old man. And now Caroline came to the res- 
 cue of her old father. She was a shrewd little Caroline. She 
 had saved a little money. Goodenough gave up a country- 
 house, which he did not care to use, and lent Mrs. Brandoiv 
 the furniture. She thought she could keep a lodging-house and 
 find lodgers. Montfitchet had painted her. There was a sort 
 of beauty about her which the artist admired. When Ridley 
 the Academician had the small-pox, she attended him, and 
 caught the malady. She did not mind ; not she. " It won't 
 spoil my beauty," she said. Nor did it. The disease dealt 
 very kindly with her little modest face, I don't know who gave 
 her the nick-name, but she had a good roomy house in Thorn- 
 haugh Street, an artist on the first and second floor; and there 
 never was a word of scandal against the Little Sister, for 
 was not her father in permanence sipping gin-and-watcr in the 
 ground floor parlor ? As we called her " the Little Sister," her 
 father was called " the Captain " — a bragging, lazy, good- 
 natured old man — not a reputable Captain — and very cheerful, 
 though the conduct of his children, he said, had repeatedly 
 broken his heart. 
 
 I don't know how many years the Little Sister had been on 
 duty when Philip Firmin had his scarlet fever. It befell him 
 at the end of the term, just when all the boys were going home. 
 His tutor and his tutor's wife wanted their holidays, and sent 
 their own children out of the way. As Phil's father was absent, 
 Dr. Goodenough came, and sent his nurse in. The case grew 
 worse, so bad that Dr. Firmin was summoned from the Isle of 
 Wight, and arrived one evening at Grey Friars — Grey Friars so 
 silent now, so noisy at other times with the shouts and crowds 
 of the playground, 
 
 " Dr. Goodenough 's carriage was at the door when Dr. 
 Firmin's carriage drove up. 
 
 " How was the boy ? " 
 
 " He had been very bad. He had been wrong in the head 
 all day, talking and laughing quite wild-like," the servant said. 
 
 The father ran up the stairs, 
 
 Phil was in a great room, in which were several empty beds 
 of boys gone home for the holidays. The windows were opened 
 into Grey Friars Square. Goodenough heard his colleague's 
 carriage drive up, and rightly divined that Phil's father had 
 arrived. He came out and met Firmin in the ante-room. 
 
 "Head has wandered a little. Better now, and quiet;" 
 and the one doctor murmured to the other the treatment which 
 he had pursued.
 
 ON HIS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. 127 
 
 Firmin stept in gently towards the patient, near whose side 
 the Little Sister was standing. 
 
 " Who is it ? " asked Phil. 
 
 " It is I, dear. Your father," said Dr. Firmin, with real 
 tenderness in his voice. 
 
 The Little Sister turned round once, and fell down like a 
 stone by the bedside. 
 
 " You infernal villain ! " said Goodenough, with an oath, 
 and a step forward. " You are the man ! " 
 
 "Hush! The patient, if you please. Dr. Goodenough," 
 said the other physician. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 A GENTEEL FAMILY. 
 
 Have you made up your mind on the question of seeming 
 and being in the world ? I mean, suppose you are poor, is it 
 right for you to seem to be well off ? Have people an honest 
 right to keep up appearances ? Are you justified in starving 
 your dinner-table in order to keep a carriage ; to have such an 
 expensive house that you can't by any possibility help a poor 
 relation ? to array your daughters in costly milliners' wares 
 because they live with girls whose parents are twice as rich ? 
 Sometimes it is hard to say where honest pride ends and hypoc- 
 risy begins. To obtrude your poverty is mean and slavish ; as it 
 is odious for a beggar to ask compassion by showing his sores. 
 But to simulate prosperity — to be wealthy and lavish thrice a 
 year when vou ask your friends, and for the rest of the time to 
 munch a crust and sit by one candle — are the folks who prac- 
 tise this deceit worthy of applause or a whipping ? Sometimes 
 it is noble pride, sometimes shabby swindling. When I see 
 Eugenia with her dear children exquisitely neat and cheerful ; 
 not showing the slightest semblance of poverty, or uttering the 
 smallest complaint ; persisting that Squanderfield, her husband, 
 treats her well, and is good at heart ; and denying that he 
 leaves her and her young ones in want • I admire and reverence 
 that noble falsehood — that beautiful constancy and endurance 
 which disdains to ask compassion. When I sit at poor Jeze- 
 bella's table, and am treated to her sham bounties and shabby
 
 128 THE ADVENTURES OF PiniJP 
 
 splendor, I only feel angry for the hospitality, and that dinner, 
 and guest, and host, are humbugs together. 
 
 Talbot Twysden's dinner-table is large, and the guests most 
 respectable. There is always a bigwig or two present, and a 
 dining dowager who frequents the greatest houses. There is a 
 butler who offers you wine ; there's a 7nenu dn dh/er heiore Mrs. 
 Twysden ; and to read it you would fancy you were at a good 
 dinner. It tastes of chopped straw. Oh, the dreary sparkle of 
 that feeble champagne ; the audacity of that public-house 
 sherry ; the swindle of that acrid claret ; the fiery twang of that 
 clammy port ! I have tried them all, I tell you ! It is sham 
 wine, a sham dinner, a sham welcome, a sham cheerfulness 
 among the guests assembled. I feel that that woman eyes and 
 counts the cutlets as they are carried off the tables ; perhaps 
 watches that one which you try to swallow. She has counted 
 and grudged each candle by which the cook prepares the meal. 
 Does her big coachman fatten himself on purloined oats and 
 beans, and Thorley's food for cattle ? Of the rinsings of those 
 wretched bottles the butler will have to give a reckoning in the 
 morning. Unless you are of the very great mo^ide, Twysden 
 and his wife think themselves better than you are, and seriously 
 patronize you. They consider it is a privilege to be invited to 
 those horrible meals to which they gravely ask the greatest 
 folks in the country. I actually met Winton there — the famous 
 Winton — the best dinner-giver in the world (ah, what a position 
 for man !) I watched him, and marked the sort of wonder 
 which came over him as he tasted and -sent away dish after 
 dish, glass after glass. " Try that Chateau Margaux, Winton !" 
 calls out our host. " It is some that Bottleby and I imported." 
 Imported ! I see Winton 's face as he tastes the wine, and puts 
 it down. He does not like to talk about that dinner. He has 
 lost a day. Twysden will continue to ask him every year ; will 
 continue to expect to be asked in return, with Mrs. Twysden 
 and one of his daughters ; and will express his surprise loudly 
 at the club, saying, " Hang Winton ! Deuce take the fellow ! 
 He has sent rtie no game this year ! " When foreign dukes and 
 princes arrive, Twysden straightway collars them, and invites 
 them to his house. And sometimes they go once — and then 
 ask, " Qui done est ee Monsieur Tvisden, qui est ce drble ? " And 
 he elbows his way up to them at the Minister's assemblies, 
 and frankly gives them his hand. And calm Mrs, Twysden 
 wriggles, and works, and slides, and pushes, and tramples if 
 need be, her girls following behind her, until she too has come 
 up under the eyes of the great man, and bestowed on him a
 
 iMR. FROG REQUESTS THE HONOR OF PRINCE OX'S COMPANY AT 
 
 DINNER.
 
 ON HIS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. 129 
 
 smile and a curtsey. Twysden grasps prosperity cordially by 
 the hand. He says to success, " Bravo ! " On the contrary, I 
 never saw a man more resolute in not knowing unfortunate 
 people, or more daringly forgetful of those whom he does not 
 care to remember. If this Levite met a wayfarer, going down 
 from Jerusalem, who had fallen among thieves, do you think he 
 would stop to rescue the fallen man ? He would neither give 
 him wine, nor oil, nor money. He would pass on perfectly 
 satisfied with his own virtue, and leave the other to go, as best 
 he might, to Jericho, 
 
 What is this } Am I angry because Twysden has left off 
 asking me to his vinegar and chopped hay ? No, I think not. 
 Am I hurt because Mrs. Twysden sometimes patronizes my 
 wife, and sometimes cuts her ? Perhaps. Only women thorough- 
 ly know the insolence of women towards one another in the 
 world. That is a very stale remark. They receive and deliver 
 stabs, smiling politely. Tom Sayers could not take punishment 
 more gayly than they do. If you could but see under the skin, 
 you would find their little hearts scarred all over with little 
 lancet digs. I protest I have seen my own wife enduring the 
 impertinence of this woman, with a face as calm and placid as 
 she wears when old Twysden himself is talking to her, and 
 pouring out one of his maddening long stories. Oh, no ! I am 
 not angry at all. I can see that by the way in which I am 
 writing of these folks. By the way, whilst I am giving this 
 candid opinion of the Twysdens, do I sometimes pause to 
 consider what they think of mef What do I care ? Think what 
 you like. Meanwhile we bow to one another at parties. We 
 smile at each other in a sickly way. And as for the dinners in 
 Beaunash Street, I hope those who eat them enjoy their food. 
 
 Twysden is one of the chiefs now of the Powder and 
 Pomatum Office, (the Pigtail branch was finally abolished in 
 1833, after the Reform Bill, with a compensation to the retiring 
 under-secretary,) and his son is a clerk in the same office. 
 When they came out, the daughters were very pretty — even my 
 wife allows that. One of them used to ride in the Park with 
 her father or brother daily ; and knowing what his salary and 
 wife's fortune were, and what the rent of his house in Beaunash 
 Street, everybody wondered how the Twysdens could make 
 both ends meet. They had horses, carriages, and a great 
 house fit for at least five thousand a year ; they had not half 
 as much, as everj'body knew ; and it was supposed that old 
 Ringwood must make his niece an allowance. She certainly 
 worked hard to get it, I spoke of stabs anon, and poor little
 
 I30 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 breasts and sides scarred all over. No nuns, no monks, no 
 fakeers take whippings more kindly than some devotees of the 
 Avorld ; and, as the punishment is one for edification, let us 
 hope the world lays smartly on to back and shoulders, and uses 
 the thong well. 
 
 When old Ringwood, at the close of his lifetime, used to 
 come to visit his dear niece and her husband and children, he 
 always brought a cat-o'-nine-tails in his pocket, and admin- 
 istered it to the whole household. He grinned at the poverty, 
 the pretence, the meanness of the people, as they knelt before 
 him and did him homage. The father and mother trembling 
 brought the girls up for punishment, and piteously smiling, 
 received their own boxes on the ear in presence of their 
 children. "Ah!" the little French governess used to say, 
 grinding her white teeth, " I like milor to come. All day you 
 vip me. When milor come, he vip you, and you kneel clown 
 and kiss de rod." 
 
 They certainly knelt and took their whipping with the most 
 exemplary fortitude. Sometimes the lash fell on papa's back, 
 sometimes on mamma's : now it stung Agnes, and now it lighted 
 on Blanche's pretty shoulders. But I think it was on the heir 
 of the house, young Ringwood Twysden, that my lord loved 
 best to operate. Ring's vanity was very thin-skinned, his sel- 
 fishness easily wounded, and his contortions under punishment 
 amused the old tormentor. 
 
 As my lord's brougham drives up — the modest little brown 
 brougham, with the noble horse, the lord chancellor of a coach- 
 man, and the ineffable footman — the ladies, who know the 
 whirr of the wheels, and may be cjuarrelling in the drawing- 
 room, call a truce to the fight, and smooth down their ruffled 
 tempers and raiment. Mamma is writing at her table, in that 
 beautiful, clear hand which we all admire ; Blanche is at her 
 book ; Agnes is rising from the piano quite naturally, A quarrel 
 between those gentle, smiling, delicate creatures ! Impossible ! 
 About your most common piece of hypocrisy how men will 
 blush and bungle : how easily, how gracefully, how consum- 
 mately, women will perform it ! 
 
 "Well," growls my lord, "you are all in such pretty 
 attitudes, I make no doubt you have been sparring. 1 suspect, 
 Maria, the men must know what devilish bad tempers the girls 
 have got. Who can have seen you fighting.? You're quiet 
 enough here, you little monkeys. I tell you what it is. Ladies'- 
 maids get about and talk to the valets in the housekeeper's 
 room, and the men tell their masters. Upon my word I believe
 
 ON HIS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. 131 
 
 it was that business last year at Whipham which frightened 
 Greenwood off. Famous match. Good house in town and 
 country. No mother alive. Agnes might have had it her own 
 way, but for that " 
 
 " We are not all angels in our family, uncle ! " cries Miss 
 Agnes, reddening. 
 
 " And your mother is too sharp. The men are afraid of 
 you, Maria. I've heard several young men say so. At White's 
 they talk about it quite freely. Pity for the girls. Great pity. 
 Fellows come and tell me. Jack Hall, and fellows who go 
 about everywhere." 
 
 " I'm sure I don't care what Captain Hall says about me 
 — odious little wretch ! " cries Blanche. 
 
 " There you go off in a tantrum ! Hall never has any 
 opinion of his own. He only fetches and carries what other 
 people say. And he says, fellows say they are frightened of 
 your mother. La bless you ! Hall has no opinion. A fellow 
 might commit murder, and Hall would wait at the door. Quite 
 a discreet man. But I told him to ask about you. And that's 
 what I hear. And he says that Agnes is making eyes at the 
 doctor's boy." 
 
 " It's a shame," cries Agnes, shedding tears under her 
 martyrdom. 
 
 " Older than he is ; but that's no obstacle. Good-looking 
 boy, I suppose you don't object to that.-* Has his poor mother's 
 money, and his father's : must be well to do. A vulgar fellow, 
 but a clever fellow, and a determined fellow, the doctor — and a 
 fellow who, I suspect, is capable of anything. Shouldn't wonder 
 at that fellow marrying some rich dowager. Those doctors get 
 an immense influence over women; and unless I'm mistaken 
 in my man, Maria, j^our poor sister got hold of a " 
 
 " Uncle ! " cries Mrs. Twysden, pointing to her daughters, 
 " before these " 
 
 " Before those innocent lambs ! Hem ! Well, I think 
 Firmin is of the wolf sort : " and the old noble laughed, and 
 showed his own fierce fangs as he spoke. 
 
 '' I grieve to say, my lord, I agree with you," remarks Mr. 
 Twysden. " I don't think Firmin a man of high principle. A 
 clever man ? Yes. An accomplished man t Yes. A. good 
 physician ? Yes. A prosperous man ? Yes. But what's a 
 man without principle .? " 
 
 " You ought to have been a parson, Twysden." 
 
 " Others have said so, my lord. My poor mother often 
 regretted that I didn't choose the Church. When I was at
 
 132 
 
 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 Cambridge I used to speak constantly at the Union. I practised 
 I do not disguise from you that my aim was public life. 1 am 
 free to confess I think the House of Commons would have been 
 my sphere ; and, had my means permitted, should certainly 
 have come forward." 
 
 Lord Ringwood smiled, and winked to his niece — 
 
 " He means, my dear, that he would like to wag his jaws 
 at my expense, and that I should put him in for Wliipham." 
 
 " There are, I think, worse Members of Parliament," 
 remarked Mr. Twysden. 
 
 " If there was a box of 'em like you, what a cage it would 
 be ! " roared my lord. " By George, I'm sick of jaw. And I 
 would like to see a king of spirit in this country, who would 
 shut up the talking-shops and gag the whole chattering crew ! " 
 
 *' I am a partisan of order — but a lover of freedom," 
 continues Twysden. " I hold that the balance of our consti- 
 tution " 
 
 I think my lord would have indulged in a few of those oaths 
 with which his old-fashioned conversation was liberally gar- 
 nished ; but the servant, entering at this moment, announces 
 Mr. Philip Firmin ; and ever so faint a blush flutters up in 
 Agnes' cheek, who feels that the old lord's eye is upon her. 
 
 " So, sir, I saw you at the Opera last night," says Lord 
 Ringwood. 
 
 " I saw you, too," says downright Phil. 
 
 The women looked terrified, and Twysden scared. The 
 Twysdens had Lord Ringwood's box sometimes. But there 
 were boxes in which the old man sat, and in which they never 
 could see him. 
 
 "Why don't you look at the stage, sir, when you go to the 
 Opera, and not at me ? When you go to church you ought to 
 look at the parson, oughtn't you 1 " growled the old man. " I'm 
 about as good to look at as the fellow who dances first in the 
 ballet — and very nearly as old. But if I were you, I should 
 think looking at the Ellsler better fun." 
 
 And now you may fancy of what old, old times we are wri- 
 ting — times in which those horrible old male dancers yet existed 
 — hideous old creatures, with low dresses and short sleeves, 
 and wreaths of flowers, or hats and feathers round their absurd 
 old wigs — who skipped at the head of the ballet. Let us be 
 thankful that those old apes have almost vanished off the stage, 
 and left it in possession of the beauteous bounders of the other 
 sex. Ah, my dear young friends, time will be when these too 
 will cease to appear more than mortally beautiful ! To Philip,
 
 ON HIS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. 133 
 
 at his age, they yet looked as lovely as houris. As this time 
 the simply young fellow, surveying the ballet from his stall at 
 the Opeia, mistook carmine for blushes, pearl-powder for native 
 snows, and cotton-wool for natural symmetry ; and I dare say 
 when he went into the world was not more clear-sighted about 
 its rouged innocence, its padded pretensions, and its painted 
 candor. 
 
 Old Lord Ringwood had a humorous pleasure in petting 
 and coaxing Philip Firmin before Philip's relatives of Peaunash 
 Street. Even the girls felt a little plaintive envy at the partiality 
 which uncle Ringwood e}:hibited for Phil ; but the elder Twys- 
 dens and Ringwood Twysden, their son, writhed with agony 
 at the preference which the old man sometimes showed for the 
 doctor's boy. Phil was much taller, much handsomer, much 
 stronger, much better tempered, and much richer, than young 
 Twysden. He would be the sole inheritor of his father's fortune, 
 and had his mother's thirty thousand pounds. Even when they 
 told him his father would marr^- again, Phil laughed, and did 
 not seem to care — " I wish him joy of his new wife," was all he 
 could be got to say : " when he gets one, I suppose I shall go 
 into chambers. Old Parr Street is not as gay as Pall Mall." I 
 am not angry with Mrs. Twysden for having a little jealousy of 
 her nephew. Her boy and girls were the fruit of a dutiful mar- 
 riage ; and Phil was the son of a disobedient child. Her 
 children were always on their best behavior before their 
 great uncle ; and Phil cared for him no more than for any other 
 man ; and he liked Phil the best. Her boy was as humble 
 and eager to please as any of his lordship's humblest hench- 
 men ; and Lord Ringwood snapped at him, browbeat him, and 
 trampled on the poor darling's tenderest feelings, and treated 
 him scarcely better than a lacquey. As for poor Mr. Twysden, 
 my lord not only yawned unreservedly in his face — that could 
 not be helped ; poor Talbot's talk set many of his acquaintance 
 asleep — but laughed at him, interrupted him, and told him to 
 hold his tongue. On this day, as the family sat together at the 
 pleasant hour — the before-dinner hour — the fireside and te?- 
 table hour — Lord Ringwood said to Phil — 
 
 " Dine with me to-dav, sir ? " 
 
 " Why does he not ask me, with my powers of conversa- 
 tion?" thought old Twysden to himself. 
 
 " Hang him, he always asks that beggar," writhed young 
 Twysden, in his corner. 
 
 " Very sorry, sir, can't come. Have asked some fellows to 
 dine at the ' Blue Posts,' " says Phil.
 
 134 THE ADVENTURES OF rillLIP 
 
 " Confound you, sir, why don't you put 'em off ? " cries the 
 old lord. " You'd -^wi 'em off, Twysden, wouldn't you ? " 
 
 " Oh, sir ! " the heart of father and son both beat. 
 
 " You know you would ; and you quarrel with this boy for 
 not throwing his friends over. Good-night, Firmin, since you 
 won't come." 
 
 And with this my lord was gone. 
 
 The two gentlemen of the house glumly looked from the win- 
 dow, and saw my lord's brougham driven swiftly away in the rain. 
 
 " I hate your dining at those horrid taverns," whispered a 
 young lady to Phillip. 
 
 " It is better fun than dining at home," Philip remarks. 
 
 " You smoke and drink too much. You come home late, 
 and you don't live in a proper motide, sir 1 " continues the 
 young lady. 
 
 " What would you have me do ? " 
 
 " Oh, nothing. You must dine with those horrible men," 
 cries Agnes ; " else you might have gone to Lady Pendleton's 
 to-night." 
 
 " I can throw over the men easily enough, if you wish," 
 answered the young man. 
 
 "I? I have no wish of the sort. Have you not already 
 refused uncle Ringwood ? " 
 
 " You are not Lord Ringwood," says Phil, with a tremor in 
 his voice. " I don't know there is much I would refuse you." 
 
 " You silly boy ! What do I ever ask you to do that you 
 ought to refuse ? I want you to live in our world, and not 
 with your dreadful wild Oxford and Temple bachelors. I 
 don't want you to smoke. I want you to go into the world of 
 which you have the entree — and you refuse your uncle on ac- 
 count of some horrid engagement at a tavern ! " 
 
 " Shall I stop here .? Aunt, will you give me some dinner — 
 here ? " asks the young man. 
 
 "We have dined: my husband and sou dine out," said 
 gentle Mrs. Twysden. 
 
 There was cold mutton and tea for the ladies ;. and Mrs. 
 Twysden did not like to seat her nephew, who was accustomed 
 to good fare and high living, to that meagre meal. 
 
 " You see I must console myself at the tavern," Philip said, 
 " We shall have a pleasant party there." 
 
 " And pray who makes it ? " asks the lady. 
 
 " There is Ridley the painter." 
 
 " My dear Philip ! Do you know that his father was actU' 
 ally "
 
 ON HIS \rA V THROUGH THE WORLD. 
 
 ^35 
 
 " In the service of Lord Todmorden ? He often tells us so. 
 He is a queer character, the old man." 
 
 " Mr. Ridley is a man of genius, certainly. His pictures 
 are delicious, and he goes everywhere — but — but you provoke 
 me, Philip, by your carelessness ; indeed you do. Why should 
 you be dining with the sons of footmen, when the first houses in 
 the country might be open to you ? You pain me, you foolish 
 boy." 
 
 " For dining in company of a man of genius ? Come, 
 Agnes ! " And the young man's brow grew dark. " Besides," 
 he added, with a tone of sarcasm in his voice, which Miss 
 Agnes did not like at all — '"besides, my dear, you know he 
 dines at Lord Pendleton's." 
 
 " What is that you are talking of Lady Pendleton, children ? " 
 asked watchful mamma from her corner. 
 
 " Ridley dines there. He is going to dine with me at a 
 tavern to-day. And Lord Halden is coming — and Mr. Winton 
 is coming — having heard of the famous beefsteaks." 
 
 " Winton ! Lord Halden ! Beefsteaks ! Where ? By 
 George ! I have a mind to go, too ! Where do you fellows 
 dine ? aii cabaret 'i Hang me, I'll be one," shrieked little Twys- 
 den, to the terror of Philip, who knew his uncle's awful powers 
 of conversation. But Twysden remembered himself in good 
 time, and to the intense relief of young Firmin. " Hang me, I 
 forgot ! Your aunt and I dine with the Bladeses. Stupid old 
 fellow, the admiral, and bad wine — which is unpardonable ; 
 but we must go — on n\t que saj^a/vk, hey ? Tell Winton that 
 I had meditated joining him, and that I have still some of that 
 Chateau Margaux he liked. Halden's father I know well. 
 Tell him so. Bring him here. Maria, send a Thursday card 
 to Lord Halden ! You must bring him here to dinner, Philip. 
 That's the best way to make acquaintance, my boy ! " And 
 the little man swaggers off, waving a bed-candle, as if he was 
 going to quaff a bumper of sparkling spermaceti. 
 
 The mention of such great personages as Lord Halden and 
 Mr. Winton silenced the reproofs of the pensive Agnes. 
 
 " You won't care for our quiet fireside whilst you live with 
 those fine people," she sighed. There was no talk now of his 
 throwing himself away on bad company. 
 
 So Philip did not dine with his relatives : but Talbot Twys- 
 den took good care to let Lord Ringwood know how young 
 Firmin had offered to dine with his aunt that day after refusing 
 his lordship. And everything to Phil's discredit, and every act 
 of extravagance or wildness which the young man committed,
 
 136 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 did Phil's uncle, and Phil's cousin Ringwood Tw}'sden, convey 
 to the old nobleman. Had not these been the informers, Lord 
 Ringwood would have been angry : for he exacted obedience 
 and servility from all round about him. But it was pleasanter 
 to vex the Twysdens than to scold and browbeat Philip, and so 
 his lordship chose to laugh and be amused at Phil's insubor- 
 dination. He saw, too, other things of which he did not speak. 
 He was a wily old man, who could afford to be blind upon oc- 
 casion. 
 
 What do you judge from the fact that Philip was ready to 
 make or break engagements at a young lady's instigation ? 
 When you were twenty years old, had no young ladies an in- 
 fluence over jw/ .? Were they not commonly older than your- 
 self ? Did your youthful passion lead to anything, and are you 
 very sorry now that it did not ? Suppose you had your soul's 
 wish and married her, of what age would she be now ? And 
 now when you go into the world and see her, do you on your 
 conscience very much regret that the little affair came to an end ? 
 Is it that (lean, or fat, or stumpy, or tall) woman with all those 
 children whom you once chose to break your heart about ; and 
 do you still envy Jones ? Philip was in love with his cousin, 
 no doubt, but at the university had he not been previously in 
 love with the Tomkinsian professor's daughter Miss Pudd ; 
 and had he not already written verses to Miss Flower, his 
 neighbor's daughter in Old Parr Street ? And don't young men 
 always begin by falling in love with ladies older than them- 
 selves ? Agnes certainly was Philip's senior, as her sister con- 
 stantly took care to inform him. 
 
 And Agnes might have told stories about Blanche, if she 
 chose — as you may about me, and I about you. Not quite true 
 stories, but stories with enough alloy of lies to make them 
 serviceable coin ; stories such as we hear daily in the world ; 
 stories such as we read in the most learned and conscientious 
 history-books, which are told by the most respectable persons, 
 and perfectly authentic until contradicted. It is only our his- 
 tories that can't be contradicted (unless, to be sure, novelists 
 contradict themselves, as sometimes they will). What we say 
 about people's virtues, failings, characters, you may be sure is 
 all true. And I defy any man to assert that my opinion of the 
 Twysden family is malicious, or unkind or unfounded in any 
 particular. Agnes wrote verses, and set her own and other 
 writers' poems to music. Blanche was scientific, and attended 
 the Albemarle Street lectures sedulously. They are both clever 
 women as times go ; well educated and accomplished, and \-ery
 
 ON ins WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. 137 
 
 well mannered when they choose to be pleasant. If you were 
 a bachelor, say, with a good fortune, or a widower who wanted 
 consolation, or a lady giving very good parties and belonging 
 to the 7no?ide, you would find them agreeable people. If you 
 were a little Treasury clerk, or a young barrister with no prac- 
 tice, or a lady, old or young, not quite of the nionde, your opin- 
 ion of them would not be so favorable. I have seen them cut, 
 and scorn, and avoid, and caress, and kneel down and worship 
 the same person. When Mrs. Lovel first gave parties, don't 1 
 remember the shocked countenances of the Twysden family ? 
 Were ever shoulders colder than yours, dear girls ? Now they 
 love her ; they fondle her step-children ; they praise her to her 
 face and behind her handsome back ; they take her hand in 
 public; they call her by her Christian name; they fall into 
 ecstasies over her toilettes, and would fetch coals for her dress- 
 ing room fire if she but gave them the word. She is not changed. 
 She is the same lady who once was a governess, and no colder 
 and no warmer since then. But you see her prosperity has 
 brought virtues into evidence, which people did not perceive 
 when she was poor. Could people see Cinderella's beauty 
 when she was in rags by the fire, or untill she stepped out of 
 her fairy c(^ch in her diamonds ? How are you to recognize a 
 diamond in a dusthole ? Only very clever eyes can do that. 
 Whereas a lady in a fairy coach and eight naturally creates a 
 sensation ; and enraptured princes come and beg to have the 
 honor of dancins: with her. 
 
 In the character of infallible historian, then, I declare that 
 if Miss Tw^ysden at three-and-twenty feels ever so much or little 
 attachment for her cousin who is not yet of age, there is no 
 reason to be angry with her. A brave, handsome, blundering, 
 downright young fellow, with broad shoulders, high spirits, and 
 quite fresh blushes on his face, with veiy good talents, (though 
 he has been wofully idle, and requested to absent himself tem- 
 porarily from his university,) the possessor of a competent for- 
 tune and the heir of another, may naturally make some impres- 
 sion on a lady's heart with whomkinsmanship and circumstance 
 bring him into daily communion. When had any sound so 
 hearty as Phil's laugh been heard in Beaunash Street? His 
 jolly frankness touched his aunt, a clever woman. She would 
 smile and say, " My dear Philip, it is not only what you say, 
 but what you are going to say next, keeps me in such a per- 
 petual tremor." There may have been a time once when she 
 was frank and cordial herself : ever so long ago, when she and 
 her sister were two blooming girls, lovingly clinging together,
 
 138 THE ADVENTURES OF riTILIP 
 
 and just stepping forth into the world. But if you succeed in 
 keeping a fine liousc on a small income ; in showing a cheerful 
 face to the world though oppressed with ever so much care ; in 
 bearing with dutiful reverence an intolerable old bore of a hus- 
 band (and I vow it is this quality in Mrs. Twysden for which I 
 most admire her) ; in submitting to defeats patiently ; to humili- 
 ations with smiles, so as to hold your own in your darling 
 7nojide ; you may succeed, but you must give up being frank and 
 cordial. The marriage of her sister to the doctor gave Maria 
 Ringwood a great panic, for Lord Ringwood was furious when 
 the news came. Then, perhaps, she sacrificed a little private 
 passion of her own : then she set her cap at a noble young 
 neighbor of my lord's, who jilted he?- ; then she took up with 
 Talbot Twysden, Esquire, of the Powder and Pomatum Office, 
 and made a very faithful wife to him, and was a very careful 
 mother to his children. But as for frankness and cordiality, 
 my good friend, accept from a lady what she can give you — 
 good manners, pleasant talk, and decent attention. If you go 
 to her breakfast-table, don't ask for a roc's &2,g, but eat that 
 moderately fresh hen's egg which John brings you. When Mrs. 
 Twysden is in her open carriage in the Park, how prosperous, 
 handsome, and jolly she looks — the girls how smiling and 
 young (that is, you know, considering all things) ; the horses 
 look fat, the coachman and footman wealthy and sleek ; they 
 exchange bows with the tenants of other carriages — well known 
 aristocrats. Jones and Brown, leaning over the railings and 
 seeing the Twysden equipage pass, have not the slightest doubt 
 that it contains people of the highest wealth and fashion. " I 
 say, Jones my boy, what noble family has the motto Wd done 
 Twys donel and what clipping girls there were in that barouche !" 
 B. remarks to J. ; " and what a handsome young swell that is 
 riding the bay mare, and leaning over and talking to the yellow- 
 haired girl ! " And it is evident to one of those gentlemen, at 
 least, that he has been looking at your regular first-rate tiptop 
 •people. 
 
 As for Phil Firmin on his bay mare, with his geranium in 
 his button-hole, there is no doubt that Philippus looks as 
 handsome, and as ricli, and as brave as any lord. And I think 
 Brown must have felt a little pang when his friend told him, 
 " That a lord ! Bless you, it's only a swell doctor's son." But 
 while J. and B. fancy all the little party very happy, they do 
 not hear Phil whisper to his cousin, "I hope you liked jw^r 
 partner last night ? " and they do not see how anxious Mrs. 
 Twysden is under her smiles, how she perceives Colonel
 
 ON ms WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. j^n 
 
 Shafto's cab coming up (the dancer in question), and Iiow slie 
 would rather have Phil anywhere than by that particular wjieel 
 of her carriage ; how Lady Braglands has just passed them by 
 without noticing them — Lady Braglands, who has a ball, and is 
 determined not to ask that woman and her two endless girls \ 
 and how, though Lady Braglands won't see Mrs. Twysden in 
 her great staring equipage, and the three faces which have 
 been beaming smiles at her, she instantly perceives Lady Lovel, 
 who is passing ensconced in her little brougham, and kisses 
 her fingers twenty times over. How should poor J. and B., 
 who are not, vous comprenez, dii mo?ide, understand these 
 mysteries ? 
 
 " That's young Firmin, is it, that handsome young fellow ? " 
 says Brown to Jones. 
 
 *' Doctor married the Earl of Ringwood's niece — ran away 
 with her, you know." 
 
 " Good practice ? " 
 
 " CaiDital. First-rate. All the tiptop people. Great ladies' 
 doctor. Can't do without him. Makes a fortune, besides what 
 he had with his wife." 
 
 " We've seen his name — the old man's — on some very queer 
 paper," says B., with a wink to J. By which I conclude they 
 are city gentlemen. And they look very hard at friend Philip, 
 as he comes to talk and shake hands with some pedestrians 
 who are gazing over the railings at the busy and pleasant Park 
 scene. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE NOBLE KINSMAN. 
 
 Having had occasion to mention a noble earl once or twice, 
 I am sure no polite reader will consent that his lordship should 
 push through this history along with the crowd of commoner 
 characters, and without a special word regarding himself. If 
 you are in the least familiar with Burke or Debrett, you know 
 that the ancient family of Ringwood has long been famous for 
 its great possessions, and its loyalty to the British crown. 
 
 In the troubles which unhappily agitated this kingdom after 
 the deposition of the late reigning house, the Ringwoods were
 
 140 
 
 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 implicated with man}^ oth^r families, but on the accession of 
 his Majesty George III, these dififerences happily ended, nor 
 had the monarch any subject more loyal and devoted than Sir 
 John Ringwood, Baronet, of Wingale and Whipham Market. 
 Sir John's influence sent three members to Parliament ; and 
 during the dangerous and vexatious period of the American 
 war, this influence was exerted so cordially and consistently in 
 the cause of order and the crown, that his jNIajesty saw fit to 
 advance Sir John to the dignity of Laron Ringwood. Sir John's 
 brother, Sir Francis Kingwood, of Appleshaw, who followed the 
 profession of the law, also was promoted to be a Baron of his 
 Majesty's Court of Exchequer. The first Baron, dying a. d. 
 1786, was succeeded by the eldest of his two sons — John, 
 second Baron and first Earl of Ringwood. His lordship's 
 brother, the Honorable Colonel Philip Ringwood, died glori- 
 ously, at the head of his regiment and in the defence of his 
 country, in the battle of Busaco, 1810, leaving two daughters, 
 Louisa and Maria, who henceforth lived with the earl their 
 uncle. 
 
 The Earl of Ringwood had but one son, Charles Viscount 
 Cinqbars, who, unhappily, died of a decline in his twent>'-second 
 year. And thus the descendants of Sir Francis Ringwood 
 became heirs to the earl's great estates of Wingate and Whip- 
 ham Market, though not of the peerages which had been 
 conferred on the earl and his father. 
 
 Lord Ringwood had, living with him, two nieces, daughters 
 of his late brother. Colonel Philip Ringwood, who fell in the 
 Peninsular War. Of these ladies, the youngest, Louisa, was 
 his lordship's favorite ; and though both the ladies had consid- 
 erable fortunes of their own, it was supposed their uncle would 
 further provide for them, especially as he was on no very good 
 terms with his cousin, Sir John of the Shaw, who took the Whig 
 side in politics, whilst his lordship was a chief of the Tory 
 party. 
 
 Of these two nieces, the eldest, Maria, never any great 
 favorite with her uncle, married, 1824, Talbot Twysden, Esq., a 
 Commissioner of Powder and Pomatum Tax; but the youngest, 
 Louisa, incurred my lord's most serious anger by eloping with 
 George Brand Firmin, Esq., M.D., a young gentleman of Cam- 
 bridge University, who had been with ].ord Cinqbars when he 
 died at Naples, and had brought home his body to Wingate 
 Castle. 
 
 The quarrel with the youngest niece, and the indiflference 
 with which he L,ciierally regarded the elder (whom his lordship
 
 ON HIS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. 141 
 
 was in the habit of calling an old schemer), occasioned at first 
 a little rapprochc7nent between Lord Ringwood and his heir, Sir 
 John of Appleshaw j but both gentlemen were very firm, not to 
 to say obstinate, in their natures. They had a quarrel with 
 respect to the cutting off of a small entailed property, of which 
 the earl wished to dispose ; and they parted with much rancor 
 and bad language on his lordship's part, who was an especially 
 free-spoken nobleman, and apt to call a spade a spade, as the 
 saying is. 
 
 After this difference, and to spite his heir, it was supposed 
 that the Earl of Ringwood would marry. He was little more 
 than seventy years of age, and had once been of a very robust 
 constitution. And though his temper was violent and his 
 person not at all agreeable (for even in Sir Thomas Lawrence's 
 picture his countenance is very ill-favored), there is little doubt 
 he could have found a wife for the asking among the young 
 beauties of his own county, or the fariest of May Fair. 
 
 But he was a cynical nobleman, and perhaps morbidly 
 conscious of his own ungainly appearance. " Of course I can 
 buy a wife " (his lordship would say). " Do you suppose 
 people won't sell their daughters to a man of my rank and 
 means ? Now look at me, my good sir, and say whether any 
 woman alive could fall in love with me ? I have been married, 
 and once was enough. I hate ugly women, and your virtuous 
 women, who tremble and cry in private, and preach at a man, 
 bore me. Sir John Ringwood of Appleshaw is an ass, and I 
 hate him ; but I don't hate him enough to make myself miserable 
 for the rest of my days, in order to spite him. When I drop, I 
 drop. Do you suppose I care what comes after me ? " And 
 with much sardonical humor this old lord used to play off one 
 good dowager after another who would bring her girl in his 
 way. He would send pearls to Emily, diamonds to Fanny, 
 opera-boxes to lively Kate, books of devotion to pious Selinda 
 and, at the season's end, drive back to his lonely great castle in 
 the west. They were all the same, such was his lordship's 
 opinion. I fear, a wicked and corrupt old gentleman, my dears. 
 But ah, would not a woman submit to some sacrifices to reclaim 
 that unhappy man ; to lead that gifted but lost being into the 
 ways of right ; to convert to a belief in woman's purity that 
 erring soul ? Xhey tried him with high-church altar-cloths for 
 his chapel at Wingate ; they tried him with low-church tracts ; 
 they danced before him ; they jumped fences on horseback : 
 they wore bandeaux or ringlets, according as his taste dictated ; 
 they were always at home when he called, and poor you and I
 
 1^2 
 
 THE ADVENTURES OE PHILIP 
 
 were gruffly told they were engaged ; they gushed in gratitude 
 over his Souqucts ; they sang for him, and their mothers, 
 concealing their sobs, murmured, " What an angel that Cecilia 
 of mine is ? " Every variety of delicious chaff they flung to 
 that old bird. ]3ut he was uncaught at the end of the season : 
 he winged his way back to his western hills. And if you dared 
 to say that Mrs. Netley had tried to take him, or Lady Trap- 
 boys had set a snare for him, you know you were a wicked, 
 gross caluniinator, and notorious everywhere for your dull and 
 vulgar abuse of women. 
 
 Now, in the year 1830, it happened that this great nobleman 
 was seized with a fit of the gout, which had very nearly 
 consigned his estates to his kinsman the Baronet of Appleshaw. 
 A revolution took place in a neighboring State. An illustrious 
 reigning family was expelled from its country, and projects of 
 reform (which would pretty certainly end in revolution) were 
 rife in ours. The events in France, and those pending at home, 
 so agitated Lord Ringwood's mind, that he was attacked by one 
 of the severest fits of gout under which he ever suffered. His 
 shrieks, as he was brought out of his yacht at Ryde to a house 
 taken for him in the town, were dreadful ; his language to all 
 persons about him was frightfully expressive, as Lady Quamley 
 and her daughter, who sailed with him several times, can vouch. 
 An ill return that rude old man made for all their kindness and 
 attention to him. They had danced on board his yacht ; they 
 had dined on board his yacht ; they had been out sailing with 
 him, and cheerfully braved the inconveniences of the deep in his 
 company. And when they ran to the side of his chair — • 
 as what would they not do to soothe an old gentleman in 
 illness and distress } — when they ran up to his chair as it was 
 wheeled along the pier, he called mother and daughter by the 
 most vulgar and opprobrious names, and roared out to them to 
 go to a place which I certainly shall not more particularly 
 mention. 
 
 Now it happened, at this period, that Dr. and Mrs. Firmin 
 were at Ryde with their little boy, then some three years of 
 age. The doctor was already taking his place as one of the 
 most fashionable physicians then in London, and had begun to 
 be celebrated for the treatment of this especial malady. 
 (P'irmin on "Gout and Rheumatism" was, you remember, 
 dedicated to his Majesty George IV.) Lord Ringwood's valet 
 betliought him of calling the doctor in, and mentioned how he 
 was present in the town. Now Lord Ringwood was a noble- 
 man who never would allow his angry feelings to stand in the
 
 ON HIS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD 14, 
 
 way of his present comforts or ease. He instantly desired Mr. 
 Firman's attendance, and submitted to his treatment : a part of 
 which was a Jiauteur to the full as great as that which the sick 
 man exhibited. Firmin's appearance was so tall and grand, 
 that he looked vastly more noble than a great many noblemen. 
 Six feet, a high manner, a polished forehead, a flashing eye, a 
 snowy shirt-frill, a rolling velvet collar, a beautiful hand 
 appearing under a velvet cufif — all these advantages he 
 possessed and used. He did not make the slightest allusion to 
 bygones, but treated his patient with a perfect courtesy and an 
 impenetrable self-possession. 
 
 This defiant and darkling politeness did not always dis- 
 please the old man. He was so accustomed to slavish compli- 
 ance and eager obedience from all people round about him, that 
 he sometimes wearied of their servility, and relished a little 
 independence. Was it from calculation, or because he was a 
 man of high spirit, that Firmin determined to maintain an inde- 
 pendent course with his lordship .-' From the first clay of their 
 meeting he never departed from it, and had the satisfaction of 
 meeting with only civil behavior from his noble relative and 
 patient, who was notorious for his rudeness and brutality to 
 almost every person who came in his way. 
 
 From hints which his lordship gave in conversation, he 
 showed the doctor that he was acquainted with some particulars 
 of the latter's early career. It had been wild and stormy. 
 Firmin had incurred debts ; had quarrelled with his father ; 
 had left the university and gone abroad ; had lived in a wild 
 society, which used dice and cards every night, and pistols 
 sometimes in the morning ; and had shown a fearful dexterity 
 in the use of the latter instrument, which he employed against 
 the person of a famous Italian adventurer, who fell under his 
 hand at Naples. When this century was five-and-twenty years, 
 younger, the crack of the pistol-shot might still occasionally be 
 heard in the suburbs of London in the very early morning; and 
 the dice-box went round in many a haunt of pleasure. The 
 knights of the Four Kings travelled from capital to capital, and 
 engaged each other or made pray of the unwary. Now, the 
 times are changed. The cards are confined in their boxes. 
 Only soi/s-officicrs, brawling in their provincial cafe's over their 
 dominos, fight duels. " Ah, dear me," I heard a veteran punter 
 sigh the other day at Bays's, " isn't it a melancholy thing to 
 think, that if I wanted to amuse myself with a fifty-pound note, 
 I don't know the place in London where I could go and lose 
 it?" And he fondly recounted the names of twenty places
 
 144 
 
 THE ADVENTURES OF PIIfLIP 
 
 where he could have cheerfull)' staked and lost his money in his 
 young time. 
 
 After a somewhat prolonged absence abroad, Mr, Firmin 
 came back to this country, was permitted to return to the uni- 
 versity, and left it with the degree of bachelor of Medicine, 
 We have told how^ he ran away with Lord Ringw-ood's niece, 
 and incurred the anger of that nobleman. Beyond abuse and 
 anger his lordship was powerless. The young lady was free to 
 "marr)' whom she liked, and her uncle to disown or receive him ; 
 and accordingly she was, as we have seen, disowned by his 
 lordship, until he found it convenient to forgive her. What 
 were Lord Ringwood's intentions regarding his property, what 
 were his accumulations, and who his heirs would be, no one 
 knew. Meanwhile, of course, there were those who felt a very 
 great interest on the point. Mrs, Twysden and her husband 
 and children were hungry and poor. If uncle Ringwood had 
 money to leave, it would be very welcome to those three dar- 
 lings whose father had not a great income like Dr. Firmin, 
 Philip was a dear, good, frank, amiable, wild fellow, and they 
 all loved him. But he had his faults — that could not be con- 
 cealed — and so poor Phil's faults were pretty constantly can- 
 vassed before uncle Ringwood, by dear relatives who knew them 
 only too well. The dear relatives ! How kind they are ! I 
 don't think Phil's aunt abused him to my lord. That quiet wo- 
 man calmly and gently put forward the claims of her own dar- 
 lings, and affectionately dilated on the young man's present 
 prosperity, and magnificent future prospects. 'J'he interest of 
 thirty thousand pounds now, and the inheritance of his father's 
 great accumulations ! What young man could want for more ? 
 Perhaps he had too much already. Perhaps he was too rich to 
 work. The sly old peer acquiesced in his niece's statements, 
 and perfectly understood the point towards which they tended. 
 " A thousand a year ! What's a thousand a year ? " growled 
 the old lord. " Not enough to make a gentleman, more than 
 enough to make a fellow idle." 
 
 " Ah, indeed, it was but a small income," sighed Mrs. 
 Twysden. " With a large house, a good establishment, and 
 Mr. Twysden's salary from his office — it was but a pittance." 
 
 " Pittance ! Starvation," growls my lord, with his usual 
 frankness. " Don't T know what housekeeping costs ; and see 
 how you screw ? Butlers and footmen, carriages and job-horses, 
 rent and dinners — though yours, Maria, are not famous." 
 
 "Very bad — I know they are very bad," says the contrite 
 lady. ** I wish we could afford any better."
 
 ON HIS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. 
 
 MS 
 
 " Afford any better ? Of course you can't. You are the 
 crockery pots, and you swim down stream with the brass pots. 
 I saw Twysden the other day walking down St. James's Street 
 with Rhodes — that tall felloAv." (Here my lord laughed, and 
 showed many fangs, the exhibition of which gave a pecu- 
 liarly fierce air to his lordship when in good-humor.) " If 
 Twysden walks with a big fellow, he always tries to keep step 
 with him. You know that." Poor Maria naturally knew her 
 husband's peculiarities \ but she did not say that she had no 
 need to be reminded of them. 
 
 " He was so blown he could hardly speak," continued uncle 
 Ringwood ; " but he would stretch his little legs, and tr}^ and 
 keep up. He has a little body, le cher mari, but a good pluck. 
 Those little fellows often have. I've seen him half dead out 
 shooting, and plunging over the ploughed fields after fellows 
 with twice his stride. Why don't men sink in the world, I want 
 to know ? Instead of a fine house, and a parcel of idle ser- 
 vants, why don't you have a maid and a leg of mutton, Maria ? 
 You go half crazy in trying to make both ends meet. You 
 know you do. It keeps you a^wake of nights ; /know that very 
 well. You've got a house fit for people with four times your 
 money. I lend you my cook and so forth ; but I can't come 
 and dine with you unless I send the wine in. Why don't you 
 have a pot of porter, and a joint, or some tripe? — tripe's a 
 famous good thing. The miseries which people entail on them- 
 seh^es in trying to live beyond their means are perfectly ridicu- 
 lous, by George ! Look at that fellow who opened the door 
 to me ; he's as tall as one of my own men. Go and live in a 
 quiet little street in Belgravia somewhere, and have a neat little 
 maid. Nobody will think a penny the worse of you — and you 
 will be just as well off as if you lived here with an extra couple 
 of thousand a year. The advice I am giving you is worth half 
 that, every shilling of it." 
 
 " It is very good advice ; but I think, sir, I should prefer 
 the thousand pounds," said the lady. 
 
 " Of course you would. That is the consequence of your 
 false position. One of the good points about that doctor is, 
 that he is as proud as Lucifer, and so is his boy. They are 
 not always hungering after money. They keep their indepen- 
 dence ; though he'll have his own too, the fellow will. Why, 
 when I first called him in, I thought, as he was a relation, he'd 
 doctor me for nothing ; but he wouldn't. He would have his 
 fee, by George ! and wouldn't come without it. Confounded 
 independent fellow Firmin is. And so is the young one."
 
 X46 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 Eut wlien Twysden and his son (perhaps inspirited by Mrs. 
 Twysdcn) tried once or twice to be independent in the presence 
 of this lion, he roared, and he rushed at them, and he rent 
 them, so that they lied from him howling. And tins reminds 
 me of an old story I have heard — quite an old, old story, such as 
 kind old fellows at clubs love to remember — of my lord, when 
 he was only Lord Cinqbars, insulting a half-pay lieutenant, in 
 his own county, who horsewhipped his lordship in the most 
 priv-ate and ferocious manner. It was said Lord Cinqbars 
 had had a rencontre with poachers ; but it was my lord who was 
 poaching and the lieutenant who was defending his own dove- 
 cot. I do not say that this was a model nobleman ; but that, 
 when his own passions or interests did not mislead him, he was 
 a nobleman of very considerable acuteness, humor, and good 
 sense ; and could give quite good advice on occasion. If men 
 would kneel down and kiss his boots, well and good. There 
 was the blacking, and you were welcome to embrace toe and 
 heel. But those who would not, were free to leave the opera- 
 tion alone. The Pope himself does not demand the cere- 
 mony from Protestants ; and if they object to the slipper, no 
 one thinks of forcing it into their mouths. Phil and his 
 father probably declined to tremble before the old man, not 
 because they knew he was a bully who might be put down, but 
 because they were men of spirit, who cared not whether a man 
 was bully or no. 
 
 I have told you I like Philip Firmin, though it must be 
 confessed that the young fellow had many faults, and that his 
 career, especially his early career, was by no means exemplary. 
 Have I ever excused his conduct to his father, or said a word 
 in apology of his brief and inglorious university career ? I ac- 
 knowledge his shortcomings with that candor which my friends 
 exhibit in speaking of mine. Who does not see a friend's 
 weaknesses, and is so blind that he cannot perceive that enor- 
 mous beam in his neighbor's eye ? Only a woman or two, 
 from time to time. And even they are undeceived some day. 
 A man of the world, I write about my friends as mundane 
 fellow-creatures. Do you suppose there are many angels 
 here? I say again, perhaps a woman or two. But as for you 
 and me, my good sir, are there any signs of wings sprouting 
 from our shoulder-blades ? Be quiet. Don't pursue your 
 snarling, cynical remarks, but go on with your story. 
 
 As you go through life, stumbling, and slipping, and stag- 
 gering to your feet again, ruefully aware of your own wretched 
 weakness, and praying, with a contrite heart, let us trust, that
 
 ON HIS WA Y THROUGH THE WORLD. 
 
 147 
 
 you may not be led into temptation, have you not often looked 
 at other fellow-sinners, and speculated with an awful interest 
 on their career ? Some there are on whom, quite in their early 
 lives, dark Ahrimanes has seemed to lay his dread mark : chil- 
 dren, yet corrupt, and wicked of tongue ; tender of age, yet 
 cruel ; who should be truth-telling and generous yet (they were 
 at their mothers' bosoms yesterday), but are false and cold and 
 greedy before their time. Infants almost, they practice the 
 art and selfishness of old men. Behind their candid faces are 
 wiles and wickedness, and a hideous precocity of artifice. I 
 can recall such, and in the vista of far-off, unforgotten boyhood, 
 can see marching that sad little procession of aifans perdiis. 
 May they be saved, pray heaven ! Then there is the doubtful 
 class, those who are still on trial ; those who fall and rise again \ 
 those who are often worsted in life's battle ; beaten down, 
 wounded, imprisoned : but escape and conquer sometimes. 
 And then there is the happy class about whom there seems no 
 doubt at all : the spotless and white-robed ones, to whom virtue 
 is easy ; in whose pure bosoms faith nestles, and cold doubt 
 finds no entrance ; who are children, and good ; young men, 
 and good ; husbands and fathers, and yet good. Why could 
 the captain of our school write his Greek iambics without an 
 effort, and without an error? Others of us blistered the page 
 with unavailing tears and blots, and might toil ever so and 
 come in lag last at the bottom of the form. Our friend Philip 
 belongs to the middle class, in which you and I probably are, 
 my dear sir — not yet, I hope, irredeemably consigned to that 
 awful third class, whereof mention has been made. 
 
 But, being homo, and liable to err, there is no doubt Mr. 
 Philip exercised his privilege, and there was even no little fear 
 at one time that he should overdraw his account. He went 
 from school to the university, and there distinguished himself 
 certainly, but in a way in which very few parents would choose 
 that their sons should excel. That he should hunt, that he 
 should give parties, that he should pull a good oar in one of 
 the best boats on the river, that he should speak at the Union 
 — all these were very well. But why should he speak such 
 awful radicalism and republicanism — he with noble blood in his 
 veins, and the son of a parent whose interest at least it was to 
 keep well with people of high station } 
 
 " Why, Pendennis," said Dr. F'rmin to me with tears in his 
 eyes, and much genuine grief exhibited on his handsome pale 
 face — " why should it be said that Philip Firmin — both of whose 
 grandfathers fought nobly for their king — should be forgetting
 
 148 THE ADVENTURES OF nilLIP 
 
 the principles of his family, and — and, I haven't words to tell 
 you how deeply he disappoints me. \\'hy, I actually heard of 
 him at that horrible Union advocating the death of C'harles the 
 First ! I was wild enough myself when I was at the university, 
 but 1 was a gentleman." 
 
 "Boys, sir, are boys," I urged. "They will advocate any- 
 thing for an argument ; and Philip would iiave taken the other 
 side quite as readily." 
 
 " Lord Axminster and Lord St. Dennis told me of it at the 
 club. I can tell you it has made a most painful impression," 
 cried the father. " That my son should be a radical and a re- 
 publican, is a cruel thought for a father ; and I, who had hoped 
 for Lord Ringwood's borough for him — who had hoped — who 
 had hoped very much better things for him and from him. He 
 is not a comfort to ihe. You saw how he treated me one night ? 
 A man might li\e on different terms, I think, with his only son ! " 
 And with a breaking voice, a pallid cheek, and a real grief at 
 his heart, the unhappy jihysician moved away. 
 
 How had the doctor bred his son, that the young man should 
 be thus unruly .-* Was the revolt the boy's fault, or the father's? 
 Dr. Firmin's horror seemed to be because his noble friends 
 were horrified by Phil's radical doctrine. At that time of my 
 life, being young and very green, I had a little mischievous 
 pleasure in infuriating Squaretoes, and causing him to pronounce 
 that I was " a dangerous man." Now, I am ready to say that 
 Nero was a monarch with many elegant accomplishments, and 
 considerable natural amiability of disposition. I praise and 
 admire success wherever I meet it. I make allowance for faults 
 and shortcomings, csi^ecially in my superiors ; and feel that, 
 did we know all, we should judge them very differently. Peo- 
 ple don't believe me, perhaps, quite so much as formerly. ]kit 
 I don't offend : I trust I don't offend. Have I said anything 
 painful ? Plague on my blunders ! I recall the expression. I 
 regret it. I contradict it flat. 
 
 As I am ready to find excuses for everybody, let poor Philip 
 come in for the benefit of this mild amnesty ; and if he vexed 
 his father, as he certainly did, let us trust — let us be thankfully 
 sure — he was not so black as the old gentleman depicted him. 
 Nay, if I have painted the Old Gentleman himself as rathei 
 black, who knows but that this was an error, not of his com- 
 plexion, but of my vision ? Phil was unruly because he was 
 bold, and wild, and young. His father was hurt, naturally 
 hurt, because of the boy's extravagances and follies. They 
 will come together again, as father and son should. The.^c
 
 ON HIS Wa y through the world. 149 
 
 little differences of temper will be smoothed and equalized 
 anon. The boy has led a wild life. He has been obliged to 
 leave college. He has given his father hours of an.xiety and 
 nights of painful watching. But stay, father, what of you? 
 Have you shown to the boy the practice of confidence, the ex- 
 ample of love and honor.? Did you accustom him to virtue, 
 and teach truth to the child at your knee ? " Honor your 
 father and mother." Amen. May his days be long who fulfils 
 the command : but implied, though unwritten on the table, is 
 there not the order, " Honor your son and daughter ? " Pray 
 heaven that we, whose days are already not few in the land, 
 may keep this ordinance too. 
 
 What had made Philip wild, extravagant, and insubordinate? 
 Cured of that illness in which we saw him, he rose up, and 
 from school went his way to the university, and there entered 
 on a life such as wild young men will lead. From that day of 
 illness his manner towards his father changed, and regarding 
 the change the elder Firmin seemed afraid to question his son. 
 He used the house as if his own, came and absented himself at 
 will, ruled the servants, and was spoiled by them ; spent the 
 income which was settled on his mother and her children, and 
 gave of it liberally to poor acquaintances. To the remon- 
 strances of old friends he replied that he had a right to do as he 
 chose with his own ; that other men who were poor might work, 
 but that he had enough to live on, without grinding over class- 
 ics and mathematics. He was implicated in more rows than 
 one ; his tutors saw him not, but he and the proctors became a 
 great deal too well acquainted. If I were to give a history of 
 Mr. Philip Firmin at the university, it would be the story of an 
 Idle Apprentice, of whom his pastors and masters were justified 
 in i^rophesying evil. He was seen on lawless London excur- 
 sions, when his father and tutor supposed him unwell in his 
 rooms in college. He made acquaintance with jolly compan- 
 ions, with whom his father grieved that he should be intimate. 
 He cut the astonished uncle Twysden in London Street, and 
 blandly told him that he must be mistaken — he one Frenchman, 
 he no speak English. He stared the master of his own college 
 out of countenance, dashed back to college with a Turpin-like 
 celerity, and was in rooms with a ready-proved alibi when in- 
 quiries were made. I am afraid there is no doubt that Phil 
 screwed up his tutor's door ; Mr. Okes discovered him in the 
 act. He had to go down, the young jDrodigal. I wish I could 
 say he was repentant. But he appeared before his father with 
 the utmost nonchalance ; said that he was doing no good at the
 
 t50 
 
 THE ADVENTURES OF PHI UP 
 
 university, and should be much better away, and then went 
 abroad on a dashing tour to France and Italy, wliither it is by 
 no means our business to follow him. Something had poisoned 
 the generous blood. The once kindly honest lad was wild and 
 reckless. He had money in sufficiency, his own horses and 
 equipage, and free quarters in his father's house. But father 
 and son scarce met, and seldom took a meal together. " I 
 know his haunts, but I don't know his friends, Pendennis," the 
 elder man said. " I don't think they are vicious, so much as 
 low. I do not charge him with vice, mind you ; but with idle- 
 ness, and a fatal love of low company, and a frantic, suicidal 
 determination to fling his chances in life away. Ah, think 
 where he might be, and where he is ! " 
 
 Where he was ? Do not be alarmed. Philip was only 
 idling, Philip might have been much more industriously, more 
 profitably, and a great deal more wickedly employed. What is 
 now called Bohemia had no name in Philip's young days, though 
 many of us knew the country very well. A pleasant land, not 
 fenced with drab stucco, like Tyburnia or Belgravia ; not 
 guarded by a huge standing army of footmen ; not echoing with 
 noble chariots ; not replete with polite chintz drawing-rooms and 
 neat tea-tables ; a land over which hangs an endless fog, occa- 
 sioned by much tobacco ; a landof chambers, billiard-rooms, sup- 
 per-rooms, oysters ; a land of song ; a land where soda-water flows 
 freely in the morning : a land of tin-dish covers from taverns, 
 and frothing porter ; a land of lotos-eating (with lots of cay- 
 enne pepper), of pulls on the river, of delicious reading of 
 novels, magazines, and saunterings in many studios ; a land 
 where men call each other by their Christian names ; where 
 most are poor, where almost all are young, and where, if a few 
 oldsters do enter, it is because they have preserved more ten- 
 derly and carefully than other folks their youthful spirits, and 
 the delightful capacity to be idle. I have lost my way to Bo- 
 hemia now, but it is certain that Prague is the most picturesque 
 city in the world. 
 
 Having long lived there, and indeed only lately quitted the 
 Bohemian land at the time whereof I am writing, 1 could no 
 quite participate in Dr. Firmin's indignation at his son persist 
 ing in his bad courses and wild associates. When Firmin had 
 been wild himself, he had fought, intrigued, and gambled in 
 good company. Phil chose his friends amongst a banditti 
 never heard of in fashionable quarters. Perhaps he liked to 
 play the prince in the midst of these associates, and was not 
 averse to the flattery which a full purse brought him among
 
 ON JIIS IVAY THROUGH THE WORLD. 15 
 
 men most of whose pockets had a meagre linhig. He had not 
 emigrated to Bohemia, and settled there altogether. At school 
 and" in his brief university career he had made some friends 
 who lived in the world, and with whom he was still familiar. 
 "These come and knock at my front door,. my father's door," 
 he would say, with one of his old laughs ; " the Bandits, who 
 have the signal, enter only by the dissecting-room. I know 
 which are the most honest, and that it is not always the poor 
 Freebooters who best deserve to be hanged." 
 
 Like man}% a young gentleman who has no intention of pur- 
 Suing legal studies seriously, Philip entered at an inn of court, 
 and kept his terms duly, though he vowed that his conscience 
 Would not allow him to practise (I am not defending the 
 opinions of this squeamish moralist — only stating them). His 
 acquaintance here lay amongst the Temple Bohemians. He 
 had part of a set of chambers in Parchment Buildings, to be 
 sure, and you might read on a door, " Mr. Cassidy, Mr. P. 
 Firmin, Mr. Vanjohn ; " but were these gentlemen likely to 
 advance Philip in life .-' Cassidy was a newspaper reporter, and 
 young Vanjohn a betting man who was always attending races. 
 Dr. Firmin had a horror of newspaper-men, and considered 
 they belonged to the dangerous classes, and treated them with 
 a distant affability. 
 
 " Look at the governor, Pen," Philip would say to the pres- 
 ent chronicler. " He always watches you with a secret sus- 
 picion, and has never got over his wonder at your being a gen- 
 tleman. I like him when he does the Lord Chatham business, 
 and condescends towards you, and give you his hand to kiss. 
 He considers he is your better, don't you see ? Oh, he is a 
 paragon of a pere noble, the governor is ! and I ought to be a 
 young Sir Charles Grandison." And the young scapegrace 
 would imitate his father's smile, and the doctor's manner of 
 laying his hand to his breast and putting out his neat right leg, 
 all of which movements or postures were, I own, rather pom- 
 pous and affected. 
 
 Whatever die paternal faults were, you will say that Philip 
 was not the man to criticize them ; nor in this matter shall I 
 attempt to defend him. My wife has a little pensioner whom 
 she found wandering in the street, and singing a little artless 
 song. The child could not speak yet — only warble its little 
 song ; and had thus strayed away from home, and never once 
 knew of her danger. We kept her for a while, until the police 
 found her parents. Our servants bathed her, and dressed her, 
 and sent her home in such neat clothes as the poor little wretch
 
 152 
 
 THE ADVENTURES OF PHI LIP 
 
 had never seen until fortune sent her in the way of those good- 
 natured folks. She pays them frequent visits. When she goes 
 away from us, she is always neat and clean ; when she comes 
 to us, she is in rags and dirty : a wicked little slattern ! And 
 pray, whose duty is it to keep her clean t and has not the 
 parent in this case forgotten to honor her daughter ? Suppose 
 there is some reason which prevents Philip from loving his 
 father — that the doctor has neglected to cleanse the boy's heart, 
 and by carelessness and indifference has sent him erring into 
 the world. If so, woe be to that doctor ! If I take my little 
 son to the tavern to dinner, shall I not assuredly pay ? If I 
 suffer him in tender youth to go astray, and harm comes to 
 him, whose is the fault } 
 
 Perhaps the very outrages and irregularities of which Phil's 
 father complained, were in some degree occasioned by the 
 elder's own faults. He was so laboriously obsequious to great 
 men, that the son in a rage defied and avoided them. He was 
 so grave, so polite, so complimentary, so artificial, that Phil, in 
 revolt at such hypocrisy, chose to be frank, cynical, and familiar. 
 The grave old bigwigs whom the doctor loved to assemble, 
 bland and solemn men of the ancient school, who dined solemnly 
 with each other at their solemn old houses — such men as old 
 Lord Botley, Baron Pumpsher, Cricklade, (who published 
 " Travels in Asia Minor," 4to, 1804,) the Bishop of St. Bees, 
 and the like — wagged their old heads sadly when they col- 
 logued in clubs, and talked of poor Firmin's scapegrace of a son. 
 He would come to no good ; he was giving his good father 
 much pain ; he had been in all sorts of rows and disturbances 
 at the university, and the Master of Boniface reported most un- 
 favorably of him. And at the solemn dinners in Old Parr 
 Street — the admirable, costly, silent dinners — he treated these 
 old gentlemen with a familiarity which caused the old heads to 
 shake with surprise and choking indignation. Lord Botley and 
 Baron Bumpsher had proposed and seconded Firmin's boy at 
 the Megatherium club. The pallid old boys toddled away in 
 alarm when he made his appearance there. He brought a smell 
 of tobacco-smoke with him. He was capable of smoking in the 
 drawing-room itself. They trembled before Philip, who, for his 
 part, used to relish their senile anger ; and loved, as he called 
 it, to tie all their pigtails together. 
 
 In no place was Philip seen or heard to so little advantage 
 as in his father's house, " I feel like a humbug myself amongst 
 those old humbugs," he would say to me, "Their old jokes, 
 and their old compliments, and their virtuous old conversation
 
 ON ins WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. x<% 
 
 sicken me. Are all old men humbugs, I wonder ? " It is not 
 pleasant to hear misanthropy from young lips, and to find eyes 
 that are scarce twenty years old already looking out with 
 distrust on the world. 
 
 In other houses than his own I am bound to say Philip was 
 much more amiable, and he carried with him a splendor of 
 gayety and cheerfulness which brought sunshine and welcome 
 into many a room which he frequented. I have said that many 
 of his companions were artists -and journalists, and their clubs 
 and haunts were his own. Ridley the Academician had Mrs. 
 Brandon's rooms in Thornhaugh Street, and Philip was often 
 in J. J.'s studio, or in the widow's little room below. He had a 
 very great tenderness and affection for her ; her presence seemed 
 to purify him ; and in her company the boisterous, reckless 
 young man was invariably gentle and respectful. Her eyes 
 used to fill with tears when she spoke about him ; and when he 
 was present, followed and watched him with sweet motherly 
 devotion. It was pleasant to see him at her homely little fire- 
 side, and hear his jokes and prattle, with a fatuous old father, 
 who was one of Mrs. Brandon's lodgers. Philip would play 
 cribbage for hours with this old man, frisk about him with a 
 hundred harmless jokes, and walk out by his invalid chair, when 
 the old captain went to sun himself in the New Road. He was 
 an idle fellow, Philip, that's the truth. He had an agreeable 
 perseverance in doing nothing, and would pass half a day in 
 perfect contentment over his pipe, watching Ridley at his easel. 
 J. J. painted that charming head of Philip which hangs in Mrs. 
 Brandon's little room:— with the fair hair, the tawny beard and 
 whiskers, and the bold blue eyes. 
 
 Phil had a certain after-supper song of " Garryowen na 
 Gloria," which it did you good to hear, and which, when sung 
 at his full pitch, you might hear for a mile round. One night I 
 had been to dine in Russell Square, and was brought home in 
 his carriage by Dr. Firmin, who was of the party. As we came 
 through Soho, the windows of a certain club-room called the 
 " Haunt " were open, and we could hear Philip's song booming 
 through the night, and especially a certain wild-Irish war-whoop 
 with which it concluded, amidst universal applause and enthu- 
 siastic battering of glasses. 
 
 The poor father sank back in the carriage as though a blow 
 had struck him. " Do you hear his voice ? " he groaned out, 
 " Those are his haunts. My son, who might go anywhere, 
 prefers to be captain in a pothouse, and sing songs in a tap 
 room ! "
 
 1 5 4 T//£ A D VENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 I tried to make the best of the case. I knew there was nc) 
 harm in the place ; that clever men of consider?ble note 
 frequented it. Jjut the wounded father was not to be consoled 
 by such commonplaces ; and a deep and natural grief oppressed 
 him in consequence of the faults of his son. 
 
 What ensued by no means surprised me. Among Dr. Fir- 
 min's patients was a maiden lady of suitable age and large 
 fortune, wlio looked upon the accomplished doctor with favor- 
 able eyes. That he should take a companion to cheer him in his 
 solitude was natural enough, and all his friends concurred in 
 thinking that he should marry. Every one had cognizance of 
 the quiet little courtship, except the doctor's son, between whom 
 and his father there were only too many secrets. 
 
 Some man in a club asked Philip whether he should condole 
 with him or congratulate him on his father's approaching 
 marriage ? His what .'' The younger Firmin exhibited the 
 greatest surprise and agitation on hearing of this match. He 
 ran home : he awaited his father's return. When Dr. Firmin 
 came home and ]:)etook himself to his stud}-, Philip confronted 
 him there. " This must be a lie, sir, which 1 have heard to-day," 
 the young man said, fiercely. 
 
 " A lie ! what lie, Philip ? " asked the father. They were 
 both very resolute and courageous men. 
 
 " That you are going to marry Miss Benson." 
 
 " Do you make my house so happy, that I don't need any 
 other companion ? " asked the father. 
 
 "That's not the question," said Philip, hotly. "You can't 
 and mustn't marry that lady, sir." 
 
 " And why -not, sir ? " 
 
 " Because in the eyes of God and Heaven you are married 
 already, sir. And I swear I will tell Miss Benson the story to- 
 morrow, if you persist in your plan." 
 
 " So you know that story ? " groaned the father. 
 
 " Yes. God forgive you," said the son. 
 
 " It was a fault of my youth that has been bitterly re- 
 pented." 
 
 "A fault ! — a crime ! " said Philip. 
 
 " Enough, sir ! Wliatever my fault, it is not for you to charge 
 me with it." 
 
 " If you won't guard your own honor, I must. I shall go to 
 Miss Benson now." 
 
 " If you go out of this house you don't pretend to return 
 to it." 
 
 " Be it so. Let us settle our accounts, and part, sir."
 
 OiV //IS IVAY TII/^OUG// Tf/E WOIU^D. 155 
 
 "thilip, Philip! you break my heart," cried the father. 
 "You don't suppose mine is very h'ght, sir," said the son. 
 PhiUp never had Miss Benson for a mother-in-law. But fatJier 
 and son loved each other no better after their dispute. 
 
 CHAPTER Vi. 
 
 Brandon's. 
 
 Thornhaugh Street is but a poor place now, and the 
 houses look as if they had seen better days : but that house 
 with the cut centre drawing-room window, which has the name 
 of Brandon on the door, is as neat as any house in the quarter, 
 and the brass plate always shines like burnished gold. About 
 Easter time many fine carriages stop at that door, and splendid 
 people walk in, introduced by a tidy little maid, or else by an 
 athletic Italian, with a glossy black beard and gold earrings, 
 who conducts them to the drawing-room floor, where Mr. Ridley, 
 the painter, lives, and where his pictures are privately exhibited 
 before they go to the Royal Academy. 
 
 As the carriages drive up, you will often see a red-faced man, 
 in an olive-green wig, smiling blandly over the blinds of the 
 parlor, on the ground-floor. That is Captain Gann, the father 
 of the lady who keeps the house. I don't know how he came 
 by the rank of captain, but he has borne it so long and gal- 
 lantly that there is no use in any longer questioning the title. 
 He does not claim it, neither does he deny it. But the wags 
 who call upon Mrs. Brandon can always, as the phrase is, 
 " draw " her father, by speaking of Prussia, France, Waterloo, 
 or battles in general, until the Little Sister says, " Now, never 
 mind about the battle of Waterloo, papa " (she says Pa — her 
 /i's are irregular — I can't help it) — " Never mind about Water- 
 loo, papa; you've told them all about it. And don't go on, 
 Mr. Beans, ^ovUt, please, go on in that way." 
 
 Young Beans has already drawn " Captain Gann (assisted 
 by Shaw, the Life-Guardsman) killing twenty-four French cuiras- 
 siers at Waterloo." " Captain Gann defending Hougoumont." 
 " Captain Gann, called upon by Napoleon Bonaparte to lay 
 down his arms, saying, ' A captain of militia dies, but never 
 surrenders.' " " The Duke of Wellington pointing to the 
 advancing Old Guard, and saying, ' Up, Gann, and at them.' '*
 
 1^5 THE ADVEI^TURES OF PlIILTP 
 
 And these sketches are so droll, that even the Little Sister, 
 Gann's own daughter, can't help laughing at them. To be sure, 
 she loves fun, the Little Sister ; laughs over droll books ; laughs 
 to herself, in her little quiet corner at work ; laughs over pic- 
 tures ; and, at the right place, laughs and sympathizes too. 
 Ridley says, he knows few better <:ritics of pictures than Mrs. 
 Brandon. She has a sweet temper, a merry sense of humor, 
 that makes the cheeks dimple and the eyes shine ; and a kind 
 heart, that has been sorely tried and wounded, but is still soft 
 and gentle. Fortunate are they whose hearts, so tried by suf- 
 fering, yet recover their health. Some have illnesses from which 
 there is no recovery, and drag through life afterwards, maimed 
 and invalided. 
 
 But this Little Sister, having been subjected in youth to a 
 dreadful trial and sorrow, was saved out of them by a kind Provi- 
 dence, and is now so thoroughly restored as to own that she is 
 happy, and to thank God that she can be grateful and useful. 
 When poor Montfitchet died, she nursed him through his illness 
 as tenderly as his good wife herself. In the days of her own. 
 chief grief and misfortune, her father, who was under the dom- 
 ination of his wife, a cruel and blundering woman, thrust out 
 poor little Caroline from his door, when she returned to it the 
 broken-hearted victim of a scoundrel's seduction ; and when 
 the old captain was himself in want and houseless, she had 
 found him, sheltered and fed him. And it was from that day 
 her wounds had begun to heal, and, from gratitude for this 
 immense piece of good fortune vouchsafed to her, that her hap- 
 piness and cheerfulness returned. Returned ? There was an 
 old servant of the family, who could not stay in the house 
 because she was so abominably disrespectful to the captain, and 
 this woman said she had never known Miss Caroline so cheer- 
 ful, nor so happy, nor so good-looking, as she was now. 
 
 So Captain Gann came to live with his daughter, and patron- 
 ized her with much dignity. He had a very few yearly pounds, 
 which served to pay his club expenses, and a portion of his 
 clothes. His club, I need not say, was at the " Admiral Byng," 
 Tottenham Court Road, and here the captain met frequently a 
 pleasant little society, and bragged unceasingly about his forme«r 
 prosperity. 
 
 I have heard that the country-house in Kent, of which he 
 boasted, was a shabby little lodging-house at Margate, of which 
 the furniture was sold in execution ; but if it had been a palace 
 the captain would not have been out of place there, one or twa 
 people still rather fondly thought. His daughter, amongst
 
 THE OLD FOGIES.
 
 ON HIS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. 
 
 157 
 
 Others, had tried to fancy all sorts of good of her father, and 
 especially that he was a man of remarkably good manners. But 
 she had seen one or two gentlemen since she knew the poor old 
 father — gentlemen with rough coats and good hearts, like Dr. 
 Goodenough ; gentlemen with superfine coats and superfine 
 double-milled manners, like Dr. Firmin, and hearts — well, never 
 mind about that point , gentlemen of no //'s, like the good, dear, 
 faithful benefactor who had rescued her at the brink of despair ; 
 men of genius, like Ridley ; — great heart)', generous, honest 
 gentlemen, like Philip , — and this illusion about Pa, I suppose, 
 had vanished along with some other fancies of her poor little 
 maiden youth. The truth is, she had an understanding with 
 the " Admiral Byng : " the landlady was instructed as to the 
 supplies to be furnished to the captain ; and as for his stories, 
 poor Caroline knew them a great deal too well to believe in 
 them any more. 
 
 I would not be understood to accuse the captain of habitual 
 inebriety. He was a generous officer, and his delight was, 
 when in cash, to order "glasses round " for the company at the 
 club, to whom he narrated the history of his brilliant early days, 
 when he lived in some of the tiptop society of this city, sir — a 
 society in which, we need not say, the custom always is for 
 gentlemen to treat other gentlemen to rum-and-water. Never 
 mind — I wish we were all as happy as the captain. I see his 
 jolly face now before me as it blooms through the window in 
 Thornhaugh Street, and the wave of the somewhat dingy hand 
 which sweeps me a gracious recognition. 
 
 The clergyman of the neighboring chapel was a very good 
 friend of the Little Sister, and has taken tea in her parlor ; to 
 which circumstance the captain frequently alluded, pointing out 
 the very chair on which the divine sat. Mr. Gann attended his 
 ministrations regularly every Sunday, and brought a rich, though 
 somewhat worn, bass voice to bear upon the anthems and hymns 
 at the chapel. His style was more florid than is general now 
 among church singers, and, indeed, had been acquired in a 
 former age and in the performance of rich Bacchanalian chants, 
 such as delighted the contemporaries of our Incledons and 
 Brahams. With a very little entreaty, the captain could be 
 induced to sing at the club ; and I must own that Phil Firmin 
 would draw the captain out, and extract from him a song of 
 ancient days ; but this must be in the absence of his daughter, 
 whose little face wore an air of such extreme terror and disturb- 
 ance when her father sang, that he presently ceased from exer- 
 cising his musical talents in her hearing. He hung up his lyre,
 
 1^8 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 whereof it must be owned that time had broken many of the 
 once resounding chords. 
 
 With a sketch or two contributed by her lodgers — with a 
 Taw gimcracks from the neighboring Wardour Street presented 
 by others of her friends — with the chairs, tables, and bureaux 
 as bright as bees'-wax and rubbing could make them — the 
 Little Sister's room was a cheery little place, and received not 
 a little company. She allowed Pa's pipe. " It's company to 
 him," she said. " A man can't be doing much harm when he 
 is smoking his pipe." And she allowed Phil's cigar. Any- 
 thing was allowed to Phil, the other lodgers declared, who pro- 
 fessed to be quite jealous of Philip Firmin. She had a very 
 few books. " When I was a girl I used to be always reading 
 novels," she said ; " but, la, they're mostly nonsense. There's 
 Mr. Pendennis, who comes to see Mr. Ridley. I wonder how 
 a married man can go on writing about love, and all that stuff! " 
 And, indeed, it is rather absurd for elderly fingers to be still 
 twanging Dan Cupid's toy bow and arrows. Yesterday is 
 gone — yes, but very well remembered ; and we think of it the 
 more now we know that To-morrow is not going to bring us 
 much. 
 
 Into Mrs. Brandon's parlor Mr. Ridley's old father would 
 sometimes enter of evenings, and share the bit of bread and 
 cheese, or the modest supper of Mrs. Brandon and the captain. 
 The homely little meal has almost vanquished out of our life 
 now, but in former days it assembled many a family round its 
 kindly board. A little modest supper-tray — a little quiet prat- 
 tle — a little kindly glass that cheered and never inebriated. I 
 can see friendly faces smiling round such a meal, at a period 
 not far gone, but how distant ! I wonder whether there are 
 any old folks now, in old quarters of old country towns, who 
 come to each other's houses in sedan-chairs, at six o'clock, and 
 play at quadrille until supper-tray time ? Of evenings Ridley 
 and the captain, I say, would have a solemn game at cribbage, 
 and the Little Sister would make make up a jug of something 
 good for the two oldsters. She liked Mr. Ridley to come, for 
 he always treated her father so respectful, and was quite the 
 gentleman. And as for Mrs. Ridley, Mr. R.'s " good lady," — 
 was she not also grateful to the Little Sister for having nursed 
 her son during his malady ? Through their connection they 
 were enabled to procure INIrs. Brandon many valuable friends ; 
 and always were pleased to pass an evening with the captain, 
 and were as civil to him as they could have been had he been 
 at the very height of his prosperity and splendor. My private
 
 ON HIS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. 
 
 159 
 
 opinion of the old captain, you see, is that he was a worthless 
 old captain, but most fortunate in his early ruin, after which he 
 had lived very much admired and comfortable, sufficient whiskey 
 being almost always provided for him. 
 
 Old Mr. Ridley's respect for her father afforded a most 
 precious consolation to the Little Sister. Ridley liked to have 
 the paper read to him. He was never quite easy with print, 
 and to his last days, many words to be met with in newspapers 
 and elsewhere used to occasion the good butler much intellec- 
 tual trouble. The Little Sister made his lodger's bills out for 
 him (Mr. R., as well as the captain's daughter, strove to in- 
 crease a small income by the letting of furnished apartments), 
 or the captain himself would take these documents in charge ; 
 he wrote a noble mercantile hand, rendered now somewhat 
 shaky by time, but still very fine in flourishes and capitals, and 
 very much at worthy Mr. Ridley's service. Time was, when 
 his son was a boy, that J. J. himself had prepared these ac- 
 counts, which neither his father nor his mother were very com- 
 petent to arrange. " We were not, in our young time, Mr. 
 Gann," Ridley remarked to his friend, " brought up to much 
 scholarship ; and very little book-learning was given to persons 
 in 7ny rank of life. It was necessary and proper for you gen- 
 tlemen, of course, sir." " Of course, Mr. Ridley," winks the 
 other veteran over his pipe. " But I can't go and ask my son 
 John James to keep his old father's books now as he used to 
 do — which to do so is, on the part of you and Mrs. Brandon, 
 the part of true friendship, and I value it, sir, and so do my 
 son John James reckonize and value it, sir." Mr. Ridley had 
 served gentlemen of the bonne ecolc. No nobleman could be 
 more courtly and grave than he was. In Mr. Gann's manner 
 there was more humorous playfulness, which in no way, how- 
 ever, diminished the captain's high breeding. As he continued 
 to be intimate with Mr, Ridley, he became loftier and more 
 majestic. I think each of these ciders acted on the other, and 
 for good ; and I hope Ridley's opinion was correct, that Mr. 
 Gann was ever the gentleman. To see these two good fogies 
 together was a spectacle for edification. Their tumblers kissed 
 each other on the table. Their elderly friendship brought 
 comfort to themselves and their families. A little matter of 
 money once created a coolness between the two old gentlemen. 
 But the Little Sister paid the outstanding account between her 
 father and Mr. Ridley : there never was any further talk of 
 pecuniary loans between them ; and when they went to the 
 " Admiral Byng," each paid for himself.
 
 i6o THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 Phil often heard of that nightly meeting at the " Admiral's 
 Head," and longed to be of the company. ]]ut even when he 
 saw the old gentlemen in the Little Sister's parlor, they felt 
 dimly that he was making fun of them. The captain would 
 not have been able to brag so at ease had Pliil been continually 
 watching him. " I have 'ad the honor of waiting on your 
 worthy father at my Lord Todmorden's table. Our little club 
 ain't no place for you, Mr, Philip, nor for my son, though he's 
 a good son, and proud me and his mother is of him, which he 
 ha\'e never gave us a moment's pain, except when he was ill, 
 since he have came to man's estate, most thankful am I, and 
 with my hand on my heart, for to be able to say so. Put what 
 is good for me and Mr. Gann, won't suit you young gentlemen. 
 You ain't a tradesman, sir, else I'm mistaken in the family, 
 which I thought the Ringwoods one of the best in England, 
 and the Firmins, a good one likewise." Mr. Ridley loved the 
 sound of his own voice. At the festive meetings of the club, 
 seldom a night passed in which he did not compliment his 
 brother Byngs and air his own oratory. Under this reproof 
 Phil blused, and hung his conscious head with shame. " Mr. 
 Ridley," says he, " you shall find I won't come where I am 
 not welcome ; and if I come to annoy you at the ' Admiral 
 Byng,' may I be taken out on the quarterdeck and shot." On 
 which INIr. Ridley pronounced Philip to be a " most sing'lar, 
 astrornar}.', and ascentric young man. A good heart, sir. Most 
 generous to relieve distress. Fine talent, sir ; but I fear — I 
 fear they won't come to much good, Mr. Gann — saving your 
 presence, Mrs. Brandon, m'm, which, of course, you always 
 stand up for him." 
 
 When Philip Firmin had had his pipe and his talk with the 
 Little Sister in her parlor, he would ascend and smoke his 
 second, third, tenth pipe in J. J. Ridley's studio. He would 
 pass hours before J. J.'s easel, pouring out talk about politics, 
 about religion, about poetry, about women, about the dreadful 
 slavishness and meanness of the world ; unwearied in talk and 
 idleness, as placid J. J. was in listening and labor. The painter 
 had been too busy in life over his easel to read many books. 
 His ignorance of literature smote him with a frequent shame. 
 He admired book-writers, and young men of the university who 
 quoted their Greek and their Horace glibly. He listened with 
 deference to their talk on such matters ; no doubt got good 
 hints from some of them ; was always secretly pained and 
 surprised when the university gentlemen were beaten in argu- 
 ment, or loud and coarse in conversation, as sometimes they
 
 ON HIS WAY THROUGH rilE WORLD. i6i 
 
 would be. *' J. J. is a very clever fellow of course." Mr. Jar- 
 man would say of him, " and the luckiest man in Europe. He 
 loves painting, and he is at work all day. He loves toadying 
 fine people, and he goes to a tea-party every night." You all 
 knew Jarman of Charlotte Street, the miniature-painter ? He 
 was one of the kings of the " Haunt." His tongue spared no 
 one. He envied all success, and the sight of prosperity made 
 him furious : but to the unsuccessful he was kind ; to the poor 
 eager with help and prodigal of compassion ; and that old talk 
 about nature's noblemen and the glory of labor was very fiercely 
 and eloquently waged by him. His friends admired him ; he 
 was the soul of independence, and thought most men sneaks 
 who wore clean linen and frequented gentlemen's society : but 
 it must be owned his landlords had a bad opinion of him, and 
 I have heard of one or two of his pecuniary transactions which 
 certainly were not to Mr. Jarman's credit. Jarman was a man 
 of remarkable humor. He was fond of the widow, and would 
 speak of her goodness, usefulness, and honesty with tears in 
 his eyes. She was poor and struggling yet. Had she been 
 wealthy and prosperous, Mr. Jarman would not have been so 
 alive to her merit. 
 
 We ascend to the room on the first floor, where the centre 
 window has been heightened, so as to afford an upper light, and 
 under that stream of radiance we behold the head of an old 
 friend, Mr. J, J. Ridley, the R. Academician. Time has some- 
 what thinned his own copious locks, and prematurely streaked 
 the head with silver. His face is rather wan ; the eager, sensi- 
 tive hand which poises brush and palette, and quivers over the 
 picture, is very thin : round his eyes are many lines of ill health 
 and, perhaps, care, but the eyes are as bright as ever, and, 
 when they look at the canvas or the model which he transfers 
 to it, clear, and keen, and happy. He has a very sweet singing 
 voice, and warbles at his work, or whistles at it, smiling. He 
 sets his hand little feats of skill to perform, and smiles with a 
 boyish pleasure at his own matchless dexterity. I have seen 
 him, with an old pewter mustard-pot for a model, fashion a 
 splendid silver flagon in one of his pictures ; paint the hair of 
 an animal, the folds and flowers of a bit of brocade, and so 
 forth, with a perfect delight in the work he was performing : a 
 delight lasting from morning to sundown, during which time he 
 was too busy to touch the biscuit and glass of water which was 
 prepared for his frugal luncheon. He is greedy of the last 
 minute of light, and never can be got from his darling pictures 
 without a regret. To be a painter, and to have your hand in
 
 l62 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 perfect command, I hold to be one of life's summa bona. The 
 happy mixture of hand and head work must render the occu- 
 pation supremely pleasant. In the day's work must occur 
 endless delightful diriiculties and occasions for skill. Over 
 the details for that armor, that drapery, or what not, the sparkle 
 of that eye, the downy blush of that cheek, the jewel on that 
 neck, there are battles to be fought and victories to be won. 
 Each day there must occur critical moments of supreme strug- 
 gle and triumph, when struggle and victory must be both 
 invigorating and exquisitely pleasing — as a burst across country 
 is to a fine rider perfectly mounted, who knows that his courage 
 and his horse will never fail him. There is the excitement ot 
 the game, and the gallant delight in winning it. Of this sort 
 of admirable reward for their labor, no men, I think, have a 
 greater share than painters (perhaps a violin-player perfectly 
 and triumphantly performing his own beautiful composition 
 may be equally happy). Here is occupation : here is excite- 
 ment : here is struggle and victory : and here is profit. Can 
 man ask more from fortune ? Dukes and Rothschilds may be 
 envious of such a man. 
 
 Though Ridley has had his trials and troubles, as we shall 
 presently learn, his art has mastered them all. Black care 
 may have sat in crupper on that Pegasus, but has never un- 
 horsed the rider. In certain minds, art is dominant and supe- 
 rior to all beside — stronger than love, stronger than hate, or 
 care, or penury. As soon as the fever leaves the hand free, it 
 is seizing and fondling the pencil. Love may frown and be 
 false, but the other mistress never will. She is always true : 
 always new : always the friend, companion, inestimable con- 
 soler. So John Ja'mes Ridley sat at his easel from breakfast 
 till sundown, and never left his work quite willingly. I wonder 
 are men of other trades so enamored of theirs ; whether lawyers 
 cling to the last to their darling reports ; or writers prefer 
 their desks and inkstands to society, to friendship, to dear idle- 
 ness ? I have seen no men in life loving their profession so 
 much as painters, except, perhaps, actors, who, when not 
 engaged themselves, always go to the play. 
 
 Before this busy easel Phil would sit for hours, and pour 
 out endless talk and tobacco-smoke. His presence was a 
 tlelight to Ridley's soul ; his face a sunshine ; his voice a cor- 
 dial. Weakly himself, and almost infirm of bod}', with sensibil- 
 ities tremulously keen, the painter most admired amongst men 
 strength, health, good spirits, good breeding. Of these, in his 
 youth, Philip had a wealth of endowment ; and I hope these
 
 ON HIS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. 163 
 
 precious gifts of fortune have not left him in his maturer age. 
 I do not say that with all men Philip was so popular. There 
 are some who never can pardon good fortune, and in the com- 
 pany of gentlemen are on the watch for offence ; and, no doubt, 
 in his course through life, poor downright Phil trampled upon 
 corns enough of those who met him in his way. " Do you 
 know why Ridley is so fond of Firmin ? " asked Jarman. 
 " Because Firmin's father hangs on to the nobility by the pulse, 
 whilst Ridley, you know, is connected with them through the 
 side-board." So Jarman had the double horn for his adver- 
 sary : he could despise a man for not being a gentleman, and 
 insult him for being one; I have met with people in the world 
 with whom the latter offence is an unpardonable crime — a cause 
 of ceaseless doubt, division, and suspicion. What more com- 
 mon or natural, Bufo, than to hate another for being what you 
 are not? The story is as old as frogs, bulls, and men. 
 
 Then, to be sure, besides your enviers in life, there are 
 your admirers. Beyond wit, which he understood — beyond 
 genius, which he had — Ridley admired good looks and man- 
 ners, and always kept some simple hero whom he loved secretly 
 to cherish and worship. He loved to be amongst beautiful 
 women and aristocratical men. Philip Firmin, with his repub- 
 lican notions and downright bluntness of behavior to all men 
 of rank superior to him, had a grand high manner of his own ; 
 and if he had scarce twopence in his pocket, would have put 
 his hands in them with as much independence as the greatest 
 dandy who ever sauntered on Pall Mall pavement. What a 
 coolness the fellow had ! Some men may, not unreasonably, 
 have thought it impudence. It fascinated Ridley. To be such 
 a man ; to have such a figure and manner ; to be able to look 
 society in the face, slap it on the shoulder, if you were so 
 minded, and hold it by the button — what would not Ridley 
 give for such powers and accomplishments ? You will please 
 to bear in mind, I am not saying that J. J. was right, only that 
 he was as he was. I hope we shall have nobody in this story 
 without his little faults and peculiarities. Jarman was quite 
 right when he said Ridley loved fine company. I believe his 
 pedigree gave him secret anguishes. He would rather have 
 been gentleman than genius ever so great ; but let you and me, 
 who have no weaknesses of our own, try and look charitably on 
 this confessed foible of my friend. 
 
 J. J. never thought of rebuking Philip for being idle. Phil 
 was as the lilies of the field, in the painter's opinion. He was 
 OOt called upon to toil or spin ; but to take his ease, and grow
 
 164 
 
 rHE ADVENTURES OF PI UUP 
 
 and bask in sunshine, and be arrayed in glory. The little 
 clique of painters knew what Firmin's means were. Thirty 
 thousand pounds of his own. Thirty thousand pounds down, 
 sir ; and the inheritance of his father's immense fortune ! A 
 splendor emanated from this gifted young man. His opinions, 
 his jokes, his laughter, his song, had the weight of thirty thou- 
 sand down, sir ; and &c., &:c. What call had he to work ? 
 Would you set a young nobleman to be an apprentice ? Philip 
 was free to be as idle as any lord, if he liked. He ought to 
 wear fine clothes, ride fine horses, dine off plate, and drink 
 champagne eveiy day. J. J. would work quite cheerfully till 
 sunset, and have an eightpenny plate of meat in Wardour 
 Street and a glass of porter for his humble dinner. At the 
 " Haunt," and similar places of Bohemian resort, a snug place 
 near the fire was always found for Firmin. Fierce republican 
 as he was, Jarman had a smile for his lordship, and used to 
 adopt particularly dandified airs when he had been invited to 
 Old Parr Street to dinner. I dare say Philip liked flatter)-. I 
 own that he was a little weak in this respect, and that you and 
 I, my dear sir, are, of course, far his superiors. J. J., who 
 loved him, would have had him follow his aunt's and cousin's 
 advice, and live in better company; but I think the painter 
 would not have liked his pet to soil his hands with too much 
 work, and rather admired Mr. Phil for being idle. 
 
 The Little Sister gave him advice, to be sure, both as to the 
 company he should keep and the occupation which was whole- 
 some for him. But when others of his acquaintance hinted 
 that his idleness would do him harm, she would not hear of 
 their censure. "Whv should he work if he don't choose.^" 
 she asked. *" He has ' no call to be scribbling and scrabbling. 
 You wouldn't have ///;;/ sitting all day painting little dolls' 
 heads on canvas, and working like a slave. A pretty idea, 
 indeed ! His uncle will get him an appointment. That's the 
 thing he should have. He should be secretary 10 an ambas- 
 sador abroad, and he will be ! " In fact Phil, at tliis period, 
 used to announce his wish to enter the diplomatic service, and 
 his hope that Lord Ringwood would further his views in that 
 respect. Meanwhile he was the king of Thornhaugh Street. 
 He might be as idle as he chose, and Mrs. Brandon had always 
 a smile for him. He might smoke a great deal too much, but 
 she worked dainty little cigar-cases for him. She hemmed his 
 fine cambric pocket-handkercliiefs, and embroidered Iiis crest 
 at the corners. She worked him a waistcoat so splendid that 
 he almost blushed to wear it, gorgeous as he was in apparel at
 
 ON HIS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. 165 
 
 this period, and sumptuous in chains, studs, and haberdashery. 
 I fear Dr. Firniin, sighing out his disappointed hopes in respect 
 of his son, has rather good cause for his dissatisfaction. But 
 of these remonstrances the Litde Sister would not hear. " Idle, 
 why not ? Why should he work ? Boys will be boys. I dare 
 say his grumbling old Pa was not better than Philip when he 
 was young ! " And this she spoke with a heightened color in 
 her little face, and a defiant toss of her head, of which I did 
 not understand all the significance then ; but attributed her 
 eager partisanship to that admirable injustice which belongs to 
 all good women, and for which let us be daily thankful. I 
 know, dear ladies, you are angry at this statement. But, even 
 at the risk of displeasing jc;?<r, we must tell the truth. You 
 would wish to represent yourselves as equitable, logical, and 
 strictly just. So, I dare say Dr. Johnson would have liked 
 Mrs. Thrale to say to him, '"' Sir, your manners are graceful ; 
 your person elegant, cleanly, and eminently pleasing ; your 
 appetite small (especially for tea), and your dancing equal to 
 the Violetta's ; " which, you perceive, is merely ironical. 
 Women equitable, logical, and strictly just ! Mercy upon us ! 
 If they were, population would cease, the world would be a 
 howling wilderness, Well, in a word, this Little Sister petted 
 and coaxed Philip Firmin in such an absurd way that every 
 one remarked it — those who had no friends, no sweethearts, no 
 mothers, no daughters, no wives, and those who were petted, 
 and coaxed, and spoiled at home themselves ; as I trust, dearly 
 beloved, is your case. 
 
 Now, again, let us admit that Philip's father had reason to 
 be angry with the boy, and deplore his son's taste for low com- 
 pany ; but excuse the young man, on the other hand, somewhat 
 for ills fierce revolt and profound distaste at much in his home 
 circle which annoyed him. "By heaven ! " he would roar out, 
 pulling his hair and whiskers, and with many fierce ejaculations, 
 according to his wont, " the solemnity of those humbugs sickens 
 me so, that I should like to crown the old bishop with the soup- 
 tureen, and box Baron Bumpsher's ears with the saddle of mut- 
 ton. At my aunt's, the humbug is just the same. It's better 
 done, perhaps ; but oh, Pendennis ! if you could but know the 
 pangs which tore into my heart, sir, the vulture which gnawed 
 at this confounded liver, when I saw women — women who ought 
 to be pure — women who ought to be like angels — women who 
 ought to know no art but that of coaxing our griefs away and 
 soothing our sorrows — fawning, and cringeing, and scheming : 
 cold to this person, humble to that, flattering to the rich, and
 
 1 66 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 indifferent to the humble in station. I tell you I have seen all 
 this, Mrs. Pendennis ! 1 won't mention names, but I have met 
 with those who have made me old before my time — a hundred 
 years old ! The zest of life is passed from me " (here Mr. Phil 
 would gulp a bumper from the nearest decanter at hand). "Put 
 if I like what your husband is pleased to call low society, it is 
 because I have seen the other. I have dangled about at fine 
 parties, and danced at fashionable balls. I have seen mothers 
 bring their virgin daughters up to battered old rakes, and ready 
 to sacrifice their innocence for fortune or a title. The atmos- 
 phere of those polite drawing-rooms stifles me. I can't bow the 
 knee to the horrible old Mammon. I walk about in the crowds 
 as lonely as if I was in a wilderness ; and don't begin to breathe 
 freely until I get some honest tobacco to clear the air. As for 
 your husband " (meaning the WTiter of this memoir), " he can- 
 not help himself ; he is a wordling, of the earth, earthy. If 
 a duke were to ask him to dinner to-morrow, the parasite owns 
 that he would go. Allow me, my friends, my freedom, my 
 rough companions, in their work-day clothes. I don't hear such 
 lies and flatteries come from behind pipes, as used to pass 
 from above white chokers when I was in the world." And he 
 would tear at his cravat, as though the mere thought of the 
 world's conventionality wellnigh strangled him. 
 
 This, to be sure, was in a late state of his career, but I 
 take up t«he biography here and there, so as to give the best idea 
 I may of my friend's character. At this time— he is out of the 
 country just now, and besides, if he saw his own likeness staring 
 him in the face, I am confident he would not know it — Mr. 
 Philip, in some things, was as obstinate as a mule, and in others 
 as weak as a woman. He had a childish sensibility for what 
 was tender, helpless, pretty or pathetic ; and a mighty scorn of 
 imposture, wherever he found it. He had many good purposes, 
 which were often very vacillating, and were but seldom performed. 
 He had a vast number of evil habits, whereof, you know, idle- 
 ness is said to be the root. Many of these evil propensities he 
 coaxed and cuddled with much care ; and though he roared out 
 peccavi most frankly when charged with his sins, this criminal 
 would fall to peccation very soon after promising amendment. 
 What he liked he would have. What he disliked he could with 
 the greatest difficulty be found to do. He liked good dinners, 
 good wine, good horses, good clothes, and late hours ; and in 
 all these comforts of life (or any others which he fancied, or 
 which were within his means) he indulged himself with perfect 
 freedom. He hated hypocrisy on his own part, and hypocrites
 
 ON HIS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. 167 
 
 in general. He said everything that came into his mind about 
 things and people ; and, of course, was often wrong and often 
 prejudiced, and often occasioned howls of indignation or ma- 
 lignant whispers of hatred by his free speaking. He believed 
 everything that was said to him until his informant had misled 
 him once "or twice, after which he would believe nothing. And 
 here you will see that his impetuous credulity was as absurd 
 as the subsequent obstinacy of his unbelief. My dear young 
 friend, the profitable way in life is the middle way. Don't quite 
 believe anybody, for he' may mislead you ; neither disbelieve 
 him, for that is uncomplimentary to your friend. Black is not 
 so very black ; and as for white, hon Dim ! in our climate what 
 paint will remain white long ? If Philip was self-indulgent, I 
 suppose other people are self-indulgent likewise : and besides 
 you know, your faultless heroes have ever so long gone out of 
 fashion. To be young, to be good-looking, to be healthy, to be 
 hungry three times a day, to have plenty of money, a great alac- 
 rity of sleeping, and nothing to do — all these, I dare say, are 
 very dangerous temptations to a man, but I think I know some 
 who would like to undergo the dangers of the trial. Suppose 
 there be holidays, is there not work-time too ? Suppose to-day 
 is feast-day ; may not tears and repentance come to-morrow ? 
 Such times are in store for Master Phil, and so please to let 
 him have rest and comfort for a chapter or two. 
 
 CHAPTER Vn. 
 
 IMPLETUR VETERIS BACCHI. 
 
 That time, that merry time, of Brandon's, of Bohemia, of 
 oysters, of idleness, of smoking, of song at night and profuse 
 soda-water in the morning, of a pillow, lonely and bachelor it 
 is true, but with few cares for bedfellows, of plenteous pocket- 
 money, of ease for to-day and little heed for to-morrow, was 
 often remembered by Philip in after days. Mr. Phil's views of 
 life were not very exalted, were they ? The fruits of this world, 
 which he devoured with such gusto, I must own were of the 
 common kitchen-garden sort ; and the lazy rogue's ambition 
 went no farther than to stroll along the sunshiny wall, eat his 
 fill, and then repose comfortably in the arbor under the arched 
 vine. Why did Phil's mother's parents leave her thirty thou-
 
 l6S THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 sand pounds? I dare say some misguided people would be 
 glad to do as much for their sons ; but, if I have ten, I am 
 determined they shall either have a hundred thousand a piece, 
 or else bare bread and cheese. " Man was made to labor, and 
 to be lazy," Phil would affirm with his usual energy of expres- 
 sion. " When the Indian warrior goes on the hunting path, he 
 is sober, active, indomitable. No dangers fright him, and no 
 labors tire. He endures the cold of the winter ; he couches on 
 the forest leaves ; he subsists on frugal roots or the casual spoil 
 of his bow. When he returns to his village, he gorges to 
 repletion ; he sleeps, perhaps, to excess. When the game is 
 devoured, and the fire-water exhausted, again he sallies forth 
 into the wilderness ; he outclimbs the 'possum and he throttles 
 the bear. I am the Indian : and this 'Haunt ' is my wigwam ! 
 Barbara my squaw, bring me oysters ; bring me a jug of the 
 frothing black beer of the pale-faces, or I will hang up thy scalp 
 on my tent-pole ? " And old Barbara, the good old attendant 
 of this " Haunt " of Bandits, would say, " Law, Mr. Philip, how 
 vou do go on, to be sure ! " Where is the " Haunt " now ? and 
 where are the merry men all who there assembled .? The sign 
 is down ; the song is silent ; the sand is swept from the floor ; 
 the pipes are broken, and the ashes are scattered. 
 
 A little more gossip about his merry days, and we have done. 
 He, Philip, was called to the bar in due course, and at his call- 
 supper we assembled a dozen of his elderly and youthful friends. 
 The chambers in Parchment Buildings were given up to him 
 for this day. Mr. Van John, I think, was away attending a 
 steeple-chase ; but Mr. Cassidy was with us, and several of 
 Philip's acquaintances of school, college, and the world. There 
 was Philip's father, and Philip's uncle Twysden, and I, Phil's 
 revered and respectable school senior, and others of our ancient 
 seminary. There was Burroughs, the second wrangler of his 
 year, great in metaphysics, greater with the knife and fork. 
 There was Stackpole, Eblana's favorite child — the glutton of 
 all learning, the master of many languages, who stuttered and 
 blushed when he spoke his own. There was Pinkerton, who, 
 albeit an ignoramus at the university, was already winning pro- 
 digious triumphs at the Parliamentary bar, and investing in 
 Consols to the admiration of all his contemporaries. There 
 was Rosebury the beautiful, the May-Fair pet and delight of 
 Almack's, the cards on whose mantel-piece made all men open 
 the eyes of wonder, and some of us dart the scowl of envy. 
 There was my Lord Egham, Lord Ascot's noble son. There 
 was Tom Dale, who having carried on his university career too
 
 ON- ins WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. 169 
 
 splendidly, had come to i:;rief in the midst of it, and was now 
 meekly earning his bread iti the reporters' gallery, alongside of 
 Cassidy. There was Macbride, who, having thrown up his 
 fellowship and married his cousin, was now doing a brave battle 
 with poverty, and making literature feed him until law should 
 reward him more splendidly. There was Haythorn, the country 
 gentleman, who ever remembered his old college chums, and 
 kept the memory of that friendship up by constant reminders 
 of pheasants and game in the season. There were Raby and 
 Maynard from the Guards' Club (Maynard sleeps now under 
 Crimean snows), who preferred arms to the toga ; but carried 
 into their military life the love of their old books, the affection 
 of their old friends. Most of these must be mute personages 
 in our little drama. Could any chronicler remember the talk 
 of all of them ? 
 
 Several of the guests present were members of the Inn of 
 Court (the Upper Temple), which had conferred on Philip the 
 degree of Barrister-at-Law. He had dined in his wig and gown 
 (Blackmore's wig and gown) in the inn-hall that day, in company 
 with other members of his inn ; and, dinner over, we adjourned 
 to Phil's chambers in Parchment Buildings, where a dessert 
 was served, to which Mr. .Firmin's friends were convoked. 
 
 The wines came from Dr. Firmin's cellar. His servants 
 were in attendance to wait upon the company. Father and son 
 both loved splendid hospitalities, and, so far as creature com- 
 forts went, Philip's feast was richly provided. " A supper, I 
 love a supper of all things ! And in order that I might enjoy 
 yours,T only took a single mutton-chop for dinner ! " cried Mr. 
 Twysden, as he greeted Philip. Indeed, we found him, as we 
 arrived from Hall, already in the chambers, and eating the 
 young barrister's dessert. " He's been here ever so long," says 
 Mr. Price, who officiated as butler, " pegging away at the olives 
 and maccaroons. Shouldn't wonder if he has pocketed some." 
 There was small respect on the part of Brice for Mr. Twysden, 
 w^hom the worthy butler frankly pronounced to be a stingy 
 'umbug. Meanwhile, Talbot believed that the old man re- 
 spected him, and always conversed with Brice, and treated him 
 with a cheerful cordiality. 
 
 The outer Philistines quickly arrived, and but that the wine 
 and men were older, one might have fancied oneself at a college 
 wine-party. Mr. Twysden talked for the whole company. He 
 was radiant. He felt himself in high spirits. He did the 
 honors of Philip's table. Indeed, no man was more hospitable 
 with other folks' wine. Philip himself was silent and nervous.
 
 lyo THE ADVEl^TURES OF PHILIP 
 
 I asked him if the awful ceremony, which he had just undergonCi 
 was vveigliiiig on liis mind ? 
 
 He was looking rather anxiously towards the door ; and, 
 knowing somewhat of the stale of affairs at home, I thought 
 that probably he and his father had had one of the disputes 
 which of late days had become so frequent between them. 
 
 The company were nearly all assembled and busy with their 
 talk, and drinking the doctor's excellent claret, when Brice en- 
 tering, announced Dr. Firmin and Mr. Tufton Hunt. 
 
 " Hang Mr. Tufton Hunt," Philip was going to say ; but 
 he started up, went forward to his father, and greeted him very 
 respectfully. He then gave a bow to the gentlemen introduced 
 as Mr. Hunt, and they found places at the table, the doctor tak- 
 ing his with his usual handsome grace. 
 
 The conversation, which had been pretty brisk until Dr. 
 Firmin came, drooped a little after his appearance. " We had 
 an awful row two days ago," Philip whispered to me. "We 
 shook hands and are reconciled, as you see. He won't stay 
 long. He will be sent for in half an hour or so. He will say 
 he has been sent for by a duchess, and go and have tea at the 
 club." 
 
 Dr. Firmin bowed, and smiled sadly at me, as Philip was 
 speaking. I dare say I blushed somewhat, and felt as if the 
 doctor knew what his son was saying to me. He presently en- 
 gaged in conversation with Lord Egham ; he hoped his good 
 father was well 1 
 
 " You keep him so, doctor. You don't give a fellow a 
 chance," says the young lord. 
 
 " Pass the bottle, you young men ! Hey ! We intend to 
 see you all out! " cries Talbot Twysden, on pleasure bent and 
 of the frugal mind. 
 
 " Well said, sir," says the stranger introduced as Mr. Hunt ; 
 " and right good wine. Ha, Firmin ! I think I know the tap ! " 
 and he smacked his lips over the claret. " It's your twenty- 
 five, and no mistake." 
 
 " The red-nosed individual seems a connoisseur," whispered 
 Rosebury at my side. 
 
 The stranger's nose, indeed, was somewhat rosy. And to 
 this I may add that his clothes were black, his face pale, and 
 not well shorn, his white neckcloth dingy, and his eyes blood- 
 shot. 
 
 " He looks as if he had gone to bed in his clothes, and 
 carries a plentiful flue about his person. Who is your father's 
 esteemed friend ? " continues the wag, in an under voice.
 
 ON HIS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. 171 
 
 "You heard his name, Rosebury," says the young barrister, 
 gloomily. 
 
 " 1 should suggest that your father is in difficulties, and at- 
 tended by an officer of the sheriff of London, or perhaps sub- 
 ject to mental aberration, and placed under the control of a 
 keeper." 
 
 " Leave me alone, do ! " groaned Philip. And here Twys- 
 den, who was longing for an opportunity to make a speech, 
 bounced up from his chair, and stopped the facetious barrister's 
 further remarks by his own eloquence. His discourse was in 
 praise of Philip, the new-made barrister. " What ! if no one 
 else will give that toast, your uncle will, and many a heartfelt 
 blessing go with you too, my boy ! " cried the little man. He 
 was prodigal of benedictions. He dashed aside the tear-drop 
 of emotion. He spoke with perfect fluency, and for a con- 
 siderable period. He really made a good speech, and was 
 greeted with deserved cheers when at length he sat down. 
 
 Phil stammered a few words in reply to his uncle's voluble 
 compliments ; and then Lord Ascot, a young nobleman of much 
 familiar humor proposed Phil's father, his health, and song. 
 The physician made a neat speech from behind his ruffled shirt. 
 He was agitated by the tender feelings of a paternal heart, he 
 said, glancing benignly at Phil, who was cracking filberts. To 
 see his son happy j to see him surrounded by such friends; to 
 know him embarked this day in a profession which gave the 
 greatest scope for talents, the noblest reward for industr}', was 
 a proud and happy moment to him. Dr. Firmin. What had the 
 poet observed ? " Ingeniias didicisse fideliter artes " (hear hear !) 
 '' emollit jjwres,'" — yes, '' emol/it mores." He drank a bumper to 
 the young barrister (he waved his ring, with a thimbleful of 
 wine in his glass). He pledged the young friends whom he 
 saw assembled to cheer • his son on his onward path. He 
 thanked them with a father's heart ! He passed his emerald 
 ring across his eyes for a moment, and lifted them to the ceiling, 
 from which quarter he requested a blessing on his boy. As 
 though " spirits " approved of his invocation, immense thumps 
 came from above, along with the plaudits which saluted the 
 doctor's speech from the gentlemen round the table. But the 
 upper thumps were derisory, and came from Mr. Buffers, of the 
 third floor, who chose this method of mocking our harmless 
 little festivities. 
 
 I think these cheers from the facetious Buffers, though 
 meant in scorn of our party, served to enliven it and make us 
 laugh. Spite of all the talking, we were dull ; and I could not
 
 172 
 
 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP. 
 
 but allow the force of my neighbor's remark, that we were sat 
 upon and smothered by the old men. One or two of the 
 younger gentlemen chafed at the license for tobacco-smoking 
 not being yet accorded. But Philip interdicted this amusement 
 as yet. 
 
 " Don't," he said ; " my father don't like it. He has to see 
 patients to-night ; and they can't bear the smell of tobacco by 
 their bedsides." 
 
 The impatient youths waited with their cigar-cases by theii 
 sides. They longed for the withdrawal of the obstacle to their 
 happiness. 
 
 " He won't go, I tell you. He'll be sent for," growled 
 Philip to me. 
 
 The doctor was engaged in conversation to the right and 
 left of him, and seemed not to think of a move. But, sure 
 enough, at a few minutes after ten o'clock, Dr. Firmin's foot- 
 man entered the room with a note, which Firmin opened and 
 read, as Philip looked at me with a grim humor in his face. I 
 think Phil's father knew that we knew he was acting. How- 
 ever, he went through the comedy quite gravely. 
 
 " A physician's time is not his own," he said, shaking his 
 handsome, melancholy head. " Good-by, my dear lord! Pray 
 remember me at home ! Good-night, Philip, my boy, and good 
 speed to you in your career ! Pray, pray don't move." 
 
 And he is gone, waving the fair hand and the broad-brimmed 
 hat, with the beautiful white lining. Phil conducted him to 
 the door, and heaved a sigh as it closed upon his father — a sigh 
 of relief, I think, that he was gone. 
 
 " Exit Governor. What's the Latin for Governor ? " says 
 Lord Egham, who possessed much native humor, but not very 
 profound scholarship. "A most venerable old parent, Firmin. 
 That hat and appearance would command any sum of money." 
 
 " Excuse me," lisps Rosebury, "But why didn't he take his 
 elderly friend with him — the dilapidated clerical gentleman who 
 is drinking claret so freely ? And also, why did he not remove 
 your avuncular orator ? Mr. Twysden, your interesting young 
 neophyte has provided us with an excellent specimen of the 
 cheerful produce of the Gascon grape." 
 
 " Well, then, now the old gentleman is gone, let us pass the 
 bottle and make a night of it. Hey, my lord .-* " cries Twysden. 
 " Philip, your claret is good ! I say, do you remember some 
 Chateau Margaux I had, which Winton liked so ? It must be 
 good if he praised it, I can tell you. I imported it myself, and 
 gave him the address of the Bordeaux ..erchant; and he said
 
 ON HIS WAY rif ROUGH THE WORLD. 173 
 
 he had seldom tasted any like it. Those were his very words. 
 I must get you fellows to come and taste it some day." 
 
 " Some day ! What day ? Name it, generous Amphitryon ! " 
 cries Rosebury. 
 
 " Some day at seven o'clock. With a plain, quiet dinner — 
 a clear soup, a bit of fish, a couple of little entre'es, and a nice 
 little roast. That's my kind of dinner. And we'll taste that 
 claret, young men. It is not a heavy wine. It is not a first- 
 class wine. I don't mean even to say it is a dear wine, but it 
 has a bouquet and a pureness. What, you will smoke, you fel- 
 lows ? " 
 
 " We zvill do it, Mr. Twysden. Better do as the rest of us 
 do. Try one of these." 
 
 The little man accepts the proffered cigar from the young 
 nobleman's box, lights it, hems and hawks, and lapses into 
 silence, 
 
 " I thought that would do for him," murmurs the facetious 
 Egham. " It is strong enough to blow his old head olT, and I 
 wish it would. That cigar," he continues, " was given to my 
 father by the Duke of Medina Sidonia, who had it out of the 
 Queen of Spain's own box. She smokes a good deal, but 
 naturallv likes 'em mild. I can give you a stronger one." 
 
 •' Oh, no. I dare say this is very fine. Thank you ! " says 
 poor Talbot. 
 
 " Leave him alone, can't you ! " says Philip. " Don't make 
 a fool of him before the young men, Egham." 
 
 Phillip still looked very dismal in the midst of the festivity. 
 He was thinking of his differences with his absent parent. 
 
 We might all have been easily consoled, if the doctor had 
 taken away with him the elderly companion whom he had intro- 
 duced to Phil's feast. He could not have been very weJcome 
 to our host, for Phil scowled at his guest, and whispered, " Hang 
 Hunt ! " to his neighbor. 
 
 " Hans: Hunt " — the Reverend Tufton Hunt was his name — 
 was in nowise disconcerted by the coolness of his reception. He 
 drank his wine very freely ; addressed himself to his neighbors 
 affably ; and called out a loud " Hear, hear ! " to Twysden, 
 when that gentleman announced his intention of making a 
 night of it. As Mr. Hunt warmed with wine he spoke to the 
 table. He talked a great deal about the Ringwood family, had 
 been very intimate at Wingate, in old days, as he told Mr. 
 Twysden, and an intimate friend of poor Cinqbars, Lord Ring- 
 wood's only son. Now the memory of the late Lord Cinqbars 
 was not an agreeable recollection to the relatives of the house
 
 1 7 4 THE A D I EA TUKES OE PHIL fP 
 
 of Ringwood. He was in life a dissipated and disreputable 
 young lord. His name was seldom mentioned in his family; 
 never by his father, witla whom he had had many quarrels. 
 
 "You know I introduced Cinqbars to your father, Philip ? " 
 calls out the dingy clergyman. 
 
 " I have heard you mention the fact," says Philip. 
 
 "They met at a wine in my room at Corpus. Brummell 
 Firmin we used to call your father in those days. He was the 
 greatest buck in the university — always a dressy man, kept 
 hunters, gave the best dinners in Cambridge. Wt were a wild 
 set. There was Cinqbars, Brand Firmin, Beryl, Toplady, about 
 a dozen of us, almost all noblemen or fellow-commoners — 
 fellows who all kept their horses and had their private servants," 
 
 This speech was addressed to the company, who yet did not 
 seem much edified by the college recollections of the dingy 
 elderly man. 
 
 " Almost all. Trinity men, sir ! We dined with each other 
 week about. Many of them had their tandems. Desperate 
 fellow across country your father was. And — but we don't tell 
 tales out of school, hey } " 
 
 " No ; please don't, sir," said Philip, clenching his fists, 
 and biting his lips. The shabby, ill-bred, swaggering man was 
 eating Philip's salt ; Phil's lordly ideas of hospitality did not 
 allow him to quarrel with tlie guest under his tent. 
 
 " When he went out in medicine, we were all of us astonished. 
 Why, sir. Brand Firmin, at one time, was the greatest swell in 
 the university," continued Mr. Hunt, " and such a plucky 
 fellow ! So was poor Cinqbars, though he had no stamina. 
 He, I, and Firmin, fought for twenty minutes before Cains' 
 Gate with about twenty bargemen, and you should have seen 
 your father hit out ! I was a handy one iii those days, too, 
 with my fingers. We learned the noble art of self-defence in 
 m)- time, young gentlemen ! We used to have Glover, the 
 boxer, down from London who ga\ e us lessons. Cinqbars was 
 a pretty sparrer — but no stamina. Brandy killed him, sir — 
 brandy killed him ! Why, this is some of your governor's wine ! 
 He and I have been drinking it to-night in Parr Street, and 
 talking o\cr old times." 
 
 " I am glad, sir, you found the wine to your taste," says 
 Philip, gravely. 
 
 " I did, Philip, my boy ! And when your father said he was 
 coming to your wine, I said I'd come too." 
 
 " I wish somebody would fling him out of the window," 
 groaned Philip.
 
 ON Ills WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. 
 
 17s 
 
 "A most potent, grave and, reverend senior," whispered 
 Rosebur)' to me. " I read billiards, Boulogne, gambling- 
 houses, in his noble lineaments. Has he long adorned your 
 family circle, Firmin 1 " 
 
 " I found him at home about a month ago in my father's 
 ante-room, in the same clothes, with a pair of mangy mus- 
 taches on his face; and he has been at our house every day since." 
 
 " Echappc de Toulon,^' says Rosebury, blandly, looking 
 towards the stranger. Celacevoit. Homme parfaitment distingue. 
 You are quite right, sir. I was speaking of you, and asking 
 our friend Philip w^here it was I had the honor of meeting you 
 abroad last year ? This courtesy," he gently added, " will 
 disarm tigers." 
 
 " I tvas abroad, sir, last year," said the other, nodding his 
 head. 
 
 " Three to one he was in Boulogne jail, or perhaps offici- 
 ating chaplain at a gambling house. Stop, I have it ! Baden 
 Baden, sir t " 
 
 " I was there, safe enough," says the clerg^^man. " It is a 
 very pretty place ; but the air of the Apres kills you. Ha ! ha ! 
 Your father used to shake his elbow when he was a youngster, 
 too, Philip ! I can't help calling you Philip. I have known 
 your father these thirty years. We were college chums, you 
 know." 
 
 " Ah ! what would I give," sighs Rosebur}', " if that vener- 
 able being would but address me by my Christian name ! 
 Philip do something to make your party go. The old gentle- 
 men are throttling it. Sing something, somebody ! or let us 
 drown our melancholy in wine. You expressed your approba- 
 tion of this claret, sir, and claimed a previous acquaintance with 
 it .? " 
 
 " I've drunk two dozen of it in the last month," says Mr. 
 Hunt, with a grin. 
 
 " Two dozen and four, sir," remarks Mr. Price, putting a 
 fresh bottle on the table. 
 
 " Well said, Brice ! I make the Firmin Arms my head- 
 quarters ; and honor the landlord with a good deal of my com- 
 pany," remarks Mr. Hunt. 
 
 " The Firmin Arms is honored by having such supporters ! " 
 says Phil, glaring, and with a heaving chest. At each moment 
 he was growing more and more angry with that parson. 
 
 At a certain stage of conviviality Phil was fond of talking 
 of his pedigree ; and, though a professor of very liberal opin- 
 ions, was not a little proud of some of his ancestors.
 
 1^6 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 " Oh, come, I say ! Sink the heraldry ! " cries Lord Egham. 
 
 " I am ver) sorry ! I would do anything to oblige you, 
 but I can't help being a gentleman ! " growls Philip. 
 
 " Oh, I say ! if you intend to come King Richard III. over 
 us — " breaks out my lord. 
 
 " Egham ! your ancestors were sweeping counters when 
 mine stood by King Richard in that righteous fight ! " shouts 
 
 Philip. 
 
 That monarch had conferred lands upon the Ringwood 
 family. Richard TIL was Philip's battle-horse; when he trot- 
 ted it after dinner he was splendid in his chivalry, 
 
 " Oh, I say ! If you are to saddle White Surrey, fight Bos- 
 worth Field, and murder the kids in the Tower !" continues 
 Lord Egham. 
 
 " Serve the little brutes right ! " roars Phil. " They were 
 no more heirs of the blood royal of England than " 
 
 "I dare say! Only I'd rather have a song now the old 
 boy is gone. I say, you fellows, chant something, do now ! 
 Bar all this row about Bosworth Field and Richard the Third. 
 Always does it when he's beer on board— always does it, give you 
 my honor ! " whispers the young nobleman to his neighbor. 
 
 " 1 am a fool ! I am a fool ! " cries Phil, smacking his 
 forehead. " There are moments when the wrongs of my race 
 7vill intervene. It's not your fault, Mr. What-d'ye-call-'im, that 
 you alluded to my arms in a derisive manner. I bear you no 
 malice ! Nay, I ask your pardon ! Nay ! I pledge you in this 
 claret, which is good, though it's my governor's. In our house 
 
 everything isn't, hum Bosh ! its twenty-five claret, sir ! 
 
 Egham's father gave him a pipe of it for saving a life which 
 which might be better spent ; and I believe the apothecary 
 would have pulled you through, Egham, just as well as my 
 governor. But the wine's good ! Good ! Brice, some more 
 claret ! A song ! Who spoke of a song ? Warble us some- 
 thing, Tom Dale ! A song, a song, a song ! " 
 
 Whereupon the exquisite ditty of " Moonlight on the Tiles " 
 was given by Tom Dale with all his accustomed humor. Then 
 politeness demanded that our host should sing one of his songs, 
 and as 1 have heard him perform it many times, I have the 
 privilege of here reprinting it : premising that the tune and 
 chorus were taken from a German song-book, which used to 
 delight us melodious youth in bygone days. Philip accord- 
 ingly lifted up his great voice and sang : —
 
 ON HIS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. lyy 
 
 DOCTOR LUTHER. 
 
 " For the souls' edification 
 Of this decent congregation, 
 Worthy people 1 by your grant, 
 I will sing a holy chant, 
 
 I will snig a holy chant. 
 If the ditty sound but oddly, 
 'Twas a father wise and godly, 
 Sang it so long ago. 
 
 Then sing as Doctor Luther sang. 
 
 As Doctor Luther sang, 
 
 Who loves not wine, woman, and song, 
 
 He is a fool his whole life long. 
 
 " He by custom patriarchal, 
 Loved to see the beaker sparkle, 
 And he thought the wine improved, 
 Tasted by the wife he loved, 
 
 By the kindly lips he loved. 
 Friends! I wish this custom pious 
 Duly were adopted by us, 
 To combine love, song, wine ; 
 
 And sing as Doctor Luther sang, 
 
 As Doctor Luther sang. 
 
 Who loves not wine, woman, and song, 
 
 He is a fool his whole life long. 
 
 " Who refuses this our credo. 
 And demurs to drink as we do. 
 Were he holy as John Knox, 
 I'd pronounce him heterodox. 
 
 I'd pronounce him heterodox. 
 And from out this congregation, 
 With a solemn commination, 
 Banish quick the heretic, 
 
 Who would not sing as Luther sang, 
 
 As Djctor Luther sang, 
 
 Who loves not wine, woman, and song. 
 
 He is a fool his whole life long." 
 
 The reader's humble servant was older than most of the 
 party assembled at this symposium, which may have taken 
 place some score of years back ; but as I listened to the 
 noise, the fresh laughter, the songs remembered out of old uni- 
 versity days, the talk and cant phrases of the old school of 
 which most of us had been disciples, dear me, I felt quite young 
 again, and when certain knocks came to the door about mid- 
 night, enjoyed quite a refreshing pang of anxious interest for a 
 moment, deeming the proctors were rapping, having heard our 
 shouts in the court below. The late comer, however, was only 
 a tavern waiter, bearing a supper-tray ; and we were free to 
 speechify, shout, quarrel, and be as young as we liked, with 
 nobody to find fault, except, perchance, the bencher below, who, 
 I dare say, was kept awake with our noise. 
 
 When that supper arrived, poor Talbot Twysden, who had 
 come so far to enjoy it, was not in a state to partake of it. 
 Lord Egham's cigar had proved too much for him ; and the
 
 178 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 worthy gentleman had been lying on a sofa, in a neighboring 
 room, for some time past, in a state of hopeless collapse. He 
 had told us, whilst yet capable of speech, what a love and re- 
 gard he had for Philip ; but between him and I'hilip's father 
 there was but little love. They had had that worst and most 
 irremediable of quarrels, a difference about twopence-halfpenny 
 in the division of the property of their late father-in-law. Fir- 
 min still thought Twysden a shabby curmudgeon ; and Twysden 
 considered Firmin an unprincipled man. When Mrs. Firmin 
 was alive, the two poor sisters had had to regulate their affec- 
 tions by the marital orders, and to be warm, cool, moder- 
 ate, freezing, according to their husbands' state for the time 
 being. I wonder are there many real reconciliations } Dear 
 Tomkins and I are reconciled, I know. We have met and 
 dined at Jones's. And ah ! how fond we are of each other ! 
 Oh, very ! So with Firmin and Twysden. They met, and 
 shook hands with perfect animosity. So did Twysden junior 
 and Firmin junior. Young Twysden was the elder, and thrash- 
 ed and bullied Phil as a boy, until the latter arose and pitched 
 his cousin down stairs. Mentally, they were always kicking 
 each other down stairs. Well, poor Talbot could not partake 
 of the supper when it came, and lay in a piteous state on the 
 neighboring sofa of the absent Mr. Van John. 
 
 Who would go home with him, where his wife must be anx- 
 ious about him 1 I agreed to convoy him, and the parson said 
 he was going our way, and would accompany us. \\'e support 
 ed this senior through the Temple, and put him on the front 
 seat of a cab. The cigar had disgracefully overcome him ; and 
 any lecturer on the evils of smoking might have pointed his 
 moral on the helpless person of this wretched gentleman. 
 
 The evening's feasting had only imparted animation to Mr. 
 Hunt, and occasioned an agreeable abandon in his talk. I had 
 seen the man before in Dr. Firmin's house, and own that his 
 society was almost as odious to me as to the doctor's son 
 Philip. On all subjects and persons, Phil was accustomed to 
 speak his mind out a great deal too openly : and Mr. Hunt had 
 been an object of special dislike to him ever since he had 
 known Hunt. I tried to make the best of the matter. P'ew 
 men of kindly feeling and good station are without a dependent 
 or two. Men start together in the race of life ; and Jack wins, 
 and Tom falls by his side. The successful man succors 
 and reaches a friendly hand to the unfortunate competitor. 
 
 Remembrance of early times gives the latter a sort of right 
 to call on his luckier comrade ; and a man finds himself pity
 
 ON HIS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. i^fj 
 
 ing, then enduring, then embracing a companion for whom, in 
 old days, perhaps, he never had had any regard or esteem. A 
 prosperous man ought to have followers : if he has none, he 
 has a hard heart. 
 
 This jDhilosophizing was all very well. It was good for a 
 man not to desert the friends of his boyhood. But to live with 
 such a cad as that — with that creature, low, swaggering, be 
 sotted — " How could his father, who had fine tastes, and loved 
 grand company, put up with such a fellow .-• " asked Phil. " I 
 don't know when the man is more odious : when he is familiar, 
 or when he is respectful ; when he is paying compliments to my 
 father's guests in Parr Street, or telling hideous old stale stories, 
 as he did at my call-supper." 
 
 The wine of which Mr. Hunt freely partook on that occasion 
 made him, as I have said, communicative. " Not a bad fellow, 
 our host," he remarked, on his part, when we came away to- 
 gether. " Bumptious, good-looking, speaks his mind, hates me, 
 and I don't care. He must be well to do in the world. Master 
 Philip." 
 
 I said I hoped and thought so. 
 
 " Brummell Firmin must make four or five thousand a year. 
 He was a wild fellow in my time, I can tell you — in the days 
 of the wild Prince and Poins — stuck at nothing, spent his own 
 money, ruined himself, fell on his legs somehow, and married a 
 fortune. Some of us ha\'e not been so lucky. I had nobody 
 to pay my debts. I missed my fellowship by idling and dissi- 
 pating with those confounded hats and silver-laced gowns. I 
 liked good company in those days — always did when 1 could 
 get it. If you were to write my adventures, now, you would 
 have to tell some queer stories. I've been everywhere ; I've 
 seen high and low — 'specially low. I've tried school-mastering, 
 bear-leading, newspapering, America, West Indies. I've been 
 in every city in Europe. I haven't been as lucky as Brummell 
 Firmin. He rolls in liis coach, he does, and I walk in my high- 
 lows. Guineas drop into his palm every day, and are uncom- 
 monly scarce in mine, I can tell you ; and poor old Tufton 
 Hunt is not much better off at fifty odd than he was when he 
 was an undergraduate at eighteen. How do you do, old gen- 
 tleman } Air do you good } Here we are at Beaunash Street ; 
 hope you've got the key, and missis won't see you." A large 
 butler, too well bred to express astonishment at any event which 
 occurred out of doors, opened Mr. Twysden's, and let in that 
 lamentable gentleman. He was very pale and solemn. He 
 gasped out a few words, intimating his intention to fix a day to
 
 I So THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 ask us to come and dine soon, and taste that wine tliat Winton 
 liked so. He waved an unsteady liand to us. If Mrs. Twysden 
 was on tlie stairs to see the condition of her lord, I hope she 
 took possession of the candle. Hunt grumbled as we came out \ 
 " He might have offered us some refreshment after bringing 
 him all that way home. It's only half-past one. There's no 
 good in going to bed so soon as that. Let us go and have a 
 drink somewhere. I know a very good crib close by. No, you 
 won't ? I say " (here he burst into a laugh which startled the 
 sleeping street), " I know what you've been thinking all the 
 time in the cab. You are a swell, — you are, too ! You have 
 been thinking, ' This dreary old parson will try and borrow 
 money from me.' But I won't, my boy. I've got a banker. 
 Look here ! Fee, faw, fum. ^'ou understand. I can get the 
 sovereigns out of my medical swell in Old Parr Street. I pre- 
 scribe bleeding for him — I drew him co-night. He is a very 
 kind fellow, Brummell Firmin is. He can't deny such a dear 
 old friend anything. Bless him ! " And as he turned away to 
 some midnight haunt of his own, he tossed- up his hand in the 
 air. I heard him laughing through the silent street, and 
 Policeman X, tramping on his beat, turned round and suspi- 
 ciously eyed him. 
 
 Then I thought of Ur. Firmin's dark melancholy face and 
 eyes. Was a benevolent remembrance of old times the bond 
 of union between these men .-' All my house had long been 
 asleep, when I opened and gently closed my house door. By 
 the twinkling night-lamp I could dimly see child and mother 
 softly breathing. Oh, blessed they on whose pillow no remorse 
 sits ! Happy you who have escaped temptation ! 
 
 I may have been encouraged in my suspicions of the dingy 
 clergyman by Philip's own surmises regarding him, which were 
 expressed with the speaker's usual candor. " The fellow calls 
 for what he likes at the ' Urmin Arms,' " said poor Phil ; " and 
 when my father's big wigs assemble, I hojDe the reverend gentle- 
 man dines with them. I should like to see him hobnobbing 
 with old Bumpsher, or slapping the bishop on the back. He 
 lives in Sligo Street, round the corner, so as to be close to our 
 house and yet preserve his own elegant independence. Other- 
 wise, I wonder he has not installed himself in Old Parr Street, 
 where my poor mother's bedroom is vacant. The doctor does 
 not care to use that room. I remember now how silent they 
 were when together, and how terrified she always seemed be- 
 fore him. What has he done ? 1 know of one affair in his
 
 ON HIS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. i8i 
 
 early life. Does this Hunt know of any more ? They have 
 been accomplices in some conspiracy, sir; I dare say with that 
 young Cinqbars, of whom Hunt is for ever bragging : the worthy 
 son of the worthy Ringwood. I say, does wickedness run in 
 the blood ? My grandfathers, I have heard, were honest men. 
 Perhaps they were only not found out ; and the family taint 
 will show in me some day. There are times when I feel the 
 devil so strong within me, that I think some day he must have 
 the mastery. I'm not quite bad yet : but I tremble lest I should 
 go. Suppose I were to drown, and go down 1 It's not a jolly 
 thing, Pendennis, to have such a father as mine. Don't hum- 
 bug 7ne with your charitable palliations and soothing surmises. 
 You put me in mind of the world then, by Jove, you do ! I 
 laugh, and I drink, and I make merry, and sing, and smoke 
 endless tobacco ; and I tell you, I always feel as if a little sword 
 was dangling over my skull which will fall some day and split it. 
 Old Parr Street is mined, sir, — mined ! And some morning we 
 shall be blown into blazes — into blazes, sir ; mark my words ! 
 That's why I'm so careless and so idle, for which j'ou fellows 
 are always bothering and scolding me. There's no use in set- 
 tling down until the explosion is over, don't you see ? Licedo 
 per ignes suppositos, and, by George ! sir, I feel my bootsoles 
 already scorching. Poor thing ! poor mother " (he apostro- 
 phized his mother's picture which hung in the room where we 
 were talking), " were you aware of the secret, and was it the 
 knowledge of that which made your poor eyes always look so 
 frightened? She was always fond of you. Pen. Do you re- 
 member how pretty and graceful she used to look as she lay on 
 her sofa up stairs, or smiled out of her carriage as she kissed 
 her hand to us boys ? I say, what if a woman marries, and is 
 coaxed and wheedled by a soft tongue, and runs off, and after- 
 wards finds her husband has a cloven foot .-" " 
 
 " Ah, Philip ! " 
 
 " What is to be the lot of the son of such a man ? Is my 
 hoof cloven, too .'' " It was on the stove, as he talked, extended 
 in American fashion. " Suppose there's no escape for me, and 
 I inherit my doom, as another man does gout or consumption ? 
 Knowing this fate, what is the use, then, of doing anything in 
 particular ? I tell you, sir, the whole edifice of our present life 
 will crumble in and smash." (Here he flings his pipe to the 
 ground with an awful shatter.) " And until the catastrophe 
 comes, what on earth is the use of setting to work, as you call 
 it ? You might as well have told a fellow, at Pompeii, to select 
 a profession the day before the eruption."
 
 1 82 THE AD VENTURES ' OF PI HI. IP 
 
 " If you know that Vesuvius is going to burst over Pompeii/' 
 I said, somewhat alarmed, " why not go to Naples, or farther if 
 you will ? " 
 
 "Were there not men in the sentry-boxes at the city gates," 
 asked Philip, " who might have run, and yet remained to be 
 burned there ? Suppose, after all, the doom isn't hanging over 
 us, — and Lhe fear of it is only a nervous terror of mine? Sup- 
 pose it comes, and I survive it ? The risk of the game gives a 
 zest to it, old boy. Besides, there is Honor : and some One 
 Else is in the case, from whom a man cduld not part in an hour 
 of danger." And here he blushed a fine red, heaved a great 
 sigh, and emptied a bumper of claret. 
 
 CHAPTER VIH. 
 
 WILL BE PRONOUNCED TO BE CYNICAL BY THE BENEVOLENT. 
 
 Gentle readers will not, I trust, think the worst of their 
 most obedient humble servant for the confession tliat I talked 
 to my wife on my return home regarding Philip and his affairs. 
 When I choose to be frank, I hope no man can be more open 
 than myself : when I have a mind to be quiet, no fish can be 
 more mute. I have kept secrets so ineffably, that I have utterly 
 forgotten them, until my memory was refreshed by people who 
 also knew them. But what was the use of hiding this one from 
 the being to whom I open all, or almost all — say all, except- 
 ing just one or two of the closets of this heart ? So I say to 
 her, " My love ; it is as I suspected. Philip and his cousin 
 Agnes are carrying on together." 
 
 " Is Agnes the pale one, or the very pale one ? " asks the 
 joy of my existence. 
 
 " No, the elder is Blanche. They are both older than Mr. 
 Firmin : but Blanche is the elder of the two." 
 
 " Well, I am not saying anything malicious, or contrary to 
 the fact, am I, sir t " 
 
 No. Only I know by her looks, when another lady's name 
 is mentioned, whether my wife likes her or not. And I am 
 bound to say, though this statement may meet with a denial, 
 that her countenance does not vouchsafe smiles at the mention 
 of all ladies' names. " You don't go to the house ? You and
 
 ON ins WAY rilROUGH THE IVORL/K 183 
 
 Mrs. Twysden have called on each other, and there the matter 
 has stopped ? Oh, I know ! It is because poor Talbot brags 
 so about his wine, and gives such abominable stuff, that you 
 have such an un-Christian feeling for him !" 
 
 That is the reason, I dare say," says the lady, 
 
 " No. It is no such thing. Though you do know sherry 
 from port, I believe upon my conscience you do not avoid the 
 Twysdens because they give bad wine. Many others sin in that 
 way, and you forgi\e them. You like your fellow-creatures better 
 than wine — some fellow-creatures — and you dislike some fellow- 
 creatures worse than medicine. You swallow them, madam. 
 You say nothing, but your looks are dreadful. You make wry 
 faces : and when you have taken them, you want a piece of 
 sweetmeat to take the taste out of your mouth." 
 
 The lady, thus wittily addressed, shrugs her lovely shoulders. 
 My wife exasperates me in many things ; in getting up at insane 
 hours to go to early church, for instance ; in looking at me in a 
 particular way at dinner, when I am about to eat one of those 
 entrees which Dr. Goodenough declares disagree with me ; in 
 nothing more than in that obstinate silence, which she persists 
 in maintaining sometimes when I am abusing people, whom I 
 do not like, whom she does not like, and who abuse me. This 
 reticence makes me wild. What confidence can there be between 
 a man and his wife, if he can't say to her, " Confound So-and- 
 so, I hate him ; " or, " What a prig What-d'ye-call-'im is ! " or, 
 What a bloated aristocrat Thingamy has become since he got 
 his place ! " or what you will ? 
 
 "No," I continue, "I know why you hate the Twysdens, 
 ]\Irs. Pendennis. You hate them because they move in a world 
 which you can only occasionally visit. You envy them because 
 they are hand-in-glove with the great ; because they possess an 
 easy grace, and a frank and noble elegance with which common 
 country people and apothecaries' sons are not endowed." 
 
 " My dear Arthur, I do think you are ashamed of being an 
 apothecary's son ; you talk about it so often," says the lady. 
 Which was all very well : but you see she was not answering 
 my remarks about the Twysdens. 
 
 " You are right, my dear," I say then. " I ought not to be 
 censorious, being myself no more virtuous than my neighbor." 
 
 "■ I know people abuse you, Arthur ; but I think you are a 
 very good sort of man," says the lady, over her little tea-tray. 
 
 " And so are the Twysdens very good people — very nice, 
 artless, unselfsh, simple, generous, well-bred people. Mr. Twys- 
 den is all heart : Twysden's conversational powers are remark-
 
 184 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 able and pleasing : and Philip is eminently fortunate in getting 
 one of those chai ming girls for a wife." 
 
 " I've no patience with them," cries my wife, losing that 
 quality to my great satisfaction : for then 1 knew I had found 
 the crack in Madam Pendennis's armor of steel, and had smit- 
 ten her in a vulnerable little place. 
 
 " No patience with them ? Quiet, lady-like young women ! " 
 I cry. 
 
 " Ah," sighs my wife, " what have they got to give Philip in 
 return for " 
 
 " In return for his thirty thousand.? They will have ten 
 thousand pounds apiece when their mother dies." 
 
 " Oh ! I wouldn't have our boy marry a woman like one of 
 those, not if she had a million. I wouldn't, my child and my 
 blessing ! " (This is addressed to a little darling who happens 
 to be eating sweet cakes, in a high chair, off the little table by 
 his mother's side, and who, though he certainly used to cry a 
 good deal at that period, shall be a mute personage in this his- 
 tory.) 
 
 " You are alluding to Blanche's little affair with " 
 
 " No, I am not, sir ! " 
 
 " How do you know which one I meant, then ? Or that 
 
 notorious disappointment of Agnes, when Lord Farintosh be- 
 came a widower .? If he wouldn't, she couldn't, you know, my 
 dear. And I am sure she tried her best : at least, everybody 
 said so." 
 
 " Ah ! I have no patience with the w-ay in which you people 
 of the world treat the most sacred of subjects — the most sacred, 
 sir. Do you hear me 1 Is a woman's love to be pledged, and 
 withdrawn every day } Is her faith and purity only to be a mat- 
 ter of barter, and rank, and social consideration ? I am sorry, 
 because I don't wish to see Philip, who is good, and honest, 
 and generous, and true as yet — however great his faults maybe 
 
 — because I don't wish to see him given up to Oh ! its 
 
 shocking, shocking ! " 
 
 Given up to what } to anything dreadful in this world, or 
 the next ? Don't imagine that Philip's relations thought they 
 were doing Phil any harm by condescending to marry him, or 
 themselves any injury. A doctor's son, indeed ! Why, the 
 Twysdens were far better placed in the world than their kins- 
 men of Old Parr Street ; and went to better houses. The year's 
 lev^e and drawing-room would have been incomplete without 
 Mr. and Mrs. Twysden. There might be families with higher 
 titles, more wealth, higher positions ; but the world did not
 
 ON ins WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. 185 
 
 contain more respectable folks then the Twysdens : of this 
 every one of the family was convinced, from Talbot himself 
 down to his heir. If somebody or some Body of savans would 
 write the history of the harm that has been done in the world 
 by people who believe themselves to be virtuous, what a queer, 
 edifying book it would be, and how poor oppressed rogues 
 might look up ! Who burn the Protestants ? — the virtuous 
 Catholics, to be sure. Who roast the Catholics ? — the virtuous 
 Reformers. Who thinks I am a dangerous character, and 
 avoids me at the club ? — the virtuous Squaretoes. Who scorns ? 
 who persecutes? who doesn't forgive.^ — the virtuous Mrs. 
 Grundy. She remembers her neighbor's peccadilloes to the 
 third and fourth generation ; and if she finds a certain man 
 fallen in her path, gathers up her affrighted garments with a 
 shriek, for fear the muddy, bleeding wretch should contaminate 
 her, and passes on. 
 
 I do not seek to create even surprises in this modest history, 
 or condescend to keep candid readers in suspense about many 
 matters which might possibly interest them. For instance, the 
 matter of love has interested novel-readers for hundreds of 
 years past, and doubtless will continue so to interest them. 
 Almost all young people read love-books and histories with 
 eagerness, as oldsters read books of medicine, and whatever it 
 is — heart-complaint, gout, liver, palsy — cry, "Exactly so, pre- 
 cisely my case ! " Phil's first love-affair, to which we are now 
 coming, was false. I own it at once. And in this commence- 
 ment of his career I believe he was not more or less fortunate 
 than many and many a man and woman in this world. Sup- 
 pose the course of true love always did run smooth, and every- 
 body married his or her first love. Ah ! what would marriage 
 be.? 
 
 A generous young fellow comes to market with a heart ready 
 to leap out of his waistcoat, for ever thumping and throbbing, 
 and so wild that he can't have any rest till he has disposed of 
 it. What wonder if he falls upon a wily merchant in Vanity 
 Fair, and barters his all for a stale bauble not worth sixpence ? 
 Phil chose to fall in love with his cousin ; and I warn you that 
 nothing will come of that passion, except the influence which it 
 had upon the young man's character. Though my wife did not 
 love the Twysdens, she loves sentiment, she loves love-affairs 
 — all women do. Poor Phil used to bore me after dinner with 
 endless rodomontades about his passion and his charmer ; but 
 my wife was never tired of listening. " You are a selfish, heart- 
 less, blase man of the world, you are," he would say. " Your
 
 l86 THE ADVENTURES OF PH/LIP 
 
 own immense and undeserved good fortune in the matrimonial 
 lottery has rendered you hard, cold, crass, indifferent. You 
 have been asleep, sir, twice to-night, whilst I was talking. I 
 will go up and tell madam everything. She\\2LS a heart." And 
 presently, engaged with my book or my after-dinner doze, I 
 would hear Phil striding and creaking overhead, and plunging 
 energetic pokers in the drawing-room fire. 
 
 Thirty thousand pounds to begin with ; a third part of that 
 sum coming to the lady from her mother ; all the doctor's sav 
 ings and property j — here certainly was enough in possession 
 and expectation to satisfy many young couples ; and as Phil is 
 twenty-two, and Agnes (must I own it ? ) twenty-five, and as 
 she has consented to listen to the warm outpourings of the 
 eloquent and passionate youth, and exchange for his fresh, 
 new-minted, golden sovereign heart, that used little threepenny- 
 piece, her own — why should they not marry at once, and so let 
 us have an end of them and this history ? They have plenty of 
 money to pay the parson and the post-chaise ; they may drive 
 off to the country, and live on their means, and lead an exist- 
 ence so humdrum and tolerably happy, that Phil may grow quite 
 too fat, lazy, and unfit for his present post of hero of a novel. 
 But stay — there are obstacles ; coy, reluctant, amorous delays. 
 After all, Philip is a dear, brave, handsome, wild, reckless, 
 blundering boy, treading upon everybody's dress skirts, smash- 
 ing the little Dresden ornaments, and the pretty little decorous 
 gimcracks of society, life, conversation ; but there is time yet. 
 Are you so very sure about that money of his mother's ? and 
 how is it that his father, the doctor, has not settled accounts 
 with him yet ? C'est louche. A family of high position and 
 principle must look to have the money matters in perfect order, 
 before they consign a darling accustomed to every luxury to the 
 guardianship of a confessedly wild and eccentric, though gen- 
 erous and amiable, young man. Besides — ah ! besides — 
 besides ! 
 
 " * * * It's horrible, Arthur ! It's cruel, Arthur ! It's a 
 shame to judge a woman or Christian people so ! Oh ! my 
 loves ! my blessings ! would I sell you ? " says this young 
 mother, clutching a little belaced, befurbelowed being to her 
 heart, infantine, squalling, with blue shoulder-ribbons, a mottled 
 little arm that has just been vaccinated, and the sweetest red 
 shoes. '* Would I sell jou ? " says mamma. Tittle Arty, I say, 
 squalls ; and little Nelly looks up from her bricks with a won- 
 dering, whimpering expression. 
 
 Well, I am ashamed to say what the " besides " is ; but the
 
 ON Ills WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. 187 
 
 fact is, that young Woolcomb of the Life Guards Green, who 
 has inherited immense West India property, and, we will say, 
 just a teaspoon ful of that dark blood which makes a man 
 naturally partial to blonde beauties, has cast his opal eyes very 
 warmly upon the golden-haired Agnes of late ; has danced with 
 her not a little ; and when Mrs. Twysden's barouche appears 
 by the Serpentine, you may not unfrequently see a pair of the 
 neatest little yellow kid gloves just playing with the reins, a pair 
 of the prettiest little boots just touching the stirrup, a magnifi- 
 cent horse dancing, and tittupping, and tossing, and performing 
 the most graceful caracoles and gambadoes, and on the magnifi- 
 cent horse a neat little man with a blazing red flower in his 
 bosom, and glancing opal eyes, and a dark complexion, and 
 hair so very black and curly that I really almost think in some 
 of the Southern States of America he would be likely to meet 
 with rudeness in a railwav car. 
 
 But in England we know better. In England Grenville 
 Woolcomb is a man and a brother. Half of Arrowroot Island, 
 they say, belongs to him ; besides Mangrove Hall, in Hertford- 
 shire; ever so much property in other counties, and that fine 
 house in Berkeley Square. He is called the Black Prince 
 behind the scenes of many theatres : ladies nod at him from 
 those broughams which, you understand, need not be particu- 
 larized. The idea of his immense riches is confirmed by the 
 known fact that he is a stingy Black Prince, and most averse to 
 parting with his money, except for his own adornment or 
 amusement. When he receives at his country-house, his enter- 
 tainments are, however, splendid. He has been flattered, 
 followed, caressed all his life, and allowed by a fond mother to 
 have his own way ; and as this has never led him to learning, it 
 must be owned that his literary acquirements are small, and his 
 writing defective. But in the management of his pecuniary 
 affairs he is ver)' keen and clever. His horses cost him less 
 than any young man's in England who is so well mounted. No 
 dealer has ever been known to get the better of him ; and, 
 though he is certainly close about money, when his wishes 
 have very keenly prompted him, no sum has been known to 
 stand in his way. 
 
 Witness the purchase of the . But never mind scandal. 
 
 Let bygones be bygones. A young doctor's son, with a 
 thousand a year for a fortune, may be considered a catch in 
 some circles, but not, vous concevez, in the upper regions of 
 society. And dear woman — dear, angelic, highly accomplished, 
 respectable woman — does she not know how to pardon many
 
 1 88 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 £: ilings in our sex ? Age ? psha ! She will crown my bare old 
 poll with the roses of her youth. Complexion ? What contrast 
 is sweeter or more touching than Desdemona's golden ringlets 
 on swart Othello's shoulder? A past life of selfishness and bad 
 -company ? Come out from among the swine, my prodigal, and 
 \ will purify thee ! 
 
 This is what is called cynicism, you know. Then I suppose 
 my wife is a cynic, who clutches her children to her pure heart, 
 and prays gracious heaven to guard them from selfishness, 
 from worldliness, from heartlessness, from wicked greed. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 CONTAINS ONE RIDDLE WHICH IS SOLVED, AND PERHAPS SOME 
 
 MORE. 
 
 Mine is a modest muse, and as the period of the story 
 arrives when a description of the love-making is justly due, my 
 Mnemosyne turns away from the young couple, drops a little 
 curtain over the embrasure where they are whispering, heaves 
 a sigh from her elderly bosom, and lays a finger on her lip. 
 Ah, Mnemosyne dear ! we will not be spies on the young people. 
 We will not scold them. We won't talk about their doings 
 much. When we were young, we too, perhaps, were taken in 
 under Love's tent ; we have eaten of his salt: and partaken 
 of his bitter, his delicious bread. Now we are padding the 
 hoof lonely in the wilderness, we will not abuse our host, will 
 we .? We will couch under the stars, and think fondly of old 
 times, and to-morrow resume the staff and the journey. 
 
 And yet, if a novelist may chronicle any passion, its flames, 
 its raptures, its whispers, its assignations, its sonnets, its 
 quarrels, sulks, reconciliations, and so on, the history of such 
 a love as this first of Phil's may be excusable in print, because 
 I don't believe it was a real love at all, only a little brief delu- 
 sion of the senses, from which I give you warning that our hero 
 will recover before many chapters are over. What ! my brave 
 boy, shall we give your heart away for good and all, for better 
 or for worse, till death do you part ? What 1 my Corj'don and 
 sighing swain, shall we irrevocably bestow you upon Phyllis, 
 who, all the time you are piping and paying court to her, has 
 Meliboeus in the cupboard, and ready to be produced should
 
 LAURAS FIRKSIDK.
 
 ON HIS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. 189 
 
 he prove to be a more eligible shepherd than t'other? lam 
 not such a savage towards my readers or hero, as to make them 
 undergo the misery of such a marriage. 
 
 Philip was very little of a club or society man. He seldom 
 or ever entered the " Megatherium," or when there stared and 
 scowled round him savagely, and laughed strangely at the ways 
 of the inhabitants. He made but a clumsy figure in the world, 
 though in person, handsome, active, and proper enough ; but 
 he would for ever put his great foot through the World's flounced 
 skirts, and she would stare, and cry out, and hate him. He was 
 the last man who was aware of the Woolcomb flirtation, when 
 hundreds of people, I dare say, were simpering over it. 
 
 " Who is that little man who comes to your house, and 
 whom I sometimes see in the Park, aunt — that little man with 
 the ver}' white gloves and the very tawny complexion ? " asks 
 Philip. 
 
 " That is Mr, ^^^oolcomb, of" the Life Guards Green," aunt 
 remembers. 
 
 "An officer is he? " says Philip, turning round to the girls. 
 "I should have thought he w^ould have done better for the tur- 
 ban and cymbals." And he laughs and thinks he has said a 
 very clever thing. Oh, those good things about people and 
 against people ! Never, my dear young friend, say them to 
 anybody — not to a stranger, for he will go away and tell ; not 
 to the mistress of your affections, for you may quarrel with her, 
 and then shew'xW tell ; not to your son, for the artless child will re- 
 turn to his schoolfellows and say : " Papa says Mr. Blenkinsop is 
 a muff." My child, or what not, praise everybody ; and everybody 
 will smile on you in return, a sham smile, and hold you out a 
 sham hand ; and, in a word, esteem you as you deserve. No. 
 I think you and I will take the ups and the downs, the roughs 
 and^the smooths of this daily existence and conversation. We 
 will praise those whom we like, though nobody repeat our kind 
 sayings ; and say our say about those whom we dislike, though 
 we are pretty sure our words will be carried by tale-bearers, and 
 increased and multiplied, and remembered long after we have 
 forgotten them. We drop a little stone — a little stone that is 
 swallowed up and disappears, but the whole pond is set in com- 
 motion, and ripples in continually widening circles long after 
 the original little stone has popped down and is out of sight. 
 Don't your speeches of ten years ago — maimed, distorted, 
 bloated it may be out of all recognition — come strangely back 
 to their author ? 
 
 Phil, five minutes after he had made the joke, so entirely
 
 IQO 
 
 THE ADVENTURES OF rillLIP 
 
 forgot his saying about the black Prince and the cymbals, that, 
 when Captain Woolconib scowled at him with liis fiercest eyes, 
 young Firmin thought that this was the natural expression of 
 the Captain's swarthy countenance, and gave himself no further 
 trouble regarding it. " By George ! sir," said Phil afterwards, 
 speaking of this ofKcer, " I remarked that he grinned, and chat- 
 ted and showed his teeth ; and remembering it was the nature 
 of such baboons to chatter and grin, had no idea that this 
 chimpanzee was more angry with me than with any other gentle- 
 man. You see. Pen, I am a white-skinned man ; I am pro 
 nounced even red-whiskered by the ill-natured. It is not the 
 prettiest color. But I had no idea that I was to have a mulatto 
 for a rival. I am not so rich, certainly, but I have enough. I 
 can read and spell correctly, and write with tolerable fluency. 
 I could not, you know, could I, reasonably suppose that I need 
 fear competition, and that the black horse would beat the bay 
 one } Shall I tell you what she used to say to me ? There is 
 no kissing and telling, mind you. No, by George. Virtue and 
 prudence were forever on her lips! She warbled little ser- 
 mons to me ; hinted gently that I should see to safe invest- 
 ments of my property, and that no man, not even a father, 
 should be the sole and uncontrolled guardian of it. She asked 
 me, sir, scores and scores of little sweet, timid, innocent ques- 
 tions about the doctor's property, and how much did I think 
 it was, and how had he laid it out ? What virtuous parents 
 that angel had ! How they brought her up, and educated her 
 dear blue eyes to the main chance ! She knows the price of 
 housekeeping, and the value of railway shares ; she invests 
 capital for herself in this world and the next. She mayn't do 
 right always, but wTong ? O fie, never ! I say, Pen, an unde- 
 veloped angel with wings folded under her dress ; not perhaps 
 your mighty, snow-white, flashing pinions that spread out .and 
 soar up to the highest stars, but a pair of good serviceable drab 
 do\e-colored wings, that will support her gently and equably 
 just over our heads, and help to drop her softly when she 
 condescends upon us. When I think, sir, that I might have 
 been married to a genteel angel and am single still, — oh ! it's 
 despair, its despair ! " 
 
 But Philip's little story of disappointed hopes and bootless 
 passion must be told in terms less acrimonious and unfair than 
 the gentleman would use, naturally of a sanguine, swaggering 
 talk, prone to exaggerate his own disappointments, and call out, 
 roar — I dare say swear — if his own corn was trodden upon, as 
 loudly as some men who may ha\e a leg taken off.
 
 ON HIS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. ,f,i 
 
 This I can vouch for Miss Twysden, Mrs. Twysden and all 
 the rest of the family : — that if they, what you call, jilted Philip, 
 they did so without the slightest hesitation or notion that they 
 \vere doing a dirty action. Their actions never were dirty or 
 mean ; they were necessary, I tell you, and calmly proper. They 
 ate cheese parings with graceful silence; they cribbed from board- 
 wages ; they turned hungrj^ servants out of doors ; they remitted 
 no chance in their own favor ; they slept gracefully under scanty 
 coverlids ; they lighted niggard fires ; they locked the caddy 
 with the closest lock, and served the teapot w ith the smallest 
 and least frequent spoon. But you don't suppose they thought 
 they were mean, or that they did wrong ? Ah ! it is admirable 
 to think of many, many, ever so many respectable families of 
 your acquaintance and mine, my dear friend, and how they 
 meet together and humbug each other ! " My dear, I have 
 cribbed half an inch of plush out of James's small-clothes." 
 " My love, I have saved a halfpenny out of Marj^'s beer. Isn't 
 it time to dress for the duchess's ; and don't you think John 
 might wear that li\'ery of Thomas's, who onl}^ had it a year, and 
 died of the small-pox? It's a little tight for him, to be sure, 
 but," &:c. What is this } I profess to be an impartial chroni- 
 cler of poor Phil's fortunes, misfortunes, friendships, and what- 
 nots, and am getting almost as angry with these Twysdens as 
 Philip ever was himself. 
 
 Well, I am not mortally angry with poor Traviata tramping 
 the pavement, with the gas-lamp flaring on her poor painted 
 smile, else my indignant virtue and squeamish modesty would 
 never walk Piccadilly or get the air. But Lais, quite moral, and 
 very neatly, primly, and straitly laced ; — Phryne, not the least 
 dishevelled, but with a fixature for her hair, and the best stays, 
 fastened by mamma; — your High Church or Evangelical 
 Aspasia, the model of all proprieties, and owner of all virgin- 
 purity blooms, ready to sell her cheek to the oldest old fogy 
 who has money and a title ; — these are the Unfortunates, my 
 dear brother and sister sinners, whom I should like to see 
 repentant and specially trounced first. Why, some of these are 
 put into reformatories in Grosvenor Square. They wear a 
 prison dress of diamonds and Chantilly lace. Their parents 
 cry, and thank heaven as they sell them ; and all sorts of re- 
 vered bishops, clergy, relations, dowagers, sign the book, and 
 ratify the ceremony. Come ! let us call a midnight meeting of 
 those who have been sold in marriage, I say, and what a re- 
 spectable, what a genteel, what a fashionable, what a brilliant, 
 what an imposing, what a multitudinous assembly we will have ; 
 and Where's the room in all Babylon big enough'to hold them ?
 
 1^2 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 Look into that grave, solemn, clingy, somewhat naked, but 
 elegant drawing-room, in Ikaunash Street, and with a little 
 fanciful opera-glass you may see a pretty little group or two 
 engaged at different periods of the day. It is after lunch, and 
 before Rotten Row ride time (this story, you know, relates to a 
 period ever so remote, and long before folks thought of riding 
 in the Park in the forenoon). After lunch, and before Rotten 
 Row time, saunters into the drawing-room a fair-haired young 
 fellow with large feet and chest, careless of gloves, with auburn 
 whiskers blowing over a loose collar, and — must I confess it? 
 — a most undeniable odor of cigars about his person. He 
 breaks out regarding the debate of the previous night, or the 
 pamphlet of yesterday, or the poem of the day previous, or the 
 scandal of the week before, or upon the street-sweeper at the 
 corner, or the Italian and monkey before the Park — upon what- 
 ever, in a word, moves his mind for the moment. If Philip has 
 had a bad dinner yesterday (and happens to remember it), he 
 growls, grumbles, nay, I dare say, uses the most blasphemous 
 language against the cook, against the waiters, against the 
 steward, against the committee, against the whole society of the 
 club where he has been dining. If Philip has met an organ-girl 
 with pretty eyes and a monkey in the street, he has grinned and 
 wondered over the monkey ; he has wagged his head, and sung all 
 the organ's tunes ; he has discovered that the little girl is the 
 most ravishing beauty eyes ever looked on, and that her scoun- 
 drelly Savoyard father is most likely an Alpine miscreant who 
 has bartered away his child to a pedlar of the beggarly cheesy 
 valleys, who has sold her to a friend qui fait la traiie des hurdi- 
 gurdies, and has disposed of her in England. If he has to 
 discourse on the poem, pamphlet, magazine article — it is written 
 by the greatest genius, or the greatest numskull, that the world 
 now exhibits. IIi? write ! A man who makes fire rhyme 
 with Marire ! This vale of tears and world which we inhabit 
 does not contain such an idiot. Or have you seen Dobbins's 
 poem .'' Agnes, mark my words for it, there is a genius in 
 Dobbins which some day will show what I have always surmised, 
 what I have always imagined possible, what I have always felt 
 to be more than probable, what, by George ! I feel to be per- 
 fectly certain, and any man is a humbug who contradicts it, and 
 a malignant miscreant, and the world is full of fellows who 
 will never give another man credit; and I swear that to recog- 
 nize and feel merit in poetry, painting, music, rope-dancing, 
 anything, is the greatest rlelight and joy of my existence. I say 
 — what was I saying ?
 
 ON- Ills ll'AV THROUGH THE WORLD. 103 
 
 " You were saying, Philip, that you love to recognize the 
 merits of all men whom you see," says gentle Agnes, " and I 
 believe you do." 
 
 " Yes ! " cries Phil, tossing about the fair looks. " I think 
 I do. Thank heaven, I do. I know fellows who can do many 
 things better than I do — everything better than I do." 
 
 " Oh, Philip ! " sighs the lady. 
 
 '' But I don't hate 'em for it." 
 
 " You never hated any one, sir. You are too brave ! Can 
 you fancy Philip hating any one, mamma .? " 
 
 "Mamma is writing: "Mr. and Mrs. Talbot Twysden 
 request the honor of Admiral and Mrs. Davis Locker's com 
 pany at dinner on Thursday the so-and-so." " Philip what ?" 
 says mamma, looking up from her card, " Philip hating any 
 one ! Philip eating any one ! Philip ! we have a little dinner 
 on the 24th. We shall ask your father to dine. We must not 
 have too many of the family. Come in afterwards, please." 
 
 "Yes, aunt," says downright Phil, "I'll come, if you and 
 the girls wish. You know tea is not my line ; and I don't care 
 about dinners, except in my own way, and with " 
 
 " And with j^our own horrid set, sir !" 
 
 " Well," says Sultan Philip, flinging himself out on the sofa, 
 and lording on the ottoman, " I like mine ease and mine inn." 
 
 " Ah, Philip ! you grow more selfish every day. I mean 
 men do," sighed Agnes. 
 
 You will suppose mamma leaves the room at this juncture. 
 She has that confidence in dear Philip and the dear girls, that 
 she sometimes does leave the room when Agnes and Phil are 
 together. She will leave Reuben, the eldest born, with her 
 daughters : but my poor dear little younger son of a Joseph, if 
 you suppose she will leave the room 7m(S. you alone in it — O my 
 dear Joseph, you may just jump down the well at once ! Mam- 
 ma, I say, has left the room at last, bowing with a perfect 
 sweetness and calm grace and gravity ; and she has slipped 
 down the stairs, scarce more noisy than the shadow that slants 
 over the faded carpet (oh ! the faded shadow, the faded sun- 
 shine !) — mamma is gone, I say, to the lower regions, and with 
 perfect good breeding is torturing the butler on his bottle-rack 
 — is squeezing the housekeeper in her jam-closet — is watching 
 the three cold cutlets shuddering in the larder behind the wires 
 — is blandly glancing at the kitchen-maid until the poor wench 
 fancies the piece of bacon is discovered which she gave to the 
 crossing-sweeper — and calmly penetrating John until he feels 
 sure his inmost heart is revealed to her, as it throbs within his
 
 I(j4 THE ADl'ENTC/RES OF PIIILIP 
 
 worsted-laced waistcoat, and she knows about that pawning oi 
 master's old boots, (beastly old highlows !} and — and, in fact^ 
 all tiie most intimate circumstances of his existence. A wretched 
 maid, who has been ironmg collars, or what not, gives her 
 mistress a shuddering curtsey, and slinks away with her laces ; 
 and meanwhile our girl and boy are prattling in the drawing- 
 room. 
 
 About what ? About everything on which Philip chooses 
 to talk. There is nobody to contradict him but himself, and 
 then his pretty hearer vows and declares he has not been so 
 very contradictory. He spouts his favorite poems. " Delight- 
 ful ! Do, Philip, read us some Waiter Scott ! He is, as you 
 say, the most fresh, the most manly, the most kindly of poetic 
 writers — not of the first class, cerialniy. in fact, he has wTitten 
 most dreadful bosh, as you call it so drolly ; and so has 
 Wordsworth, though he is one of the greatest of men, and has 
 reached sometimes to the very greatest height and sublimity oi 
 poetry ; but now you put it, 1 must confess he is often an old 
 bore, and I certainly should have gone to sleep during the 
 ' Excursion,' only you read it so nicely. You don't think the 
 new composers as good as the old ones, and love mamma's 
 old-fashioned playing? Well, Philip, it is delightful, so lady- 
 like, so feminine ! " Or, perhaps, Philip has just come from 
 Hyde Park, and says, " As I passed by Apslcy House, I saw 
 the Duke come out, with his old blue frock and white trousers 
 and clear face. I have seen a picture of him in an old European 
 Magazine, which I think I like better than all — gives me the 
 idea of one of the brightest men in the world. The brave eyea 
 gleam at you out of the picture ; and there's a smile on the 
 resolute lips, which seems to ensure triumph. Agnes, Assaye 
 must have been glorious ! " 
 
 " Glorious, Philip ! " says Agnes, who had never heard of 
 Assaye before in her life. Arbela, perhaps ; Salamis, Marathon, 
 Agincourt, Blenheim, Busaco — where dear grandpapa was 
 killed — Waterloo, Armageddon ; but Assaye .'' Quevoulez vous t 
 
 " Think of that ordinarily prudent man, and how greatly he 
 knew how to dare when occasion came ! I should like to have 
 died after winning such a game. He has never done anything 
 so exciting since." 
 
 '' A game ? 1 thought it was a battle just now," murmurs 
 Agnes in her mind ; but there may be some misunderstanding. 
 " Ah, Philip," she says, " 1 fear excitement is too much the life 
 of all young men now When will you be quiet and steady, sir? " 
 
 " And go to an ofBce every day, like my uncle and cousin ;
 
 ON HIS WAY TIIROUCII THE WORLD. 195 
 
 see you. 
 
 " Well, sir ! that ought not to be such very bad amusement," 
 ,'s one of the ladies. 
 
 and read the newspaper for three hours, and trot back and 
 see 
 
 says 
 
 " What a clumsy wretch I am ! my foot is always trampling 
 on something or somebody 1 " groans Philip. 
 
 " You must come to us, and we will teach you to dance, 
 Bruin ! " says gentle Agnes, smiling on him. I think when 
 very much agitated, her pulse must have gone up to forty. 
 Her blood must have been a light pink. The heart that beat 
 under that pretty white chest, which she exposed so liberally, 
 may have throbbed pretty quickly once or twice with waltzing, 
 but otherwise never rose or fell beyond its natural gentle 
 undulation. It may have had throbs of grief at a disappoint- 
 ment occasioned by the milliner not bringing a dress home ; or 
 have felt some little fluttering impulse of youthful passion when 
 it was in short (rocks, and ^Master Grimsby at the dancing- 
 school showed some preference for another young pupil out of 
 the nursery. But feelings, and hopes, and blushes, and passions 
 now .? Psha ! They pass away like nursery dreams. Now 
 there are only proprieties. What is love, young heart ? It is 
 two thousand a year, at the very lowest computation ; and, 
 with the present rise in wages and house-rent, that calculation 
 can't last very long. Love ? Attachment ? Look at Frank 
 Maythorn, with his vernal blushes, his leafy whiskers, his sun- 
 shiny, laughing face, and all the birds of spring carolling in his 
 jolly voice ; and old General Pinwood hobbling in on his cork 
 leg, with his stars and orders, and leering round the room from 
 under his painted eyebrows. Will my modest nymph go to 
 Maythorn, or to yonder leering Satyr, who totters towards her 
 in his white and rouge ? Nonsense. She gives her garland to 
 the old man, to be sure. He is ten times as rich as the young 
 one. And so they went on in Arcadia itself, really. Not in 
 that namby-pamby ballet and idyll world, where they tripped up 
 to each other in rhythm, and talked hexameters ; but in the 
 real downright, no-mistake country — Arcadia — where Tityrus, 
 fluting to Amaryllis in the shade, had his pipe very soon put 
 out when Meliboeus (the great grazier) performed on his 
 melodious, exquisite, irresistible cowhorn ; and where Daphne's 
 mother dressed her up with ribbons and drove her to market, 
 and sold her, and swapped her, and bartered her like any other 
 lamb in the fair. This one has been trotted to the market so 
 long now that she knows the way herself. Her baa has been 
 heard for — do not let us count how many seasons. She has
 
 196 
 
 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 nibbled out of countless hands ; frisked in many thousand 
 dances ; come quite harmless away from goodness knows how 
 many wolves. Ah ! ye lambs and raddled innocents of our 
 Arcadia! Ah, old Ewe ! Is it of your ladyship this fable is 
 narrated ? I say it is as old as Cadmus, and man- and mutton- 
 kind. 
 
 " So, when Philip comes to Beaunash Street, Agnes listens 
 to him most kindly, sweetly, gently, and affectionately. Her 
 pulse goes up very nearly half a beat when the echo of his 
 horse's heels is heard in the quiet street. It undergoes a cor- 
 responding depression when the daily grief of parting is encoun- 
 tered and overcome. Blanche and Agnes don't love each other 
 very passionately. If I may say as much regarding those twa 
 lambkins, they butt at each other — they quarrel with each other 
 ■ — but they have secret understandings. During Phil's visits 
 ^he girls remain together, you understand, or mamma is with 
 the young people. Female friends may come in to call on Mrs, 
 Twysden, and the matrons whisper together, and glance at the 
 cousins, and look knowing. " Poor orphan boy ! " mamma 
 says to a sister matron. '' I am like a mother to him since my 
 dear sister died. His own home is so blank, and ours so 
 merry, so affectionate ! There may be intimacy, tender regard, 
 the utmost confidence between cousins — there may be future 
 and even closer ties between them — but you understand, dear 
 Mrs. Matcham, no engagement between them. He is eager, 
 hot-headed, impetuous, and imprudent, as we all know. She 
 has not seen the world enough — is not sure of herself, poor 
 dear child ! Therefore every circumspection, every caution is 
 necessary. There must be no engagement, no letters between 
 them. My darling Agnes does not write to ask him to dinner 
 without showing the note to me or her father. My dearest girls 
 respect themselves." "Of course, my dear Mrs. Twysden, 
 they are admirable, both of them. Bless you, darlings ! Agnes, 
 you look radiant ! Ah, Rosa, my child, I wish you had dear 
 Blanche's complexion ! " 
 
 "And isn't it monstrous keeping that poor boy hanging on 
 until Mr. Woolcomb has made up his mind about coming for- 
 ward ? " says dear Mrs. Matcham to her own daughter, as her 
 ijrougham door closes on the pair. " Here he conies ! Here 
 is his cab. Maria Twysden is one of the smartest women in 
 England — that she is." 
 
 " How odd it is, mamma, that the hcau cousin and Captain 
 Woolcomb are always calling, and never call together 1 " re- 
 marks the ingenue.
 
 ON HIS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. 197 
 
 "They might quarrel if they met. They say young Mr. 
 Firmin is \ery ciuarrelsome and impetuous ! " says mamma. 
 
 " Ikit how are they kept apart ? " 
 
 " Chance, my clear ! mere chance ! " says mamma. And 
 they agree to say it is chance — and tliey agree to pretend to 
 believe one another. And the girl and the mother know every- 
 thing about Woolcomb's property, everything about Philip's 
 property and expectations, ever}'thing about all the young men 
 in London, and those coming on. And Mrs. Matcham's girl 
 fished for Captain Woolcomb last year in Scotland, at Loch- 
 hookey ; and stalked him to Paris ; and they went down on 
 their knees to Lady Banbury when they heard of the theatricals 
 at the Cross ; and pursued that man about until he is forced to 
 say, "Confound me ! hang me ! it's too bad of that woman and 
 her daughter, it is now, I give you my honor it is ! And all the 
 fellows chaff me ! And she took a house in Regent's Park, 
 opposite our barracks, and asked for her daughter to learn to 
 ride in our school — I'm blest if she didn't, Mrs. Twysden ! and 
 I thought my black mare would have kicked her off one day — 
 I mean the daughter — but she stuck on like grim death ; and 
 the fellows call them Mrs. Grini Death and her daughter. Our 
 surgeon called them so, and a doosid rum fellow — and they 
 chaff me about it, you know — ever so many of the fellows do — ■ 
 and Tin not going to be had in that way by Mrs. Grim Death 
 and her daughter ! No, not as I knows, if you please ! " 
 
 " You are a dreadful man, and you gave her a dreadful 
 name, Captain Woolcomb ! " says mamma. 
 
 " It wasn't me. It was the surgeon, you know, Miss Agnes : 
 a doosid funny and witty fellow, Nixon is — and sent a thing 
 once to Punch, Nixon did. I heard him make the riddle in 
 Albany Barracks and it riled Foker so ! You've no idea how 
 it riled Foker, for he's in it ! " 
 
 " In it "i " asks Agnes, with the gentle smile, the candid blue 
 eyes — the same eyes, expression, lips, that smile and sparkle at 
 Philip. 
 
 " Here it is ! Capital ! Took it down. Wrete it into my 
 pocket-book at once as Nixon made it. ' All doctors likemyjirsf, 
 that's clear!' Doctor Firmin does that. Old Parr Street 
 party ! Don't you see. Miss Agnes ? Fee ! Don't you see ? " 
 
 " Fee ! Oh, you droll thing ! " cries Agnes, smiling, radiant, 
 very much puzzled. 
 
 *" My second,' " goes on the young officer — ^^^ My second 
 glvei lis Foker' s beer f " 
 
 ". * My whole's the shortest month in all the year I ' Don't
 
 igg THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 you see, Mrs. Twysden? Fee-Brewery, don't you see? 
 February ! A doosid good one, isn't it now ? and I wonder 
 riinch never put it in. And upon my word, 1 used to spell it 
 Febuary before, I did ; and I dare say ever so many fellows do 
 still. And I know the right way now, and all from that riddle 
 which Nixon made." 
 
 The ladies declare he is a droll man, and full of fun. He 
 rattles on, artlessly telling his little stories of sport, drink, ad- 
 venture, in which the dusky little man himself is a prominent 
 figure. Not honey-mouthed Plato would be listened to more 
 kindly by those three ladies. A blank, frank smile shines over 
 Talbot Twysden's noble face, as he comes in from his office, 
 and finds the Creole prattling. " What ! yon here, Woolcomb ? 
 Hay ! Glad to see you ! " And the gallant hand goes out and 
 meets and grasps Woolcomb's tiny kid glove. 
 
 " He has been so amusing, papa ! He has been making us 
 die with laughing ! Tell papa that riddle you made. Captain 
 Woolcomb ? " 
 
 " That riddle I made ? That riddle Nixon, our surgeon, 
 made. 'All doctors like my first, that's clear,' " &c. 
 
 And da capo. And the family, as he expounds this admira- 
 ble rebus, gather round the young officer in a group, and the 
 curtain drops. 
 
 As in a theatre booth at a fair there are two or three per- 
 formances in a day, so in Beaunash Street a kittle genteel com- 
 edy is played twice : — at four o'clock with Mr. Firmin, at five 
 o'clock with Mr. Woolcomb ; and for both young gentlemen, 
 same smiles, same eyes, same voice, same welcome. Ah, bravo ! 
 ah, encore 1 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 IN WHICH WE VISIT "ADMIRAL BYNG. 
 
 From long residence in ]>ohemia, and fatal love of bacheloi 
 ease and habits. Master Philip's pure tastes were so destroyed, 
 and liis manners so perverted that, you will hardly believe it, 
 he was actually indifferent to the pleasures of the refined home 
 we have just been describing ; and, when Agnes was away, 
 sometimes even when she was at home, was quite relieved to 
 get out of Beaunash Street. He is hardly twenty yards' from
 
 ON HIS WA Y THROUGH THE WORLD. 199 
 
 the door, when out of his pocket there comes a case ; out of the 
 case there jumps an aromatic cigar, which is scattering 
 fragrance around as he is marching briskly nortliwards to his 
 next house of call. The pace is even more lively now than 
 when he is hastening on what you call the wings of love to 
 Eeaunash Street. At the house whither he is now going, he 
 and the cigar are always welcome. There is no need of 
 munching orange chips, or chewing scented pills, or flinging 
 your weed away half a mile before you reach Thornhaugh 
 Street — the low, vulgar place. I promise you Phil may smoke 
 at Brandon's, and find others doing the same. He may set the 
 house on fire, if so minded, such a favorite is he there ; and the 
 Little Sister, with her kind, beaming smile, will be there to bid 
 him welcome. How that woman loved Phil, and how he loved 
 her, is quite a curiosity ; and both of them used to be twitted 
 with this attachment by their mutual friends, and blush as they 
 acknowledged it. Ever since the little nurse had saved his life 
 as a schoolboy, it was a la vie a la mort between them. Phil's 
 father's chariot used to come to Thornhaugh Street sometimes 
 — at rare times — and the doctor descend thence and have 
 colloquies with the Little Sister. She attended a patient or 
 two of his. She was certainly very much better off in her 
 money matters in these late years, since she had known Dr. 
 Firmin. Do you think she took money from him ? " As a 
 novelist, who knows everything about his people, I am con- 
 strained to say. Yes. She took enough to pay some little bills 
 of her weak-minded old father, and send the bailiff's hand from 
 his old collar. But no more. " I think you owe him as much 
 as that," she said to the doctor. But as for compliments 
 between them — " Dr. Firmin, I would die rather than be 
 beholden to you for anything," she said, with her little limbs 
 all in a tremor, and her eyes flashing anger. " How dare you, 
 sir, after old days, be a coward and pay compliments to me ; I 
 will tell your son of you, sir ! " and the little woman looked as 
 if she could have stabbed the elderly libertine there as he stood. 
 And he shrugged his handsome shoulders : blushed a little too, 
 perhaps : gave her one of his darkling looks, and departed. 
 She had believed him once. She had married him, as she 
 fancied. He had tired of her ; forsaken her ; left her — left her 
 even without a name. She had not known his for long years 
 after her trust and his deceit. " No, sir, I wouldn't have your 
 name now, not if it were a lord's, I wouldn't, and a coronet on 
 your carriage. You are beneath me now, Mr. Brand Firmin 1 " 
 she had said.
 
 200 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 How came she to love the boy so ? Years back, in her own 
 horrible extremity of misery, she could remember a week or 
 two cf a brief, strange, exquisite happiness, which came to her 
 in the midst of her degradation and desertion, and for a few 
 days a baby in her arms, with eyes like Philip's. It was taken 
 from her, after a few days — only sixteen days. Insanity came 
 upon her, as her dead infant was carried away : — insanity, and 
 fever, and struggle — ah ! who knows how dreadful ? She never 
 does. There is a gap in her life which she never can recall 
 quite. But George Brand Firmin, Esq., M.D., knows how veiy 
 frequent are such cases of mania, and that women who don't 
 speak about them often will cherish them for years after they 
 appear to have passed away. The Little Sister says, quite 
 gravely, sometimes, " They are allowed to come back. They 
 do come back. Else what's the good of little cherubs bein' 
 born, cand smilin', and happy, and beautiful — say, for sixteen 
 days, and then an end .'' I've talked about it to many ladies in 
 grief sim'lar to mine was, and it comforts them. And when I 
 saw that child on his sick-bed, and he lifted his eyes, / knczu 
 /mn, I tell you, Mrs. Ridley. I don't speak about it ; but I 
 knew him, ma'am ; my angel came back again. I know him 
 by the eyes. Look at 'em. Did you ever see such eyes ? 
 They look as if they had seen heaven. His fathers don't." 
 Mrs. Ridley believes this theory solemnly, and I think I know 
 a lady, nearly connected with myself, who can't be got quite to 
 disown it. And this secret opinion to women in grief and 
 sorrow over their new-born lost infants Mrs. Brandon persists 
 in imiDarting. " / know a case," the nurse murmurs, " of a 
 poor mother who lost her child at sixteen days old ; and 
 sixteen years after, on the very day, she saw him again." 
 
 Philip knows so far of the Little Sister's story, that he is 
 the object of this delusion, and, indeed, it very strangely and 
 tenderly affects him. He remembers fitfully the illness through 
 which the Little Sister tended him, the wild paroxysms of his 
 fever, his head throbbing on her shoulders — cool tamarind 
 drinks which she applied to his lips — great gusty night shadows 
 flickering through the bare school dormitory — the little figure 
 of the nurse gliding in and out of the dark. Lie must be aware 
 of the recognition, which we know of, and which took place at 
 his bedside, though he has never mentioned it — not to his 
 father, not to Caroline. But he clings to the woman, and 
 shrinks from the man. Is it instinctive love and antipathy.? 
 The special reason for his quarrel with his father the junior 
 Firmin has never explicitly told me then or since. I have
 
 ON II IS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. 20I 
 
 known sons much more confidential, and who, when their 
 fathers tripped and stumbled, would bring their acquaintances 
 to jeer at the patriarch in his fall. 
 
 One day, as Philip enters Thornhaugh Street, and the 
 Sister's little parlor there, fancy his astonishment on finding his 
 father's dingy friend, the Rev. Tufton Hunt, at his ease by the 
 fireside. " Surprised to see me here, eh ? " says the dingy 
 gentleman, with a sneer at Philip's lordly face oT wonder and 
 disgust. " Mrs. Brandon and I turn out to be very old friends." 
 
 "Yes, sir, old acquaintances," says the Little Sister, very 
 gravely. 
 
 " The Captain brought me home from the club at the 
 * Byng.' Jolly fellows the Byngs. My service to you, Mr. 
 Gann and Mrs. Brandon." And the two persons addressed by 
 the gentleman, who is "taking some refreshment," as the 
 phrase is, made a bow in acknowledgment of this salutation. 
 
 " You should have been at Mr. Philip's call-supper. Cap- 
 tain Gann," the divine resumes. " That zvas a night ! Tip- 
 top swells — noblemen — first-rate claret. That claret of your 
 father's, Philip, is pretty nearly drunk down. And your song 
 was famous. Did you ever hear him sing, Mrs. Brandon ?" 
 
 " Who do you mean by him ? " says Philip, who always 
 boiled with rage before this man. 
 
 Caroline divines the antipathy. She lays a little hand on 
 Philip's arm. " Mr. Hunt has been having too much, I think," 
 she says. " I did know him ever so long ago, Philip ! " 
 
 " What does he mean by Him ? " again says Philip, snort- 
 ing at Tufton Hunt. 
 
 " Him ? — Dr. Luther's Hymn ! ' Wein, Weber, und Gesang,' 
 to be sure ! " cries the clergyman, humming the tune. " I 
 learned it in Germany myself — passed a good deal of time in 
 Germany, Captain Gann — six months in a specially shady 
 place — ^^^^Strasse, in Frankfort-on-the-Maine — being perse- 
 cuted by some wicked Jews there. And there was another 
 poor English chap in the place, too, who used to chirp that 
 song behind the bars, and died there, and disappointed the 
 Philistines. I've seen a deal of life, I have ; and met with a 
 l^recious deal of misfortune ; and borne it pretty stoutly, too, 
 since your father and I were at college together, Philip. You 
 don't do anything in this way ? Not so early, eh ? It's good 
 rum, Gann, and no mistake." And again the chaplain drinks 
 to the Captain, who waves the dingy hand of hospitality towards 
 his dark guest. 
 
 For several months past Hunt had now been a resident in
 
 202 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 London, and a pretty constant visitor at Dr. Firmin's house 
 He came and went at liis will. He made the place his house 
 of call ; and in the doctor's trim, silent, orderly mansion, was 
 perfectly free, talkative, dirty, and familiar. Thilip's loathing 
 for the man increased till it reached a pitch of frantic hatred. 
 Mr. Phil, theoretically a Radical, and almost a Republican (in 
 opposition, jDerhaps, to his father, who, of course, held the 
 highly respectable line of politics) — -Mr. Sansculotte Phil was 
 personally one of the most aristocratic and overbearing of young 
 gentlemen ; and had a contempt and hatred for mean people, 
 for base people, for servile people, and especially for too 
 familiar joeople, which was not a little amusing sometimes, 
 which was provoking often, but which he never was at the least 
 pains of disguising. His uncle and cousin Twysden, for ex- 
 ample, he treated not half so civilly as their footmen. Little 
 Talbot humbled himself before Phil, and felt not always easy 
 in his company. Young Twysden hated him, and did not dis- 
 guise his sentiments at the club, or to their muiual acquaint- 
 ance behind Phil's broad back. And Phil, for his part, adopted 
 towards his cousin a kick-me-down-stairs manner, which I own 
 must have been provoking to that gentleman, w-ho was Phil's 
 senior by three years, a clerk in a public office, a member of 
 several good clubs, and altogether a genteel member of society. 
 Phil would often forget Ringwood Twysden's presence, and 
 pursue his own conversation entirely regardless of Ringwood's 
 observations. He was very rude, I own. Que vonlez-vous ? 
 We have all of us our little failings, and one of Philip's was an 
 ignorant impatience of bores, parasites, and pretenders. 
 
 So no wonder my young gentleman was not very fond of his 
 father's friend, the dingy jail chaplain. I, who am the most 
 tolerant man in the world, as all my friends know, liked Hunt 
 little better than Phil did. The man's presence made me un- 
 easy. His dress, his complexion, his teeth, his leer at women — 
 Que sfais-Je? — everything ^vas unpleasant :d)out this Mr. Hunt, 
 and his gayety and familiarity more specially disgusting than 
 even his hostility. The wonder was that battle had not taken 
 place between Philip and the jail clergyman, who, I suppose,- 
 was accustomed to be disliked, and laughed with cynical good 
 humor at the other's disgust. 
 
 Hunt was a visitor of many tavern parlors ; and one day, 
 strolling out of the "Admiral P.vng," he saw his friend Dr. 
 Firmin's well-known equipage stopping at a door in Thornhaugh 
 Street, out of which the doctor presently came ; " Lrandon " 
 was on the door. Brandon, Brandon ? Hunt remembered a
 
 ON HIS WA Y THROUGH THE WORLV. 203 
 
 dark transaction of more than twenty years ago — of a woman 
 deceived by this Firmin, who then chose to go by the name of 
 Brandon. " He lives with her still, the old hypocrite, or he 
 has gone back to her," thought the parson. Oh, you old sin- 
 ner ! And the next time he called in Old Parr Street on his 
 dear old college friend, Mr. Hunt was specially jocular, and 
 frightfully unpleasant and familiar. 
 
 " Saw your trap Tottenham Court Road waj'," says the 
 slang parson, nodding to the physician. 
 
 " Have some patients there. People are ill in Tottenham 
 Court Road," remarks the doctor. 
 
 " Pallida mors cBqno pede — hay, doctor? What used Flaccus 
 to say, when we were undergrads ? " 
 
 " yEquo pede," sighs the doctor, casting up his fine eyes to 
 the ceiling. 
 
 " Sly old fox ! Not a word will he say about her ! " thinks 
 the clergyman. " Yes, yes, I remember. And, by Jove! Gann 
 was the name." 
 
 Gann was also the name of that queer old man wdio fre- 
 quented the " Admiral Byng," where the ale was- so good — 
 the old boy whom they called the Captain. Yes ; it was clear 
 now. That ugly business was patched up. The astute Hunt 
 saw it all. The doctor still kept ujd a connection with the — 
 the party. And that is her old father, sure enough. " The 
 old fox, the old fox ! I've earthed him, have I ? This is a good 
 game. I wanted a little something to do, and this will excite 
 me," thinks the clerg\mian. 
 
 I am describing what I never could have seen or heard, 
 and can guarantee only verisimilitude, not truth, in my report 
 of the private conversation of these worthies. The end of 
 scores and scores of Hunt's conversations with his friend was 
 the same — an application for money. If it rained when Hunt 
 parted from his college chum, it was, " I say, doctor, I shall 
 spoil my new hat, and I'm blest if I have any money to take a 
 cab. Thank you, old boy. . Au revoir." If the day was fine, 
 it was, " My old blacks show the white seams so, that you 
 must out of your charity rig me out with a new pair. Not3-our 
 tailor. He is too expensive. Thank you — a couple of sover- 
 eigns will do." And the doctor takes two from the mantel- 
 piece, and the divine retires, jingling the gold in his greasy 
 pocket. 
 
 The doctor is going after the few words about pa//ida mors, 
 and has taken up that well-brushed broad hat, with that ever- 
 fresh lining, which we all admire in him — " Oh, I say, Firmin ! "
 
 204 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP. 
 
 breaks out the clergyman. " Before you go out, you must 
 lend me a few sovs, please. They've cleaned me out in Air 
 Street. That confounded roulette! It's a madness with me. 
 "By George!" cries the other, with a strong execration, 
 " you are too bad, Hunt. Every week of my life you come 
 to me for money. You have had plenty. Go elsewhere. I 
 won't give it you." 
 
 "Yes, you will, old boy," says the other, looking at him a 
 terrible look ; " for " 
 
 "For'what ? " says the doctor, the veins of his tall forehead 
 growing very full. 
 
 " For old times' sake," says the clergyman. " There's 
 seven of 'em on the table in bits of paper — that'll do nicely. 
 And he sweeps the fees with a dirty hand into a dirty pouch. 
 *' Halloa I Swearin' and cursin' before a clergyman. Don't 
 cut up rough, old fellow 1 Go and take the air. It'll cool 
 you." 
 
 " I don't think I would like that fellow to attend me, if I 
 was sick," says Hunt, shuffling away, rolling the plunder in his 
 greasy hand. " I don't think I'd like to meet him by moon- 
 light alone, in a very quiet lane. He's a determined chap. 
 And his eyes mean miching fnalec/io, his eyes do. Phew ! " 
 And he laughs, and makes a rude observation about Dr. 
 Firmin's eyes. 
 
 That afternoon, the gents who used the " Admiral Byng " 
 remarked the reappearance' of the jDarty who looked in last 
 evening, and who now stood glasses round, and made himself 
 uncommon agreeable to be sure. Old Mr. Ridley says he is 
 (juite the gentleman. " Hevident have been in foring parts a 
 great deal, and speaks the languages. Probbly have 'ad mis- 
 fortunes, which many 'ave 'ad them. Drinks rum-and-water 
 tremenjous. 'Ave scarce no heppytite. Many get into this 
 way from misfortunes. A plesn man, most well informed on 
 almost every subjeck. Think he's a clergyman. ' He and Mr. 
 Gann have made quite a friendship together, he and Mr. Gann 
 'ave. Which they talked of Watloo, and Gann is very fond of 
 that, Gann is, most certny." I imagine Ridley delivering these 
 sentences, and alternate little volleys of smoke, as he sits be- 
 hind his sober calumet and prattles in the tavern parlor. 
 
 After Dr. Firmin has careered through the town, standing 
 by sick-beds with his sweet sad smile, fondled and blessed by 
 tender mothers who hail him as the saviour of their children, 
 touching ladies' pulses with a hand as delicate as their own, 
 patting little fresh cheeks with courtly kindness — little cheeks
 
 ON HIS WA Y THROUGFF THE WORLD. 
 
 ^05 
 
 that owe their roses to his marvellous skill ; after he has 
 soothed and comforted my lady, shaken hands with my lord, 
 looked in at the clubs, and exchanged courtly salutations with 
 brother bigwigs, and driven away in the handsome carriage 
 with the noble horses — admired, respecting, respectful, saluted, 
 saluting — so that every man says, " Excellent man, Firmin. 
 Excellent doctor, excellent man. Safe man. Sound man. 
 Man of good family. Married a rich wife. Lucky man." And 
 so on. After the day's triumphant career, I fancy I see the 
 doctor driving homeward, with those sad eyes, that haggard smile. 
 He comes whirling up Old Parr Street just as Phil saunters 
 in from Regent Street, as usual, cigar in mouth. He flings 
 away the cigar as he sees his father, and they enter the house 
 together. 
 
 " Do you dine at home, Philip ? " the father asks. 
 " Do you, sir? I will if you do," says the son, " and if you 
 are alone." 
 
 " Alone. Yes. That is, there'll be Hunt, I suppose, whom 
 you don't like. But the poor fellow has few places to- dine 
 
 at. What? D Hunt? That's a strong expression about 
 
 a poor fellow in misfortune, and your father's old friend." 
 
 I am afraid Philip had used that wicked monosyllable 
 whilst his father was speaking, and at the mention of the 
 clergyman's detested name. " I beg your pardon, father. It 
 slipped out in spite of me. I can't help it. I hate the fel- 
 low." 
 
 " You don't disguise your likes or dislikes, Philip," says, or 
 rather groans, the safe man, the sound man, the prosperous 
 man, the lucky man, the miserable man. For years and 
 years he has known that his boy's heart has revolted from 
 him, and detected him, and gone from him; and with shame 
 and remorse, and sickening feeling, he lies awake in the 
 night-watches, and thinks how he is alone — alone in the 
 world. Ah! Love your parents, young one<^' Oh Father 
 Beneficent! strengthen our hearts; strengthen and purify them 
 so that we may not have to blush before our children! 
 
 " You don't disguise your likes and dislikes, Philip," says 
 the father then, with a tone that smites strangely and keenly 
 on the young man. 
 
 There is a great tremor in Philip's voice, as he says, " No, 
 father, I can't bear that man, and I can't disguise my feelings. 
 I have just parted from the man. I have just met him." 
 
 '* Where?" 
 
 "At — at Mrs. Brandon's, father." He blushes like a girl 
 as he sneaks.
 
 2o6 THE ADVENTURES OF PITTLIP 
 
 At the next moment he is scared by the execration which 
 hisses from his father's Hps, and the awful look of hate which 
 the elder's face assumes — the fatal, forlorn, fallen, lost look 
 which, man and boy, has oftened frightened poor Phil. Philip 
 did not like that look, nor indeed that other one, which his 
 father cast at Hunt, who presently swaggered in. 
 
 " What ! yon dine here ? We rarely do papa the honor of 
 dining with him," says the parson, with his knowing leer. *• I 
 suppose, doctor, it is to be fatted-calf day now the prodigal has 
 come kome. There's worse things than a good fillet of veal ; 
 eh ? " 
 
 Whatever the meal might be, the greasy chaplain leered and 
 winked over it as he gave it his sinister blessing. The two 
 elder guests tried to be lively and gay, as Philip thought, who 
 took such little trouble to disguise his own moods cf gloom or 
 merriment. Nothing was said regarding the occurrences of the 
 morning when my young gentleman had been rather rude to 
 Mr. Hunt ; and Philip did not need his father's caution to 
 make no mention of his previous meeting with their guest. 
 Hunt, as usual, talked to the butler, made sidelong remarks to 
 the footman, and garnished his conversation with slippery 
 double-entendre and dirty old-world slang. Petting-houses, 
 gambling-houses, Tattersall's fights, and their frequenters, were 
 his cheerful themes, and on these he descanted as usual. The 
 doctor swallowed this dose, which his friend poured out, with- 
 out the least expression of disgust. On the contrary, he was 
 cheerful : he was for an extra bottle of claret — it never could 
 be in better order than it was now. 
 
 The bottle was scarce put on the table, and tasted and pro- 
 nounced perfect, when — oh ! disappointment ! — the butler reap- 
 pears with a note for the doctor. One of his patients. Pie 
 must go. She has little the matter with her. She lives hard 
 by, in May Fair. " You and Hunt finish this bottle, unless I 
 am back before it is done ; and if it is done, we'll have another," 
 says Dr. Firmin, jovially. " Don't stir. Hunt " — and Dr. Firmin 
 is gone, leaving Philip alone with the guest to whom he had 
 certainly been rude in the morning. 
 
 " The doctor's patients often grow very unwell about claret 
 time," growls Mr. Hunt, some few minutes after. "Never 
 mind. The drink's good — good ! as somebody said at your 
 famous call-supper, Mr. Philip — won't call you Philip, as you 
 don't like it. You were uncommon crusty to me this morning, 
 to be sure. In my time there would have been bottles broke, 
 or worse, for that sort of treatment."
 
 ON HIS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. 207 
 
 " I have asked your pardon," Philip said. " I was annoyed 
 about — no matter what — and had no right to be rude to Mrs, 
 Brandon's guest." 
 
 "■ I say, did you tell the governor that you saw me in 
 Thornhaugh Street.? " asks Hunt. 
 
 '' I was very rude and ill-tempered, and again I confess I 
 was wrong," said Phil, boggling and stuttering, and turning 
 very red. He remembered his father's injunction. 
 
 " I say again, sir, did you tell your father of our meeting 
 this morning ? " demands the clergyman. 
 
 " And pray, sir, what right have you to ask me about my 
 private conversation with my father ? " asks Philip, with tower- 
 ing dignity. 
 
 " You won't tell me ? " Then you have told him. He's a 
 nice man, A^our father is, for a moral man." 
 
 " I am not anxious for your opinion about my father's 
 morality, Mr. Hunt," says Philip, gasping in a bewildered man- 
 ner, and drumming the table. " I am here to replace him in 
 his absence, and treat his guest with civility." 
 
 " Civility ! Pretty civility ! " says the other, glaring at him. 
 
 " Such as it is, sir, it is my best, and — I — I have no other," 
 groans the young man. 
 
 " Old friend of your father's, a university man, a Master of 
 Arts, a gentleman born, by Jove I a clergyman — though I sink 
 that " 
 
 " Yes, sir, you do sink that," says Philip. 
 
 " Am I a dog," shrieks out the clergj-man, " to be treated 
 by you in this way ? Who are you ? Do you know who you 
 are ? " 
 
 " Sir, I am striving with all my strength to remember," says 
 Philip. 
 
 " Come ! I say ! don't try any of your confounded airs on 
 me P^ shrieks Hunt, with a profusion of oaths, and swallowing 
 glass after glass from the various decanters before him. " Hang 
 me, when I was a young man, I would have sent one — two at 
 your nob, though you were twice as tall ! Who are you, to 
 patronize your senior, your father's old pal — a university man : 
 you confounded, supercilious " 
 
 " I am here to pay every attention to my father's guest," 
 says Phil ; " but, if you have finished your wine, I shall be 
 happy to break up the meeting, as early as you please." 
 
 " You shall pay me ; I swear you shall," said Hunt. 
 
 " Oh, Mr. Hunt 1 " cried Philip, jumping up, and clenchisg 
 his great fists, " I should desire nothing better."
 
 2o8 THE ADVENTURES OF PIIILIP 
 
 The man shrank back, thhiking Philip was going to strike 
 him (as IMiilip told me in describing the scene), and made for 
 the bell. But when the butler came, Philip only asked for 
 coffee ; and Hunt, uttering a mad oath or two, staggered out of 
 the room after the servant. Price said he had been drinking 
 before he came. He was often so. And Phil blessed his stars 
 that he had not assaulted his father's guest then and there, 
 under his own roof-tree. 
 
 He went out into the air. He gasped and cooled himself 
 under the stars. He soothed his feelings by his customary 
 consolation of tobacco. He remembered that Ridley in Thorn- 
 haugh Street held a divan that night ; and jumped into a cab, 
 and drove to his old friend. 
 
 The maid of the house, who came to the door as the cab was 
 driving away, stopped it ; and as Phil entered the passage, he 
 found the Little Sister and his father talking together in the 
 hall. The doctor's broad hat shaded his face from the hall- 
 lamp, which was burning with an extra brightness, but Mrs. 
 Brandon's was very pale, and she had been crying. 
 
 She gave a little scream when she saw Phil. " Ah ! is it 
 you, dear?" she said. She ran up to him: seized both his 
 hands : clung to him, and sobbed a thousand hot tears on his 
 hand. " I never will. Oh, never, never, never ! " she mur- 
 mured. 
 
 The doctor's broad chest heaved as with a great sigh of 
 relief. He looked at the woman and at his son with a strange 
 smile ; — not a sweet smile. 
 
 " God bless you, Caroline," he said, in his pompous, rather 
 theatrical way. 
 
 " Good-night, sir," said Mrs. Brandon, still clinging to 
 Philip's hand, and making the doctor a little humble curtsey. 
 And when he was gone, again she kissed Philip's hand, and 
 dropped her tears on it, and said, " Never, my dear ; no, never, 
 never ! " 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 IN WHICH PHILIP IS VERY ILL-TEMPERED. 
 
 Philip had long divined a part of his dear little friend's 
 history. An educated young girl had been found, cajole<l, 
 deserted by a gentleman of the world. And poor Caroline was
 
 ON HIS WA Y THROUGH THE WORLD. 
 
 209 
 
 the victim, and Philip's own father the seducer. He easily 
 guessed as much as this of the sad httle story. Dr. Firmin's 
 part in it was enough to shock his son with a thrill of disgust, 
 and to increase the mistrust, doubt, alienation, with which the 
 father had long inspired the son. What would Philip feel, 
 when all the pages of that black book were opened to him, and 
 he came to hear of a false marriage, and a ruined and outcast 
 woman, deserted for years by the man to whom he himself was 
 most bound } In a word, Philip had considered this as a mere 
 case of early libertinism, and no more ; and it was as such, in 
 the very few words which he may have uttered to me respecting 
 this matter, that he had chosen to regard it. I knew no more 
 than my friend had told me of the stor}' as yet ; it was only by 
 degrees that I learned it, and as events, now subsequent, served 
 to develop and explain it. 
 
 The elder Firmin, when questioned by his old acquaintance, 
 and, as it appeared, accomplice of former days, regarding the 
 end of a certain intrigue at Margate, which had occurred some 
 four or five and twenty years back, and when Firmin, having 
 reason to avoid his college creditors, chose to live away and 
 bear a false name, had told the clergyman a number of false- 
 hoods which appeared to satisfy him. What had become of 
 that poor little thing about whom he had made such a fool of 
 himself ? Oh, she was dead, dead ever so many years before. 
 He had pensioned her off. She had married, and died in Can- 
 ada — yes, in Canada. Poor little thing ! Yes, she was a good 
 little thing, and, at one time, he had been very soft about her. 
 I am sorry to have to state of a respectable gentleman that he 
 told lies, and told lies habitually and easily. But, you see, if 
 you commit a crime, and break a seventh commandment let us 
 say, or an eighth, or choose any number you will — you will prob- 
 ably have to back the lie of action by the lie of the tongue, 
 and so you are fairly warned, and I have no help for you. If 
 I murder a man, and the policeman inquires, " Pray, sir, did 
 you cut this here gentleman's throat ? " I must bear false wit- 
 ness, you see, out of self defence, though I may be naturally a 
 most reliable, truth-telling man. And so with regard to many 
 crimes which gentlemen commit — it is painful to have to say 
 respecting gentlemen, but they become neither more nor less 
 than habitual liars, and have to go lying on through life to you, 
 
 to me, to the servants, to their wives, to their children, to 
 
 oh, awful name ! I bow and humble myself. May we kneel, 
 may we kneel, nor strive to speak our falsehoods before Thee ! 
 
 And rx), my dear sir, seeing that after committing any in-
 
 2 1 o THE A D VENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 fraction of tlie moral laws, you must tell lies in order to back 
 yourself out of your scrape, let me ask you, as a man of honor 
 and a gentleman, whether you had not better forego the crime, 
 so as to avoid the unavoidable, and unpleasant, and daily recur- 
 ring necessity of the subsequent perjury ? A poor young girl 
 of the lower orders, cajoled, or ruined, more or less, is of course 
 no great matter. The little baggage is turned out of doors — 
 worse luck for her ! — or she gets a place, or she marries one of 
 her own class, who has not the exquisite delicacy belonging to 
 '"' gentle blood " — and there is an end of her. But if you marry 
 her privately and irregularly yourself, and then throw her off, 
 and then marry somebody else, you are brought to book in all 
 sorts of unpleasant ways. I am writing of quite an old story, 
 be pleased to remember. The first part of the history I myself 
 printed some twenty years ago ; and if you fancy I allude to 
 any more modern period, madam, you are entirely out in your 
 conjecture. 
 
 It must have been a most unpleasant duty for a man of 
 fashion, honor, and good family, to lie to a poor tipsy, disrepu- 
 table bankrupt merchant's daughter, such as Caroline Gann, bi^t 
 George Brand Firmin, Esq., M.D., had no other choice, and 
 when he liqd — as in severe cases, when he administered calomel 
 — he thought it best to give the drug freely. Thus he lied to 
 Hunt, saying that Mrs. Brandon was long since dead in Canada ; 
 and he lied to Caroline, prescribing for her the very same pill, 
 as it were, and saying that Hunt was long since dead in Can- 
 ada too. And I can fancy few more painful and humiliating 
 positions for a man of rank and fashion and reputation, than 
 to have to demean himself so far as to tell lies to a little low- 
 bred person, who gets her bread as a nurse of the sick, and has 
 not the proper use of her /^'s. 
 
 " Oh, yes, Hunt ! " Firmin had said to the Little Sister, in 
 one of those sad little colloquies which sometimes took place 
 between him and his victim, his wife of old days. " A wild, bad 
 man, Hun* was — in days when I own I was little better ! I 
 have deeply repented since, Caroline ; of nothing more than of 
 my conduct to you ; for you were worthy of a better fate, and 
 you loved me truly — madly." 
 
 " Yes," says Caroline. 
 ' " I was wild then ! I was desperate ! I had ruined my 
 fortunes, estranged my father from me, was hiding from my 
 creditors under an assumed name — that under which I saw you. 
 Ah, why did I ever come to your house, my poor child ? The 
 mark of the demon was upon me. I did not dare to speak of
 
 ON HIS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. 211 
 
 marriage before my fatlier. You have yours, and tend him 
 with your ever constant goodness. Do you know that my father 
 would not see me when he died ? Oh, it's a cruel thing to 
 think of ! " And the suffering creature slaps his tall forehead 
 with his trembling hand ; and some of his grief about his own 
 father, I dare say, is sincere, for he feels the shame and remorse 
 of being alienated from his own son. 
 
 As for the marriage — that it was a most wicked and unjusti- 
 fiable deceit, he owned ; but he was wild when it took place, 
 wild with debt and with despair at his father's estrangement 
 from him — but the fact was, it was no marriage. 
 
 " I am glad of that ! " sighed the poor Little Sister. 
 
 " Why ? " asked the other eagerly. His love was dead, but 
 his vanity was still hale and well. " Did you care for some- 
 body else, Caroline ? Did you forget your George, whom you 
 used to " 
 
 " No ! " said the little woman, bravely. " But I couldn't 
 live with a man who behaved to any woman so dishonest as 
 you behaved to me. I liked you because I thought you was a 
 gentleman. My poor painter was whom you used to despise 
 and trample to hearth — and my dear dear Philip is, Mr. Firmin. 
 But gentlemen tell the truth ! Gentlemen don't deceive poor 
 innocent girls, and desert 'em without a penny ! "■ 
 
 " Caroline ! I was driven by my creditors. I " 
 
 '' Never mind. It's over now. I bear you no malice, Mr. 
 Firmin, but I would not marry you, no, not to be doctor's wife 
 to the Queen ! " 
 
 This had been the Little Sister's language when there was 
 no thought of the existence of Hunt, the clerg}'man who had 
 celebrated their marriage ; and I don't know whether Firmin 
 was most piqued or pleased at the divorce which the little 
 woman pronounced of her own decree. But when the ill- 
 omened Hunt made his appearance, doubts and terrors filled 
 the physician's mind. Hunt was needy, greedy, treacherous, 
 unscrupulous, desperate. He could hold this marriage over 
 the doctor. He could threaten, extort, expose, perhaps in\ali- 
 •date Philip's legitimacy. The first marriage, almost certainly, 
 was null, but the scandal would be fatal to Firmin's reputation 
 and practice. And the quarrel with his son entailed conse- 
 quences not pleasant to think of. You see George Firmin, 
 Esq., M.D., was a man with a great development of the back 
 head ; when he willed a thing, he willed so fiercely that he must 
 have it, never mind the consequence^. And so he had willed 
 to make himself master of poor little Caroline . and so he had
 
 212 THE ADVENTURES OF PHIUP 
 
 willed, as a young man, to have horses, splendid entertainments, 
 roulette and ecarte', and so forth ; and the bill came at its 
 natural season, and George Firmin, Esq., did not always like 
 to pay. But for a grand, prosperous, highly bred gentleman in 
 the l/est society — with a polished forehead and manners, and 
 universally looked up to — to have to tell lies to a poor, little, 
 timid, uncomplaining, sick-room nurse, it 7f/<?J humiliating, wasn't 
 it ? And I can feel for Firmin. 
 
 To have to lie to Hunt was disgusting : but somehow not 
 so exquisitely mean and degrading as to have to cheat a little 
 trusting, humble, houseless creature, over the bloom of whose 
 gentle young life his acciirsed foot had already trampled. Ikit 
 then this Hunt was such a cad and ruffian that there need be 
 no scruple about humbugging ///;;/; and if Firmin had had any 
 humor he might have had a grim sort of pleasure in leading the 
 dirty clergyman a dance thro' bush thro' briar. So, perhaps 
 (of course \ have no means of ascertaining the fact), the doctor 
 did not altogetlier dislike the duty which now devolved on him 
 of hoodwinking his old acquaintance and accomplice. I don't 
 like to use such a vulgar phrase regarding a man in Doctor 
 Firmin's high social position, as to say of him and the jail- 
 chaplain that it was " thief catch thief ; " but at any rate Hunt 
 is such a low, graceless, friendless vagabond, that if he comes 
 in for a few kicks, or is mystified, we need not be very sorry. 
 When Mr. Thurtell is hung we don't put on mourning. His is 
 a painful position for the moment ; but, after all, he has mur- 
 dered i\Ir. William Weare. 
 
 Firmin was a bold and courageous man, hot in pursuit, 
 fierce in desire, but cool in danger, and rapid in action. Some 
 of his great successes as a physician arose from his daring and 
 successful practice in sudden emergency. While Hunt was 
 only lurching about the town an aimless miscreant, living from 
 dirty hand to dirty mouth, and as long as he could get drink, 
 cards, and shelter, tolerably content, or at least pretty easily 
 appeased by a guinea-dose or two — Firmin could adopt the 
 palliative system ; soothe his patient with an occasional bounty ; 
 set him to sleep with a composing draught of claret or brandy ; 
 and let the day take care of itself. He might die ; he might 
 have a fancy to go abroad again ; he might be transported for 
 forgery or some other rascaldom. Dr. Firmin would console 
 himself ; and he trusted to the chapter of accidents to get rid 
 of his friend. But Hunt, aware that the woman was alive whom 
 he had actually, though unlawfully married to Firmin, became 
 an enemy whom it was necessary to subdue, to cajole, or to
 
 ON HIS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. 213 
 
 bribe, and the sooner the doctor put himself on his defence the 
 better. What should the defence be ? Perhaps the most ef- 
 fectual was a fierce attack on the enemy; perhaps it would be 
 better to bribe him. The course to be taken would be best 
 ascertained after a little previous reconnoitring. 
 
 " He will try and inflame Caroline," the doctor thought, 
 " by representing her wrongs and her rights to her. He will 
 show her that, as my wife, she has a right to my name and a 
 share of my income. A less mercenary woman never lived than 
 this poor little creature. She disdains money, and, except for her 
 father's sake, would have taken none of mine. But to punish 
 me for certainly rather shabby behavior ; to claim and take her 
 own right and position in the world as an honest woman, may 
 she not be induced to declare war against me, and stand by her 
 marriage ? After she left home, her two Irish half-sisters 
 deserted her and spat upon her ; and when she would have 
 returned, the heartless women drove her from the door. Oh, 
 the vixens ! And now to drive by them in her carriage, to 
 claim a maintenance from me, and to have a right to my 
 honorable name, would she not have her dearest revenge over 
 her sisters by so declaring her marriage ? " 
 
 Firmin's noble mind misgave him very considerably on this 
 point. He knew women, and how those had treated their little 
 sister. Was it in human nature not to be revenged ? These 
 thoughts rose straightway in Firmin's mind, when he heard that 
 the much dreaded meeting between Caroline and the chaplain 
 had come to pass. 
 
 As he ate his dinner with his guest, his enemy, opposite to 
 him, he was determining on his plan of action. The screen 
 was up, and he was laying his guns behind it, so to speak. Of 
 course he was as civil to Hunt as the tenant to his landlord 
 when he comes with no rent. So the doctor laughed, joked, 
 bragged, talked his best, and was thinking the while what was 
 to be done against the danger. 
 
 He had a plan which might succeed. He must see Caroline 
 immediatel}'. He knew the weak point of her heart, and where 
 she was most likely to be vulnerable. And he would act against 
 her as barbarians of old acted against their enemies, when they 
 brought the captive wives" and children in front of the battle, 
 and bade the foe strike through them. He knew how Caroline 
 loved his boy. It was through that love he would work upon 
 her. As he washes his pretty hands for dinner, and bathes his 
 noble brow, he arranges his little plan. He orders himself to 
 be sent for soon after the second bottle of claret — and \f
 
 ■214 '^-^^-^ ADVENTURES OF rillLIP 
 
 appears the doctor's servants were accustomed to the delivery 
 of these messages from their master to liimself. The plan 
 arranged, now let us take our dinner and our wine, and make 
 ourselves comfortable until the moment of action. In his 
 wild-oats days, when travelling abroad with wild and noble 
 companions, Firmin had fought a duel or two, and was always 
 remarkable for his gayety of conversation and the fiine appetite 
 which he showed at breakfast before going on to the field. So, 
 perhaps, Hunt, had he not been stupefied by previous drink, 
 might have taken the alarm by remarking Firmin's extra 
 courtesy and gayety, as they dined together. It was nimcviniim, 
 cms ceqiior. 
 
 When the second bottle of claret was engaged. Dr. Firmin 
 starts. He has an advance of half-an-hour at least on his 
 Adversary, or on the man who may be his adversary. If the 
 Little Sister is at home, he will see her — he will lay bare his 
 candid heart to her, and make a clean breast of it. The Little 
 Sister was at home. 
 
 " I want to speak to you very particularly about that case of 
 poor Lady Humandhaw," says he, dropping his voice. 
 
 " I will step out, my dear, and take a little fresh air," says 
 Captain Gann ; meaning that he will be off to the "Admiral 
 Byng ; " and the two are together. 
 
 " I have had something on my conscience. I have deceived 
 you, Caroline," says the doctor, with the beautiful shining fore- 
 head and hat. 
 
 " Ah, Mr. Firmin," says she, bending over her work ; 
 *' you've used me to that." 
 
 " A man whom you knew once, and who tempted me for his • 
 own selfish ends to do a very wrong thing by you — a man whom' 
 I thought dead is alive : — Tufton Hunt, who performed that — ■ 
 that illegal ceremony at Margate, of which so often and often 
 on my knees I have repented, Caroline ! " 
 
 The beautiful hands are clasped, the beautiful deep voice 
 thrills lowly through the room ; and if a tear or two can be 
 squeezed out of the beautiful eyes, I dare say the doctor will 
 not be sorry. 
 
 " He has been here to-day. Him -and Mr. Philip was here 
 and quarrelled. Philip has told you, I suppose, sir ? " 
 
 " Before heaven, ' on the word of a gentleman,' when I said 
 he was dead, Caroline, I thought he was dead ! Yes, I declare, 
 at our college, Maxwell — Dr. Maxwell — who had been at Cam- 
 bridge with us, told me that our old friend Hunt had died in 
 Canada." (This, my beloved friends and readers, may not
 
 NURSE AND DOCTOR.
 
 ON HIS WAY THROUGH TIIE WORLD, 215 
 
 have been the precise long bow which George Firmin, Esq.' 
 M.D., pulled; but that he twanged a famous lie out, whenever 
 there was occasion for the weapon, 1 assure you is an undoubt- 
 ed fact.) " Ves, Dr. Maxwell told nic our old friend was dead 
 — our old friend ? My worst enemy and yours ! But let that 
 pass. It was he, Caroline, who led me into crimes which I 
 have never ceased to deplore." 
 
 "Ah, Mr. Firmin," sighs the Little Sister, " since I've known 
 you, you was big enough to take care of yourself in that way." 
 
 " I have not come to excuse myself, Caroline," says the deep 
 sweet voice. " I have done you enough wrong, and I feel it 
 here — at this heart. I have not come to speak about myself, 
 but of some one I love the best of all the world — the only being 
 I do love — some one you love, you good and generous soul — 
 —about Philip." 
 
 " What is it about Philip ? " asks Mrs. Brandon, very 
 quickly. 
 
 " Do you want harm to happen to him ? " 
 
 " Oh, ray darling boy, no ! " cries the Little Sister, clasping 
 her little hands. 
 
 " Would you keep him from, harm ? " 
 
 "Ah, sir, you know I would. When he had the scarlet 
 fever, didn't I pour the drink down his poor throat, and nurse 
 him, and tend him, as if, as if — as a mother would her own child ?" 
 
 " You did, you did, you noble, noble woman ; and heaven 
 bless you for it ! A father does. I am not all heartless, Caro- 
 line, as you deem me, perhaps." 
 
 " I don't think it's much merit, your loving him,'" says Caro- 
 line, resuming her sewing. And, perhaps, she thinks within 
 herself, " What is he a-coming to ? " You see she was a shrewd 
 little person, when her passions and partialities did not over- 
 come her reason ; and she had come to the conclusion that this 
 elegant Dr. Firmin, whom she had admired so once, was a — not 
 altogether veracious gentleman. In fact, I heard her myself 
 say afterwards, " La ! he used to talk so fine, and slap his hand 
 on his heart, you know ; but I usedn't to believe him, no more 
 than a man in a play." " It's not much merit your loving that 
 boy," says Caroline, then. " But what about him, sir? " 
 
 Then Firmin explained. This man Hunt was capable of 
 any crime for money or revenge. Seeing Caroline was alive * * 
 
 " I s'pose you told him I was dead too, sir," says she, look- 
 ing up from the w^ork. 
 
 " Spare me, spare me ! Years ago, perhaps, when I had 
 lost sight of you. I may, perhaps have thought * * * "
 
 2 1 6 THE AD ventures; OF PHILIP 
 
 "And it's not to you, George Brandon — it's not to you," 
 cries Caroline, starting up, and speaking witli her sweet, inno- 
 cent, ringing voice ; " it's to kind, dear friends, — it's to my 
 good God that I owe my life, which you had flung it away. 
 And I paid you back by guarding your boy's dear life, I did, 
 under — under Him who giveth and taketh. And bless His 
 name ! " 
 
 " You are a good woman, and I am a bad, sinful man, 
 Caroline," says the other. " You saved my Philip's — our 
 Pliilip's life, at the risk of your own. Now I tell you that 
 another immense danger menaces him, and may come upon him 
 any day as long as yonder scoundrel is alive. Suppose his 
 character is assailed ; suppose, thinking you dead, I married 
 another t " 
 
 " Ah, George, you never thought me dead ; though, perhaps, 
 you wished it, sir. Many would have died," added the poor 
 Little Sister. 
 
 " Look, Caroline ! If I was married to you, my wife — 
 Philip's mother — was not my wife, and he is her natural son. 
 The property he inherits does not belong to him. The children 
 of his grandfather's other daughter claim it, and Philip is a 
 beggar. Philip, bred as he has been — Philip, the heir to a 
 mother's large fortune." 
 
 *' And — and his father's, too ? " asks Caroline, anxiously. 
 
 " I daren't tell you — though, no, by heaven ! I can trust 
 you with everything. My own great gains have been swallowed 
 up in speculations which have been almost all fatal. There has 
 been a fate hanging over me, Caroline — a righteous punishment 
 for having deserted you. I sleep with a sword hanging over 
 my head, which may fall and destroy me. I walk with a vol- 
 cano under my feet, AThich may burst any day and annihilate 
 me. And people speak of the famous Dr. Firmin, the rich Dr. 
 Firmin, the prosperous Dr. Firmin ! I shall have a title soon, 
 I believe. I am believed to be happy, and I am alone; and the 
 wretchedest man alive." 
 
 " Alone, are you ? " said Caroline. " There was a womnn 
 once who would have kept by you, only you — you flung her 
 away. Look here, George Brandon. It's over with us. Years 
 and years ago it lies where a cherub was buried. But I love 
 my Philip ; and I won't hurt him, no, never, never, never ! " 
 
 And as the doctor turned to go away, Caroline followed 
 him wistfully into the hall, and it was there that Philip found 
 them. 
 
 Caroline's tender "nevei;" "never," rang in Philip's mem-
 
 ON ms WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. 217 
 
 ory as he sat at Ridley's party, amidst the artists and authors 
 there assembled. Phil was thoughtful and silent. He did not 
 laugh \ery loud. He did not praise or abuse anybody out- 
 rageously, as was the wont of that most emphatic young gen- 
 tleman. He scarcely contradicted a single person ; and per- 
 haps, when Larkins and Scumble's last picture was beautiful, 
 or Bunch, the critic of the Connoisseur., praised Bowman's last 
 novel, contented himself with a scornful " Ho ! " and a pull at 
 his whiskers, by way of protest and denial. Had he been in 
 his usual fine spirits, and enjoying his ordinary flow of talk, he 
 would have informed Larkins and the assembled company not 
 only that Scumble was an impostor, but that he, Larkins, was 
 an idiot for admiring him. He would have informed Bunch 
 that he was infatuated about that jackass Bowman, that cock- 
 ney, that wretched ignoramus, who didn't know his own or any 
 other lan2:ua<re. He would have taken down one of Bowman's 
 stories from the shelf, and proved the folly, the imbecility, and 
 crass ignorance of that author, (Ridley has a simple little 
 stock of novels and poems in an old cabinet in his studio, and 
 reads them still with much artless wonder and respect.) Or, 
 to be sure, Phil would have asserted propositions the exact 
 contrary of those here maintained, and declared that Bowman 
 was a genius, and Scumble a most accomplished artist. But 
 then, you know, somebody else must have commenced by taking 
 the other side. Certainly a more paradoxical, and provoking, 
 and obstinate, and contradictory disputant than Mr. Phil I 
 never knew. I never met Dr. Johnson, who died before I came 
 up to town ; but I do believe Phil Firmin would have stood up 
 and argued even with hwi. 
 
 At these Thursday divans the host provided the modest and 
 kindly refreshment, and Betsy the maid, or Virgilio the model, 
 travelled to and fro with glasses and water. Each guest 
 brought his own smoke,and I promise you there were such liberal 
 contributions of the article, that the studio was full of it ; and 
 new-comers used to be saluted by a roar of laughter as you 
 heard, rather than saw, them entering, and choking in the fog. 
 It was, " Hilloa, Prodgers ! is that you, old boy .? " and the 
 beard of Prodgers (that famous sculptor) would presently loom 
 through the cloud. It was, "Newcome, how goes?" and Mr. 
 Clive Newcome (a mediocre artist, I must own, but a famous 
 good fellow, with an uncommonly pretty villa and pretty and rich 
 wife at Wimbledon) would make his appearance, and be warmly 
 greeted by our little host. " It was, " Is that you, F. B. ? would 
 you like a link, old boy, to see you through the fog? " And
 
 ^ I g THE AD VENTURES OF PIIILiP 
 
 the deep voice of Frederick I]ayham, Esquire (the eminent critic 
 on Art), would boom out of the tobacco-mist, and would exclaim, 
 •' A link ? T would like a drink." Ah, ghosts of youth, again ye 
 draw near ! Old figures glimmer through the cloud. Old songs 
 echo out of the distance. What were you saying anon about 
 Dr. Johnson, boys ? I am sure some of us must remember 
 him. As for me, I am so old, that I might have been at Edial 
 school — the other pupil along with little Davy Garrick and his 
 brother. 
 
 We had a bachelor's supper in the Temple so lately that I 
 think that we must pay but a very brief visit to a smokingparty 
 in Thornhaugh Street, or the ladies will say that we are too 
 fond of bachelor habits, and keep our friends away from their 
 cliarming and amiable society. A novel must not smell of 
 cigars much, nor should its refined and genteel page be stained 
 with too frequent brandy-and-water. Please to imagine, then, 
 the prattle of the artists, authors, and amateurs assembled at 
 Ridley's divan. Fancy Jarman, the minature painter, drinking 
 mor.e liquor than any man present, asking his neighbor {sub 
 voce) why Ridley does not give his father (the old butler) five 
 shillings to wait ; suggesting that perhaps the old man is gone 
 out, and is getting seven-and-sixpence elsewhere ; praising Rid- 
 ley's picture aloud, and sneering at it in an undertone ; and 
 when a man of rank happens to enter the room, shambling up 
 to him and fawning on him, and cringing to him with fulsome 
 praise and flattery. When the gentleman's back is turned, 
 Jarman can spit epigrams at it. I hope he will never forgive 
 Ridley, and always continue to hate him : for hate him Jarman 
 will, as long as he is prosperous, and curse him as long as the 
 world esteems him. Look at Pym, the incumbent of St. Bronze 
 hard by, coming in to join the literary and artistic assembly, 
 and choking in his white neckcloth to the diversion of all tlie 
 company vvho can see him ! Sixteen, eighteen, twenty men 
 are asse'nibled. Open -the windows, or sure they will all be 
 stifled with the smoke ! Why, it fills the whole house so, that 
 the Little Sister has to open the parlor window on the ground- 
 floor, and gasp for fresh air. 
 
 Phil's head and cigar are thrust out from a window above, 
 and he lolls there, musing about his own affairs, as his smoke 
 ascends to the skies. Young Mr. Philip Firmin is known to 
 be wealthy, and his father gives very good parties in Old Parr 
 Street, so Jarman sidles up to Phil and wants a little fresh air 
 too. He enters into conversation by abusiug Ridley's picture 
 that is on the easel.
 
 ON HIS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. 219 
 
 Everybody is praising it ; what do yon think of it, Mr. 
 Virniin ? Very queer drawing about those eyes, isn't there ? 
 
 " Is there ? " growls Phil. 
 
 "Very loud color." 
 
 " Oh ! " says Phil. 
 
 " The composition is so clearly prigged from Raphael." 
 
 " Indeed ! " 
 
 ■"I beg your pardon. I don't think you know who I am," 
 continues the other, with a simper. 
 
 "Yes, I do," says Phil, glaring at him. "You're a painter, 
 and your name is Mr. Envy." 
 
 " Sir ! " shrieks the painter ; but he is addressing himself 
 to the tails of Phil's coat, the sujDerior half of Mr. Firmin's 
 body is stretching out of the window. Now, you may speak of 
 a man behind his back, but not to him. So Mr. Jarman with- 
 draws, and addresses himself, face to face, to somebody else 
 in the company. I daresay he abuses that upstart, impudent, 
 bumptious young doctor's son. Have I not owned that Philip 
 was often very rude? and to-night he is in a specially bad 
 humor. 
 
 As he continues to stare into the street, who is that who has 
 just reeled up to the railings below, and is talking in at Mrs. 
 Brandon's window ? Whose blackguard voice and laugh are 
 those which Phil recognizes with a shudder ? It is the voice 
 and laugh of our friend Mr. Hunt, whom Philip left not very 
 long since, near his father's house in Old Parr Street, and both 
 of those familiar sounds are more vinous, more odious, more 
 impudent than they were even two hours ago. 
 
 " Hilloa ! I say ! " he calls out with a laugh and a curse, 
 " Pst ! Mrs. WhaVd'you-call-em ! Hang it ! don't shut the 
 window. Let a fellow in ! " and he looks towards the upper 
 window, where Philip's head and bust appear dark before the 
 light. Hunt cries out, " Holloa ! what game's up now, I wonder ? 
 Supper and ball. Shouldn't be surprised." And he hiccups 
 a waltz tune, and clatters time to it with his dirty boots. 
 
 " Mrs. What-d'you-call-em ! Mrs. B— ! " the sot then re- 
 commences to shriek out. " Must see you — most particular 
 business. Private and confidential. Hear of something to 
 your advantage." And rap, rap, rap, he is now thundering at 
 the door. In the clatter of twenty voices, few hear Hunt's 
 noise except Philip ; or, if they do, only imagine that another 
 of Ridley's guests is arriving. 
 
 At the halldoor there is talk and altercation, and the high 
 shriek of a well-known odious voice. Philip moves quickly
 
 220 THE ADVENTURES OF PIIILTP 
 
 from liis window, slioulclcrs friend Jarnian at the studio door, 
 and hustling past liini obtains, no doubt, more good wishes 
 from that ingenious artist. Philip is so rude and overbearing 
 that I really have a mind to depose him from his place of hero 
 — only, you see, we are committed. His name is on the page 
 overhead, and we can't take it down and put up another. The 
 Little Sister is standing in her hall by the just opened door, 
 and remonstrating with Mr. Hunt, who appears to wish to force 
 his way in. 
 
 " Pooh ! shtuff, my dear! If he's here I musht see him — 
 particular business — get out of that ! " and he reels forward and 
 against little Caroline's shoulder. 
 
 " Get away, you brute, you ! " cries the little lady. " Go 
 home, Mr. Hunt ; you are worse than you were this morning." 
 She is a resolute little woman, and puts out a firm little arm 
 against this odious invader. She has seen patients in hospital 
 raging in fever : she is not frightened by a tipsy man. " La ! is 
 it you, Mr. Philip ? ^^'ho ever will take this horrid man f He 
 ain't fit to go up stairs among the gentlemen ; indeed he ain't." 
 
 "You said Firmin was here — and it isn't the father. It's 
 the cub ! I want the doctor. Where's the doctor.? " hiccups 
 the chaplain, lurching against the wall ; and then he looks at 
 Philip with bloodshot eyes, that twinkle hate. " Who wantsh 
 you, I shlike to know ? Had enough of you already to-day. 
 Conceited brute. Don't look at 7ne in that sortaway ! I ain't 
 afraid of you — ain't afraid anybody. Time w^as when I was a 
 young man fight you as soon as look at you. I say, Philip ! " 
 
 " Go home, now. Do go home, there's a good man," says 
 the landlady. 
 
 " I say ! Look here — hie — hi ! Philip ! On your word as 
 a gentleman, your father's not here ? He's a sly old boots, 
 P.rummell Firmin is — Trinity man — I'm not a Trinity man — 
 Corpus man. I say, Philip, give us your hand. Bear no malice. 
 Look here — something very particular. After dinner — went 
 into Air Street — you know — 7-ouge gagne, el cotileiir — cleaned 
 out. Cleaned out, on the honor of a gentleman and master of 
 arts of the Universit}^ of Cambridge. So was your father — no, 
 he went out in medicine. I say, Philip, hand us out fi\'e sover- 
 eigns, and let's try the luck again ! What, you won't ! It's 
 mean, I say. Don't be mean." 
 
 " Oh, here's iive shillings ! Go and have a cab. Fetch a 
 cab for him, Virgilio, do ! " cries the mistress of the house. 
 
 "That's not enough, my dear!" cries the chaplain, advan- 
 cing towards Mrs. Brandon, with such a leer and air, that Philip,
 
 ON HIS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. 221 
 
 half choked with passion, runs forward, grips Hunt by the collar, 
 and crying out, " You filthy scoundrel ! as this is not my house, 
 I may kick you out of it ! " — in another instant has run Hunt 
 through the passage, hurled him down the steps, and sent him 
 sprawling into the kennel. 
 
 " Row down below," says Rosebur}-, placidly, looking from 
 above. " Personal conflict. Intoxicated individual — in gutter. 
 Our impetuous friend has floored him." 
 
 Hunt, after a moment, sits up and glares at Philip. He is 
 not hurt. Perhaps the shock has sobered him. He thinks, 
 perhaps, Philip is going to strike again. " Hands off, Bastard ! " 
 shrieks out the prostrate wretch. 
 
 "O Philip, Philip! He's mad, he's tipsy !" cries out the 
 Little Sister, running into the street. She puts her arms round 
 Philip. " Don't mind him, dear — he's mad ! Policeman ! The 
 gentleman has had too much. Come in, Philip ; come in ! " 
 
 She took him into her little room. She was pleased with 
 the gallantry of the boy. She liked to see him just now, stand- 
 ing over her enemy, courageous, victorious, her champion, 
 " La ! how savage he did look ; and how brave and strong you 
 are ! But the little wretch ain't fit to stand before such as you ! " 
 And she passed her little hand down his arm, of which the 
 muscles were all in a quiver from the recent skirmish. 
 
 " What did the scoundrel mean by calling me bastard ? " 
 said Philip, the wild blue eyes glaring round about with more 
 than ordinary fierceness. 
 
 " Nonsense, dear ! Who minds anything he says, that 
 beast ? His language is always horrid ; he's not a gentleman. 
 He had had too much this morning when he was here. What 
 matters what he says ? He won't know anything about it to- 
 morrow. But it was kind of my Philip to rescue his poor little 
 nurse, wasn't it? Like a novel. Come in, and let me make 
 you some tea. Don't go to no more smoking : you have had 
 enough. Come in and talk to me." 
 
 And, as a mother, with sweet pious face, yearns to her little 
 children from her seat, she fondles him, she watches him ; she 
 fills her teapot from her singing kettle. She talks — talks in 
 her homely way, and on this subject and that. It is a wonder 
 how she prattles on, who is generally rather silent. She won't 
 see Phil's eyes, which are following her about very strangely 
 and fiercely. And when again he mutters, " What did he mean 
 by * * * " " La, my dear, how cross you are ! " she breaks 
 out. " It's always so ; you won't be happy without your cigar. 
 Here's a cheroot, a beauty ! Pa brought it home from the club.
 
 222 THE ADVENTURES OF rillLIP 
 
 A China captain gave him some. You must light it at the little 
 end. There ! " And if I could draw the picture which my 
 mind sees of her lii^hling Phil's cheroot for him, and smiling 
 the while, the little innocent Delilah coaxing and wheedling 
 this young Samson, I know it would be a pretty picture. I 
 wish Ridley would sketch it for me. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 DAMOCLES. 
 
 On the next morning, at an hour so early that Old Parr 
 Street was scarce awake, and even the maids who wash the 
 broad steps of the houses of the tailors and medical gentlemen 
 who inhabit that region had not yet gone down on their knees 
 before their respective doors, a ring was heard at Dr. Firmin's 
 night-bell, and when the door was opened by the yawning at- 
 tendant, a little person in a gray gown and a black bonnet made 
 her appearance, handed a note to the servant, and saicf the case 
 was most urgent and the doctor must come at once. Was not 
 Lady Humandhaw the noble person whom we last mentioned, 
 as the invalid about whom the doctor and the nurse had spoken 
 a few words on the previous evening ? The Little Sister, for it 
 was she, used the very same name to the servant, who retired 
 grumbling to waken up his master and deliver the note. 
 
 Nurse Brandon sat awhile in the great gaunt dining-room 
 where hung the portrait of the doctor in his splendid black 
 collar and cuffs, and contemplated this masterpiece until an 
 invasion of housemaids drove her from tl.e apartment, when she 
 took refuge in that other little room to which Mrs. Firmin's 
 portrait had been consigned. 
 
 "That's like him ever so many years and years ago," she 
 thinks, " It is a little handsomer ; but it has his wicked look 
 that I used to think so killing, and so did my sisters, both of 
 them — they were ready to tear out each other's eyes for jeal- 
 ousy. And that's Mrs. Firmin ! Well, I suppose the painter 
 haven't flattered her. If he have she could have been no great 
 things, Mrs^ F. couldn't." And the doctor, entering softly by 
 the opened door and over the thick Turkey carpet, comes up 
 to her noiselessly, and finds the Little Sister gazing at the por' 
 trait of the departed lady.
 
 ON HIS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. 223 
 
 "Oh, it"s you, is it. I wonder whether you treated her no 
 better than you treated me, Dr. F. J've a notion she's not the 
 only one. She don't look happy, poor thing," says the little 
 lady. 
 
 " What is it, Caroline ? asked the deep-voiced doctor 3 " and 
 what brings you so early ? " 
 
 The Little Sister then explains to him. " Last night after 
 he went away Hunt came, sure enough. He had been drinking. 
 He was very rude, and Philip wouldn't bear it. Philip had a 
 good courage of his own and a hot blood. And Philip thought 
 Hunt was insulting her, the Little Sister. So he up with his 
 hand and down goes Mr. Hunt on the pa^vement. Well, when 
 he was down he was in a dreadful way, and he called Philip a 
 dreadful name." 
 
 " A name ? what name ? " Then Caroline told the doctor 
 the name Mr. Hunt had used ; and if Firmin's face usually 
 looked wicked, I dare say it did not seem very angelical when 
 he heard how this odious name had been applied to his son. 
 "Can he do Philip a mischief?" Caroline continued. "I 
 thought I was bound to tell his father. Look here Dr. F., I 
 don't want to do my dear boy a harm. But suppose what you 
 told me last night isn't true — as I don't think you much mind ! 
 — mind — saying things that are incorrect, you know, when us 
 women are in the case. But suppose when you played the vil- 
 lain, thinking only to take in a poor innocent girl of sixteen, it 
 was you who were took in, and that I was your real wife after 
 all ? There would be a punishment ! " 
 
 " I should have an honest and good wife, Caroline," said 
 the doctor, with a groan. 
 
 "This would be a punishment, not for you, but for my poor 
 Philip," the woman goes on. "What has he done, that his 
 honest name should be took from him — and his fortune per- 
 haps ? I have been lying broad awake all night thinking of 
 him. Ah, George Brandon ! Why, why did you come to my 
 poor old father's house, and bring this misery down on me, and 
 on your child unborn ? " 
 
 " On myself, the worst of all," says the doctor. 
 
 "You deserve it. But it's an innocent that has had, or will 
 have, to suffer most. O George Brandon ! Think of a poor 
 child, flung away, and left to starve and die, without even so 
 much as knowing your real name ! Think of your boy, perhaps 
 brought to shame and poverty through your fault ! " 
 
 " Do you suppose I don't often think of my wrong ? " says 
 the doctor. " That it does not cause me sleepless nights, and
 
 224 ^•^^'^' ''^ ^ ^ 'ENTUKES OF PIHL IP 
 
 hours of anguish ? Ah ! Caroline ! " and he looks in the glass ; 
 " I am not shaved, and it's very unbecoming," he thinks ; that 
 is, if I may dare to read his thoughts, as I do to report his 
 unheard words. 
 
 " You think of your wrong now it may be found out, I dare 
 say ! " says Caroline, " Suppose this Hunt turns against you? 
 He is desperate ; mad for drink and money ; has been in jail 
 — as he said this very night to me and my papa. He'll do or 
 say anything. If you treat him hard, and Philip have treated 
 him hard — not harder than served him right though — he'll pull 
 the house down and himself under it ; but he'll be revenged. 
 Perhaj^s he drank so much last night that he may have forgot. 
 But I fear he means mischief, and I came here to say so, and 
 hoping that you might be kep' on your guard. Doctor F., and if 
 you have to quarrel with him, I don't know what you ever will 
 do, 1 am sure — no more than if you had to fight a chimney- 
 sweep in the street. I have been awake all night thinking, and 
 as soon as ever I saw the daylight, I determined I would run 
 and tell you." 
 
 " \Vhen he called Philip that name, did the boy seem much 
 disturbed ? " asked the doctor. 
 
 " Yes ; he referred to it again and again — though I tried to 
 coax him out of it. But it was on his mind last night, and I 
 am sure he will think of it the first thing this morning. Ah, 
 yes, doctor ! conscience will sometimes let a gentleman doze ; 
 but after discover}' has come, and opened your curtains, and 
 said, ' You desired to be called early ! ' there's little use in try- 
 ing to sleep much. You look very much frightened, Doctor F.," 
 the nurse continues. " You haven't such a courage as Philip 
 has ; or as you had when you were a young man, and came a 
 leading poor girls astray. You used to be afraid of nothing 
 then. Do you remember that fellow on board the steamboat in 
 Scotland in our wedding-trip, and, la ! I thought you was going 
 to kilj him. That poor little Lord Cinqbars told me ever so 
 many stories then about your courage and shooting people. It 
 wasn't very courageous, leaving a poor girl without even a name, 
 and scarce a guinea, was it ? But I ain't come to call up old 
 stories — only to warn you. Fven in old times, when he mar- 
 ried us, and 1 thought he was doing a kindness, I never could 
 abide this horrible man. In Scotland, when you was away 
 shooting with your poor little lord, the things Hunt used to say 
 and look was dreadful. I wonder how ever you, who were 
 gentlemen, could put up with such a fellow ! Ah, that was a 
 sad honeymoon of ours ! I wonder why I'm a thinking of it
 
 ON HIS WAY THRO ran the ]vorld. 235 
 
 now ? I suppose it's from having seen the picture of the other 
 one — poor lady ! " 
 
 " I have told you, Caroline, that I was so wild and desperate 
 at that unhappy time, I was scarcely accountable for my ac- 
 tions. If I left you, it was because I had no other resource 
 but flight. I was a ruined, penniless man, but for my mar- 
 riage with Ellen Ringwood. You don't suppose the marriage 
 was happy ? Happy ! when have I ever been happy ? My lot 
 is to be wretched, and bring wretchedness down on those I 
 love ! On you, on my father, on my wife, on my boy — I am a 
 doomed man. Ah, that the innocent should suffer for me ! " 
 And our friend looks askance in the glass, at the blue chin, 
 and hollow eyes which make his guilt look the more haggard. 
 
 " I never had my lines," the Little Sister continued, " I 
 never knew there were papers, or writings, or anything but a ring 
 and a clergyman, when you married me. But I've heard tell 
 that people in Scotland don't want a clergyman at all ; and if 
 they call themselves man and wife, they are man and wife. 
 Now, sir, Mr. and Mrs. Brandon certainly did travel together 
 in Scotland — witness that man whom vou were ffoins: to throw 
 into the lake for being rude to your wife — and * * * La! 
 Don't fly out so ! It wasn't me, a poor girl of sixteen, who 
 did wrong. It was you, a man of the world, who was years 
 and years older." 
 
 When Brandon carried off his poor little victim and wife, 
 there had been a journey to Scotland, where Lord Cinqbars, 
 then alive, had sporting quarters. His lordship's chaplain, 
 Mr. Hunt, had been of the party, which fate very soon after- 
 wards separated. Death seized on Cinqbars .at Naples. 
 Debt caused Firmin — Brandon, as he called himself then — to 
 fly the country. The chaplain wandered from jail to jail. 
 And as for poor little Caroline Brandon, I suppose the husband 
 who had married her under a false name thought that to escape 
 her, leave her, and disown her altogether was an easier and 
 less dangerous plan than to continue relations with her. So 
 one day, four months after their marriage, the 5-oung couple 
 being then at Dover, Caroline's husband happened to go out 
 for a walk. But he sent away a portmanteau by the back door 
 when he went out for the walk, and as Caroline was waiting 
 for her little dinner some hours after, the porter who carried 
 the luggage came with a little note from her dearest G. B. : 
 and it was full of little fond expressions of regard and affec- 
 tion, such as gentlemen put into little notes ; but dearest G. B. 
 gaid the bailiffs were upon him, and one of them had arrived
 
 2 26 I^HE AD VENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 that morning, and he must fly : and he took half the money he 
 had, and left half for his little Carry. And he would be back 
 soon, and arrange matters ; or tell her where to write and fol- 
 low him. And she was to take care of her little health, and to 
 write a great deal to her Georgy. And she did not know how 
 to write ver)' well then ; but she did her best, and improved a 
 great deal ; for, indeed, she wrote a great deal, poor thing. 
 Sheets and sheets of paper she blotted with ink and tears. And 
 then the money was spent ; and the next money ; and no more 
 came, and no more letters. And she was alone at sea, sink- 
 ing, sinking, when it pleased heaven to send that friend who 
 rescued her. It is such a sad, sad little story, that in fact I 
 don't like dwelling on it ; not caring to look upon poor inno- 
 cent, trusting creatures in pain. 
 
 * * Well, then, when Caroline exclaimed, " La ! don't fly 
 out so. Dr. Firmin ! " I suppose the doctor had been crying 
 out, and swearing fiercely, at the recollections of his friend 
 Mr. Brandon, and at the danger which possibly hung over that 
 gentleman. Marriage ceremonies are dangerous risks in jest 
 or in earnest. You can't pretend to marry even a poor old 
 bankrupt lodging-house-keeper's daughter without some risk of 
 being brought subsequently to book. If you have a vulgar 
 wife alive, and afterwards choose to leave her and marr}' an 
 earl's niece, you will come to trouble, however well connected 
 you are and highly placed in society. If you have had thirty 
 thousand pounds with wife No. 2, and have to pay it back on 
 a sudden, the payment may be inconvenient. You may be 
 tried for bigamy, and sentenced, goodness knows to what pun- 
 ishment. A.t any rate, if the matter is made public, and you 
 are a most respectable man, moving in the highest scientific 
 and social circles, those circles may be disposed to request you 
 to walk out of their circumference. A novelist, I know, ought 
 to have no likes, dislikes, pity, partiality for his characters ; but 
 I declare I cannot help feeling a respectful compassion for a 
 gentleman wOio, in consequence of a youthful, and, I am sure, 
 sincerely regretted folly, may be liable to lose his fortune, his 
 place in society, and his considerable practice. Punishment 
 hasn't a right to come with such a pcdc claudo. There ought 
 to be limitations ; and it is shabby and revengeful of Justice to 
 present her little bill when it has been more than twenty years 
 owing. * * * Having had his talk out with the Little 
 Sister, having a long-past crime suddenly taken down from the 
 shelf ; having a remorse long since supposed to be dead and 
 buried, suddenly starting up in the most blustering, bolster-
 
 ON HIS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. 
 
 227 
 
 ous, inconvenient manner ; having a rage and terror tearing 
 him within ; I can fancy this most respectable physician going 
 about his day's work, and most sincerely sympathize with him. 
 Who is to heal the physician ? Is he not more sick at heart 
 than most of his patients that day ? He has to listen to Lady 
 Megrim cackling for half an hour at least, and describing her 
 little ailments. He has to listen, and never once to dare to 
 say, " Confound you, old chatterbox ! What are you prating 
 about your ailments to me, who am suffering real torture whilst 
 I am smirking in your face? " He has to wear the inspiriting 
 smile, to breathe the gentle joke, to console, to whisper hope, 
 to administer remedy ; and all day, perhaps, he sees no one so 
 utterly sick, so sad, so despairing, as himself. 
 
 The first person on whom he had to practise hypocrisy that 
 day was his own son, who chose to come to breakfast — a meal 
 of which son and father seldom now partook in comjDan}-, 
 "What does he know, and what does he suspect?" are the 
 father's thoughts ; but a louring gloom is on Philip's face, and 
 the father's eyes look into the son's, but cannot penetrate their 
 darkness. 
 
 " Did you stay late last night, Philip ? " says papa. 
 
 "Yes, sir, rather late," answers the son. 
 
 " Pleasant party ? " 
 
 " No, sir, stupid. Your friend Mr. Hunt wanted to come 
 in. He was drunk, and rude to Mrs. Brandon, and I was 
 obliged to put him out of the door. He was dreadfully violent 
 and abusive." 
 
 " Swore a good deal, I suppose ? " 
 
 "Fiercely, sir, and called names." 
 
 I dare say Philip's heart beat so when he said these last 
 words, that they were inaudible ; at all events, Philip's father 
 did not appear to pay much attention to the words, for he was 
 busy reading the Morning Post, and behind that sheet of 
 fashionable news hid whatever expression of agony there might 
 be on his face. Philip afterwards told his present biographer 
 of this breakfast meeting and dreary fcfe-a-tete. " I burned to 
 ask what was the meaning of that scoundrel's words of the past 
 night," Philip said to his biographer ; " but I did not dare, 
 somehow. You see, Pendennis, it is not pleasant to say point- 
 blank to your father, * Sir, are you a confirmed scoundrel, or 
 are you not ? Is it possible that you have made a double mar- 
 riage, as yonder other rascal hinted ; and that my own legit- 
 imacy and my mother's fair fam_% as well as poor, harmless 
 Caroline's honor and happiness, have been destroyed by your
 
 228 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 crime?' . F.ut I had lain awake all night thinking about that 
 scoundrel Hunt's words, and whether there was any meaning 
 beyond drunken malice in what he said." So we find that 
 three people had passed a bad night in consequence of Mr. 
 Firmin's evil behavior of five-and-twenty years back, which 
 surely was a most unreasonable punishment for a sin of such 
 old date. I wish, dearly belo\^ed brother sinners, we could take 
 all the punishment for our individual crimes on our individual 
 shoulders : but we drag them all down with us — that is the fact ; 
 and when Macheath is condemned to hang, it is Polly and Lucy 
 who have to weep and suffer and wear piteous mourning in their 
 hearts long after the dare-devil rogue has jumped off the 
 Tyburn ladder. 
 
 "Well, sir, he did not say a word," said Philip, recounting 
 the meeting to his friend ; " not a word, at least, regarding the 
 matter both of us had on our hearts. But about fashion, parties, 
 politics, he discoursed much more freely than was usual with 
 him. He said I might have had Lord Ringwood's seat for 
 Whipham, but for my unfortunate politics. What made a Rad- 
 ical of me, he asked, who was naturally one of the most haughty 
 of men ? " (" and that, I think, perhaps I am," says Phil, " and 
 a good many iiberal fellows are.") I should calm down, he 
 was sure — I should calm down, and be of the politics des 
 hommes dii mojidey 
 
 Philip could not say to his father, " Sir, it is seeing you 
 cringe before great ones that has set my own back up." There 
 were countless points about which both father and son could 
 not speak ; and an invisible, unexpressed, perfectly unintelligible 
 mistrust, always w-as present when those two were tete-a-tcte. 
 
 Their meal was scarce ended w^hen entered to them Mr. 
 Hunt, with his hat on. I was not present at the time, and can- 
 not speak as a certainty ; but I should think at his ominous 
 appearance Philip may have turned red and his father pale. 
 " Now is the time," both, I daresay, thought ; and the doctor 
 remembered his stormy young days of foreign gambling, intrigue 
 and duel, when he was put on his ground before his adversary, 
 and bidden, at a given signal, to fire. One, two, three ! Each 
 man's hand was armed with malice and murder. Philip had 
 plenty of pluck for his part, but I should think on such an 
 occasion might be a little nervous and fluttered, whereas his 
 father's eye "was keen, and his aim rapid and steady. 
 
 " You and Philip had a difference last night, Philip tells 
 me," said the doctor. 
 
 " Yes, and 1 promised he should pay me," said the clergyman.
 
 O.V mS WAV THROUGH THE WORLD. 229 
 
 "And I said I should desire no better," says Mr. Phil. 
 
 " He struck his senior, his father's f riend — a sick man, a 
 clergyman," gasped Hunt. 
 
 " Were you to repeat what you did last night, I should re- 
 peat what I did," said Phil. " You insulted a good woman." 
 
 " It's a lie, sir," cries the other. 
 
 " You insulted a good woman, a lady in her own house, and 
 I turned you out of it," said Phil. 
 
 " I say again, it is a lie, sir ! " screams Hunt, with a stamp 
 on the table. 
 
 " That you should give me the lie, or otherwise, is perfectly 
 immaterial to me. But whenever you insult Mrs. Brandon, or 
 any harmless woman in my presence, I shall do my best to 
 chastise you," cries Philip of the red mustaches, curling them 
 with much dignity. 
 
 "You hear him, Firmin ? " says the parson. 
 
 " Faith, I do, Hunt ! " says the physician ; " and I think he 
 means what he says, too." 
 
 " Oh ! you take that line, do you ? " cries Hunt of the dirty 
 hands, the dirty teeth, the dirty neckcloth. 
 
 " I take what you call that line ; and whenever a rudeness 
 is offered to that admirable woman in my son's hearing, I shall 
 be astonished if he does not resent it," says the doctor. " Thank 
 you, Philip ! " 
 
 The father's resolute speech and behavior gave Philip great 
 momentary comfort. Hunt's words of the night before had 
 been occupying the young man's thoughts. Had Firmin been 
 criminal, he could not be so bold. 
 
 " You talk this way in presence of your son 1 Y'ou have 
 been talking over the matter together before ? " asks Hunt. 
 
 "We have been talking over the matter before — yes. We 
 were engaged on it when you came into breakfast," says the 
 doctor. " Shall we go on with the conversation where we left 
 it off ? " 
 
 " Well, do — that is, if you dare," said the clergyman, some- 
 what astonished. 
 
 " Philip, my dear, it is ill for a man to hide his head before 
 his own son ; but if I am to speak — and speak I must one day 
 or the other — why not now ? " 
 
 " Why at all, Firmin ? " asks the clergyman, astonished al 
 the other's rather sudden resolve. 
 
 " Why ? Because I am sick and tired of you, Mr. Tufton 
 Hunt," cries the physician, in his most lofty manner, " of you 
 and your presence in my liouse ; your blackguard behavior and
 
 230 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 your rascal extortions — because you will force me to speak one 
 clay or the other — and now, Philip, if you like, shall be the clay." 
 
 " Hang it, I say ! Stop a bit ! " cries the clergyman. 
 
 " I understand you want some more money from me." 
 
 " I did promise Jacobs I would pay him to-day, and that 
 was what made me so sulky last night ; and, perhaps, I took a 
 little too much. You see my mind was out of order ; and what's 
 the use of telling a story that is no good to any one, Firmin — 
 least of all to you," cries the parson, darkly. 
 
 " Because, you ruffian, I'll bear with you no more," cries 
 the doctor, the veins of his forehead swelling as he looks fiercely 
 at his dirty adversary. " In the last nine months, Philip, this 
 man has had nine hundred pounds from me." 
 
 " The luck has been so very bad, so bad, upon my honor, 
 now," grumbles the parson. 
 
 " To-morrow he will want more ; and the next day more \ 
 and the next day more ; and, in fine, I won't live with this 
 accursed man of the sea round my neck. You shall have the 
 story ; and Mr. Hunt shall sit by and witness against his own 
 crime and mine. I had been very wild at Cambridge, when I 
 was a young man. I had quarrelled with my father, lived with 
 a dissipated set, and beyond my means ; and had had my debts 
 paid so often by your grandfather, that I was afraid to ask for 
 more. He was stern to me ; I was not dutiful to him. I own 
 my fault. Mr. Hunt can bear witness to what I say. 
 
 " I was in hiding at Margate, under a false name. You 
 know the name." 
 
 " Yes, sir, I think I know the name," Philip said, thinking 
 he liked his father better now than he had ever liked him in 
 his life, and sighing, " Ah, if he had always been frank and 
 true with me ! " 
 
 " I took humble lodgings with an obscure family." [If Dr. 
 Firmin had a prodigious idea of his own grandeur and impor- 
 tance, you see I cannot help it — and he was long held to be 
 such a respectable man.] " And there I found a young girl- 
 one of the most innocent beings that ever a man played with 
 and betrayed. Betrayed, I own it, heaven forgive me ! The 
 crime has been the shame of my life, and darkened my whole 
 career with misery. I got a man worse than myself, if that 
 could be. I got Hunt for a few pounds, which he owed me, 
 to make a sham marriage between me and poor Caroline. My 
 money was soon gone. My creditors were after me. I fled 
 the country, and I left her." 
 
 " A sham marriage ! a sham marriage ! " cries the clergy-
 
 ON HIS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. 23 1 
 
 man. " Didn't you make me perform it by holding a pistol to 
 my throat ? A fellow won't risk transportation for nothing. 
 But I owed him money for cards, and he had my bill, and he 
 said he would let me off, and tliat's why I helped him. Never 
 mind. I am out of the business now, Mr. IJrummell Firmin 
 and you are in it. I have read the Act, sir. The clergyman 
 who performs the marriage is liable to punishment, if informed 
 against within three years, and it's twenty years or more. But 
 you, Mr. Brummell Firmin, — your case is diliferent ; and you, 
 my young gentleman, with the fiery whiskers, who strike down 
 old men of a night, — you may find some of us know how to re- 
 venge oursel\-es, though we are down." And with this, Hunt 
 rushed to his greasy hat, and quitted the house, discharging 
 imprecations at his hosts as he passed through the hall. 
 
 Son and father sat awhile silent, after the departure of their 
 common enemy. At last the father spoke. 
 
 " This is the sword that has always been hanging over my 
 head, and it is now falling, Philip." 
 
 " What can the man do ? Is the first marriage a good mar- 
 riage ? " asked Philip, with alarmed face. 
 
 '■ It is no marriage. It is void to all intents and purposes. 
 You may suppose I have taken care to learn the law about that. 
 Your legitimacy is safe, sure enough. But that man can ruin 
 me, or nearly so. He will tiy to-morrow, if not to-day. As 
 long as you or I can give him a guinea, he will take it to the 
 gambling-house. I had the mania on me myself once. My 
 poor father quarrelled with me in consequence, and died with- 
 out seeing me. I married your mother — heaven help her, poor 
 soul ! and forgive me for being but a harsh husband to her — 
 with a view of mending my shattered fortunes. I wished she 
 had been more happy, poor thing. But do not blame me utterly, 
 Philip. I was desperate, and she wished for the marriage so 
 much ! I had good looks and high spirits in those days. Peo- 
 ple said so." [And here he glances obliquely at his own hand- 
 some portrait.] " Now I am a wreck, a wreck ! " 
 
 " I conceive, sir, that this will annoy you ; but how can it 
 ruin you ? " asked Philip. 
 
 '• What becomes of my practice as a family physician ? The 
 practice is not now what it was, between ourselves, Philip, and 
 the expenses greater than you imagine. I have made unlucky 
 speculations. If you count upon much increase of wealth from 
 me, my boy, you will be disappointed ; though you were never 
 mercenary, no, never. But the story bruited about by this ras- 
 cal, of a physician of eminence engaged in two marriages, do
 
 232 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 you suppose my ri\als won't licar it, and take advantage of it 
 — my patients hear it, and avoid me ? " 
 
 •' Make terms with the man at once, then, sir, and silence 
 lum.'' 
 
 " To make terms with a gambler is impossible. My purse 
 is always there open for him to thrust his hand into when he 
 loses. No man can withstand such a temptation. I am glad 
 you have never fallen into it. 1 have quarrelled with you some- 
 times for living with people below your rank : perhaps you were 
 right, and I was wrong. I have liked, always did, I don't dis- 
 guise it, to live with persons of station. And these, when I 
 was at the University, taught me play and extravagance ; and 
 in the world haven't helped me much. Who would ? Who 
 would ? " and the doctor relapsed into meditation. 
 
 A little catastrophe presently occurred, after which Mr. 
 Philip Firmin told me the substance of this story. He de- 
 scribed his father's long acquiescence in Hunt's demands, and 
 sudden resistance to them, and was at a loss to account for the 
 change. I did not tell my friend in express terms, but I fan- 
 cied I could account for the change of behavior. Dr. Firmin, 
 in his interviews with Caroline, had had his mind set at rest 
 about one part of his danger. The doctor need no longer fear 
 the charge of a double marriage. The Little Sister resigned 
 her claims past, present, future. 
 
 If a gentleman is sentenced to be hung, I wonder is it a 
 matter of comfort to him or not to know beforehand the day of 
 the operation ? Flunt would take his revenge. When and how ? 
 Dr. Firmin asked himself. Nay, possibly, you will have to learn 
 that this eminent practitioner walked about with more than 
 danger hanging imminent over him. Perhaps it was a rope : 
 perhaps it was a sword : some weapon of execution, at any rate, 
 as we frequently may see. A day passes : no assassin darts at 
 the doctor as he threads the dim opera-colonnade passage on 
 his way to his club. A week goes by : no stiletto is plunged 
 into his well-wadded breast as he steps from his carriage at 
 some noble patient's door. Philip says he never knew his 
 father more pleasant, easy, good-humored, and affable than 
 during this period, when he must have felt that a danger was 
 hanging over him of wliich his son at this time had no idea. I 
 dined in Old Parr Street once in this memorable period (mem- 
 orable it seemed to me from immediately subsequent events). 
 Never was the dinner better served : the wine more excellent : 
 the guests and conversation more gravely respectable than at 
 this entertainment ; and my neighbor remarked with pleasure
 
 ON HIS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. 233 
 
 how the father and son seemed to be on much belter terms thar. 
 orduiary. The doctor addressed Philip pointedly once or twice ; 
 alluded to his foreign travels, spoke of his mother's family — it 
 was most gratifying to see the pair together. ]:)ay after day 
 passes so. The enemy has disappeared. At least, the lining 
 of his'dirty hat is no longer visible on the broad marble table of 
 Dr. Firmin's hall. 
 
 But one day — it may be ten days after the quarrel — a little 
 messenger comes to Philip, and says, " Philip dear, I am sure 
 there is something wrong ; that horrible Hunt has been here 
 with a very quiet, soft-spoken old gentleman, and they have been 
 going on with my poor pa about my wrongs and his — his, indeed ! 
 — and they have worked him up to believe that somebody has 
 cheated his daughter out of a great fortune ; and who can that 
 somebody be but your father ? And whenever they see me 
 coming, papa and that horrid Hunt go off to the 'Admiral 
 Byng : ' and one night when pa came home he said, ' Bless you, 
 bless you, my poor, innocent, injured child ; and blessed you 
 will be, mark a fond father's words ! ' They are scheming 
 something against Philip and Philip's father. Mr. Bond the 
 soft-spoken old gentleman's name is : and twice there has been 
 a Mr. Walls to inquire if Mr. Hunt was at our house." 
 
 " Mr. Bond t — Mr. Walls ? — A gentleman of the name of 
 Bond was uncle Twysden's attorney. An old gentleman, with 
 a bald head, and one eye bigger than the other ? " 
 
 " Well, this old man has one smaller than the other, I do 
 think," said Caroline. " First man who caihe was Mr. Walls — 
 a rattling young fashionable chap, always laughing, talking 
 about theatres, operas, every thing — came home from the 
 'Byng ' along with pa and his new friend — oh ! I do hate him, 
 that man, that Hunt ! — then he brought the old man, this Mr. 
 Bond. What are they scheming against you, Philip ? I tell 
 you this matter is all about you and your father." 
 
 Years and years ago, in the poor mother's lifetime, Philip 
 remembered an outbreak of wrath on his father's part, who 
 called uncle Twysden a swindling miser, and this very Mr. Bond 
 a scoundrel who deserved to be hung, for interfering in some 
 way in the management of a part of the property which Mrs. 
 Twysden and her sister inherited from their own mother. That 
 quarrel had been made up, as such quarrels are. The brothers- 
 in-law had continued to mistrust each other ; but there was no 
 reason why the feud should descend to the children ; and 
 Philip and his aunt, and one of her daughters at least, were on 
 good terms together. Philip's uncle's lawyers engaged with
 
 234 THE ApVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 father's debtor and enemy against Dr. Firmin : the alliance 
 boded no good. 
 
 *' I won't tell you what I think, Philip," said the father. 
 " You are fond of your cousin ? " 
 
 " Oh ! for ev " 
 
 " For ever, of course ! At least until we change our* mind, 
 or one of us grows tried, or finds a better mate." 
 
 "Ah, sir!" cries Philip, but suddenly stops in his remon- 
 strance. 
 
 "What were you going to say, Philip, and why do you 
 pause ? " 
 
 " I was going to say, father, if I might without offending, 
 that I think you judge hardly of women. I know two who 
 have been very faithful to you." 
 
 " And I a traitor to both of them. Yes ; and my remorse, 
 Philip, my remorse ! " says his father in his deepest tragedy 
 voice, clutching his hand over a heart that I believe beat very 
 coolly. But, psha ! why am I, Philip's biographer, going out of 
 the way to abuse Philip's papa? Is not the threat of bigamy 
 and exposure enough to disturb any man's equanimity.? I say 
 again, suppose there is another sword — a rope, if you will so 
 call it — hanging over the head of our Damocles of Old Parr 
 Street.? * * * * Howbeit, the father and the son met and 
 parted in these days with unusual gentleness and cordiality. 
 And these were the last days in which they were to meet to- 
 gether. Nor could Philip recall without satisfaction, after- 
 wards, that the hand which he took was pressed and given with 
 a real kindness and cordiality. 
 
 Why were these the last days son and father were to pass 
 together .? Dr. Firmin is still alive. Philip is a very tolerably 
 prosperous gentleman. He and his father parted good friends, 
 and it is the biographer's business to narrate how and where- 
 fore. When Philip told his father that Messrs. Bond and 
 Selby, his uncle Twysden's attorneys, were suddenly interested 
 about Mr. Brandon and his affairs, the father instantly guessed, 
 though the son was too simple as yet to • understand, how it 
 was that these gentlemen interfered. If Mr. Brandon-Firmin's 
 marriage with Miss Ringwood was null, her son was illegiti- 
 mate, and her fortune went to her sister. Painful as such a 
 duty rnight be to such tender-hearted people as our Twysden 
 acquaintances to deprive a dear nephew of his fortune, yet, 
 after all, duty is duty, and a parent must sacrifice everything 
 for justice and his own children. " Had I been in such a case," 
 Talbot Twysden subsequently and repeatedly declared, "I
 
 ON HIS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. 235 
 
 should never have been easy a moment if I thought I possessed 
 wrong-full}' a beloved nephew's property. I could not have 
 slept in peace ; I could not have shown my face at my own 
 club, or to my own conscience, had I the weight of such an in- 
 justice on my mind." In a word, when he found that there 
 was a chance of annexing Philip's share of the property to his 
 own, Twysden saw clearly that his duty was to stand by his own 
 wife and children. 
 
 The information ujoon which Talbot Twysden, Esq., acted, 
 was brought to him at his ofhce by a gentleman in dingy black, 
 who, after a long interview with him, accompanied him to his 
 lawyer, Mr. Bond, before mentioned. Here, in South Square, 
 Gray's Inn, the three gentlemen held a consultation, of which 
 the results began quickly to show themselves. Messrs. Bond 
 and Selby had an exceedingly lively, cheerful, jovial, and intel- 
 ligent confidential clerk, who combined business and pleasure 
 with the utmost affability, and w^as acquainted with a thousand 
 queer things, and queer histories about queer people in this 
 town ; who lent money ; who wanted money ; who was in debt : 
 and who was outrunning the constable ; whose diamonds were 
 in pawn ; whose estates were over-mortgaged ; who was over- 
 building himself ; who was casting eyes of longing at what 
 pretty opera dancer — about races, fights, bill brokers, quicquid 
 aguiit hommes. This Tom Walls had a deal of information, 
 and imparted it so as to make you die of laughing. 
 
 The Reverend Tufton Hunt brought this jolly fellow first to 
 the " Admiral Byng," where his amiability won all hearts at 
 the club. At the " Byng " it was not very difficult to gain 
 Captain Gann's easy confidence. And this old man was, in the 
 course of a very trifling consumption of rum-and-water, brought 
 to see that his daughter had been the object of a wicked con- 
 spiracy, and was the rightful and most injured wife of a man 
 who ought to declare her fair fame before the world, and put 
 her in possession of a portion of his great fortune. 
 
 A great fortune ? How great a fortune ? Was it three 
 hundred thousand, say ? Those doctors, many of them, had 
 fifteen thousand a-year. Mr. Walls (who perhaps knew better) 
 was not at liberty to say what the fortune was : but it was a shame 
 that Mrs. Brandon was kept out of her rights, that was clear. 
 
 Old Gann's excitement, when this matter was first broached 
 to him (under vows of profound secrecy) was so intense that 
 his old reason tottered on its rickety old throne. He wellnigh 
 burst with longing to speak upon this mystery, Mr. and Mrs. 
 Oves, the esteemed landlord and lady of the "Byng," never
 
 236 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 saw liiiii so excited. He had a great opinion of the judgment 
 of his friend, Mr. Ridley; in fact, he must have gone to JJedlam, 
 unless he had talked to somebody on this most nefarious trans- 
 action, which might make the blood of every Briton curdle with 
 Jiorror — as he was free to say. 
 
 Old Mr. Ridley was of a much cooler temperament, and al- 
 together a more cautious person. The doctor rich 1 He 
 wished to tell no secrets, nor to meddle in no gentleman's af- 
 fairs : but he have heard very different statements regarding 
 Dr. Firmin's affairs. 
 
 When dark hints about treason, wicked desertion, rights 
 denied, " and a great fortune which you are kep' out of, my 
 poor Caroline, by a rascally wolf in sheep's clothing, you are ; 
 and 1 always mistrusted him, from the moment I saw him, and 
 said to your mother, ' Emily, that Brandon is a bad fellow, 
 Brandon is;' and bitterly, bitterly I've rued ever receiving him 
 under my roof." When speeches of this nature were made to 
 Mrs. Caroline, strange to say, the little lady made light of them. 
 " Oh, nonsense, Pa ! Don't be bringing that sad old story up 
 again. I have suffered enough from it already. If Mr. F. left 
 me, he wasn't the only one who flung me away ; and I have 
 been able to live, thank mercy, through it all." 
 
 This was a hard hit, and not to be parried. The truth is, 
 that when poor Caroline, deserted by her husband, had come 
 back, in wretchedness, to her father's door, the man, and the 
 wife who then ruled him, had thought fit to thrust her away. 
 And she had forgiven them : and had been enabled to heap a 
 rare quantity of coals on that old gentleman's head. 
 
 When the Captain remarked his daughter's indifference and 
 unwillingness to reopen this painful question of her sham 
 marriage with Firmin, his wrath was moved, and his suspicion 
 excited. "Ha!" says he, "have this man been a tampering 
 with you again ? " 
 
 _ " Nonsense, Pa 1 " once more says Caroline. " I tell you, 
 it is this fine-talking lawyers' clerk has been tampering with 
 you. You're made a tool of, Pa! and you've been made a tool 
 of all your life ! " 
 
 " Well, now, upon my honor, my good madam," interposes 
 Mr. Walls. 
 
 " Don't talk to me, sir! I don't want any lawyers' clerks 
 to meddle in my business ! " cries Mrs. Brandon, very briskly. 
 " I don't know what you're come about. I don't want to know, 
 and I'm most certain it is for no g:ood." 
 
 I suppose It was the ill success of his ambassador that
 
 ON HIS WAY THROUGIT THE WORLD. 237 
 
 brought Mr. Bond himself to Thornhaugh Street ; and a more 
 kind, fatherly, little man never looked than Mr. I3ond, although 
 he may have had one eye smaller than the other. " What is 
 this, my dear madam, I hear from my confidential clerk, Mr. 
 Walls ? " he asked of the Little Sister. " You refuse to give 
 him your confidence because he is only a clerk ? I wonder 
 whether you will accord it to me as a principal ? " 
 
 " She may, sir, she may — every confidence ! " says the Cap- 
 tain, laying his hand on that snuffy satin waistcoat which all 
 his friends so long admired on him. " She might have spoken 
 to Mr. Walls." 
 
 " Mr. Walls is not a family man. I am. I have children at 
 home, Mrs. Brandon, as old as you are," says the benevolent 
 Bond. I would have justice done them, and for you too." 
 
 " You're very good to take so much trouble about me all of 
 a sudden, to be sure," says Mrs. Brandon, demurely. " I sup- 
 pose you don't do it for nothing." 
 
 " I should not require much fee to help a good woman to 
 her rights ; and a lady I don't think needs much persuasion to 
 be helped to her advantage," remarks Mr. Bond. 
 
 " That depends who the helper is." 
 
 " Well, if I can do you no harm, and help you possibly to a 
 name, to a fortune, to a high place in the world, I don't think 
 you need be frightened. I don't look very wicked or ver)' 
 artful, do I ! " 
 
 "Many is that don't look so. I've learned as much as that 
 about you gentlemen," remarks Mrs. Brandon. 
 
 "You have been wronged by one man, and doubt all." 
 
 " Not all. Some, sir ! " 
 
 " Doubt about me if I can by any possibility injure you. 
 But how and why should I ? Your good father knows what 
 has brought me here. I have no secret from him. Have I, 
 Mr. Gann, or Captain Gann, as I have heard you addressed ? " 
 
 " Mr., sir — plain Mr. — No, sir ; your conduct have been 
 most open, honorable, and like a gentleman. Neither would 
 you, sir, do aught to disparage Mrs. Brandon ; neither would I, 
 her father. No ways, I think, would a parent do harm to his 
 own child. May I offer you any refreshment, sir ? " and a 
 shaky, a dingy, but a hospitable hand, is laid upon the glossy 
 cupboard, in which Mrs. Brandon keeps her modest little store 
 of strong waters. 
 
 " Not one drop, thank you ! You trust me, I think, more 
 than Mrs. Firm — I beg your pardon — Mrs. Brandon, is disposed 
 to do "
 
 238 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 At the utterance of that monosyllable Finn Caroline be- 
 came so white, and trembled so, that her interlocutor stopped, 
 rather alarmed at the effect of his word — his word ! — his syl- 
 lable of a word. 
 
 The old lawyer recovered him'self with much grace. 
 
 " Pardon me, madam," he said ; " I know your wrongs ; I 
 know your most melancholy history; I know your name, and 
 was going to use it, but it seemed to renew painful recollections 
 to you, which I would not needlessly recall. 
 
 Captain Gann took out a snuffy pocket-handkerchief, wiped 
 two red eyes and a shirt-front, and winked at the attorney, and 
 gasped in a pathetic manner. 
 
 " You know my story and name, sir, who are a stranger to 
 me. Have you told this old gentleman all about me and my 
 affairs, pa ? " asks Caroline, with some asperity. '' Have you 
 told him that my ma never gave me a word of kindness — that I 
 toiled for you and her like a servant — and when I came back to 
 you, after being deceived and deserted, that you and ma shut 
 the door in my face ? You did ! you did ! I forgi\-e you ; but 
 a hundred thousand billion years can't mend that injury, father, 
 while you broke a poor child's heart with it that day ! My pa 
 has told you all this, INIr. What's-your-name ? I'm s'prized he 
 didn't find something pleasanter to talk about, I'm sure ! " 
 
 " My love ! " interposed the captain. 
 
 " Pretty love ! to go and tell a stranger in a public-house, 
 and ever so many there besides, I suppose, your daughter's mis- 
 fortunes, pa. Pretty love ! That's what I've had from you ! '' 
 
 " Not a soul, on the honor of a gentleman, except me and 
 Mr. Walls." 
 
 "Then what do you come to talk about me at all for? and 
 what scheme on hcarlh are you dri\ ing at ? and what brings this 
 old man here ? " cries the landlady of Thornhaugh Street, 
 stamping her foot. 
 
 " Shall I tell you frankly, my good lady ? I called you Mrs. 
 I''irmin now, because, on my honor and word, I believe such to 
 be your rightful name — because you arc the lawful wife of 
 George Brand Firmin. If such be your lawful name, others 
 bear it who have no right to bear it — and inherit property to 
 which they can lay no just claim. In the year 1827, you, Caro- 
 line Gann, a child of sixteen, were married by a clergyman 
 whom you know, to George Prand lirniin, calling himself 
 George Brandon. He was guilty of deceiving you ; but you 
 were guity of no deceit. Pie was a hardened and wily man ; 
 but you were an in-nocent child out of a schoolroom. And
 
 ON HIS WAY TIIROUQ'H THE WORLD. 239 
 
 though he thought tlie marriage was not binding upon him, 
 binding it is by Act of Parliament and judges' decision ; and 
 you are as assuredly George Firmin's wife, madam, as Mrs. 
 Bond is mine !. " 
 
 " Vou have been cruelly injured, Caroline," says the Captain, 
 wagging his old nose over his Jiandkerchief. 
 
 Caroline seemed to be very well versed in the law of the 
 transaction. " You mean, sir," she said slowl}^, "that if me and 
 Mr. JBrandon was married to each other, he knowing that he was 
 only playing at marriage, and me believing that it was all foi 
 good, we are really married." 
 
 " Undoubtedly you are, madam — my client has — that is, I 
 have had advice on the point." 
 
 " But if we both knew that it was — was only a sort of a mar- 
 riage — an irregular marriage, you know ? " 
 
 " Then the Act says that to all intents and purposes the 
 marriage is null and void." 
 
 " But you didn't know, my poor innocent child ! " cries Mr. 
 Gann. " How should you ? How old was you.? She was a 
 child in the nursery, Mr. Bond, when the villain inveigled her 
 away from her poor old father. She knew nothing of irregular 
 marriages." 
 
 " Of course she didn't, the poor creature," cries the old gen- 
 tlemen, rubbing his hands together with perfect good-humor. 
 *' Poor young thing, poor young thing ! " 
 
 As he was speaking, Caroline, very very pale and still, was 
 sitting looking at Ridley's sketch of Philip, which hung in her 
 little room. Presently she turned round on the attorney, fold- 
 ing her little hands over her work. 
 
 " Mr. Bond," she said, " girls, though they may be ever so 
 young, know more than some folks fancy. I was more than six- 
 teen when that — that business happened. I wasn't happy at 
 home, and eager to get away. I knew that a gentleman of his 
 rank wouldn't be likely really to marry a poor Cinderella out of 
 a lodging-house, like me. If the truth must be told, I — I knev/ 
 it was no marriage — never thought it was a marriage — not for 
 good, you know." 
 
 And she folds her little hands together as she utters the 
 words, and I dare say once more looks at Philip's portrait. 
 
 " Gracious goodness, madam, you must be under some 
 error ! " cries the attorney. " How should a child like you know 
 that the marriage was irregular? " 
 
 " Because I had no lines ! " cries Claroline quickly. *" Never 
 asked for none ! And our maid we had then said to me, ' Miss
 
 2 ^Q THE A D VENTURES OF J '///L IP 
 
 Carry, where's your lines? And it's no good without.' And 1 
 knew it wasn't ! And I'm ready to go before the Lord Chan- 
 cellor to-morrow and say so ! " cries Caroline, to the bewilder- 
 ment of her father and her cross-examinant. 
 
 " Pause, pause ! my good madam ! " exclaims the meek old 
 gentleman, rising from his chair. 
 
 " Go and tell this to them as sent you, sir ! " cries Caroline, 
 very imperiously, leaving the lawyer amazed, and her father's 
 face in a bewilderment, over which we will fling his snuffy old 
 pocket-handkerchief. 
 
 "If such is unfortunately the case — if you actually mean to 
 abide by this astonishing confession — which deprives you of a 
 high place in society — and — and casts down the hope we had 
 formed of redressing your injured reputation — I have nothing 
 for it ! I take my leave, madam ! Good morning, Mr. Hum ! 
 — Mr. Gann ! " And the old lawyer walks out of the Little 
 Sister's room. 
 
 " She won't own to the marriage ! She is fond of some one 
 else — the little suicide ! " thinks the old lawyer, as he clatters 
 down the street to a neighboring house, where his anxious prin- 
 cipal was in waiting. " She's fond of some one else ! " 
 
 Yes. But the some one else whom Caroline loved was 
 Brand Firmin's son : and it was to save Philip from ruin that 
 the poor Little Sister chose to forget her marriage to his father. 
 
 CHAPTER Xin. 
 
 LOVE MK LOVE MY DOG. 
 
 Whilst the battle is raging, the old folks and ladies peep 
 over the battlements, to watch the turns of the combat, and the 
 behavior of the knights. To princesses in old days, whose 
 lovely hands were to be bestowed upon the conqueror, it must 
 have hten a matter of no small interest to know whether the 
 slim young champion with the lovely eyes on the milk white 
 steed should vanquish, or the dumpy, elderly, square-should- 
 ered, squinting, carroty whiskerando of a warrior who was lay- 
 ing about him so savagely ; and so in this battle, on the issue 
 of whicli depended the keeping or losing of poor Philip's inheri- 
 tance, there were several non-combatants deeply interested.
 
 ON HIS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. 241 
 
 Or suppose we withdraw the chivalrous simile (as in fact the 
 conduct and views of certain parties engaged in the matter 
 were anything but what we call chivalrous), and imagine a wily 
 old monkey who engages a cat to take certain chestnuts out of 
 the fire, and pussy putting her paw through the bars, seizing 
 the nut and then dropping it ? Jacko is disappointed and 
 angry, shows his sharp teeth, and bites if he dares. When the 
 attorney went down to do battle for Philip's patrimony, some 
 of those who wanted it were spectators of the fight, and lurking 
 up a tree hard by. When Mr. Bond came forward to try and 
 seize Phil's chestnuts, there was a wily old monkey who thrust 
 the cat's paw out, and proposed to gobble up the smoking prize. 
 
 If you have ever been at the " Admiral Byng,'' you know, 
 my dear madam, that the parlor where the club meets is just 
 behind Mrs. Oves's bar, so that by lifting up the sash of the 
 window which communicates between the two apartments, that 
 good-natured woman may put her face into the club-room, and 
 actually be one of the society. Sometimes for company, old 
 
 Mr. Ridley goes and sits with Mrs. O in her bar, and reads 
 
 the paper there. He is slow at his reading. The long words 
 puzzle the worthy gentleman. As he has plenty of time to 
 spare, he does not grudge it to the study of his paper. 
 
 On the day when Mr. Bond went to persuade Mrs. Brandon 
 in Thornhaugh Street Xo claim Dr. Firmin for her husband, and 
 to disinherit poor Philip, a little gentleman wrapt most solemnly 
 and mysteriously in a great cloak appeared at the bar of the 
 " Admiral Byng," and said in an aristocratic manner, " You 
 have a parlor, show me to it." And being introduced to the 
 
 parlor, (where there are fine pictures of Oves, Mrs. O , and 
 
 " Spotty-nose," their favorite defunct bull-dog,) sat down and 
 called for a glass of sherry and a newspaper. 
 
 The civil and intelligent potboy of the " Byng " took the 
 party The Advertise?- of yesterday (which to-day's paper was in 
 'and) and when the gentleman began to swear over the old 
 paper, Frederic gave it as his opinion to his mistress that the 
 new comer was a harbitrary gent, — as, indeed, he was, with the 
 comission, perhaps, of a single letter ; a man who bullied 
 everj'body who would submit to be bullied. In fact, it was our 
 friend Talbot Twysden, Esq., Commissioner of the Powder and 
 Pomatum Office ; and I leave those who know him to say 
 whether he is arbitrary or not. 
 
 To him presently came that bland old gentleman, Mr. Bond, 
 who also asked for a parlor and some sherry-and-water ; and 
 this is how Philip and his veracious and astute biographer
 
 242 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 came to know for a certainty that dear uncle Talbot was the 
 person who wished to — to have Philip's chestnuts. 
 
 Mr. Bond and Mr. Twysden had been scarcely a minute 
 together, when such a storm of imprecations came clattering 
 through the glass window which communicates with Mrs. Oves's 
 bar, that I dare say they made the jugs and tumblers clatter on 
 the shelves, and Mr. Ridley, a very modest-spoken man, reading 
 his paper, lay it down with a scared face, and say — '' W'ell, I 
 never." Nor did he often, I dare to say. 
 
 This volley was fired by Talbot Twysden, in consequence of 
 his rage at the news which Mr. Bond brought him. 
 
 " Well, Mr. Bond ; well, Mr. Bond ! What does she say ? " 
 he asked of his emissary, 
 
 " She will have nothing to do with the business, Mr. Twys- 
 den. We can't touch it ; and I don't see how we can move 
 her. She denies the marriage as much as Firmin does ; says 
 she knew it was a mere sham when the ceremony was per- 
 formed." 
 
 " Sir, you didn't bribe her enough," shrieked Mr. Tw3''sden. 
 " You have bungled this business ; by George you have, sir." 
 
 " Go and do it yourself, sir, if you are not ashamed to 
 appear in it," says the lawyer. " You don't suppose I did it 
 because f liked it ; or want to take that poor young fellow's 
 inheritance from him, as you do." 
 
 '' I wish justice and tlie law, sir. If I were wrongfully de- 
 taining his property I would give it up. I would be the first 
 to give it up. I desire justice and law, and employ you be- 
 cause you are a law agent. Are you not ? " 
 
 " And I have been on your errand, and shall send in my 
 bill in due time ; and there will be an end of my connection 
 with you as your law agent, Mr. Twysden," cried the old lawyer. 
 
 " You know, sir, how badly Firmin acted to me in the last 
 
 matter." 
 
 " Faith, sir, if you ask my opinion as a law agent, I don't 
 think there was much to choose between you. How much is 
 the sherry-and-water .' — keep the change. Sorry Fd no better 
 news to bring you, Mr. T., and as you are dissatisfied, again 
 recommend you to employ another law agent." 
 
 " My good sir, I " 
 
 " My good sir, I have had other dealings with your family, 
 and am no more going to put u]) with your highti-tightiness 
 than 1 would with Lord Ringwood's when I was one of his law 
 agents. I am not going to tell Mr. Philip Firmin that his uncle 
 and aunt propose to ease him of his property ; Lul if anybody
 
 ON HIS WA Y THROUGH THE WORLD. 243 
 
 else does — that good little Mrs. Brandon — or that old goose 
 Mr. What-d'ye-call-um, her father — I don't suppose he will be 
 over well pleased. I am speaking as a gentleman now, not as 
 a law agent. You and your nephew had each a half share of 
 Mr. Philip Firmin's grandfather's property, and you wanted it 
 all, that's the truth, and set a law agent to get it for you ; and 
 swore at him because he could not get it from its right owner. 
 And so, sir, I wish you a good-morning, and recommend you to 
 take your papers to some other agent, Mr. Twysden." And 
 with this, exit Mr. Bond. And now, I ask you, if that secret 
 could be kept which was known through a trembling glass door 
 to Mrs. Oves of the " Admiral Byng," and to Mr. Ridley the 
 father of J. J., and the obsequious husband of Mrs. Ridley ? 
 On that very afternoon, at tea-time, Mrs. Ridley was made 
 acquainted by her husband (in his noble and circumlocutory 
 manner) with the conversation which he had overheard. It 
 was agreed that an embassy should be sent to J. J. on the 
 business, and his advice taken regarding it ; and J. J.'s opinion 
 was that the conversation certainly should be reported to Mr. 
 Philip Firmin, who might afterwards act upon it as he should 
 think best. 
 
 What ? His own aunt, cousins, and uncle agreed in a 
 scheme to overthrow his legitimacy, and deprive him of his 
 grandfather's inheritance ? It seemed impossible. Big with 
 the tremendous news, Philip came to his adviser, Mr. Pen- 
 dennis, of the Temple, and told him what had occurred on the 
 part of father, uncle, and Little Sister. Her abnegation had 
 been so noble, that you maybe sure Philip appreciated it ; and 
 a tie of friendship was formed between the young man and the 
 little lady even more close and tender than that which had 
 bound them previously. But the Twysdens, his kinsfolk, to 
 employ a lawyer in order to -rob him of his inheritance ! — Oh, 
 it was dastardly ! Philip bawled, and stamped, and thumped 
 his sense of the wrong in his usual energetic manner. As for 
 his cousin Ringwood Twysden, Phil had often entertained a 
 strong desire to wring his neck and pitch him down stairs. 
 " As for Uncle Talbot : that he is an old pump, that he is a 
 pompous old humbug, and the queerest old sycophant, I grant 
 you ; but I couldn't have believed him guilty of this. And as 
 for the girls — oh, Mrs. Pendennis, you who are good, you who 
 are kind, although you hate them, I know you do — you can't 
 say, you won't say, that tliey were in the conspiracy ? " 
 
 " But suppose Twysden was asking only for what he con- 
 ceives to be his rights "i " asked Mr. Pendennis. " Had your
 
 244 "^^^^^ ADVENTURES OE PHILIP 
 
 father been inarried to Mrs. Brandon, you would not have been 
 Dr. Firmin's legitimate son. Had you not been his legitimate 
 son, you had no right to a half-share of j-our grandfather's 
 property. Uncle Talbot acts only the part of honor and jus- 
 tice in the transaction. He is Brutus, and he orders you off to 
 death, with a bleeding heart." 
 
 "And he orders his family out of the way," roars Phil, "so 
 that they mayn't be pained by seeing the execution ! I see it all 
 now. I wish somebody would send a knife through me at once, 
 and put an end to me. I see it all now. Do you know that 
 for the last week I have been to Beaunash Street, and found 
 nobody ? Agnes had the bronchitis, and her mother was at- 
 tending to her ; Blanche came for a minule or two, and \ras as 
 cool — as cool as I have seen Lady Iceberg be cool to her. 
 Then they must go away for change of air. They have been 
 gone these three days \ whilst Uncle Talbot and that viper of a 
 Ringwood have been closeted with their nice new friend, Mr. 
 
 Hunt, Oh, conf ! I beg your pardon, ma'am ; but I 
 
 know you always allow for the energy of my language." 
 
 " I should like to see that Little Sister, Mr. Firmin. She 
 has not been selfish, or had any scheme but for your good," 
 remarks my wife. 
 
 " A little angel who drops her h's — a little heart, so good 
 and tender that I melt as I think of it," says Philip, drawing 
 his big hand over his eyes. What have men done to get the 
 love of some women } We don't earn it ; we don't deserve it, 
 perhaps. We don't return it. They bestow it on us. I have 
 given nothing back for all this love and kindness, but I look a 
 little like my father of old days, for whom — for whom she had 
 an attachment. And see now how she would die to serve me ! 
 You are wonderful, women are ! your fidelities and your fickle- 
 nesses alike marvellous. What can any woman have found to 
 adore in the doctor 1 Do you think my father could ever have 
 been adorable, Mrs. Pendennis ? And yet I have heard my 
 poor mother say she was obliged to marry him. She knew it 
 was a bad match, but she couldn't resist it. In what was my 
 father so irresistible ? He is not to wy taste. Between our 
 selves, T think he is a well, nevermind what." 
 
 " I think we had best not mind what t " says my wife with a 
 smile. 
 
 "Quite right — quite right ; only I blurt out everything that 
 is on my mind. Can't keep it in," cries Phil, gnawing his 
 mustachios. " If my fortune depended on my silence I should 
 be a beggar, that's the fact. And, you see, if you had such a
 
 OiV HIS WA V THROUGH THK WORLD. 245 
 
 father as mine, you yourself would find it rather difficult to hold 
 your tongue about him. But now, tell me : this ordering away 
 of the girls and Aunt Twysden, whilst the little attack upon my 
 property is being carried on — isn't it queer?" 
 
 " The question is at an end," said Mr. Pendennis. " You 
 are restored to your atavis rcgibus and ancestral honors. Now 
 that Uncle Twysden can't get the property without you ; have 
 courage, my boy — he may take it, along with the encumbrance." 
 
 Poor Phil had not known — but some of us, who are pretty 
 clearsighted when our noble selves are not concerned, had per- 
 ceived that Philip's dear aunt was playing fast and loose with 
 the lad, and when his back was turned was encouraging a richer 
 suitor for her daughter. 
 
 Hand on heart I can say of my wife, that she meddles with 
 her neighbors as little as any person I ever knew ; but when 
 treacheries in love affairs are in question, she fires up at once, 
 and would persecute to death almost the heartless male or 
 female criminal who would break love's sacred laws. The idea 
 of a man or woman trifling with that holy compact awakens in 
 her a liame of indignation. In curtain confidences (of which 
 let me not vulgarize the arcana) she had given me her mind 
 about some of Miss Twysden's behavior with that odious black- 
 amoor, as she chose to call Captain Woolcomb, who, I own, 
 had a very slight tinge of complexion ; and when, quoting the 
 words of Hamlet regarding his father and mother, I asked, 
 " Could she on this fair mountain leave to feed, and batten on 
 this Moor ? " Mrs. Pendennis cried out that this matter was all 
 too serious for jest, and wondered how her husband could make 
 word plays about it. Perhaps she has not the exquisite sense 
 of humor possessed by some folks ; or is it that she has more 
 reverence ? In her creed, if not in her church, marriage is a 
 sacrament, and the fond believer never speaks of it without 
 awe. 
 
 Now, as she expects both parties to the marriage engagement 
 to keep that compact holy, she no more understands trifling 
 with it than she could comprehend laughing and joking in a 
 church. She has no patience with flirtations as they are called. 
 " Don't tell me, sir," says the enthusiast, "a light word between 
 a man and a married woman ought not to be permitted." And 
 this is why she is harder on the woman than the man, in cases 
 where such dismal matters happen to fall under discussion. A 
 look, a word from a woman, she says, will check a libertine 
 thought or word in a man ; and these cases might be stopped 
 at once if the woman but showed the slightest resolution. She
 
 2^6 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 is thus more angry (I am only mentioninij tlie peculiarities, not 
 defending the ethics of this indivitlual moralist) — she is, I say, 
 more angrily disposed towards the woman than the man in such 
 delicate cases ; and, I am afraid, considers that women are for 
 the most part only victims because they choose to be so. 
 
 Now, we had happened during this season to be at several 
 entertainments, routs, and so forth, where poor Phil, owing to 
 his unhappy Bohemian preferences and love of tobacco, &c., 
 was not present — and where we saw Miss Agnes Twysden 
 carrying on such a game with the tawny Woolcomb as set Mrs. 
 Laura in a tremor of indignation. What though Ague's blue- 
 eyed mamma sat near her blue-eyed daughter and kept her keen 
 clear orbs perfectly wide open and cognizant of all that 
 happened ? So much the worse for her, the worse for both. 
 It was a shame and a sin that a Christian English mother 
 should suffer her daughter to deal lightly with the most holy, 
 the most awful of human contracts ; should be preparing her 
 child who knows for what after miserj^ of mind and soul. Three 
 months ago, you saw how she encouraged poor Philip, and now 
 see her with this mulatto ! 
 
 " Is he not a man, and a brother, my dear } " perhaps at 
 this Mr. Pendennis interposes. 
 
 " Oh, for shame, Pen, no levity on this — no sneers and 
 laughter on this the most sacred subject of all." And here, I 
 dare say the woman falls to caressing her own children and 
 hugging them to her heart as her manner was when moved. 
 Qua voukz voics ? There are some women in the world to whom 
 love and truth are all in all here below. Other ladies there are 
 who see the benefit of a good jointure, a town and country 
 house, and so forth, and who are not so very particular as to 
 the character, intellect, or complexion of gentlemen who are in 
 a position to offer their dear girls these benefits. In fine, I say, 
 that regarding this blue-eyed mother and daughter, Mrs. Laura 
 Pendennis was in such a state of mind that she was ready to 
 tear their blue eyes out. 
 
 Nay, it was with no little difficulty that Mrs. Lauia could 
 be induced to hold her tongue upon the matter and not give 
 Philip her opinion. " What > " she would ask, " the poor young 
 man is to be deceived and cajoled ; to be taken or left as it 
 suits these people ; to be made miserable for life certainly if 
 she married him ; and his friends are not to dare to warn him ? 
 The cowards ! The cowardice of you men. Pen, upon matters 
 of opinion, of you masters and lords of creation, is really 
 despicable, sir ! You dare not ha\'e opinions, or holding them
 
 ON HIS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. 247 
 
 you dare not declare them and act by them. You compromise 
 with crime every day because you think it would be officious to 
 declare yourself and interfere. You are not afraid of outraging 
 morals, but of inflicting oinui upon society, and losing your 
 popularity. You are as cynical as — as, what was the name of 
 the horrid old man who lived in the tub — Demosthenes ? — well, 
 Diogenes, then, and the name does not matter a pin, sir. You 
 are as cynical, only you wear fine ruffled shirts and wristbands, 
 and you carry your lantern dark. It is not right to ' put your 
 oar in ' as you say in your jargon (and even your slang is a 
 sort of cowardice, sir, for you are afraid to speak the feelings 
 of your heart : — ) it is not right to meddle and speak the truth, 
 not right to rescue a poor soul who is drovi'ning — of course not. 
 What call have you fine gentlemen of the world to put your oai 
 in ? Let him perish ! What did he in that galley ? That is 
 the language of the world, baby, darling. And, my poor, poor 
 child, when you are sinking, nobody is to stretch out a hand to 
 save you ! " As for that wife of mine, when she sets forth the 
 maternal jDlea, and appeals to the exuberant school of philos- 
 ophers, I know there is no reasoning with her. I retire to my 
 books, and leave her to kiss out the rest of the argument over 
 the children. 
 
 Philip did not know the extent of the obligation which he 
 owed to his little friend and guardian, Caroline ; but he was 
 aware that he had no better friend than herself in the world ; 
 and I dare say, returned to her, as the wont is in such bargains 
 between man and woman — woman and man, at least — a six- 
 pence for that pure gold treasure, her sovereign aftection. I 
 suppose Caroline thought her sacrifice gave her a little authority 
 to counsel Philip ; for she it was who, I believe, first bid him to 
 inquire whether that engagement which he had virtually 
 contracted with his cousin was likely to lead to good, and was 
 to be binding upon him but not on her ? She brought Ridley 
 to add his doubts to her remonstrances. She showed Philip 
 that not only his uncle's conduct, but his cousin's, was inter- 
 ested, and set him to inquire into it further. 
 
 That peculiar form of bronchitis under which poor dear 
 Agnes was suffering was relieved by absence from London. 
 The smoke, the crowded parties and assemblies, the late hours, 
 and perhaps, the gloom of the house in Beaunash Street, 
 distressed the poor dear child ; and her cough was very much 
 soothed by that fine, cutting east wind, which blows so liberally 
 along the Brighton cliffs, and which is so good for coughs as 
 we all know. But there was one fault in Brighton which could
 
 248 THE ADVENTURES OF ririLTP 
 
 not be helped in her bad case : it is too near London. The air, 
 that chartered Hbertine, can blow down from London quite 
 easily ; or people can come from London to Urighton, bringing 
 I dare say, the insidious London fog along with them. At any 
 rate, Agnes, if she wished for quiet, poor thing, might have gone 
 farther and fared better. Why, if you owe a tailor a bill, he 
 can run down and present it in a few hours. Vulgar, incon- 
 venient acquaintances thrust themselves upon you at every 
 moment and corner. Was ever such a iohuboJiu of people as 
 there assembles? You can't be tranquil, if you will. Organs 
 pipe and scream without cease at your windows. Your name 
 is put down in the papers when you arrive ; and everybody meets 
 everybody ever so many times a day. 
 
 On finding that his uncle had set lawyers to work, with the 
 charitable purpose of ascertaining whether Philip's property 
 was legitimately his own, Philip was a good deal disturbed in 
 mind. He could not appreciate that high sense of moral 
 obligation by which Mr. Twysden was actuated. At least, he 
 though that these inquiries should not have been secretly set 
 a-foot ; and as he himself was perfectly open — a great deal too 
 open, perhaps — in his words and his actions, he was hard with 
 those who attempted to hoodwink or deceive him. 
 
 It could not be ; ah ! no, it never could be, that Agnes the 
 pure and gentle was privy to this conspiracy. But then, how 
 very — very often of late she had been from home ; how very, 
 very cold Aunt Twysden's shoulder had somehow become. 
 Once, when he reached the door, a fishmonger's boy was leaving 
 a fine salmon at the kitchen, — a salmon and a tub of ice. Once, 
 twice, at five o'clock, when he called, a smell of cooking 
 pervaded the hall, — that hall which culinary odors very seldom 
 visited. Some of those noble Twysden dinners were on the 
 tapis^ and Pliilip was not asked. Not to be asked was no great 
 deprivation ; but who were the guests ? To be sure, these were 
 trifles light as air ; but Philip smelt mischief in the steam of 
 those Twysden dinners. He chewed that salmon with a bitter 
 sauce as he saw it sink down the area steps and disappear with 
 its attendant lobster in the dark kitchen region. 
 
 Yes ; eyes were somehow averted that used to look into his 
 very frankly ; a glove somehow had grown over a little hand 
 which once used to lie very comfortably in his broad palm. 
 Was anybody else going to seize it, and it was going to paddle in 
 that blackamoor's unblest fingers ? Ah ! fiends and tortures ! a 
 gentleman may cease to love, but does he like a woman to cease 
 to love him ? People carry on ever so long for fear of that de«
 
 HAND AND GLOVE.
 
 ON HIS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. 249 
 
 claration that all is over. No confession is more dismal to 
 make. The sun of love has set. We sit in the dark. I mean 
 you, dear madam, and Corydon, or I and Amaryllis ; uncom- 
 fortably, with nothing more to say to one another ; with the 
 night dew falling, and a risk of catching cold, drearily contem- 
 plating the fading west, with " the cold remains of lustre gone, 
 of fire long past away." Sink, fire of love ! Rise, gentle moon, 
 and mists of chilly evening. And my good Madam Amaryllis, 
 let us go home to some tea and a fire. 
 
 So Philip determined to go and seek his cousin. Arrived 
 at his hotel (and if it were the * * I can't conceive Philip 
 in much better quarters), he had the opportunity of inspect- 
 ing those delightful newspaper arrivals, a perusal of which has 
 so often edified us at Brighton. Mr. and Mrs. Penfold, he 
 was informed, continued their residence. No. 96, Horizontal 
 Place : and it was with those guardians he knew his Agnes was 
 staying. He speeds to Horizontal Place. MissTwysden is out. 
 He' heaves a sigh, and leaves a card. Has it ever happened to 
 you to leave a card at that house — that house which was once 
 THE house — almost your own ; where you were ever welcome ; 
 where the kindest hand was ready to grasp yours, the brightest 
 eye to greet you ? And now your friendship has dwindled away 
 to a little bit of pasteboard, shed once a year, and poor dear 
 Mrs. Jones (it is with J- you have quarrelled) still calls on the 
 ladies of your family and slips her husband's ticket upon the hall 
 table. Oh, life and time, that it should have come to this ! 
 Oh, gracious powers ! Do you recall the time when Arabella 
 Thompson was Arabella Briggs ? You call and talk fadaiscs 
 to her (at first she is rather nervous, and has the children in) ; 
 you talk rain and fine weather ; the last novel ; the next party ; 
 Thompson in the City? Yes, Mr. Thompson is in the City. 
 He's pretty well, thank you. Ah ! Daggers, ropes, and 
 poisons, has it come to this ? You are talking about the 
 weather, and another's man's health, and another man's chil- 
 dren, of which she is mother, to her ? Time was the weather 
 was all a burning sunshine, in which you and she basked ; or if 
 clouds gathered, and a storm fell, such a glorious rainbow 
 haloed round you, such delicious tears fell and refreshed you, 
 that the storm was more ravishing than the calm. And now 
 another man's children are sitting on her knee — their mother's 
 knee ; and once a year Mr. and Mrs. John Thompson request 
 the honor of Mr. Brown's company at dinner ; and once a year 
 you read in The Times, " In Nursery Street, the wife of J. 
 Thompson, Esq., of a Son." To come to the once-beloved one's
 
 250 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 door, and find the knocker tied ujd with a white kid glove, is 
 humiliating — say what you will, it is liuniiliating. 
 
 Philip leaves his card, and walks on to the Cliff, and of 
 course, in three minutes, meets Clinker. Indeed who ever went 
 to Brighton for half an hour without meeting Clinker ? 
 
 " Father pretty well ? His old patient. Lady Geminy, is 
 down here with the children ; what a number of them there are, 
 to be sure ? Come to make any stay ? See your cousin, Miss 
 Twysden, is here with the Penfolds. Little party at the Grig- 
 sons' last night ; she looked uncommonly well ; danced ever so 
 many times with the Black Prince, Woolcomb of the Greens. 
 Suppose I may congratulate you. Six thousand five hundred a 
 year now, and thirteen thousand when his grandmother dies ; 
 but those negresses live for ever. I suppose the thing is settled. 
 I saw them on the pier just now, and Mrs. Penfold was read- 
 ing a book in the arbor. Book of sermons it was — pious wo- 
 man, Mrs. Penfold. I dare say they are on the pier still." 
 Striding with hurried steps Philip Firmin makes for the pier. 
 The breathless Clinker cannot keep alongside of his face. I 
 should like to have seen it when Clinker said that "the thing" 
 was settled between Mrs. Twysden and the cavalry gentleman. 
 
 There were a few nursery governesses, maids, and children, 
 paddling about at the end of the pier; and there was a fat 
 woman reading a book in one of the arbors — but no Agnes, no 
 Woolcomb. Where can they be ? Can they be weighing each 
 other ? or buying those mad pebbles, which people are known 
 to purchase? or having their silhouettes ({ox\^\\\ black.? Ha! 
 ha ! Woolcomb would hardly have his face done m black ? 
 The idea would provoke odious comparisons. I see Philip is 
 in a dreadfully bad sarcastic humor. 
 
 Up there comes from one of those trap doors which lead 
 down from the pier-head to the green sea-waves ever restlessly 
 jumping below — up there comes a little Skye-terrier dog with a 
 red collar, who as soon as she sees Philip, sings, squeaks, 
 whines, runs, jumps,y7//w/j' up on him, if I may use the expres- 
 sion, kisses his hands, and with eyes, tongue, jDaws, and tail 
 shows him a thousand marks of welcome and affection. 
 " What, Brownie, Brownie ! " Philip is glad to see the dog, an 
 old friend who has many a time licked his hand and bounced 
 upon his knee. 
 
 The greeting over. Brownie, wagging her tail with prodi- 
 gious activity, trots before Philip — trots down an oiDcning, 
 down the steps under which the waves shimmer greenly, and 
 into quite a quiet remote corner just over the water, whence
 
 ON HIS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. 251 
 
 you may command a most beautiful view of tlie sea, the shore, 
 the Marine Parade, and tlie "Albion Hotel," and where, were 
 I five-and-twenty say, with nothing else to do, I would gladly 
 pass a quarter of an hour talking about " Glaucus, or the 
 Wonders of the Deep " with the object of my affections. 
 
 Here, amongst the labyrinth of piles, Brownie goes flouncing 
 along till she comes to a young couple who are looking at the 
 view just described. In order to view it better, the young man 
 has laid his hand, a pretty little hand most delicately gloved, 
 on the lady's hand ; and Brownie comes up and muzzles against 
 her, and whines and talks as much as to say, " Here's some- 
 body," and the lady says, " Down Brownie, miss." 
 
 "It's no good, Agnes, that dog," says the gentleman (he 
 has very curly, not to say woolly hair, under his natty little 
 hat). " I'll give you a pug with a nose you can hang your hat 
 on. I do know of one now. My man Rummins knows of one. 
 Do you like pugs ? " 
 
 " I adore them," says the lady. 
 
 " I'll give you one, if I have to pay fifty pounds for it. 
 And they fetch a good figure, the real pugs do, I can tell you. 
 Once in London there was an exhibition of 'em, and " 
 
 " Brownie, Brownie, down ! " cries Agnes. The dog was 
 jumping at a gentleman, a tall gentleman with a red mustache 
 and beard, who advances through the chequered shade, under 
 the ponderous beams, over the translucent sea. 
 
 "Pray don't mind, Brownie won't hurt me," says a perfectly 
 well-known voice, the sound of which sends all the color shud- 
 dering out of Miss Agnes' pink cheeks. 
 
 " You see I gave my cousin this dog. Captain Woolcomb," 
 says the gentleman ; " and the little slut remembers me. 
 Perhaps Miss Twysden prefers the pug better." 
 
 "Sir!" 
 
 "If it has a nose you can hang your hat on, it must be a 
 very pretty dog, and I suppose you intend to hang your hat on 
 it a good deal." 
 
 " Oh, Philip ! " says the lady ; but an attack of that dreadful 
 coughing stops further utterance.
 
 2r2 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 CONTAINS TWO OF PHILIP'S MISHAPS. 
 
 You know that, in some parts of India, infanticide is the 
 common custom. It is part of the religion of the land, as, in 
 other districts, widow-burning used to be. 1 can't imagine 
 that ladies like to destroy either themselves or their children, 
 though they submit with bravery, and e\-en cheerfulness, to the 
 decrees of that religion which orders them to make away with 
 their own or their young ones' lives. Now, suppose you and I, 
 as Europeans, happened to drive up where a young creature 
 was just about to roast herself, under the advice of her family 
 and the highest dignitaries of her church : what could we do ? 
 Rescue her ? No such thing. We know better than to inter- 
 fere with her, and the laws and usages of her country. We 
 turn away with a sigh from the mournful scene ; we pull out 
 our pocket-handkerchiefs, tell coachman to drive on, and leave 
 her to her sad fate. 
 
 Now about poor Agnes Twysden : how, in the name of 
 goodness, can we help her ? You see she is a well-brought-up 
 and religious young woman of the Brahminical sect. If she is 
 to be sacrificed, that old Brahmin, her father, that good and 
 devout mother, that most special Brahmin herbrotb.cr, and that 
 admirable girl her straitlaced sister, all insist upon her under- 
 going the ceremony, and deck her with flowers ere they lead 
 her to that dismal altar flame. Suppose, I say, she has made 
 up her mind to throw over poor Philip, and take on with some 
 one else ? What sentiment ought our virtuous bosoms to enter- 
 tain towards her ? Anger ? "l have just been holding a con- 
 versation with a young fellow in rags and without shoes, whose 
 bed is commonly a dry arch, who has been repeatedly in prison, 
 whose father and mother were thieves, and whose grandfathers 
 were thieves ; — are we to be angry with him for following the 
 paternal profession ? With one eye brimming with pity, the 
 other steadily keeping watch over the family spoons,^ I listen 
 to his artless tale. I have no anger against that child ; nor 
 towards thee, Agnes, daughter of Talbot the Brahmin. 
 
 For though "duty is duty, when it comes to the pinch, it is 
 often hard to do. Though dear papa and mamma say that here 
 is a gentleman with ever so many thousands a year, an un-
 
 ON HIS WA Y THROUGH THE WORLD. 253 
 
 doubted part in So-and-So-shire, and whole islands in the 
 western main, who is wildly in love with your fair skin and 
 blue eyes, and is ready to fling all his treasures at your feet ; 
 yet, after all, when you consider that he is very ignorant, though 
 very cunning : very stingy, though very rich ; very ill-tempered, 
 probably, if faces and eyes and mouths can tell truth : and as 
 for Philip Firmin — though actually his legitimacy is dubious, as 
 we have lately heard, in which case his maternal fortune is ours 
 — and as for his paternal inheritance, we don't know whether 
 the doctor is worth thirty thousand pounds or a shilling ; — yet, 
 after all — as for Philip — he is man ; he is a gentleman ; he has 
 brains in his head, and a great honest heart of which he has 
 offered to give the best feelings to his cousin : — I say, when a 
 poor girl has to be off with that old love, that honest and fair 
 love, and be on with the new one, the dark one, I feel for her ; 
 and though the Brahmins are, as we know, the most genteel 
 sect in Hindostan, I rather wish the poor child could have 
 belonged to some lower and less rigid sect. Poor Agnes ! to 
 think'that he has sat for hours, with mamma and Blanche or 
 the governess, of course, in the room (for, you know, when she 
 and Philip were quite wee wee things dear mamma had little 
 amiable plans in view) ; has sat for hours by Miss Twysden's 
 side pouring out his heart to her ; has had, mayhap, little 
 precious moments of confidential talk — little hasty whispers in 
 corridors, on stairs, behind window-curtains, and — and so forth 
 in fact. She must remember all this past ; and can't, without 
 some pang, listen on the same sofa, behind the same window- 
 curtains, to her dark suitor pouring out his artless tales of 
 barracks, boxing, horseflesh, and the tender passion. He is 
 dull, he is mean, he is ill-tempered, he is ignorant, and the 
 other was * * * * • but she will do her duty : oh, yes ! she 
 will do her duty ! Poor Agnes ! Cest cl fendre le cceur. I 
 declare I quite feel for her. 
 
 When Philip's temper was roused, I have been compelled, 
 as his biographer, to own how very rude and disagreeable he 
 could be ; and you must acknowledge that a young man has 
 some reason to be displeased, when he finds the girl of his 
 heart hand-in-hand with another young gentleman in an occult 
 and shady recess of the woodwork of Brighton Pier. The 
 green waves are softly murmuring : so is the officer of the Life- 
 Guards Green. The waves are kissing the beach. Ah, agon- 
 izing thought ! I will not pui'sue the simile, which may be but 
 a jealous man's mad fantasy. Of this I am sure, no pebble 
 on that beach is cooler than polished Agnes. But, then, Philip
 
 254 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 drunk with jealousy is not a reasonable being like Philip sober. 
 " He had a dreadful temper," Philip's dear aunt said of him 
 afterwards,—" I trembled for my dear gentle child, united for 
 ever to a man of that violence. Never, in my secret mind, 
 could I think that their union could be a happy one. Besides, 
 you know, the nearness of their relationship. My scruples on 
 that score, dear Mrs. Candour, never, never could be quite got 
 over." And these scruples came to weigh whole tons, when 
 Mangrove Hall, the House in Berkeley Square, and Mr. Wool- 
 comb's West India island were put into the scale along with 
 them. 
 
 Of course there was no good in remaining amongst those 
 damp, reeking timbers, now that the pretty little tete-U-tete was 
 over. Little Brownie hung fondling and whining round Philip's 
 ankles, as the party ascended to the upper air. " My child, 
 how pale you look ! " cries Mrs. Penfold, putting down her 
 volume. Out of the Captain's open eyeballs shot lurid flames, 
 and hot blood burned behind his yellow cheeks. In a quarrel, 
 Mr. Philip Firmin could be particularly cool and self-possessed. 
 When Miss Agnes rather piteously introduced him to Mrs. Pen- 
 fold, he made a bow as polite and gracious as any performed 
 by his royal father. " My little dog knew me," he said, caress- 
 ing the animal. •' She is a faithful little thing, and she led me 
 down to my cousin ; and — Captain Woolcomb, I think, is your 
 name, sir .'' " 
 
 As Philip curls his mustache and smiles blandly. Captain 
 Woolcomb pulls his and scowls fiercely. " Yes, sir," he mut- 
 ters, " my name is Woolcomb." Another bow and a touch of 
 the hat from Mr. Firmin. A touch ? — a gracious wave of the 
 hat; acknowledged by no means so gracefully by Captain 
 Woolcomb. 
 
 To these remarks Mrs. Penfold says, " Oh ! " In fact, 
 " Oh ! " is about the best thing that could be said under the 
 circumstances. 
 
 '' My cousin, Miss Twysden, looks so pale because she was 
 out very late dancing last night. I hear it was a very pretty 
 ball. But ought she to keep such late hours, Mrs. Penfold, 
 with her delicate health? Indeed, you ought not, Agnes 1 
 Ought she to keep late hours. Brownie ? There — don t, you 
 little foolish thing ! I gave my cousin the dog : and she's very 
 fond of me — the dog is — still. You were saying, Captain 
 Woolcomb, when I came up, that you would give Miss Twys- 
 den a dog on whose nose you could hang your * * * * I beg 
 pardon ? "
 
 ON HIS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. 255 
 
 Mr. Woolcomb, as Philip made this second alkision to the 
 peculiar nasal formation of the pug, ground his little white 
 teeth together, and let slip a most improper monosyllable. 
 More acute bronchial suffering was manifested on the part of 
 Miss Twysden. Mrs. Penfold said, " The day is clouding over. 
 I think, Agnes, I will have my chair, and go home." 
 
 " May I be allowed to walk with you as far as your house } " 
 says Philip, twiddling a little locket which he wore at his watch- 
 chain. It was a little gold locket, with a little pale hair inside. 
 Whose hair could it have been that was so pale and fine? As 
 for the pretty, hieroglyphical A. T. at the back, those letters 
 might indicate Alfred Tennyson, or Anthony Trollope, who 
 might have given a lock of their golden hair to Philip, for I 
 know he is an admirer of their works. 
 
 Agnes looked guiltily at the little locket. Captain Wool- 
 comb pulled his mustache so, that you would have thought he 
 would have pulled it off ; and his opal eyes glared with fearful 
 confusion and wrath. 
 
 "Will you please to fall back and let me speak to you, 
 Agnes .'' Pardon me, Captain Woolcomb, I have a private mes- 
 sage for my cousin ; and I came from London expressly to 
 deliver it." 
 
 " If Miss Twysden desires me to withdraw, I fall back in 
 one moment," says the Captain, clenching the little lemon- 
 colored glove:^. 
 
 " My cousin and I have lived together all our lives, and I 
 bring her a family message. Have you any particular claim to 
 hear it. Captain Woolcomb ? " 
 
 " Not if Miss Twysden don't want me to hear it. * * * D — 
 the little brute." 
 
 " Don't kick poor little harmless Brownie ! He sha'n't kick 
 you, shall he. Brownie ? " 
 
 " If the brute comes between my shins, I'll kick her ! " 
 shrieks the Captain. " Hang her, I'll throw her into the sea ! " 
 
 " Whatever you do to my dog, I swear I will do to you ! " 
 whispers Philip to the Captain. 
 
 " Where are you staying ? " shrieks the Captain. " Hang 
 you, you shall hear from me. 
 
 " Quiet — ' Bedford Hotel' Easy, or I shall think you want 
 the ladies to overhear." 
 
 " Your conduct is horrible, sir," says Agnes, rapidly, in the 
 French language. " Mr. does not comprehend it." 
 
 " it! If you have any secrets to talk, I'll withdraw 
 
 fast enough, Miss Agnes," says Othello. 
 
 fc>
 
 256 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 " Oh, Grenville ? can I have any secrets from you ? Mr. 
 Firmhi is my first-cousin. W^e have Uved together all our lives" 
 I'hilip, I — 1 don't know whether mamma announced to you — 
 my — my engagement with Captain Grenville \\'oolcomb.'' The 
 agitation has brought on another severe bronchial attack. 
 Poor, poor little Agnes ! What it is to have a delicate throat ! 
 
 The pier tosses up to the skies, as though it had left its 
 moorings — the houses on the cliff dance and reel, as though an 
 earthquake was driving them — the sea walks up into the lodg- 
 ing-houses — and Philip's legs are falling from under him : it is 
 only for a moment. When you ha\-e a large, tough double 
 tooth out, doesn't the chair go up to the ceiling, and your head 
 come off, too ? But, in the next instant, there is a grave gentle- 
 man before you, making you a bow, and concealing something 
 in his right sleeve. The crash is over. You are a man again. 
 Philip clutches hold of the cha^n pier for a minute : it does not 
 sink under him. The houses, after reeling for a second or two, 
 reassume the perpendicular, and bulge their bow-windows 
 towards the main. He can see the people looking from the 
 windows, the carriages passing, Professor Spurrier riding on 
 the cliff with eighteen young ladies, his pupils. In long after- 
 days he remembers those absurd little incidents with a curious 
 tenacity. 
 
 "This news," Philip says, "was not — not altogether unex- 
 pected. I congratulate my cousin, I am sure. Captain Wool- 
 comb, had I known this for certain^ I am sure I should not 
 have interrupted you. You were going, perhaps, to ask me to 
 your hospitable house, Mrs. Penfold ? " 
 
 " Was she though ? " cries the Captain. 
 
 " I have asked a friend to dine with me at the ' Bedford,' 
 and shall go to town, I hope, in the morning. Can 1 take 
 anything for you, Agnes } Good-by : " and he kisses his hand 
 in quite a dcgage manner, as Mrs. Penfold's chair turns east- 
 ward, and he goes to the west. Silently the tall Agnes sweeps 
 along, a fair hand laid upon her friend's chair. 
 
 It's over ! it's over ! She has done it. He was bound, and 
 kept his honor, but she did not : it was she who forsook him. 
 And I fear very much Mr, Philip's heart leaps with pleasure 
 and an immense sensation of relief at thinking he is free. He 
 meets half-a-dozen acquaintances on the clifT. He laughs, 
 jokes, shakes hands, invites two or three to dinner in the gayest 
 manner. He sits down on that green, not very far from his inn, 
 and is laughing to himself, when he suddenly feels something 
 nestling at his knees, — rubbing, and nestling, and whining
 
 ON HIS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. 
 
 257 
 
 plaintively. " What, is that you ? " It is little Brownie, who 
 has followed him. Poor little rogue ! 
 
 Then Philip bent down his head over the dog, and as it 
 jumped on him, with little bleats, and whines, and innocent 
 caresses, he broke out into a sob, and a great refreshing rain of 
 tears fell from his eyes. Such a little illness ! Such a mild 
 fever ! Such a speedy cure ! Some people have the complaint 
 so mildly that they are scarcely ever kept to their beds. Some 
 bear its scars for ever. 
 
 Philip sat resolutely at the hotel all night, having given 
 special orders to the porter to say that he was at home, in case 
 any gentleman shoulcl call. He had a faint hope, he afterwards 
 owned, that some friend of Captain Woolcomb might wait on 
 him on that officer's part. He had a faint hope that a letter 
 might come explaining that treason, — as people will have a sick, 
 gnawing, yearning, foolish desire for letters — letters which con- 
 tain nothing — which never did contain anything — letters which, 
 
 nevertheless, you . You know, in fact, about those letters, 
 
 and there is no earthly use in asking to read Philip's. Have 
 we not all read those love letters which, after love-quarrels, 
 come into court sometimes ? We have all read them ; and how 
 many have written them ? Nine o'clock. Ten o'clock. Eleven 
 o'clock. No challenge from the Captain ; no explanation from 
 Agnes. Philip declares he slept perfectly well. But poor little 
 Brownie the dog made a piteous howling all night in the stables. 
 She was not a well-bred dog. You could not have hung the 
 least hat on her nose. 
 
 We compared anon our dear Agnes to a Brahmin lady, 
 meekly offering herself up to sacrifice according to the practice 
 used in her her highly respectable caste. Did we speak in 
 anger or in sorrow ? — surely in terms of respectful grief and 
 sympathy. And if we pity her, ought we not likewise to pity 
 her highly respectable parents ? When the notorious Brutus 
 ordered his sons to execution, you can't suppose he was such 
 a brute as to be pleased ? All three parties suffered by the 
 transaction : the sons, probably, even more than their austere 
 father ; but it stands to reason that the whole trio were very 
 melancholy. At least, were I a poet or musical composer, I 
 certainly should make them so. The sons, piping in a very 
 minor key indeed ; the father's manly basso, accompanied 
 by deep wind instruments, and interrupted by appropriate sobs. 
 Though pretty fair Agnes is being led to execution, I don't 
 suppose she likes it, or that her parents are happy, who are 
 compelled to order the tragedy. 
 
 17
 
 258 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 That the rich young proprietor of Mangrove Hall should be 
 fond of her was merely a coincidence, Mrs. Twysden afterwards 
 always averred. Not for mere wealth — ah, no ! not for mines 
 of gold — would they sacrifice their darling child. But when 
 that sad Firmin affair happened, you see it also happened that 
 Captain Woolcomb was much struck by dear Agnes, whom he 
 met everywhere. Her scapegrace of a cousin would go no- 
 where. He preferred his bachelor associates, and horrible 
 smoking and drinking habits, to the amusements and pleasures 
 of more refined societv. He neiilected As;nes. There is not 
 the slightest doubt he neglected and mortified her, and his 
 wilful and frequent absence showed how little he cared for her. 
 Would you blame the dear girl for coldness to a man who him- 
 self showed such indifference to her ? " No, my good Airs. 
 Candour. Had Mr. Firmin been ten times as rich as Mr. Wool- 
 comb, 1 should have counselled my child to refuse him. / 
 take the responsibility of the measure entirely on myself — I, 
 and her father, and her brother." So Mrs. Twysden afterwards 
 spoke, in circles where an absurd and odious rumor ran, that 
 the Twysdens had forced their daughter to jilt j'oung Mr. 
 Firmin in order to marry a wealthy quadroon. People will 
 talk, you know, de me, de te. If Woolcomb's dinners had not 
 gone off so after his marriage, I have little doubt the scandal 
 would have died away, and he and his wife might have been 
 pretty generally respected and visited. 
 
 Nor must you suppose, as we have said, that dear Agnes 
 gave up her first love without a pang. That bronchitis showed 
 how acutely the poor thing felt her position. It broke out very 
 soon after Mr. Woolcomb's attentions became a little particu- 
 lar ; and she actually left London in consequence. It is true 
 that he could follow her without difficulty, but so, for the 
 matter of that, could Philip, as we have seen when he came 
 down and behaved so rudely to Captain Woolcomb. And 
 before Philip came, poor Agnes could plead, " My father 
 pressed me sair," as in the case of the notorious Mrs. Robin 
 Gray. 
 
 leather and mother both pressed her sair, Mrs. Twj'sden, I 
 think I have mentioned, wrote an admirable letter, and was 
 aware of her accomplishment. She used to write reams of 
 gossip regularly every week to dear uncle Ringwood when he 
 was in the country : and when her daughter Blanche married, 
 she is said to have written several of her new son's sermons. 
 As a Christian mother, was she not to give her daughter lier 
 advice at this momentous period of her life ? That advice went
 
 ON HIS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. 259 
 
 against poor Philip's chances with his cousin, who was kept 
 acquainted with all the circumstances of the controversy of 
 which we have just seen the issue. I do not mean to say that 
 Mrs. Twysden gave an impartial statement of the case. What 
 parties in a lawsuit do speak impartially on their own side or 
 their adversaries' ? Mrs. Twysden's view, as I have learned 
 subsequently, and as imparted to her daughter, was this : — 
 That most unprincipled man. Dr. Firmin, who had already 
 attempted, and unjustly, to deprive the Twysdens of a part of 
 their projoerty, had commenced in quite early life his career of 
 outrage and wickedness against the Ringwood family. He had 
 led dear Lord Ringwood's son, poor dear Lord Cinqbars, into 
 a career of vice and extravagance which caused the premature 
 death of that unfortunate young nobleman. Mr. Firmin had 
 then made a marriage, in spite of the tears and entreaties of 
 Mrs. Twysden, with her late unhappy sister, whose whole life 
 had been made wretched by the doctor's conduct. But the 
 climax of outrage and wickedness was, that when he — he, a low, 
 penniless ad\-enturer — married Colonel Ringwood's daughter, 
 he was married already, as could be sworn by the repentant 
 clergyman who had been forced, by threats of punishment 
 which Dr. Firmin held over him, to perform the rite ! " The 
 mind " — Mrs. Talbot Twysden's fine mind — " shuddered at the 
 thought of such wickedness." But most of all (for to think ill 
 of any one whom she had once loved gave her pain) there was 
 reason to believe that the unhappy Philip Plrmin was his 
 father's accomplice, and that he knew of his owrt illegitimacy., 
 which he was determined to set aside by zxvj fraud or artifice — 
 (she trembled, she wept to have to say this : O heaven ! that 
 there should be such perversity in thy creatures !) And so 
 little store did Philip set by his mother's honor, that he actually 
 visited the abandoned woman who acquiesced in her own 
 infamy, and had brought such unspeakable disgrace on the 
 Ringwood family ! The thought of this crime had caused Mrs„ 
 Twysden and her dear husband nights of sleepless anguish — 
 had made them years and years older — had stricken their hearts 
 with a grief which must endure to the end of their days, \^"ith 
 people so unscrupulous, so grasping, so artful as Dr. Firmin 
 and (must she say T) his son, they were bound to be on their 
 guard ; and though tliey had avoided Philip, she had deemed it 
 right, on the rare occasions when she and the young man whom 
 she must now call lier illegii'iniate nephew met, to behave as 
 though she knew nothing of this most dreadful controversy. 
 " And now, dearest child " * * * Surely the moral is ob-
 
 26o THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 vious ? The dearest child " must see at once that any foolish 
 plans which were formed in childish days and \xwi\ii\: former delu- 
 sions must be cast aside for ever as impossible, as unworthy of a 
 Twysden — of a Ringwood. Be not concerned for the young 
 man himself," wrote Mrs. Twysden — " I blush that he should 
 bear that dear father's name who was slain in honor on Busaco's 
 glorious field. P. F. has associates amongst whom he has ever 
 been much more at home than in our refined circle, and habits 
 which will cause him to forget you only too easily. And if near 
 you is one whose ardor shows itself in his ever)'- word and 
 action, whose wealth and property may raise you to a place 
 wortliy of my child, need I say, a mother's, a father's blessing 
 go with you." This letter was brought to Miss Twysden, at 
 Brighton, by a special messenger ; and the superscription an- 
 nounced that it was " honored by Captain Grenville Woolcomb." 
 
 Now when Miss Agnes has had a letter to this effect (I may 
 at some time tell you how I came to be acquainted with its con- 
 tents) ; when she remembers all the abuse her brother lavishes 
 against Philip as, heaven bless some of them! dear relatives 
 can best do ; when she thinks how cold he has of late been — 
 how he 7uill come smelling of cigars — how he won't conform to 
 the usages dn monde, and has neglected all the decencies of 
 society — how she often can't understand his strange rhapso- 
 dies about poetry, painting, and the like, nor how he can live 
 with such associates as those who seem to delight him — and 
 now how he is showing himself actually imprincipkd and 
 abetting his horrid father ; when we consider mither pressing 
 sair, and all these points in mither's favor, I don't think we can 
 order Agnes to instant execution for the resolution to which 
 she is coming. She will give him up — she will give him up. 
 Good-by, Philip. Good-by the past. Be forgotten, be for- 
 gotten, fond words spoken in not unwilling ears! l^e still and 
 breathe not, eager lips, that have trembled so near to one an- 
 other ! Unlock, hands, and part for ever, that seemed to be 
 formed for life's long journey ! Ah, to part for ever is hard ; 
 but harder and more humiliating still to ])art without regret ! 
 
 That papa and mamma had influenced Miss Twysden in her 
 behavior my wife and I could easily imagine, when Philip, in his 
 wrath and grief, came to us and poured out the feelings of his 
 lieart. My wife is a repository of men's secrets, an untiring 
 consoler and comforter; and she knows many a sad story which 
 we are not at liberty to tell, like this one of which this person, 
 Mr. Firmin, has given us possession. 
 
 " Father and mother's orders," shouts Philip, " I dare say,
 
 OM HIS WAY THRO UG If THE WORLD. 26 1 
 
 Mrs. Pendennis ; iDut the wish was father to the thought of 
 parting, and it was for the blackamoor's parks and acres that 
 the girl jilted me. Look here. T told you just now that I slept 
 perfectly well on that infernal night after I had said farewell to 
 her. Well, I didn't. It was a lie. \ walked ever so many 
 times the whole length of the cliff, from ilove to Rottingdean 
 almost, and then went to bed afterwards, and slept a little out 
 of sheer fatigue. And as I was passing by Horizontal Terrace 
 ( — T happened to pass by there two or three times in the moon- 
 light, like a great jackass — ) you know those verses of mine 
 which I have hummed here sometimes ? " (hummed ! he used 
 to roar them !) " ' When the locks of burnished gold, lady, shall 
 to silver turn I ' Never mind the rest. You know the verses 
 about fidelity and old age ? She was singing them on that 
 night to that negro. And I heard the beggar's voice say, 
 ' Bravo 1 ' through the open windows." 
 
 "Ah, Philip! it was cruel," says my wife, heartily pitying 
 our friend's anguish and misfortune. " It was cruel indeed. 
 I am sure we can feel for you. Put think what certain mis- 
 ery a marriage with such a person would have been ! Think 
 of your warm heart given away for ever to that heartless crea- 
 ture." 
 
 " Laura, Laura, have you not often warned me not to speak 
 ill of people ? " says Laura's husband. 
 
 " I can't help it sometimes," cries Laura in a transport. " I 
 try and do my best not to speak ill of my neighbors ; but the 
 worldliness of those people shocks me so that I can't bear to be 
 near them. They are so utterly tied and bound by conven- 
 tionalities, so perfectly convinced of their own excessive 
 high-breeding, that they seem to me more odious and more 
 vulgar than quite low people ; and I'm sure Mr. Philip's friend, 
 the Little Sister, is infinitely more ladylike than this dreary 
 aunt or either of his supercilious cousins ! " Upon my word, 
 when this lady did speak her mind, there was no mistaking her 
 meaning. 
 
 I believe Mr. Firmin took a considerable number of people 
 into his confidence regarding this love affair. He is one of 
 those individuals who can't keep their secrets ; and when hurt 
 he roars so loudly that all his friends can hear. It has been 
 remarked that the sorrows of such persons do not endure very 
 long ; nor surely was there any great need in this instance that 
 Philip's heart should wear a lengthened mourning. Ere long 
 he smoked his pipes, he played his billiards, he shouted his 
 songs ; he rode in the Park for the pleasure of severely cutting
 
 262 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 his aunt and cousins when their open carriage passed, or of 
 riding down Captain Woolcomb or his cousin Ringwood, should 
 either of those wortliies come in Iiis way. 
 
 One day, when the old Lord Ringwood came to town for his 
 accustomed spring visit, Philip condescended to wait upon 
 him, and was announced to his lordship just as Talbot Twysdcn 
 and Ringwood his son were taking leave of their noble kins- 
 man. Philip looked at them with a flashing eye and a distended 
 nostril, according to his .swaggering wont. I dare say they on 
 their part bore a very mean and hangdog appearance ; for my 
 lord laughed at their discomfiture, and seemed immensely 
 amused as they slunk out of the door when Philip came 
 hectoring in. 
 
 " So, sir, there has been a family row. Heard all about it : 
 at least, their side. Your father did me the favor to marry 
 my niece, having another wife already? " 
 
 " Having no other wife already, sir — though my dear 
 relations were anxious to show that he had." 
 
 " Wanted your money ; thirty thousand pound is not a trifle. 
 Ten thousand apiece for those children. And no more need 
 of any confounded pinching and scraping, as they have to do 
 at Eeaunash Street. Aft"air off between you and Agnes ? 
 Absurd affair. So much the better." 
 
 " Yes, sir, so much the better." 
 
 " Have ten thousand apiece. Would have twenty thousand 
 if they got yours. Quite natural to want it." 
 
 " Quite." 
 
 "Woolcomb a sort of negro, I understand. Fine property 
 here : besides the West India rubbish. Violent man — so 
 people tell me. Luckily Agnes seems a cool, easy-going 
 woman, and must put up with the rough as well as the smooth 
 in marrying a property like that. Very lucky for you that the 
 woman persists there was no marriage with your father. 
 Twysden says the doctor bribed her. Take it he's not got 
 much money to bribe, unless you gave some of yours." 
 
 " I don't bribe people to bear false witness, my lord — and 
 if " 
 
 "Don't be in a huff; I didn't say so. Twj^sden says so — 
 perhaps thinks so. When people are at law they believe any- 
 thing of one another." 
 
 " I don't know what other people may do, sir. If I had 
 another man's money, I should not be easy until I had paid 
 him back. Had my share of my grandfather's property not 
 been lawfully mine — and for a few hours I thought it was not
 
 ON HIS WA Y THROUGH THE WORLD. 263 
 
 — please God, I would have given it up to its rightful owners — 
 at least, my father would." 
 
 " Why, hang it all, man, you don't mean to say your father 
 has not settled with you ? " 
 
 Philip blushed a little. He had been rather surprised that 
 there had been no settlement between him and his father. 
 
 " I am only of age a few months, sir. I am not under any 
 apprehension. I get my dividends regularly enough. One of 
 my grandfather's trustees, General Baynes, is in India. He is 
 to return almost immediately, or we should have sent a power 
 of attorney out to him. There's no hurry about the busi- 
 ness." 
 
 Philip's maternal grandfather, and Lord Ringwood's brother, 
 the late Colonel Philip Ringwood, had died possessed of but 
 trifling property of his own ; but his wife had brought him a 
 fortune of sixty thousand pounds, which was settled on their 
 children, and in the names of trustees — Mr. Criggs, a lawyer, 
 and Colonel Baynes, an East India officer, and friend of Mrs. 
 Philip Ringwood's family. Colonel Baynes had been in Eng- 
 land some eight years before ; and Philip remembered a kind 
 old gentleman coming to see him at school, and leaving tokens 
 of his bounty behind. The other trustee, Mr. Briggs, a lawyer 
 of considerable county reputation, was dead long since, having 
 left his affairs in an involved condition. During the trustee's 
 absence and the son's minority, Philip's father received the 
 dividends on his son's property, and liberally spent them on 
 the boy. Indeed, I believe that for some little time at college, 
 and during his first journeys abroad, Mr. Philip spent rather 
 more than the income of his maternal inheritance, being freely 
 supplied by his father, who told him not to stint himself. He 
 was a sumptuous man. Dr. Firmin — open-handed — subscribing 
 to many charities — a lover of solemn good cheer. The doctor's 
 dinners and the doctor's equipages were models in their way ; 
 and I remember the sincere respect with which my uncle the 
 Major (the family guide in such matters) used to speak of Dr. 
 Firmin's taste. " No duchess in London, sir," he would say, 
 " drove better horses than Mrs. Firmin. Sir George Warrender, 
 sir, could not give a better dinner, sir, than that to which we sat 
 down yesterday." And for the exercise of these civic virtues 
 the doctor had the hearty respect of the good Major, 
 
 " Don't tell me, sir," on the other hand, Lord Ringwood 
 would say ; " I dined with the fellow once — a swaggering fel- 
 low, sir ; but a servile fellow. The way he bowed and flattered 
 was perfectly absurd. Those fellows think we like it — and we
 
 J (54 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 may. Even at my age, I like flattery — any quantity of it ; and 
 not what you call delicate, but strong, sir. I like a man to 
 kneel down and kiss my shoe-strings. 1 have my own opinion 
 of him afterwards, but that is what I like — what all men like ; 
 and that is what Firmin gave in quantities. But you could see 
 that his house was monstrously expensive. His dinner was 
 excellent, and you saw it was good every day — not like your 
 dinners, my good Maria ; not like your wines, Twysden, which, 
 hang it, I can't swallow, unless I send 'em in myself. Even at 
 my own house, I don't give that kind of wine on common occa- 
 sions which Firmin used to give. I drink the best myself, of 
 course, and give it to some who know ; but I don't give it to 
 common fellows, who come to hunting dinners, or to girls and 
 boys who are dancing at my balls." 
 
 " Yes ; Mr. Firmin's dinners were very handsome — and a 
 pretty end came of the handsome dinners ! " sighed Mrs. 
 Twysden. 
 
 " That's not the question ; I am only speaking about the 
 fellow's meat and drink, and they were both good. And it's 
 my opinion, that fellow will have a good dinner wherever he 
 goes." 
 
 I had the fortune to be present at one of these feasts, which 
 Lord Ringwood attended, and at which I met Philip's trustee, 
 General Baynes, who had just arrived from India. 1 remember 
 now the smallest details of the little dinner, — the brightness of 
 the old plate, on which the doctor prided himself, and the quiet 
 comfort, not to say splendor, of the entertainment. The 
 General seemed to take a great liking to Philip, whose grand- 
 father had been his special friend and comrade in arms. He 
 thought he saw something of Philip Ringwood in Philip Fir- 
 min's face. 
 
 " Ah, indeed ! " growls Lord Ringwood. 
 
 " You ain't a bit like him,*' says the downright General. 
 " Never saw a handsomer or more open-looking feiiow than 
 Philip Ringwood." 
 
 " Oh ! I daresay I looked pretty open myself forty years 
 ago," said my lord; "now Fm shut, I suppose. I don't see 
 the least likeness in this young man to my brother." 
 
 " That is some sherry as old as the century," whispers the 
 host ; " it is the same the Prince Regent liked so at a Mansion 
 House dinner, five-and-twenty years ago." 
 
 " Never knew anything about wine ; was always tippling 
 liqueurs and punch. What do you give for this sherry, 
 doctor ? "
 
 ON- ms WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. 265 
 
 The doctor sighed, and looked up to the chandelier. 
 " Drink it while it lasts, my good lord ; but don't ask me the 
 price. The fact is, I don't like to saj^ what I gave for it." 
 
 " You need not stint yourself in the price of sherry, doctor," 
 cries the General gayly ; " you have but one son, and he has a 
 fortune of his own, as I happen to know. You haven't dipped 
 it, Master Philip ? " 
 
 " I fear, sir, I may have exceeded my income sometimes, 
 in the last three years ; but my father has helped me." 
 
 " Exceeded nine hundred a year ! Upon my word ! When 
 I was a sub, my friends gave me fifty pounds a year, and I 
 never was a shilling in debt ! What are men coming to now ? " 
 
 " If doctor's drink Prince Regent's sherry at ten guineas a 
 dozen, what can you expect of their sons. General Baynes ? " 
 grumbles my lord. 
 
 " My father gives you his best, my lord," says Philip gayly ; 
 " if you know of any better, he will get it for you. Si non his 
 uiere fiiecum I Please to pass me that decanter. Pen ! " 
 
 I thought the old lord did not seem ill pleased at the young 
 man's freedom ; and now, as I recall it, think I can remem- 
 ber that a peculiar silence and anxiety seemed to weigh upon 
 our host — upon him whose face was commonly so anxious 
 and sad. 
 
 The famous sherry, which had made many voyages to 
 Indian climes before it acquired its exquisite flavor, had trav- 
 elled some three or four times round the doctor's polished 
 table, when Brice, his man, entered with a letter on a silver 
 tray. Perhaps Philip's eyes and mine exchanged glances in 
 which ever so small a scintilla of mischief might sparkle. The 
 doctor often had letters when he was entertaining his friends ; 
 and his patients had a knack of falling ill at awkward times. 
 
 " Gracious heavens ! " cries the doctor, when he read the 
 despatch — it was a telegraphic message. " The poor Grand 
 Duke ! " 
 
 " What Grand Duke ? " asks the surly lord of Ringwood. 
 
 " My earliest patron and friend — the Grand Duke of 
 Groningen ! Seized this morning at eleven at Potzendorff ! 
 Has sent for me. I promised to go to him if ever he had need 
 of me. I must go ! I can save the night train yet. General ! 
 our visit to the City must be deferred till my return. Get a 
 portmanteau, Brice ; and call a cab at once. Philip will enter- 
 tain my friends for the evening. My dear lord, you won't mind 
 an old doctor leaving you to attend an old patient ? I will 
 write from Groningen. I shall be there on Friday morning.
 
 266 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 Farewell, gentlemen ! Brice, another bottle of that sherry ! I 
 pray, don't let anybody stir ! God bless you, Philip my boy ! " 
 And with this the doctor went up, took his son by the hand, 
 and laid the other very kindly on the young man's shoulder. 
 Then he made a bow round the table to his guests — one of his 
 graceful bows, for which he was famous. 1 can see the sad 
 smile on his face now, and the light from the chandelier over 
 the dining-table glancing from his shining forehead, and cast- 
 ing deep shadows on to his cheek from his heavy brows. 
 
 The departure was a little abrupt, and of course cast some- 
 what of a gloom vipon the company. 
 
 " My carriage ain't ordered till ten — must go on sitting 
 here, I suppose. Confounded life doctor's must be ! Called 
 up any hour in the night ! Get their fees ! Must go ! " 
 growled the great man of the party. 
 
 " People are glad enough to have them when they are ill, 
 my lord. I think I have heard that once when you were at 
 Ryde * * *" 
 
 The great man started back as if a little shock of cold 
 water had fallen on him ; and then looked at Philip with not 
 unfriendly glances. " Treated for gout — so he did. Very well, 
 too ! " said my lord ; and whispered, not inaudibly, " Cool hand, 
 that boy ! " And then his lordship fell to talk with General 
 P>aynes about his campaigning, and his early acquaintance 
 with his own brother, Philip's grandfather. 
 
 The general did not care to brag about his own feats of 
 arms, but was loud in praises of his old comrade. Philip was 
 pleased to hear his grandsire so well spoken of. The General 
 had known Dr. Firmin's father also, who likewise had been a 
 colonel in the famous old Peninsular army. " A Tartar that 
 fellow was, and no mistake ! " said the good officer, " Your 
 father has a strong look of him ; and you have a glance of him 
 at times. But you remind me of Philip Ringwood not a little ; 
 and you could not belong to a better man." 
 
 " Ha ! " says my lord. There had been differences between 
 him and his brother. He may ha\e been thinking of days 
 when they were friends. Lord Ringwood now graciously 
 asked if General Baynes was staying in London ? But llie 
 General had only come to do this piece of business, which must 
 now be delayed. He was too poor to live in London. He 
 must look out for a country place, where he and his six children 
 could live cheaply. " Three boys at school, and one at college, 
 Mr. Philip — you know what that must cost; though, thank my 
 stars, my college boy does not spend nine hundred a year
 
 ON HIS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. 267 
 
 Nine hundred ! Where should we be if he did ? " In fact, the 
 days of nabobs are long over, and the General had come back 
 to his native country with only very small means for the sup- 
 port of a great family. 
 
 When my lord's carriage came, he departed, and the other 
 guests presently took their leave. The General, who was a 
 bachelor for the nonce, remained awhile, and we three prattled 
 over cheroots in Philip's smoking-room. It was a night like a 
 hundred I have spent there, and yet how well I remember it ! 
 We talked about Philip's future prospects, and he conuiumi- 
 cated his intentions to us in his lordly way. As for practising 
 at the bar : " No, sir," he said, in reply to General Paynes' 
 queries ; he should not make much hand of that ; shouldn't if 
 he were ever so poor. Pie had his own money, and his father's ;" 
 and he condescended to say that " he might, perhaps, try for 
 Parliament should an eligible opportunity offer." "Here's a 
 fellow born with a silver spoon in his mouth," says the Gen- 
 eral, as we walked away together. " A fortune to begin with ; 
 a fortune to inherit. ]\Iy fortune was two thousand pounds, 
 and the price of my two first commissions; and when I die my 
 children will not be quite so well off as their father was when 
 he began ! " 
 
 Having parted with the old officer at his modest sleeping 
 quarters near his club, I walked to my own home, little thinking 
 that yonder cigar, of which I had shaken some of the ashes in 
 Philip's smoking-room, was to be the last tobacco I ever should 
 smoke there. The pipe was smoked out. The wine was 
 drunk. When that door closed on me, it closed for the last 
 time — at least was never more to admit me as Philip's, as Dr. 
 Firmin's, guest and friend. I pass the place often now. My 
 youth comes back to me as I gaze at those blank, shining win- 
 dows. I see myself a boy and Philip a child ; and his fair 
 mother ; and his father, the hospitable, the melancholy, the 
 magnificent. I wish I could have helped him. I wish some- 
 how he had borrowed money. He never did. He gave me his 
 often. I have never seen him since that night when his own 
 door closed upon him. 
 
 On the second day after the doctor's departure, as I was at 
 breakfast with my family, I received the following letter : — 
 
 " Mv DEAR Pendennis, — Could I have seen you in private on Tuesday night, I might 
 have warned you of the Calamity which was hanging over my liouse. But to what good 
 end? That you should know a few weeks, hours, before what all the world will ring with 
 to-morrnw? Neither you nor I, nor one whom we both love, would have been the hajipier 
 for knowing my misfortunes a few hours sooner. In four-and-twenty hours every club m 
 London will be busy with talk of the departure of the celebrated Dr. Firniin — the wealthy
 
 268 THE ADVENTURES OP PHILIP 
 
 Dr. Firmin ; a few ir.niitlis more and (I have strict and confiilential reason to believe) 
 liercditary rank would have been mine, but Sir George Firmin would have been an insol- 
 vent man, and his son Sir Philip a beggar. Perhaps the thought of this lionor has been 
 one of the reasons wliich has determined mc on expatriating myself sooner than I otherwise 
 needed to liave done. 
 
 " George Firmin, the honored, the wealthy j^hysician, and liis son a beggar? I see you 
 ire startled at the news! You wonder how, witli a great practice, and no great ostensible 
 expenses, such ruin should come upon me — upon him. It has seemed as if for years past 
 Fate has been determined to make war upon George Prand Firmin ; and who can battle 
 against Fate? A man universally admitted to be of good judgment, I have embarked in 
 mercantile speculations the most jiromising. Everything upon which 1 laid my hand lias 
 crumbled to ruin ; but I can say with the Roman bard, 'Iiii/iavidiiiii /erioit ruiiiic.'' And, 
 almost penniless, almost aged, an exile driven from my country, I seek antJther where 1 do 
 not despair — I ezien have a firm belief \\\7\\. I shall be enabled to repair my shattered fortunes! 
 My race has never been deficient in courage, and Philip and /V;/7/yS'j_/(i///t'r must use all 
 theirs, so as to be enabled to face the dark times which menace them. Si celeres qvatit 
 itnnas Forhtna, we must resign what she gave us, and bear our calamity with unshaken 
 hearts ! 
 
 " There is a man, I own to you, whom I cannot, I must not face. General I'ayncs has 
 just come from India, with but very small savings, I fear; and these are jeopardized by his 
 imprudence and my most cruel and unexpected misfortune. 1 need not tell you that my 
 rt// would have been my boy's. My will, made long since, will be found in the tortoiseshell 
 secretaire standing in my consulting-room under the picture of Abraham offering up Isaac. 
 In it you will see that everything, except annuities to old and deserving servants and a 
 leg.acy to oiTe excellent and faithful woman whom I own I have wronged — my all, which 
 once was considerable, is left to my boy. 
 
 " I am now worth less than nothing, and have compromised Philip's property along 
 with my own. As a man of business, General Paynes, Colonel Ringwood's old companion 
 in arms, was culpably careless, and I— alas 1 that I must own it — deceived him. Peing the 
 only surviving trustee (Mrs. Philip Ringwood's other trustee was an unprincipled attorney 
 who has been long dead), General B- signed a paper authorizing, as he imagined, my 
 bankers to receive Philip's dividends, but, in fact, giving me the power to dispose of the 
 capital sum. On my honor, as a man, as a gentleman, as a father, Pendennis, 1 hoped to 
 replace it! I took it; I embarked it in speculations in which it sank down with ten times 
 the amount of my own private jiroperty. Half-year after half-year, with straitened means 
 and with the greaiest difficulty to myself, my poor boy has had his dividend; and //<^ at 
 least has never knowm what was want or anxiety until now. Want ? Anxiety ? Pray 
 Heaven he never may suffer the sleepless anguish, the racking care which has j ui sued me ! 
 ''Post cquitcm sedct (lira cura,' our favorite poet says. Ah! how truly, too, does he re- 
 mark, ' PatriiE gins exul se qnoqiic fitgitV Tliink you where I go grief and remorse will 
 not follow me? Thev will never leave mc until I shall return to this country — for that I 
 .9// (j// return, my heart tells me — until I can reimburse General Paynes, who stands indebted 
 to Pliilip through his incautiousness and my overpowering necessity ; and my heart — an 
 erring but im\A father's heart — tells me that my boy will not eventually lose a penny by my 
 misfortune. 
 
 " I own, between ourselves, that this illness of the Grand Duke of Groningen was a 
 pretext which I put forward. You will hear of me ere long from the place whither for some 
 time ijast I have determined on bending my steps. I placed 100/. on Saturday, to Philip's 
 credit, at his banker's. I take little more than that sum with me; depressed, yety)<// ()/ 
 hofie ; having done wrong, yet determined io retrieve it, and vowing that ere I die my poor 
 boy shall not have to blush at bearing the name of 
 
 " George Brand Firmin. 
 
 " Good-by, dear Philip! Your old friend will tell you of my misfortunes. When I 
 write again, it will be to tell you where to address me ; and wherever 1 am, or whatever 
 misfortunes oppress me, think of me always as your fond 
 
 " Father." 
 
 I had scarce read this awful letter when Philip Firmin 
 himself came into our breakfast-room looking ver}^ much dis- 
 turbed.
 
 ON HIS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. 26c 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 SAMARITANS. 
 
 The children trotted up to their friend with outstretched 
 hands and their usual smiles of welcome. Philip patted their 
 heads, and sat down with very woe-begone aspect at the family 
 table. " Ah, friends," said he, " do you know all ? " 
 
 " Yes, we do," said Laura, sadly, who has ever compassion 
 for other's misfortunes. 
 
 " What 1 is it all over the town already ? " asked poor 
 Philip. 
 
 " We have a letter from your father this morning." And 
 we brought the letter to him, and showed him the affectionate 
 special message for himself. 
 
 " His last thought was for you, Philip ! " cries Laura. " Sec 
 here, those last kind words ! " 
 
 Philip shook his head. " It is not untrue, what is written 
 here : but it is not all the truth." And Philip Firmin dismayed 
 us by the intelligence which he proceeded to give. There was 
 an execution in the house in Old Parr Street. A hundred 
 clamorous creditors had appeared there. Before going away, 
 the doctor had taken considerable sums from those dangerous 
 financiers to whom he had been of late resorting. They were 
 in possession of numberless lately signed bills, upon which the 
 desperate man had raised money. He had professed to share 
 with Philip, but he had taken the great share, and left Philip 
 two hundred pounds of his own money. All the rest was gone. 
 All Philip's stock had been sold out. The father's fraud had 
 made him master of the trustee's signature : and Philip Firmin, 
 reputed to be so wealthy, was a beggar, in my room. Luckily 
 he had few, or very trifling, debts. Mr. Philip had a lordly 
 impatience of indebtedness, and, with a good bachelor-income, 
 had paid for all his pleasures as he enjoyed them. 
 
 Well ! He must work. A young man ruined at two-and- 
 twenty, with a couple of hundred pounds yet in his pocket, 
 hardly knows that he is ruined. He will sell his horses — iiv^e 
 in chambers — has enough to go on for a year. " When I am 
 very hard put to it," says Philip, " I will come and dine with
 
 270 THE AD VENTURES OF PHIL IP 
 
 the children at one. I dare say you haven't dined much at 
 Williams's in the Old Bailey ? You can get a famous dinnei 
 there for a shilling — beef, bread, potatoes, beer, and a penny 
 for the waiter." Yes, Philip seemed actually to enjoy his dis- 
 comfiture. It was long since we had seen him in such spirits. 
 " The weight is off my mind now. It has been throttling me 
 for some time past. Without understanding why or wherefore, 
 I have always been looking out for this. My poor father had 
 ruin written in his face ; and when those bailiffs made their 
 appearance in Old Parr Street yesterday, I felt as if I had 
 known them before. I had seen their hooked beaks in my 
 dreams."' 
 
 " That unlucky General Baynes, when he accepted your 
 mother's trust, took it with its consequences. If the sentry 
 falls asleep on his post, he must pay the penalty," says Mr. 
 Pendennis, very severely. 
 
 " Great powers, you would not have me come down on an 
 old man with a large family, and ruin them all ? " cries Philip. 
 
 " No : I don't think Philip will do that," says my wife, 
 looking exceedingly pleased. 
 
 " If men accept trusts they must fulfil them, my dear," cries 
 the master of the house. 
 
 " And I must make that old gentleman suffer for my father's 
 wrong ? If I do, may I starve ! there ! " cries Philip. 
 
 " And so that poor Little Sister has made her sacrifice in 
 vain ! " sighed my wife. " As for the father — oh, Arthur ! I 
 can't tell you how odious that man was to me. There was 
 something dreadful about him. And in his manner to women 
 —oh ! " 
 
 " If he had been a black draught, my dear, you could not 
 have shuddered more naturally." 
 
 " Well, he was horrible ; and I know Philip will be better 
 now he is gone." 
 
 Women often make light of ruin. Give them but the beloved 
 objects, and poverty is a trifling sorrow to bear. As for Philip, 
 he, as we have said, is gayer than he has been for years past. 
 The doctor's flight occasions not a little club talk : but, now he 
 is gone, many people see quite well that they were aware of his 
 insolvency, and always knew it must end so. The case is told, 
 is canvassed, is exaggerated as such cases will be, I dare say 
 it forms a week's talk. But people know that poor Philip is 
 his father's largest creditor, and eye the young man with no 
 unfriendly looks when he comes to his club after his mishap, — 
 with burning cheeks, and a tingling sense of shame, imagining
 
 ON HIS WA V THROUGH THE WORLD. 
 
 271 
 
 that all the world will point at and avoid him as the guilty 
 fugitive's son. 
 
 " No : the world takes very little heed of his misfortune. 
 One or two old acquaintances are kinder to him than before. 
 A few say his ruin, and his obligation to work, will do him 
 good. Only a very, very few avoid him, and look unconscious 
 as he passes them by. Amongst these cold countenances, you, 
 of course, will recognize the faces of the whole Twysden family. 
 Three statues, with marble eyes, could not look inore stony- 
 calm than Aunt Twysden and her two daughters, as they pass 
 in the stately barouche. The gentlemen turn red when they 
 see Philip. It is rather late times for Uncle Tw3^sden to begin 
 blushing, to be sure. " Hang the fellow ! he will, of course, be 
 coming for money. Dawkins, I am not at home, mind, when 
 young Mr. Firmin calls." So says Lord Ringwood, regarding 
 Philip fallen among thieves. Ah, thanks to Heaven, travellers 
 find Samaritans as well as Levites on life's hard way ! Philip 
 told us with much humor of a rencontre which he had had 
 with his cousin, Ringwood Twysden, in a public place. Twysden 
 was enjoying himself with some young clerks of his office; but 
 as Philip advanced upon him, assuming his fiercest scowl and 
 most hectoring manner, the other lost heart, and fled. And no 
 wonder. " Do you suppose," says Twysden, "I will willingly 
 sit in the same room with that cad, after the manner in which 
 he has treated my family ! No, sir ! " And so the tall door in 
 Beaunash Street is to open for Philip Firmin no more. 
 
 The tall door in Beaunash Street flies open readily enough 
 for another gentleman. A splendid cab-horse reins up before 
 it every day. A pair of varnished boots leap out of the cab, 
 and spring up tlie broad stairs, where somebody is waiting with 
 a smile cf genteel welcome — the same smile — on the same sofa 
 — the same mamma at her table writing her letters. And beau- 
 tiful bouquets from Covent Garden decorate the room. And 
 after half an hour mamma goes out to speak to the house- 
 keeper, VOHS comprcnez. And there is nothing particularly new 
 under the sun. It will shine to-morrow upon pretty much the 
 same flowers, sports, pastimes, <S:c., which it illuminated yester- 
 day. And when your love-making days are over, miss, and 
 you are married, and ad\"antageously established, shall not 
 your little sisters, now in the nurser)', trot down and play their 
 little games ? A^' ould you, on your conscience, now — you who 
 are rather inclined to consider Miss Agnes Twysden 's conduct 
 as heartless — would you, I say, have her cry her pretty eyes but 
 about a young man who does not care much for her, for whom
 
 72 
 
 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 she never did care much herself, and who is now, moreover, a beg* 
 gar, with a ruined and disgraced father and a doubtful legiti- 
 macy? Absurd! That dear girl is like a beautiful fragrant 
 bower-room at the " Star and Garter " at Richmond, with 
 honeysuckles mayhap trailing round the windows, from which 
 you behold one of the most lovely and pleasant of wood and 
 river scenes. The tables are decorated with flowers, rich wine- 
 cups sparkle on the board, and Captain Jones's party have 
 everything they can desire. Their dinner over, and that com- 
 pany gone, the same waiters, the same flowers, the same cups 
 and crystals, array themselves for Mr. Brown and his party. 
 Or, if j'ou won't have Agnes Tw)-sden compared to the " Star 
 and Garter Tavern," which must admit mixed company, liken 
 her to the chaste moon who shines on shepherds of all com- 
 plexions, swarthy or fair. 
 
 When ojDpressed by superior odds, a commander is forced 
 to retreat, we like him to show his skill by carrying off his guns, 
 treasure, and camp equipages. Doctor Firmin, beaten by for- 
 tune and compelled to fly, showed quite a splendid skill and 
 coolness in his manner of decamping, and left the very smallest 
 amount of spoils in the hands of the victorious enemy. His 
 wines had been famous amongst the grave epicures witia whom 
 he dined : he used to boast, like a worthy hon-vivatit who knows 
 the value of wine-conversation after dinner, of the quantities 
 which he possessed, and the rare bins which he had in store ; 
 but when the executioners came to arrange his sale, there was 
 found only a beggarly account of empty bottles, and I fearsome 
 of the unprincipled creditors put in a great quantity of bad 
 liquor which they endeavored to foist off on the public as the 
 genuine and carefully selected stock of a well-known connois- 
 seur. News of this dishonest proceeding reached Dr. Firmin 
 presently in his retreat ; and he showed by his letter a generous 
 and manly indignation at the manner in which his creditors had 
 tampered with his honest name and reputation as a bon-vivant. 
 He have bad wine ! For shame ! He had the best from the 
 best wine-merchant, and paid, or rather owed, the best prices 
 for it ; for of late years the doctor had paid no bills at all : 
 and the wine-merchant appeared in quite a handsome group of 
 figures in his schedule. In like manner his books were pawned 
 to a book auctioneer ; and lirice, the butler, had a bill of sale 
 for the furniture. Firmin retreated, we will not say with the 
 honors of war, but as little harmed as possible by defeat. Did 
 the enemy want the plunder of his city .'' He had smuggled 
 almost all his valuable goods over the wall. Did they desire
 
 ON HIS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. 
 
 273 
 
 his ships ? He had sunk them : and when at length the con- 
 querors poured into his stronghold, he was far beyond the reach 
 of their shot. Don't we often hear still that Nana Sahib is 
 alive and exceedingly comfortable ? We do not love him ; but 
 we can't help having a kind of admiration for that slippery 
 fugitive who has escaped from the dreadful jaws of the lion. In 
 a word, when Firmin's furniture came to be sold, it was a mar- 
 vel how little his creditors benefited by the sale. Contemptuous 
 brokers declared there never was such a shabby lot of goods. 
 A friend of the house and poor Philip bought in his mother's 
 picture for a few guineas ; and as for the doctor's own state 
 portrait, I am afraid it went for a few shillings only, and in the 
 midst of a roar of Hebrew laughter. I saw in Wardour Street, 
 not long after, the doctor's sideboard, and what dealers cheer- 
 fully call the sarcophagus cellaret. Poor doctor ! his wine was 
 all drunken ; his meat was eaten up ; but his own body had 
 slipped out of the reach of the hook-beaked birds of prey. 
 
 We had spoken rapidly in undertones, innocently believing 
 that the young people round about us were taking no heed of 
 our Jalk. But in a lull of the conversation, Mr. Pendennis 
 junior, who had always been a friend to Philip, broke out with 
 — " Philip ! if you are so very poor, you'll be hungry, you know, 
 and you may have my piece of bread and jam. And I don't 
 want it, mamma," he added ; " and you know Philip has often 
 and often given me things." 
 
 Philip stooped down and kissed this good little Samaritan. 
 " I'm not hungr}', Arty, my boy," he said ; " and I'm not so poor 
 but I have got — look here — a fine new shilling for Arty ! " 
 
 " Oh, Philip, Philip ! " cried mamma. 
 
 "Don't take the money, Arthur," cried papa. 
 
 And the boy, with a rueful face but a manly heart, prepared 
 to give back the coin. " It's quite a new one ; and it's a very 
 pretty one : but I won't have it, Philip, thank you," he said, 
 turning very red. 
 
 " If he won't, I vow I will give it to the cabman," said Philip. 
 
 " Keeping a cab all this while ? Oh, Philip, Philip ! " again 
 cries mamma the economist. 
 
 " Loss of time is loss of money, my dear lady," says Philip, 
 very gravely. '• I have ever so many places to go to. When I 
 am set in for being ruined, you shall see what a screw I will be- 
 come ! I must go to Mrs. Brandon, who will be very uneasy, 
 poor dear, until she knows the worst." 
 
 " Oh, Philip, I should like so to go with you ! " cries Laura. 
 " Pray, give her our very best regards and respects." 
 
 18
 
 274 
 
 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 " Merci f' said the younp; man, and squeezed Mrs. Penden- 
 nis's hand in his own big one. " I will take your message to 
 her, Laura, y'aimcqii'oii raivie, savcz-iwus ? " 
 
 " That means, I love those who love her," cries little Laura ; 
 "but, I don't know," remarked this little person afterwards to 
 her paternal confidant, " that I like a// people to love my mamma. 
 That is, I don't like //<r;- to like them, papa — only you may, papa, 
 and iLthcl may, and Arthur, may, and, 1 think, Philip may, now 
 he is poor and quite, quite alone — and we will take care of him, 
 won't we ? And, I think, I'll buy him something with my money 
 which Aunt Ethel gave me." 
 
 " And I'll give him my money," cries a boy. 
 
 " And I'll div him my — my " Psha ! what matters what 
 
 the little sweet lips prattle in their artless kindness ? But the 
 soft words of love and pity smote the mother's heart with an 
 exquisite pang of graiitude and joy ; and I know where her 
 thanks were paid for those tender words and thoughts of her 
 little ones. 
 
 Mrs. Pendennis made Philip promise to come to dinner, and 
 also to remember not to take a cab — which promise Mr. Firmin 
 had not much difficulty in executing, for he had but a few hun- 
 dred yards to walk across the Park from his club ; and I must 
 say that my wife took a special care of our dinner that day, pre- 
 paring for Philip certain dishes which she knew he liked, and 
 enjoining the butler of the establishment (who also happened to 
 be the owner of the house) to fetch from his cellar the very 
 choicest wine in his possession. 
 
 I have previously described our friend and his boisterous, 
 impetuous, generous nature. When Philip was moved, he called 
 to all the world to witness his emotion. When he was 3-ngry, 
 his enemies were all the rogues and scoundrels in the world. 
 He vowed he would have no mercy on them, and desired all 
 his acquaintances to participate in his anger. How could such 
 an open-mouthed son have such a close-spoken father ? I dare 
 say you have seen very well-bred young people, the children of 
 vulgar and ill-bred parents ; the swaggering father have a silent 
 son ; the loud mother a modest daughter. Our friend is not 
 Amadis or Sir Charles Grandison ; and I don't set him up for a 
 moment as a person to be revered or imitated ; but try to draw 
 him faithfully, and as nature made him. As nature made him, 
 so he was, I don't think he tried to improve himself much. 
 Perhaps few people do. They suppose they do : and you read, 
 in apologetic memoirs, and fond biographies, how this man cured 
 his bad temper, and t'other worked and strove until he grew to
 
 ON HIS WAY THRO UG If THE WORLD. 275 
 
 be almost faultless. Very well and good, my ^ood people. You 
 can learn a language ; you can master a science ; I have heard 
 of an old square-toes of sixty who learned, by study and intense 
 application, very satisfactorily to dance ; but can you, by taking 
 thought, add to your moral stature ? Ah me ! the doctor who 
 preaches is only taller than most of us by the height of the 
 pulpit : and when he steps down, I dare say he cringes to the 
 duchess, growls at his children, scolds his wife about the dinner. 
 All is vanity, look you : and so the preacher is vanity, too. 
 
 Well, then, I must again say that Philip roared his griefs : 
 he shouted his laughter : he bellowed his applause : he was ex- 
 travagant in his humility as in his pride, in his admiration of 
 his friends and contempt for his enemies • I dare say not a just 
 man, but I have met juster men not half so honest ; and cer- 
 tainly not a faultless man, though I know better men not near so 
 good. So, I believe, my wife thinks : else why should she be 
 so fond of him ? Did we not know boys who never went out of 
 bounds, and never were late for school, and never made a false 
 concord or quantity, and never came under the ferule ; and 
 others who were always playing truant, and blundering, and 
 being whipped • and yet, somehow, was not Master Naughtyboy 
 better liked than Master Goodchild 1 When Master Naughty- 
 boy came to dine with us on the first day of his ruin, he bore a 
 face of radiant happiness — he laughed, he bounced about, he 
 caressed the children ; now he took a couple on his knees ; now 
 he tossed the baby to the ceiling 3 now he sprawled over a sofa, 
 and now he rode upon a chair ; never was a penniless gentle- 
 man more cheerful. As for his dinner, Phil's appetite was 
 always fine, but on this day an ogre could scarcely play a more 
 terrible knife and fork. He asked for more and more, until his 
 entertainers wondered to behold him. " Dine for to-day and 
 to-morrow too ; can't expect such fare as this every day, you 
 know. This claret, how good it is ! May I pack some up in 
 paper, and take it home with me ? " The children roared with 
 laughter at this admirable idea of carrying home wine in a sheet 
 of paper. I don't know that it is always at the best jokes that 
 children laugh : — children and wise men too. 
 
 When we three were by ourselves, and freed from the com- 
 pany of servants and children, our friend told us the cause of 
 his gayety. " By George ! " he swore, " it is worth being ruined 
 to find such good people in the world. My dear, kind Laura " — ■ 
 here the gentleman brushes his eyes with his fist—" it was as 
 much as I could do this morning to prevent myself from hug- 
 ging you in my arms, you were so generous, and — and so kind,
 
 276 
 
 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 and so tender, and so good, by George. And after leaving you, 
 where do you tliink 1 went ? " 
 
 "I think I can guess, Philip," says Laura. 
 
 " Well," says Philip, winking his eyes again, and tossing off 
 a great bumper of wine, " I went to her, of course. I think she 
 is the best friend I have in the world. The old man was out, 
 and I told her about everytliing that had happened. And what 
 do you think she has done .'' She says she has been expecting 
 me — she has ; and she lias gone and fitted up a room with a 
 nice little bed at tlie top of the house, with everytliing as neat 
 and trim as possible ; and she begged and prayed 1 would go 
 and stay with her — and I said 1 would, to please her. And 
 then she takes me down to her room ; and she jumps up to a 
 cupboard, which she unlocks ; and she opens and takes three- 
 and-twenty pounds out of a — out of a tea — out of a tea-caddy- 
 confound me ! — and she says, ' Here, Philip," she says, and — 
 Boo ! what a fool 1 am ! " and here the orator fairly broke down 
 in his speech. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 IN WHICH PHILIP SHOWS HIS METTLE. 
 
 When the poor Little Sister proffered her mile, her all, 
 to Philip, I dare say some sentimental passages occurred 
 between them which are much too trivial to be narrated. No 
 doubt her pleasure would have been at that moment to give 
 him not only that gold which she had been saving up against 
 rent-day, but the spoons, the furniture, and all the valuables of 
 the house, including, perhaps, J. J-'s bric-a-brac, cabinets, cliina, 
 and so forth. To perform a kindness, an act of self-sacrifice ; — 
 are not these the most delicious privileges of female tenderness .'' 
 Philip checked his little friend's enthusiasm. He showed her 
 a purse full of money, at which sight the poor little soul was 
 rather disappointed. He magnified the value of his horses, 
 which, according to Philip's calculation, were to bring him at 
 least two hundred pounds more than the stock which he had 
 already in hand ; and the master of such a sum as this, she was 
 forced to confess, had no need to despair. Indeed, she had 
 never in lier life possessed the half of it, Her kind dear little
 
 01^ HIS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. 
 
 277 
 
 offer of a home in her house he would accept sometimes, and 
 with gratitude. Well, there was a little consolation in that. In 
 a moment tliat active little housekeeper saw the room ready ; 
 flowers on the mantel-piece ; his looking-glass, which her father 
 could do quite well with the little one, as he was always shaved 
 by the barber now ; the quilted counterpane, which she had her- 
 self made : — I know not what more improvements she devised ; 
 and I fear that at the idea of having Philip with her, this little 
 thing was as extravagantly and unreasonably happy as we have 
 just now seen Philip to be. What was that last dish which 
 Pastus and Arria shared in common ? I have lost my Lempriere's 
 dictionary (that treasury of my youth), and forget whether it 
 was a cold dagger <7?/f nature!, or a dish of hot coals a la Rojuaine 
 of which they partook ; but, whatever it was, she smiled, and 
 delightedly received it, happy to share the beloved one's 
 fortune. 
 
 Yes : Philip would come home to his Little Sister sometimes : 
 sometimes of a Saturday, and they would go to church on Sun- 
 day, as he used to do when he was a boy at school. " But 
 then, you know," says Phil, " law is law ; study is study. I 
 must devote my whole energies to my work — get up very early." 
 
 " Don't tire your eyes, my dear," interposes Mr. Philip's 
 soft, judicious friend. 
 
 " There must be no trifling with work," says Philip, with 
 awful gravity. " There's Benton the Judge : Benton and 
 Burbage, you know." 
 
 " Oh, Benton and Burbage ! " whispers the Little Sister, not 
 a little bewildered. 
 
 " How do you suppose he became a judge before forty ? " 
 
 " Before forty who ? law, bless me ! " 
 
 " Before he was forty, Mrs. Carry. When he came to work, 
 he had his own way to make : just like me. Pie had a small 
 allowance from his father : that's not like me. He took 
 chambers in the Temple. He went to a pleader's office. He 
 read fourteen, fifteen hours every day. He dined on a cup of 
 tea and a mutton-chop." 
 
 " La, bless me, child ! I wouldn't have you to do that, not to 
 be Lord Chamberlain — Chancellor what's his name ? Destroy 
 your youth with reading, and your eyes, and go without your 
 dinner ? You're not used to that sort of thing, dear ; and it 
 would kill you ! " 
 
 Philip smoothed his fair hair off his ample forehead, and 
 nodded his head, smiling sweetly. I think his inward monitor 
 hinted to him that there was not much danger of his killing
 
 iyS THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 himself by over work. " To succeed at the law, as in all othet 
 professions," he continued, with much gravity, " requires the 
 greatest perseverance, and industry, and talent ; and then, per- 
 haps, you don't succeed. Many have failed who have had all 
 these qualities." . 
 
 " But they haven't talents like my Philip, I know they 
 haven't. And I had to stand up in a court once, and was cross- 
 examined by a vulgar man before a horrid deaf old judge ; and 
 I'm sure if your lawyers are like them I don't wish you to suc- 
 ceed at all. And now, look ! there's a nice loin of pork coming 
 up. Pa loves roast pork ; and you must come and have some 
 with us ; and every day and all days, my dear, I should like to 
 see you seated there." And the Little Sister frisked about here, 
 and bustled there, and brought a cunning bottle of wine from 
 some corner, and made the boy welcome. So that, you see, 
 far from starving, he actually had two dinners on that first day 
 of his ruin. 
 
 Caroline consented to a compromise regarding the money, 
 on Philip's solemn vow and promise that she should be his 
 banker whenever necessity called. She rather desired his 
 poverty for the sake of its precious reward. She hid away a 
 little bag of gold for her darling's use whenever he should need 
 it. I dare say she pinched and had shabby dinners at home, 
 so as to save yet more, and so caused the Captain to grumble. 
 Why, for that boy's sake, I believe she would have been capable 
 of shaving her lodgers' legs of mutton, and levying a tax on 
 their tea-caddies and baker's stuff. If you don't like unprin- 
 cipled attachments of this sort, and only desire that your woman- 
 kind should love you for yourself, and according to your deserts, 
 I am your very humble servant. Hereditary bondswomen ! 
 you know, that were you free, and did you strike the blow, my 
 dears, you were unhappy for your pain, and eagerly would claim 
 your bonds again. What poet has uttered that sentiment ? It 
 is perfectly true, and I know will receive the cordial approba- 
 tion of the dear ladies. 
 
 Philip has decreed in his own mind that he will go and live 
 in those chambers in the Temple where we have met him. Van 
 John, the sporting gentleman, had determined for special reasons 
 to withdraw from law and sport in this country, and Mr. Firmin 
 took possession of his vacant sleeping-chamber. To furnish a 
 bachelor's bedroom need not be a matter of much cost ; but 
 Mr. Philip was too good-natured a fellow to haggle about the 
 valuation of Van John's bedsteads and chests of drawers, and 
 generously took them at twice their value. He and Mr. Cassidy
 
 OM ms IVAY THROUGH THE WORLD. 279 
 
 now divided tlie rooms in equal reign. Ah, happy rooms, 
 bright rooms, rooms near the sky, to remember you is to be 
 young again ! for I would have you to know that when Philip 
 went to lake possession of his share of the fourth lioor in the 
 Temple, his biographer was still comparatively juvenile, and in 
 one or two very old-fashioned families was called "young 
 Pendennis." 
 
 So Philip Firmin dwelt in a garret ; and the fourth part of 
 a laundress and the half of a boy now formed the domestic 
 establishment of him who had been attended by housekeepers, 
 butlers, and obsequious liveried menials. To be freed from 
 that ceremonial and etiquette of plush and worsted lace was 
 an immense relief to Firmin. His pipe need not lurk in crypts 
 or back closets now : its fragrance breathed over the wliole 
 chambers, and rose up to the sky, their near neighbor. 
 
 The first month or two after being ruined, Philip vowed, 
 was an uncommonly pleasant time. He had still plenty of 
 money in his pocket ; and the sense that, perhaps, it was im- 
 prudent to take a cab or drink a bottle of wine, added a zest 
 to those enjoyments which they by no means possessed when 
 they were easy and of daily occurrence. I am not certain that 
 a dinner of beef and portef did not amuse our young man 
 almost as well as banquets much more costly to which he had 
 been accustomed. He laughed at the pretensions of his boyish 
 days, when he and other solemn young epicures used to sit 
 down to elaborate tavern banquets, and pretend to criticize vin- 
 tages, and sauces, and turtle. As yet there was not only con- 
 tent with his dinner, but plenty therewith ; and I do not wish 
 to alarm you by supposing that Philip will ever have to encounter 
 any dreadful extremities of poverty or hunger in the course of 
 his history. The wine in the jug was very low at times, but it 
 never was quite empty. This lamb was shorn, but the wind 
 was tempered to him. 
 
 So Philip took possession of his rooms in the Temple, and 
 began actually to reside there just as the long vacation com- 
 menced, which he intended to devote to a course of serious 
 study of the law and private preparation, before he should ven- 
 ture on the great business of circuit and the bar. Nothing is 
 more necessary for desk-men than exercise, so Philip took a 
 good deal ; especially on the water, where he pulled a famous 
 oar. Nothing is more natural after exercise than refreshment; 
 and Mr. Firmin, now he was too poor for claret, showed a great 
 capacity for beer. After beer and bodily labor, rest, of course, 
 is necessary ; and Firmin slept nine hours, and looked as rosy
 
 28o THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 as a girl in her first season. Then such a man, witli such t 
 frame and health, must ha\e a good appetite for breakfast. 
 And then every man who wishes to succeed at the bar, in the 
 senate, on the bench, in the House of Peers, on the Woolsack, 
 must know the quotidian history of his country; so, of course, 
 Philip read the newspaper. Thus, you see, his hours of study 
 were perforce curtailed by the necessary duties which dis- 
 tracted him from his labors. 
 
 It has been said that Mr. Firmin's companion in chambers, 
 Mr, Cassidv, was a native of the neii2;hborin<r kingdom of Ire- 
 land, and engaged in literary pursuits in this country. A merr}^, 
 shrewd, silent, observant little man, he, unlike some of his 
 compatriots, always knew how to make both ends meet ; feared 
 no man alive in the character of a dun ; and out of small earn- 
 ings managed to transmit no small comforts and subsidies to 
 old parents living somewhere in Munster. Of Cassidy's friends 
 was Finucane, now editor of the Pall Mall Gazette ; he mar- 
 ried the widow of the late eccentric and gifted Captain Shan- 
 don, and Cass himself was the fashionable correspondent of 
 the Gazette, chronicling the marriages, deaths, births, dinner- 
 parties of the nobility. These Irish gentlemen knew other 
 Irish gentlemen, connected with other newspapers, who formed 
 a little literary society. They assembled at each other's rooms, 
 and at haunts where social pleasure was to be purchased at no 
 dear rate. Philip Firmin was known to many of them before 
 his misfortunes occurred, and when there was gold in plenty in 
 his pocket, and never-failing applause for his songs. 
 
 When Pendennis and his friends wrote in this newspaper, 
 it was impertinent enough, and many men must have heard the 
 writers laugh at the airs which they occasionally thought proper 
 to assume. The tone which they took amused, annoyed, tickled, 
 was popular. It was continued, and, of course, caricatured by 
 their successors. They worked for very moderate fees : but 
 paid themselves by impertinence, and the satisfaction of assail- 
 ing their betters. Three or four persons were reserved from 
 their abuse ; but somebody was sure every week to be tied up 
 at their post, and the public made sport of the victim's con- 
 tortions. The writers were obscure barristers, ushers, and 
 college men, but they had omniscience at their pens' end, and 
 were ready to lay down the law on any given subject — to teach 
 any man his business, Avere it a bishop in his pulpit, a Minister 
 in his place in the House, a captain on his quarter-deck, a tailor 
 on his shop-board, or a jockey in his saddle. 
 
 Since those early days • of the 2\ll Mall Gazette^ when
 
 O^r tllS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. 2^1 
 
 old Shandon wielded his truculent tomahawk, and Messrs. 
 W-rr-ugt-n and P-nd-nn-s followed him in the war path, the 
 Gazette had passed through several hands ; and the victims 
 who were immolated by the editors of to-day were very likely 
 the objects of the best puffery of the last dynasty. To be 
 flogged in what was 3'our own schoolroom — that, surely, is a 
 queer sensation ; and when my Report was published on the 
 decay of the sealing-wax trade in the three kingdoms (owing to 
 the prevalence of gummed envelopes, — as you may see in that 
 masterly document) I was horsed up and smartly whipped in 
 the Gazette by some of the rods which had come out of pickle 
 since my time. Was hot good Dr. Guillotin executed by his 
 own neat invention ? I don't know who was the Monsieur 
 Sanson who operated on me ; but have always had my idea 
 that Digges, of Corpus, was the man to whom my flagellation 
 was entrusted. His father keeps a ladies' school at Hackney ; 
 but there is an air of fashion in everything which Digges writes, 
 and a chivalrous conservatism which makes me pretty certain 
 that D. was my scarifier. All this, however, is naught. Let us 
 turn away from the author's private griefs and egotisms to 
 those of the hero of the story. 
 
 Does any one remember the appearance some twenty years 
 ago of a little book called " Trumpet Calls " — a book of songs 
 and poetry, dedicated to his brother officers by Cornet Canter- 
 ton ? His trumpet was very tolerably melodious, and the cor- 
 net played some small airs on it with some little grace and 
 skill. But this poor Canterton belonged to the Life-Guards 
 Green, and Philip Firmin would have liked to have the lives 
 of one or two troops at least of that corps. Entering into Mr. 
 Cassidy's room, Philip found the little volume. He set to 
 work to exterminate Canterton. He rode him down, trampled 
 over his face and carcase, knocked the "Trumpet Calls" and 
 all the teeth down the trumpeter's throat. Never was such a 
 smashing article as he wrote. And Mugford, Mr. Cassidy's 
 chief and owner, who likes always to have at least one man 
 served up and hashed small in the Pall Mall Gazette, happened 
 at this very juncture to have no other victim ready in his lar- 
 der. Philip's review appeared there in print. He rushed off 
 with immense glee to Westminster, to show us his performance. 
 Nothing must content him but to give a dinner at Greenwich 
 on his success. Oh, Philip ! We wished that this had not 
 been his first fee ; and that sober law had given it to him, and 
 not the graceless and fickle muse with whom he had been 
 flirting. For, truth to say, certain wise old heads which wag-
 
 i82 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 ged over his performance could see but little merit in it. His 
 style was coarse, his wit clumsy and savage. Never mind 
 characterizing cither now. He has seen the error of his ways, 
 and divorcecl with the muse whom he never ousrht to have 
 
 o 
 
 wooed. 
 
 The shrewd Cassidy not only could not write himself, but 
 knew he could not — or, at least, pen more than a plain para- 
 graph, or a brief sentence to the point, but said he would carry 
 this paper to his chief. " His Excellency " was the nickname 
 by which this chief was called by his familiars. INIugford — • 
 Frederick Mugford was his real name — and putting out of sight 
 that little defect in his character, that he committed a system- 
 atic literary murder once a week, a more worthy good-natured 
 little murderer did not live. He came of the old school of the 
 press. Like French marshals, he had risen from the ranks,, 
 and retained some of the manners and oddities of the private 
 soldier. A new race of writers had grown uji since he enlisted 
 as a printer's boy — men of the world, with the manners of 
 other gentlemen. Mugford never professed the least gentility. 
 He knew that his young men laughed at his peculiarities, and 
 did not care a fig for their scorn. As the knife with which he 
 conveyed his victuals to his mouth went down his throat at the 
 plenteous banquets which he gave, he saw his young friends 
 wince and wonder, and rather relish their surprise. Those 
 lips never cared in the least about placing his Ji's in right 
 places. They used bad language with great freedom — (to hear 
 him bullying a printing office was a wonder of eloquence) — 
 but they betrayed no secrets, and the words which they uttered 
 you might trust. He had belonged to two or three parties, 
 and had respected them all. When he went to the Under- 
 Secretary's office he was never kept waiting ; and once or 
 twice Mrs. Mugford, who governed him, ordered him to attend 
 the Saturday reception of the Ministers' ladies, where he might 
 be seen, with dirty hands, it is true, but a richly embroidered 
 waistcoat and fancy satin tie. His heart, however, was not in 
 these entertainments. I have heard him say that he only came 
 because Mrs. M. would have it ; and he frankly owned that he 
 "would rather 'ave a pipe, and a drop of something 'ot, than 
 all your ices and rubbish." 
 
 Mugford had a curious knowledge of what was going on in 
 the world, and of the affairs of countless people. When Cass 
 brought Philip's article to his Excellency, and mentioned the 
 author's name, Mugford showed himself to be perfectly familiar 
 with the histories of Philip and his father. " The old chap has
 
 O.V HIS IV A V TH ROUGH THE WORLD 283 
 
 nobbled the young fellow's money, almost every shilling of it, I 
 hear. Knew he never would carry on. His discounts would 
 have killed any man. Seen his paper about this ten year. 
 Young one is a gentleman — passionate fellow, hawhaw fellow, 
 but kind to the poor. Father never was a gentleman, with al' 
 his fine airs and fine waistcoats. I don't set up in that line 
 myself, Cass, but I tell you I know 'em when I see 'em." 
 
 Philip had friends and private patrons whose influence was 
 great with the Mugford family, and of whom he little knew. 
 Every year Mrs. M. was in the habit of contributing a Mugford 
 to the world. She was one of Mrs. Brandon's most regular 
 clients ; and year after year, almost from his first arrival in 
 London, Ridley, the painter, had been- engaged as portrait- 
 painter to this worthy family. Philip and his illness \ Philip 
 and his horses, splendors, and entertainments ; Philip and his 
 lamentable downfall and ruin, had formed the subject of 
 many an interesting talk between Mrs. Mugford and her 
 friend the Little Sister ; and as we know Caroline's infatua- 
 tion about the young fellow, we may suppose that his good 
 qualities lost nothing in the description. When that article in 
 the Pall Mall Gazette appeared. Nurse Brandon took the omni- 
 bus to Haverstock Hill, where, as you know, Mugford had his 
 villa ; — arrived at Mrs. Mugford's, Gazette in hand, and had a 
 long and delightful conversation with that lady. Mrs. Brandon 
 bought I don't know how many copies of thz.t Fall Mall Gazette. 
 She now asked for it repeatedly in her walks at sundry ginger- 
 beer shops, and of all sorts of news-vendors. I have heard 
 that when the Mugfords first purchased the Gazette, Mrs. M. 
 used to drop bills from her pony-chaise, and distribute placards 
 setting forth the excellence of the journal. " We keep our 
 carriage, but we ain't above our business, Brandon," that good 
 lady would say. And the business prospered under the man- 
 agement of these worthy folks ; and the pony-chaise unfolded 
 into a noble barouche ; and the pony increased and multiplied, 
 and became a pair of horses ; and there was not a richer piece 
 of gold-lace round any coachman's hat in London than now 
 decorated John, who had grown with the growth of his master's 
 fortunes, and drove the chariot in which his worthy employers 
 rode on the way to Hampstead, honor, and prosperity. 
 
 " All this pitching into the poet is very well, you know, Cas- 
 sidy," says Mugford to his subordinate. " It's like shooting a but- 
 terfly with a blunderbuss ; but if Firmin likes that kind of sport, I 
 don't mind. There won't be any difficulty about taking his copy at 
 our place. The duchess knows another old woman who is a friend
 
 284 "^^^ ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 of his " (•* the duchess " was the title which Mr. Mugford was in 
 the playful habit of conferring upon his wife). " It's my belief 
 young F. had better stick to the law, and leave the writing rul> 
 bisli alone. Ikit he knows his own affairs best, and, mind you, 
 the duchess is determined we shall give him a helping hand." 
 
 Once, in the days of his prosj^erity, and in J. J.'s company, 
 Pliiliphad visited Mrs. Mugford and her family — a circumstance 
 which the gentleman had almost forgotten. The painter and 
 his friend were taking a Sunday walk, and came upon Mug- 
 ford's pretty cottage and garden, and were hospitably enter- 
 tained there by the owners of the place. It has disappeared, 
 and the old garden has long since been covered by terraces 
 and villas, and Mugford, and Mrs. M., good souls, where are 
 they.? -But the lady thought she had never seen such a fine- 
 looking young fellow as Philip ; cast about in her mind which 
 of her little female Mugfords should marry him ; and insisted 
 upon offering her guest champagne. Poor Phil ! So, you see, 
 whilst, perhaps, he was rather pluming himself upon his literary 
 tak^int, and imagining that he was a clever fellow, he was only 
 the object of a job on the part of two or three good folks, who 
 knew his history, and compassionated his misfortunes. 
 
 Mugford recalled himself to Philip's recollection, when 
 they met after the appearance of Mr. Phil's first performance 
 in the Gazette. If he still took a sundry walk, Hampstead way, 
 Mr. jNI. requested him to remember that there was a slice of 
 beef and a glass of wine at the old shop. Philip remembered 
 it well enough now : the ugly room, the ugly family, the kind 
 worthy people. Ere long he learned what had been Mrs. Bran- 
 don's connection with them, and the young man's heart was 
 solFtened and grateful as he thought how this kind, gentle crea- 
 ture had been able to befriend him. She, we may be sure, was 
 not a little proud of her prote'ge. I believe she grew to fancy 
 that the whole newspaper was written by Philip. She made 
 her fond parent read it aloud as she worked. Mr. Ridley, 
 senior, pronounced it was remarkably fine, really now ; without, 
 I think, entirely comprehending the meaning of the sentiments 
 which Mr. Gann gave forth in his rich loud voice, and often 
 dropping asleep in his chair during this sermon. 
 
 In the autumn, Mr. Firmin's friends, Mr. and Mrs. Penden- 
 nis, selected the romantic seaport town of Boulogne for theii 
 holiday residence \ and liaving roomy quarters in the old town, 
 we gave Mr. Philip an invitation to pay us a visit whenever he 
 could tear himself away from literature and law. He came in 
 high spirits. He amused us by imitations and descriptions of
 
 O.V HIS WAY TITROUGir THE WORLD. 285 
 
 his new proprietor and master, Air. Mugford — his blunders, his 
 bad language, his good heart. One da}', Mugford expected a 
 celebrated literary character to dinner, and Philip and Cassidy 
 were invited to meet him. The great man was ill, and was 
 unable to come. "Don't dish up the side-dishes," called out 
 Mugford to his cook, in the hearing of his other guests. " Mr. 
 Lyon ain't a coming." They dined quite sufficiently without 
 the side-dishes, and were perfectly cheerful in the absence of 
 the lion. Mugford patronized his young men with amusmg 
 good-nature. " Firmin, cut the goose for the duchess, will 
 you .? Cass can't say Bo ! to one, he can't. Ridley, a little of 
 the stuffing. It'll make your hair curl." And Philip was going 
 to imitate a frightful act with the cold steel (with which I have 
 said Philip's master used to convey food to his mouth), but our 
 dear innocent third daughter uttered a shriek of terror, Avhich 
 caused him to drop the dreadful weapon. Our darling little 
 Florence is a nervous child, and the sight of an edged tool 
 causes her anguish, ever since our darling little Tom nearly cut 
 his thumb off with his father's razor. 
 
 Our main amusement in this delightful place was to look at 
 the sea-sick landing from the steamers ; and one day, as we 
 witnessed this phenomenon, Philip sprang to the ropes which 
 divided us from the arriving passengers, and with a cry of 
 " How do you do. General ? " greeted a yellow-faced gentleman, 
 who started back, and, to my thinking, seemed but ill inclined 
 to reciprocate Philip's friendly greeting. The General was 
 fluttered, no doubt, by the bustle and interruptions incidental 
 to the landing. A pallid lady, the partner of his existence prob- 
 ably, was calling out, " Noof et doo domestiques, Doo ! " to 
 the sentries who kept the line, and who seemed little interested 
 by this family news. A governess, a tall young lady, and 
 several more male and female children, followed the pale lady, 
 who, as I thought, looked strangely frightened when the gentle- 
 man addressed as General communicated to her Philip's name. 
 '' Is that him ? " said the lady in questionable grammar; and 
 the tall young lady turned a pair of large eyes upon the indi- 
 vidual designated as "him," and showed a pair of dank ring- 
 lets, out of which the envious sea-nymphs had shaken all the 
 curl. 
 
 The general turned out to be General Baynes ; the pale lady 
 was Mrs. General B. ; the tall young lady was Miss Charlotte 
 Baynes, the General's eldest child ; and the other six, formmg 
 nine, or "noof," in all, as^Mrs. General B. said, were the other 
 members of the Baynes family. And here I may as well say
 
 286 THE ADVENTURES OF nilLIP 
 
 why the General looked alarmed on seeing Philip, and why the 
 General's lady frowned at him. In action, one of the bravest 
 of men, in common life General Baynes was timorous and weak. 
 Specially he was afraid of Mrs. General Baynes, who ruled him 
 with a vigorous authorit3\ As PJiilip's trustee, he had allowed 
 Philip's father to make away with the boy's money. He learned 
 with a ghastly terror that he was answerable for his own remiss- 
 ness and want of care. For a long while he did not dare to tell 
 his commander-in-chief of this dreadful jDcnalty which was hang- 
 ing over him. When at last he ventured upon this confession, 
 I do not envy him the scene which must have ensued between 
 him and his commanding officer. The morning after the fatal 
 confession, when the children assembled for breakfast and 
 prayers, Mrs. Baynes gave their young ones their porridge : she 
 and Charlotte poured out the tea and coffee for the elders, and 
 then addressing her eldest son Ochterlony, she said, " Ocky, 
 my boy, the General has announced a charming piece of news 
 this morning." 
 
 * Bought that pony, sir t " says Ocky. 
 
 " Oh, what jolly fun ! " sa3'S Moira, the second son. 
 
 " Dear, dear papa ! what's the matter, and why do you look 
 so ? " cries Charlotte, looking behind her father's paper. 
 
 That guilty man would fain have made a shroud of his 
 Morning Herald. He would have fiung the sheet over his. 
 whole body, and lain hidden there from all eyes. 
 
 " The fun, my dears, is that your father is ruined : that's 
 the fun. Eat your porridge now, little ones. Charlotte, pop 
 a bit of butter in Carrick's jDorridge ; for you mayn't have any 
 to-morrow." 
 
 " Oh, gammon," cries Moira. 
 
 " You'll soon see whether it is gammon or not, sir, when 
 you'll be starving, sir. Your father has ruined us — and a very 
 pleasant morning's work, I am sure." 
 
 And she calmly rubs the nose of her youngest child who is 
 near her, and too young, and innocent, and careless, perhaps, 
 of the world's censure as yet to keep in a strict cleanliness her 
 own dear little snub nose and dappled cheeks. 
 
 " We are only ruined, and shall be starving soon, my dears, 
 and if the General has bought a pony — as 1 dare say he has ; 
 he is quite capable of buying a pony when we are starving — 
 the best thing we can do is to eat the pony. M'Grigor, don't 
 laugh. Starvation is no laughing matter. When we were at 
 Dumdum, in '36, we ate some colt. Don't you remember 
 Jubber's colt — ^Jubber of the Horse Artillery, General .? Never
 
 ON HIS WA V THROUGH THE WORLD. 287 
 
 tasted anything more tender in all my life. Charlotte, take 
 Jany's hands out of the marmalade ! We are all ruined, my 
 dears, as sure as our name is Baynes." Thus did the mother 
 of the family prattle on in the midst of her little ones, and an- 
 nounce to them the dreadful news of impending starvation. 
 "General Baynes, by his carelessness, had allowed Dr. Firmin 
 to make away with the money over which the General had been 
 set as sentinel. Philip might recover from the trustee, and no 
 doubt would. Perhaps he would not press his claim ? My 
 dear, what can you expect from the son of such a father? 
 Depend on it, Charlotte, no good fruit can come from a stock 
 like that. The son is a bad one, the father is a bad one, and 
 your father, poor dear soul, is not fit to be trusted to walk the 
 street without some one to keep him from tumbling. Why did 
 I allow him to go to town without me ? We were quartered at 
 Colchester then : and I could not move on account of your 
 brother M'Grigor. ' Baynes,' I said to your father, ' as sure 
 as I let you go away to town without me, you will come to mis- 
 chief.' And go he did, and come to mischief he did. And 
 through his folly I and my poor children must go and beg our 
 bread in the streets — I and my seven poor, robbed, penniless 
 little ones. Oh, it's cruel, cruel ! " 
 
 Indeed, one cannot fancy a more dismal prospect for this 
 worthy mother and wife than to see her children without pro- 
 vision at the commencement of their lives and her luckless 
 husband robbed of his life's earnings, and ruined just when he 
 was too old to work. 
 
 What was to become of them ? Now poor Charlotte 
 thought, with pangs of a keen remorse, how idle she had been, 
 and how she had snubbed her governesses, and how little she 
 knew, and how badiy she played the piano. Oh, neglected 
 opportunities ! Oh, remorse, now the time was past and irre- 
 coverable ! Does any young lady read this who, perchance, 
 ought to be doing her lessons ? My dear, lay down the story- 
 book at once. Go up your schoolroom, and practise your 
 piano for two hours this moment ; so that you may be prepared 
 to support your family, should ruin in any case fall upon you. 
 A great girl of sixteen, I pity Charlotte Baynes's feelings of 
 anguish. She can't write a very good hand \ she can scarcely 
 answer any question to speak of in any educational books ; 
 her pianoforte playing is ver)' very so-so indeed. If she is to 
 go out and get a living for the family, how, in the name of 
 goodness, is she to set about it ? What are they to do with 
 the boys, and the money that has been put away for Ochterlony
 
 288 '^I^E ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 when he goes to college, and for Moira's commission ? " Why, 
 we can't afford to keep them at Dr. Pybus's, where they were 
 doing so well ; and they were ever so much better and more 
 gentlemanlike than Colonel Chandler's boys ; and to lose the 
 army will break Moira's heart, it will. And the little ones, my 
 little blue-e)-ed Carrick, and my darling Jany, and my iSIary, 
 that I nursed almost miraculously out of her scarlet fever. God 
 help them ! God help us all ! " thinks the poor mother. No 
 wonder that her nights are wakeful, and her heart in a tumult 
 of alarm at the idea of the impending danger. 
 
 And the father of the family ? — the stout old General whose 
 battles and campaigns are over, who has come home to rest his 
 war-worn limbs, and make his peace with heaven ere it calls 
 him away — what nuist be his feelings when he thinks that he 
 has been entrapped by a villain into committing an imprudence 
 which makes his children penniless and himself dishonored 
 and a beggar ? When he found what Dr. Firmin had done, 
 and how he had been cheated, he went away, aghast, to his 
 lawyer, who could give him no help. Philip's mother's trustee 
 was answerable to Philip for his properly. It had been stolen 
 through Baynes's own carelessness, and the law bound him to 
 replace it. General Baynes's man of business could not help 
 him out of his perplexity at all ; and I hope my worthy reader 
 is not going to be too angry with the General for what he did. 
 You never would, my dear sir, I know. No power on earth 
 would induce j^« to depart one inch from the path of rectitude ; 
 or, having done an act of imprudence, to shrink from bearing 
 the consequence. The long and short of the matter is, that 
 poor Baynes and his wife, after holding agitated, stealthy 
 councils together — after believing that every strange face they 
 .saw was a bailiffs coming to arrest them on Philip's account — 
 after horrible days of remorse, misery, guilt — I say the long and 
 the short of the matter was that these poor people determined 
 to run away. They would go and hide themselves anywhere — 
 in an impenetrable pine forest in Norway — up an inaccessible 
 mountain in Switzerland. They would change their names ; 
 dye their mustaches and honest old white hair ; fly with tlieir 
 little ones away, away, away, out of the reach of law and Philip ; 
 and the first flight lands them on Boulogne Pier, and there is 
 Mr. Philip holding out his hand and actually eyeing them as 
 they get out of the steamer! Eyeing them? It is the eye of 
 heaven that is on those criminals. Holding out his hand to 
 them ? It is the hand of fate that is on their wretched shoul- 
 ders. No wonder they shuddered and turned pale. That
 
 ON HIS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. 289 
 
 which I took for sea-sickness, I am sorry to say was a guilty 
 conscience : and \yhere is the steward, my dear friends, who 
 can reUeve us of that ? 
 
 As this party came staggering out of the Custom-house, poor 
 Baynes still found Philip's hand stretched out to catch hold of 
 him, and saluted him with a ghastly cordiality. "These are 
 your children, General, and this is Mrs. Baynes ? " says Philip, 
 smiling, and taking off his hat. 
 
 " Oh, yes ! I'm Mrs. General Baynes ! " says the poor 
 woman ; " and these are the children — yes, yes. Charlotte, this 
 is Mr. Firmin, of whom you have heard us speak ; and these are 
 my boys, Moira and Ochterlony." 
 
 " I have had the honor of meeting General Baynes at Old 
 Parr Street. Don't you remember, sir.? " says Mr. Pendennis, 
 with great affability to the General. 
 
 " What, another who knows me ? " I dare say the poor 
 wretch thinks ; and glances of a dreadful meaning pass between 
 the guilty wife and the guilty husband. 
 
 " You are going to stay at any hotel ? " 
 
 "'Hotel des Bains!"" "'Hotel du Nord ! '" "'Hotel 
 d'Angleterre ! ' " here cry twenty commissioners in a breath. 
 
 "Hotel? Oh, yes! That is, we have not made up our 
 minds whether we shall go on to-night or whether we shall stay," 
 say those guilty ones, looking at one another, and then down 
 to the ground ; on which one of the children, with a roar, 
 says — 
 
 " Oh, ma, what a story ! You said you'd stay to-night : and 
 I was so sick in the beastly boat and 1 woi't travel any more ! " 
 And tears choke his artless utterance. "And you said Bang 
 10 the man who took your keys, you know you did," resumes 
 the innocent, as soon as he can gasp a further remark. 
 
 " W' ho told you to speak ? " cried mamma, giving the boy a 
 shake. 
 
 "This is the way to the 'Hotel des Bains,'" says Philip, 
 making Miss Baynes another of his best bows. And Miss 
 Baynes makes a curtsey, and her eyes look up at the handsome 
 young man — large brown honest eyes in a comely round face, 
 on each side of which depend two straight wisps of brown hair 
 that were ringlets when they left Folkestone a few hours since. 
 
 " Oh, I say, look at those women with the short petticoats ! 
 and wooden shoes, bv George ! Oh ! it's jolly, ain't it ? '" crie? 
 one young gentleman. 
 
 " By George, there's a man with earrings on ! There is, 
 Ocky, upon mv word ! " calls out another. And the elder boy, 
 
 19
 
 2C)o THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 turning round to his father, points to some soldiers. " Did you 
 ever see such little beggars ? " he says, tossing his head up. 
 "They wouldn't take such fellows into our line." 
 
 "I \\\\\ not at all tired, thank you," says Charlotte. " I am 
 accustomed to carry him." I forgot to say that the young lady 
 had one of the children asleep on her shoulder ; and another 
 was toddling at her side, holding by his sister's dress, and 
 admiring Mr. Firmin's whiskers, that flamed and curled very 
 luminously and gloriously, like to the rays of the setting sun. 
 
 " 1 am very glad we met, sir," says Philip, in the most 
 friendly manner, \aking leave of the General at the gate of his 
 hotel. " I hope you won't go away to-morrow, and that I may 
 come and pay my respects to Mrs. Baynes." Again he salutes 
 that lady with a coup de chapeaii. Again he bows to Miss 
 Baynes. She makes a pretty curtsey enough, considering that 
 she has a baby asleep on her shoulder. And they enter the 
 hotel, the excellent Marie marshalling them to fitting apart- 
 ments, where some of them, I have no doubt, will sleep very 
 soundly. How much more comfortably might poor Baynes and 
 his wife have slept had they known what were Philip's feelings 
 regarding them ! 
 
 We both admired Charlotte, the tall girl who carried her 
 little brother, and around whom the others clung. And we 
 spoke loudly in Miss Charlotte's praises to Mrs. Pendennis, 
 when we joined that lady at dinner. In the praise of Mrs. 
 Baynes we had not a great deal to say, further than that she 
 seemed to take command of the whole expedition, including the 
 general officer, her husband. 
 
 Though Marie's beds at the " Hotel des Bains " are as 
 comfortable as any beds in Europe, you see that admirable 
 chambermaid cannot lay out a clean, easy conscience upon the 
 clean, fragrant pillow-case; and General and Mrs. Baynes 
 owned, in after days, that one of the most dreadful nights they 
 ever passed was that of their first landing in France. What 
 refugee from his country can fly from himself ? Railways were 
 not as yet in that part of France. The General was too poor 
 to fly with a couple of private carriages, which he must have 
 had for his family of "noof," his governess, and two servants. 
 Encumbered with such a train, his enemy would speedily have 
 pursued and overtaken him. 1 1 is a fact that immediately after 
 landing at his hotel, he and his commanding ofiicer went off to 
 see when they could get places for — never mind the name of 
 the place where they really thought of taking refuge. They 
 never told, but Mrs. General Baynes had a sister. Mrs. Major
 
 ON HIS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. 
 
 291 
 
 MacWhirter (married to MacW. of the Bengal Cavalry), and 
 the sisters loved each other very afifectionately, especially by 
 letter, for it must be owned that they quarrelled frightfully when 
 together ; and Mrs. MacWhirter never could bear that her 
 younger sister should be taken out to dinner before her, because 
 she was married to a superior officer. Well, their little differ- 
 ences were forgotten when the two ladies were apart. The 
 sisters wrote to each other prodigious long letters, in which 
 household affairs, the children's puerile diseases, the relative 
 prices of veal, eggs, chickens, the rent of lodging and houses 
 in various places, were fully discussed. And as Mrs. Baynes 
 showed a surprising knowledge of Tours, the markets, rents, 
 clergymen, society there, and as Major and Mrs. Mac. were 
 staying there, I have little doubt, for my part, from this and 
 another not unimportant circumstance, that it was to that fair 
 city our fugiti\es were wending their way, when events occurred 
 which must now be narrated, and which caused General Baynes 
 at the head of his domestic regiment to do what the King of 
 France with twenty thousand men is said to have done in old 
 times. 
 
 Philip was greatly interested about the family. The truth 
 is, we were all very much bored at Boulogne. We read the 
 feeblest London papers at the reading-room with frantic as- 
 siduity. We saw all the boats come in : and the day was lost 
 when we missed the Folkestone boat or the London boat. We 
 consumed much time and absinthe at cafe's ; and tramped 
 leagues upon that old pier every day. Well, Philip was at the 
 " Hotel des Bains " at a very early hour next morning, and there 
 he saw the General, with a woe-worn face, leaning on his stick, 
 and looking at his luggage, as it lay piled in the porte-cochere 
 of the hotel. There they lay, thirty-seven packages in all, 
 including washii->g-tubs, and a child's India sleeping-cot; and 
 all these packages were ticketed M. le General Baynes, 
 Officier Anglais, Tours, Touraine, France. I say, putting 
 two and two together ; calHng to mind Mrs. General's singular 
 knowledge of Tours and familiarity with the place and its 
 prices ; remembering that her sister Emily — Mrs. Major Mac- 
 Whirter, in fact — was there ; and seeing thirty-seven trunks, 
 bags, and portmanteaus, all directed " M. le Ge'ne'ral Baynes, 
 Officier Anglais, Tours, Touraine," am I wrong in supposing 
 that Tours was the General's destination ? On the other hand, 
 we have the old officer's declaration to Philip that he did not 
 know where he was going. Ob, you sly old man! Oh, you 
 gray old fo.\, beginning to double and to turn at sixty-seven
 
 292 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 years of age! Well? Hie General was in retreat, and he did 
 not wish the enemy to know upon what lines he was retreating. 
 What is the harm of that, pray ? I5esides, he was under the 
 orders of his commanding officer, and when Mrs. General gave 
 her orders, I should have liked to see any officer of hers 
 disobey. 
 
 •' What a pyramid of portmanteaus ! You are not thinking 
 of moving to-day, General ? " says Philip. 
 
 " It is Sunday, sir," says the General ; which you will per- 
 ceive was not answering the question ; but, in truth, except for 
 a \ery great emergency, the good General would not travel on 
 that day. 
 
 " I hope the ladies slept well after their windy A'oyage." 
 
 " Thank you. My wife is an old sailor, and has made two 
 voyages out and home to India." Here, you understand, the 
 old man is again eluding his interlocutor's artless queries. 
 
 " I should like to have some talk with you, sir, when you 
 are free," continues Philip, not having leisure as yet to be 
 surprised at the other's demeanor. 
 
 " There are other days beside Sunday for talk on business," 
 says that piteous sly-boots of an old officer. Ah, conscience ! 
 conscience ! Twenty-four Sikhs, sword in hand, two dozen 
 Pindarries, Mahrattas, Ghoorkas, what you please — that old 
 man felt that he would rather have met them than Philip's 
 unsuspecting blue eyes. These, however, now lighted up with 
 rather an angry, " Well, sir, as you don't talk business on Sun- 
 day, may I call on you to-morrow morning." 
 
 And what advantage had the poor old fellow got by all this 
 doubling and hesitating and artfulness ? — a respite until to- 
 morrow morning ! Another night of horrible wakefulness and 
 hopeless guilt, and Philip waiting ready the next morning with 
 his little bill, and, "Please pay me the thirty .thousand which 
 my father spent and you owe me. Please turn out into the 
 streets with your wife and family, and beg and starve. Have 
 the goodness to hand me out your last rupee. Be kind enough 
 to sell your children's clothes and your wife's jewels, and hand 
 over the proceeds to me. I'll call to-morrow. Bye, bye." 
 
 Here there came tripping over the marble pavement of the 
 hall of the hotel a tall young lady in a brown silk dress and 
 rich curling ringlets falling upon her fair young neck — beautiful 
 brown curling ringlets, vous cot/ipreiiez, not wisps of moistened 
 hair, and a broad clear forehead, and two honest eyes shining 
 below it, and cheeks not pale as they were yesterday; and lips 
 redder still ; and she says, '• Papa, papa, won't voii come to
 
 O.V HIS VVA Y THROUGH THE WORLD. 
 
 ^93 
 
 breakfast ? The tea is " What the precise state of llic 
 
 tea is I don't know — none of us ever shall — for here she says, 
 " Oh, Mr. Firniin ! " and makes a curtsey. 
 
 To which remark Philip replied, " Miss Baynes, I hope you 
 are very well this morning and not the worse for yesterday's 
 rough weather. 
 
 " 1 am quite well, thank you," was Miss Baynes's instant 
 reply. The answer was not witty to be sure ; but I don't know 
 that under the circumstances she could have said anything 
 more appropriate. Indeed, never was a pleasanter picture of 
 health and good-humor than the young lady presented : a 
 difference more pleasant to note than Miss Charlotte's pale 
 face from the steamboat on Saturday, and shining, rosy, 
 happy, and innocent, in the cloudless Sabbath morn. 
 
 " A Madame, 
 " Madame le Major MacWhirter, 
 
 " .\ Tours, 
 
 " Touraine, 
 " France. 
 
 " Tintelhries, Boulogne sur-Mer, 
 
 " IVednesday, August 24, 18 — . 
 " Dearest Emily, -^After suffering more dreadfully in the t7vo hours' passage from 
 Folkestone to this place than I have in four passages out and home from India, except in 
 that terrible storm off the Cape, in September, 1S24, when I certainly did suffer most 
 cruelly on board that horrible troopship, we reached this place last Saturday evening, hav- 
 ing a /ull determivalioii to proceed immediately on our route. N^oiv, you will perceive 
 that our minds are changed. We found this place pleasant, and the lodgings besides most 
 neat, comfortable, and well found in everything, more reasonable than you proposed to get 
 for us at Tours, which I am told also is damp, and might bring on the general's jungle 
 fever again. Owing to the hoopin.:i;-ccugh having just been in the house, which, praised 
 be mercy, all my dear ones have had it, including dear baby, who is quite well through it, 
 and recommended sea air, we got this house more reaso7iable than prices you mention at 
 Tours. A whole house : little room for two boys ; nursery ; nice little room for Charlotte, 
 and a den/or the General. I don't know how ever we should have brought our party safe 
 all the way to Tours. Thirty-seven articles of luggage, and Miss Flixby, who announced 
 herself as perfect French governess, acquired at Paris — perfect, but perfectly useless. She 
 can't understand the French people when they speak to her, and goes about the house in a 
 most be'cvilderi>ig 7vay. I am tlie interpreter ; poor Charlotte is much too timid to speak 
 when I am by. I have rubbed uj) the old French which we learned at Chiswick at Kliss 
 Pinkerton's ; and J find my Hindostanee of great help: which I use it when we are at a 
 
 loss for a word, and it answers extremely well. We pay for lodgings, the whole house 
 
 francs per month. Butchers' meat and poultry plentiful but dear. A grocer in the Grar.de 
 Rue sells excellent wine at fifteenpence per bottle ; and groceries pretty much at English 
 prices. Mr. Blowman at the English chapel of the Tintelleries has a 'fine voice, and ap- 
 pears to be a most excellent clergyman. I have heard him only once, however, on Sunday 
 evening, when I was so agitated and so unhappy in my mind that I own I took little note 
 of his sermon. 
 
 '•The cause of that agitation ;;/£)« knou\ having imparted it to vou in my letters of July, 
 June, and 24th of May, ult. My poor simple, guileless Baynes', was trustee to Mrs. Dr. 
 Firmni, before she married that most unprincipled man. When we were at home last, and 
 exchanged to the 120th from the ggth, my poor husband was inveigled by the horrid man 
 into signing a paper which put the doctor in possession of alt his wife's property ; whereas 
 Charles thought he was only signing a power of attorney, enabling him to receive his son's 
 dividends. Dr. F'., after the most atrocious deceit, forgery^ and criminality of every 
 kind, fled the country ; and Hunt and Pegler, our solicitors, informed us that the General 
 was answerable for the wickedness of this fniscreant. He is so weak that he has been 
 many and many times on the point of going to young Mr. F. and giving up everything.
 
 294 ^>^^^ ADVENTURES OF rillLlP 
 
 It was only by my jirayirs, by my (■ommmids, that 1 have been enabled to keep him qulet ; 
 and, indeed, Kmily. llie cffcu't lias ahiuul killed him. iiiandy repeatedly 1 was obliged to 
 administer on the dreudjul night of our arrival here. 
 
 " For the first per sofi we met on landing was Mr. Philip Kirmin, with a pert friend oj 
 his, Ml. Pendcimis, whom 1 don't at all like, though his wife is an amiable person like 
 Emma Fletcher of the Horse Artillery : not with Emma's style, however, but still amiable, 
 and disposed to be most civil. Charlotte has taken a 'great fancy to her, as she always does 
 to every new person. Well, fancy our state on landing, when a young gentleman calls out, 
 ' How do you do, General ?' and turns out to be Mr. Firmin ! I thought I should have 
 lost Charles in the night. I have seen him before going into action as calm, and sleep and 
 smile as sweet, as ntiy habe. It was all I could do to keep up his courage : and, but for 
 me, but for my prayers, but for viy agonies, I think he would have jumped out of bed, and 
 gone to Mr. F. that night, and said, ' Take everything 1 have.' 
 
 " The young man I own has behaved in the most honorable luay. He came to see us 
 before breakfast on Sunday, when the poor General was so ill that I thought he would have 
 fainted over his tea. He was too ill to go to church, where I went alone, with my dear 
 ones, having, as I own, but very small comfort in the sermon: but oh, Emily, fancy, on 
 our return, when I went into our room, I found my General on his knees with his Church 
 service before him, crving, crying like a baby! You know I am hasty in my temper some- 
 times, and his is indeed an angeV s—mvK I said to him, 'Charles Baynes, be a man, and 
 don't cry like a child ! ' ' Ah,' says he, ' Eliza, do you kneel, and thank God too ; ' on 
 which I said that I thought I did not require instruction in 7ny religion from him or any 
 man, except a clergyman, and many of these are but poor instructors, as you know. 
 
 " ' He has been here,' says Charles ; when I said, ' Who has been here ?' ' That noble 
 young fellow,' says my General : ' that noble, noble Philip Firmin.' Which noble his con- 
 duct I own it has been. ' Whilst you were at church he came again — here into this very 
 room, where I was sitting, doubting and despairing, with the Holy Book before my eyes, 
 and no comfort out of it. And he said to me, " General, I want to talk to you about my 
 grandfather's will. You don't suppose that because my father has deceived you and ruined 
 me, I will carry the ruin farther, and visit his wrong upon children and innocent people ?" 
 Those were the young man's words,' my General said; and, 'oh, Eliza! ' says he, 'what 
 pangs of remorse I feh when I remembei-ed we had used hard words about him,' \v]iich I 
 own we had, for his manners are rough and haughty, and I have heard things of him which 
 I do believe now can't be true. 
 
 " All Monday my poor man was obliged to keep his bed with a ^mart attack of his fever. 
 Rut vesterday he was quite bright and well again. v.n(ii the Pendennis party took Charlotte 
 for a drive, and showed themselves most polite. She reminds me of Mrs. Tom Fletcher of 
 the Horse Artillerv, but that I think I have mentioned before. My paper is full ; and 
 with our best to MaicWhirter and the children, I am always mv dearest Emily's affectionate 
 sister, " Eliza Baynes." 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 BREVIS ESSE LABORO. 
 
 Never, General Baynes afterwards declared, did fever come 
 and go SO pleasantly as that attack to which we have seen the 
 Mrs. General advert in her letter to her sister, Mrs. Major 
 MacWhirter. The cold fit was merely a lively, pleasant chatter 
 and rattle of the teeth ; the hot fit an agreeable warmth ; and 
 though the ensuing sleep, with which I believe such aguish 
 attacks are usually concluded, was enlivened by several dreams 
 of death, demons, and torture, how felicitous it was to wake 
 and find that dreadful thought of ruin removed which had 
 always, for the last few months, ever since Dr. Firmin's flight
 
 av nis WA y through the world. 295 
 
 and the knowledge of his o-wn imprudence, pursued the good- 
 natured genlleman ! What ! this boy might go to college, and 
 that get his commission ; and their meals need be embittered 
 by no more dreadful thoughts of the morrow, and their walks 
 no longer were dogged by imaginary bailiffs, and presented a 
 jail in the vista ! It was too much bliss ; and again and again 
 the old soldier said his thankful prayers, and blessed his bene- 
 factor. 
 
 Philip thought no more of his act of kindness, except to be 
 very grateful, and very happy that he had rendered other peo- 
 ple so. He could no more have taken the old man's all, and 
 plunged that innocent family into poverty, than he could have 
 stolen the forks off my table. But other folks were disposed to 
 rate his virtue much more highly ; and amongst these was my 
 wife, who chose positively to worship this young gentleman, 
 and I believe would have let him smoke in her drawing-room 
 if he had been so minded, and though her genteelest acquaint- 
 ances were in the room. Goodness knows what a noise and 
 what piteous looks are produced if ever the master of the house 
 chooses to indulge in a cigar after dinner ; but then, you under- 
 stand, /have never declined to claim mine and my children's 
 right because an old gentleman would be inconvenienced : 
 and this is what I tell Mrs. Pen. If I order a coat from my 
 tailor, must I refuse to pay him because a rogue steals it, and 
 ought I to expect to be let off ? Women won't see matters of 
 fact in a matter-of-fact point of view, and justice, unless it is 
 tinged with a little romance, gets no respect from them. 
 
 So, forsooth, because Philip has performed this certainly 
 most generous, most dashing, most reckless piece of extrava- 
 gance, he is to be held up as a perfect /rtv^j; chevalier. The most 
 riotous dinners are ordered for him. We are to wait until he 
 comes to breakfast, and he is pretty nearly always late. The 
 children are to be sent round to kiss Uncle Philip, as he is now 
 called. The children ? I wonder the mother did not jump up 
 and kiss him too. Elle en etait capable. As for the osculations 
 which took place between Mrs. Pendennis and her new-found 
 young friend, Miss Charlotte Paynes, they were perfectly ridic- 
 ulous ; two school children could not have behaved more ab- 
 surdly ; and I don't know which seemed to be the younger of 
 these two. There were colloquies, assignations, meetings on 
 the ramparts, on the pier, where know I ? — and the servants 
 and little children of the two establishments were perpetually 
 trotting to and fro with letters from dearest Laura to dearest 
 Charlotte, and dearest Charlotte to her dearest Mrs. Pendennis.
 
 i()6 
 
 TriE ADVENTURES ()/■ I'UJLIP 
 
 Why, my wife absolutely went the length of saying that dearest 
 Charlotte's mother, Mrs. Baynes, was a wortiiy, clever woman, 
 and a good mother — a woman whose tongue never ceased 
 clacking about the regiment, and all the officers, and all the 
 officers' wives ; of whom, by the way, she had very little good 
 to tell. 
 
 " A worthy mother, is she, my dear ? " I say. " But, oh, 
 mercy ! Mrs. Baynes would be an awful mother-in-law ! " 
 
 I shuddered at the thought of having such a commonplace, 
 hard, ill-bred woman in a state of quasi authority over me. 
 
 On this Mrs. Laura must break out in quite a petulant 
 tone — " Oh, how stak this kind of thing is, Arthur, from a man 
 qui veut passer pour un hofnme d' esprit / You are always at- 
 tacking mothers-in-law ! " 
 
 "Witness Mrs. Mackenzie, my love — Clive Newcome's 
 mother-in-law. That's a nice creature ; not selfish, not wicked, 
 not " 
 
 " Not nonsense, Arthur ! " . 
 
 " Mrs. Baynes knew Mrs, Mackenzie in the West Indies, as 
 she knew all the female army. vShe considers Mrs. Mackenzie 
 was a most elegant, handsome, dashing woman — only a little 
 too fond of the admiration of our sex. There was, 1 own. a 
 fascination about Captain Goby. Do you remember, my love, 
 that man with the stays and dyed hair, who '' 
 
 " Oh, Arthur ! When our girls marry, I suppose you will 
 teach their husbands to abuse, and scorn, and mistrust their 
 mother-in-law. Will he, my darlings ? will he, my blessings ? " 
 (This apart to the children, if you please.) '' Go ! I have no 
 patience with such talk ! " 
 
 " Well, my love, Mrs. Baynes is a most agreeable woman ; 
 and, when I have heard that story about the Highlanders at 
 the Cape of Good Hope a few times more " (1 do not tell it 
 here, for it has nothing to do with the present historj^), " I dare 
 say I shall begin to be amused by it." 
 
 "Ah ! here comes Charlotte, I'm glad to say. How pretty 
 she is ! What a color! What a dear creature ! " 
 
 To all which of course I could not say a contradictory word, 
 for a prettier, fresher lass than Miss Baynes, with a sweeter 
 voice, face, laughter, it was difficult to see. 
 
 " Why does mamma like Charlotte better than she likes us .'"' 
 says our dear and justly indignant eldest girl. 
 
 " 1 could not love her better if I were her vwther-iti-law,^'' 
 says Laura, running to her young friend, casting a glance at me 
 over her shoulder ; and that kissing nonsense begins between
 
 ON ins WAV I'lfRorcn ri/i: world. 
 
 297 
 
 the two ladies. To be sure tlie L;irl looks unrnmnionly bright 
 and pretty with her pink cheeks, her hrighl eyes, her slim form, 
 and that charming white India shawl which her father brought 
 home for her. 
 
 To this osculatory party enters presently Mr. Philip Firmin, 
 who has been dawdling about the ramparts ever since break- 
 fast. He says he has iDeen reading law there. He has found 
 a jolly quiet place to read law, has he ? And much good may 
 it do him ! Why has he not gone back to his law and his 
 reviewing ? 
 
 " You must — you must stay on a little longer. You have 
 only been here five days. Do, Charlotte, ask Philip to stay a 
 little." 
 
 All the children sing in a chorus, "Oh, do, Uncle Philip, 
 stay a little longer ! " Miss Baynes says, " I hope you will 
 stay, Mr. Firmin," and looks at him. 
 
 " Five days has he been here ? Five years. Five lives. 
 Five hundred years. What do you mean } In that little time 
 of — let me see, a hundred and twenty hours, and, at least, a 
 half of them for sleep and dinner (for Philip's appetite was very 
 fine) — do you mean that in that little time, his heart, cruelly 
 stabbed by a previous monster in female shape, has healed, 
 got quite well, and actually begun to be wounded again } Have 
 two walks on the pier, as many visits to the Tintelleries (where 
 he hears the story of the Highlanders at the Cape of Good-Hope 
 with respectful interest), a word or two about the weather, a 
 look or two, a squeezekin, perhaps, of a little handykin — I say, 
 do you mean that this absurd young idiot, and that little round- 
 faced girl, pretty, certainl}', but only just out of the schoolroom 
 
 — do you mean to sa)- that they have Upon my word, 
 
 Laura, this is too bad. Why, Philip has not a penny piece in 
 the world." 
 
 "Yes, he has a hundred pounds, and expects to sell his 
 mare for ninety at least. He has excellent talents. He can 
 easily write three articles a week in the Pall Mall Gazette. I 
 am sure no one writes so well, and it is much better done and 
 more amusing than it used to be. That is three hundred a 
 year. Lord Ringwood must be applied to, and must and shall 
 get him something. Don't you know that Captain Baynes 
 stood by Colonel Ringwood 's side at Busaco, and that they 
 were the closest friends ? And pray how did we get on, I should 
 like to know ? How did w get on, baby ? " 
 
 " How did we det on .'' " says the baby. 
 
 "Oh, woman! woman!" yells the father of the family.
 
 298 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 " Why, J'hilip l-'irniiii lias all the habits of a rich man with the 
 pay of a mechanic. Do you suppose he ever sat in a second- 
 class carriage in his life, or denied himself any pleasure to 
 which he had a mind ? He gave five francs to a beggar-<Tirl 
 yesterday." 
 
 " He had always a noble heart," says my wife. " He gave 
 a fortune to a whole family a week ago ; and " (out comes the 
 pocket-handkerchief — oh, of course, the pocket-handkerchief) — 
 " and — ' God loves a cheerful giver ! ' " 
 
 " He is careless ; he is extravagant ; he is lazy ; — I don't 
 know that he is remarkably clever " 
 
 " Oh, yes ! he is your friend, of course. Now, abuse him — ■ 
 do, Arthur ! " 
 
 "And, pray, when did you become acquainted with this 
 astounding piece of news .'' " I inquire. 
 
 " When ? From the very first moment when I saw Char- 
 lotte looking at him, to be sure. The poor child said to me 
 only yesterday, ' Oh, Laura ! he is our preserver ! ' And their 
 preserver he has been, under Heaven." 
 
 " Yes. But he has not got a five-pound note ! " I cry. 
 
 " Arthur, I am surprised at you. Oh, men are awfully 
 worldly ! Do you suppose Heaven will not send him help at 
 its good time, and be kind to him who has rescued so many 
 from ruin ? Do you suppose the prayers, the blessings of that 
 father, of those little ones, of that dear child will not avail him ? 
 Suppose he has to wait a year, ten years, have they not time, 
 and will not the good day come ? " 
 
 ^'es. This was actually the talk of a woman of good sense 
 and discernment, when her prejudices and romance were not in 
 the way, and she looked forward to the marriage of those folks 
 some ten years hence, as confidently as if they were both rich, 
 and going to St. George's to-morrow. 
 
 As for making a romantic story of it, or spinning out love 
 conversations between Jenny and Jessamy, or describing 
 moonlight raptures and passionate outpourings of two young 
 hearts and so forth — excuse me, sHl vous plait. I am a man of 
 the world, and of a certain age. Let the young people fill in 
 this outline, and color it as they please. Let the old folks who 
 read lay down the book a minute, and remember. It is well 
 remembered, isn't it, that time ? Yes, good John Anderson, 
 and Mrs. John. Yes, good Darby and Joan. The lips won't 
 tell now what they did once. To-day is for the happy, and 
 to-morrow for the young, and yesterday, is not that dear and 
 here too?
 
 ON HIS IVA Y THkOVGH THE WORLD. 2()() 
 
 I was in the company of an elderly gentleman, not very long 
 since, who was perfectly sober, who is not particularly hand- 
 some, or healthy, or. wealthy, or witty ; and who, speaking of his 
 past life, volunteered to declare that he would gladly live every 
 minute of it over again. Is a man who can say that a hardened 
 sinner, not aware how miserable he ought to be by rights, and 
 therefore really in a most desperate and deplorable condition ; 
 or is \\^ fortunatus niinium, and ought his statue to be put up 
 in the most splendid and crowded thoroughfares of the town ? 
 Would you, who are reading this, for example, like to live your 
 life over again? What has been its chief joy? What are 
 to-day's pleasures ? Are they so exquisite that you would 
 prolong them for ever? Would you like to have the roast beef 
 on which you ha\-e dined brought back again to the table, and 
 have more beef, and more, and more ? Would you like to hear 
 yesterday's sermon over and over again — eternally voluble ? 
 Would you like to get on the Edinburgh jnail, and travel 
 outside for fifty hours as you did in your youth ? You might as 
 well say you would like to go into the flogging-room, and take 
 a turn under the rods : you would like to be thrashed over 
 again by your bully at school : you would like to go to the 
 dentist's, where your dear parents were in the habit of taking 
 you : you would like to be taking hot Epsom salts, with a piece 
 of dry bread to ta'.;e away the taste : you would like to be 
 jilted by your first love : you would like to be going in to your 
 father to tell him you had contracted debts to the amount of 
 X + r + z, whilst you were at the university. As I consider 
 the passionate griefs of childhood, the weariness and sameness 
 of shaving, the agony of corns, and the thousand other ills to 
 which flesh is heir, I cheerfully say it for one, I am not anxious 
 to wear it for ever. No. I do not want to go to school again. 
 I do not want to hear Trotman's sermon over again. Take me 
 out and finish me. Give me the cup of hemlock at once. 
 Here's a health to you, my lads. Don't weep, my Simmias. 
 Be cheerful, my Phaedon. Ha ! I feel the co-o-old stealing, 
 stealing upwards. Now it is in my ankles — no more gout in 
 my foot : now my knees are numb. What is — is that poor 
 executioner crying too ? Good-by. Sacrifice a cock to ^scu 
 — to ^scula— * * * Have you ever read the chapter in 
 " Grote's Histoiy ? " Ah ! When the Sacred Ship returns 
 from Delos, and is telegraphed as entering into port, may we 
 be at peace and ready ! 
 
 What is this funeral chant, when the pipes should be 
 playing gayly as Love, and Youth, and Spring, and Joy are
 
 3 oo TUJi A jy I -KNTURRS OF PITIL IP 
 
 dancing under the windows ? Look you. Men not so wise as 
 Socrates have their demons, who will be heard to whisper in 
 the queerest times and places. Perhaps 1 shall have to lell 
 of a funeral presently, and shall be outrageously cheerful ; or 
 of an execution, and shall split my sides with laughing. 
 Arrived at my time of life, when 1 see a penniless young friend 
 falling in love and thinking of course of committing matrimony, 
 what can I do but be melancholy ? How is a man to marry 
 who has not enough to keep e\er so miniature a brougham— 
 ever so small a house — not enough to keep himself, let alone a 
 wife and family } Gracious powers ! is it not blasphemy to 
 marry without fifteen hundred a year ? Poverty, debt, pro- 
 tested bills, duns, crime, fall assuredly on the wretch who has 
 not fifteen — say at once two thousand a year ; for* you can't 
 live decently in London for less. And a wife whom you have 
 met a score of times at balls or breakfasts, and with her best 
 dresses and behavior at a country house ; — how do you know 
 how she will turn out ; what her temper is ; what her relations 
 are likely to be ? Suppose she has poor relations, or loud 
 coarse brothers who are always dropping in to dinner ? What 
 is her mother like.' and can you bear to have that woman 
 meddling and domineering over 3'our establishment.? Old 
 General Baynes was very well ; a weak, quiet and presentable 
 old man : but Mrs. General Baynes, and that awful Mrs. Major 
 MacWhirter, — and those hobbledehoys of boys in creaking 
 shoes, hectoring about the premises .? As a man of the world 1 
 saw all these dreadful liabilities impending over the husband 
 of Miss Charlotte Baynes, and could not view them without 
 horror. Gracefully and slightly, but wittily and in my sarcastic 
 way, I thought it my duty to show up the oddities of the 
 Baynes family to Philip. I mimicked the boys, and their 
 clumping blucher-boots, I touched ofif the dreadful militarv 
 ladies, very smartly and cleverly as I thought, and as if T never 
 supposed that Philip had any idea of Miss Baynes. To do 
 him justice, he laughed once or twice ; then he grew very red. 
 His sense of humor is very limited ; that even Laura allows. 
 Then he came out with a strong expression, and said it was a 
 confounded shame, and strode off with his cigar. And when I 
 remarked to my wife how susceptible he was in some things, 
 and how little in the matter of joking, she shrugged her shoul- 
 ders and said, " Philip not only understood perfectly well what 
 I said, but would tell it all to Mrs. General and Mrs. Major on the 
 first opportunity." And this was the fact, as Mrs. ]Jaynes took 
 care to tell me afterivards. She was aware who was her enemy.
 
 ON HIS \VA V THROUGH THE WORLD. 301 
 
 She was aware who spoke ill of her, and her blessed darling be- 
 hind our backs. And " do you think it was to ^^^yoii or any one 
 belonging to your stuck-up house, sir, that we came to you so 
 often, which we certainly did, day and night, breakfast and 
 supper, and no thanks to you ? No, sir ! ha, ha ! " I can see her 
 flaunting out of my sitting-room as she speaks, with a strident 
 laugh, and snapping her dingily gloved fingers at the door. 
 Oh, Philip, Philip ! To think that you were such a coward as 
 to go and tell her ! But I pardon him. From my heart I pity 
 and pardon him. 
 
 For the step which he is meditating you may be sure that 
 the young man himself does not feel the smallest need of par- 
 don or pity. He is in a state of happiness so crazy that it is 
 useless to reason with him. Not being at all of a poetical turn 
 originally, the wretch is actually perpetrating verse in secret, 
 and my servants found fragments of his manuscript on the 
 dressing-table in his bedroom. Heart and art, sever and for 
 ever, and so on ; what stale rhymes are these ? I do not feel 
 at liberty to give in entire the poem which our maid found in 
 Mr. Philip's room, and brought sniggering to my wife, who only 
 said, " Poor thing ! " The fact is, it was too pitiable. Such 
 maundering rubbish ! such stale rhymes, and such old thoughts ! 
 But then, says Laura, " I dare say all people's love-making is 
 not amusing to their neighbors ; and I know who wrote not 
 very wise love-verses when he was young." No, I won't pub- 
 lish Philip's verses, until some day he shall mortally offend 
 me. I can recall some of my own written under similar circum- 
 stances with twinges of shame ; and shall drop a veil of decent 
 friendship over my friend's folly. 
 
 Under that veil, meanwhile, the young man is perfectly 
 contented, nay, uproariously happy. All earth and nature 
 smiles round about him. ''When Jove meets his Juno, in 
 Homer, sir," says Philip, in his hectoring way, "don't immortal 
 flowers of beauty spring up around them, and rainbows of 
 celestial hues bend over their heads ? Love, sir, flings a halo 
 round the loved one. Where she moves rise roses, hyacinths, 
 and ambrosial odors. Don't talk to me about poverty, sir ! 
 He either fears his fate too much or his desert is small, who 
 dares not put it to the touch and win or lose it all ! Haven't 1 
 endured poverty ? Am I not as poor now as a man can be — 
 and what is there in it ? Do I want for anything ? Haven't I 
 got. a guinea in my pocket ? Do I owe any man anything ? 
 Isn't there manna in the wilderness for those who have faith 
 to walk in it? That's where you fail, Pen. By all that is
 
 302 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 sacred, you have no faith ; your heart is cowardly, sir ; and it 
 you are to escape, as perhaps you may, I suspect it is by your 
 wife that you will be saved. Laura has a trust in heaven, but 
 Arthur's morals are a genteel atheism. Just reach me that 
 claret — the wine's not bad. I say your morals are a genteel 
 atheism, and 1 shudder when I think of your condition. Talk 
 to me about a brougham being necessary for the comfort of a 
 woman ! A broomstick to ride to the moon ! And I don't say 
 that a brougham is not a comfort, mind 3-ou ; but that, when 
 it is a necessity, mark you, heaven will provide it ! Why, sir, 
 hang it, look at me ! Ain't 1 suffering in tiie most abject pov- 
 erty ? I ask you is there a man in London so poor as I am 1 
 And since my father's ruin do I want for anything 1 I want 
 for shelter for a day or two. Good. There's my dear Little 
 Sister ready to give it me. I want for money. Does not 
 that sainted widow's cruse pour its oil out for me .-' Heaven 
 bless and reward her. Boo ! " (Here, for reasons which need 
 not be named, the orator squeezes his fists into his eyes.) " 1 
 want shelter ; ain't I in good quarters ? 1 want work ; haven't 
 I got work, and did you not get it for me ? You should just 
 see, sir, how 1 polished off that book of travels this morning. 
 
 I read some of the article to Char , to Miss , to some 
 
 friends, in fact. I don't mean to say that they are very intel- 
 lectual people, but your common humdrum average audience is 
 the public to try. Recollect Moliere and his housekeeper, you 
 know." 
 
 " By the housekeeper, do you mean Mrs. Baynes ? " I ask, 
 in my amontillado manner. (By the way, who ever heard of 
 amoiitillado in the early days of which I write ?) " In manner 
 she would do, and I dare say in accomplishments ; but I doubt 
 about her temper." 
 
 '• You're almost as worldly as the Twysdens, by George, you 
 are ! Unless persons are of a certain monde, you don't value 
 them. A little adversity would do you good. Pen ; and 1 
 heartily wish you might get it, except for the dear wife and 
 children. You measure your morality by May Lair standards ; 
 and if an angel unawares came to you in pattens and a cotton 
 umbrella, you would turn away from her. Von would never 
 have found out the Little Sister. A duchess — God bless her ! 
 A creature of an imperial generosity, and delicacy, and intre- 
 pidity, and the finest sense of humor ; but she drops her //'s 
 often, and how could you pardon such a crime ? Sir, you are 
 my better in wit antl a dexterous application of your powers ; 
 but 1 think, sir," says Piiil, curling the flaming mustache, " I
 
 ON If IS WA Y THROUGH THE WORLD, 
 
 Z'^Z 
 
 am your superior in a certain magnanimity; though, by Jove, 
 old fellow, man and boy, you h^ve always been one of the best 
 fellows in the world to P. Y. ; one of the best fellows, and the 
 most generous, and the most cordial, — that you ha\'e : only you 
 do rile me when you sing in that confounded May Fair twang." 
 
 Here one of the children summoned us to tea — and " Papa 
 was laughing, and uncle Philip was flinging his hands about and 
 pulling his beard olf," said the little messenger. 
 
 " I shall keep a fine lock of it for you, Nelly, my dear," says 
 uncle Philip. On which the child said, '' Oh, no ! I know whom 
 you'll give it to, don't 1, mamma ? " and she goes up to her 
 mamma, and whispers. 
 
 Miss Nelly knows.' At what age do those little match- 
 makers begin to know, and how soon do they practise the use 
 of their 3^oung eyes, their little smiles, wiles, and ogles ? This 
 young woman, I believe, coquetted while she was yet a baby in 
 arms, over her nurse's shoulder. Before she could speak, she 
 could be proud of her new vermilion shoes, and would point 
 out the charms of her blue sash. She was jealous in the nursery, 
 and her little heart had beat for years and years before she left 
 off pinafores. 
 
 For whom will Philip keep a lock of that red, red gold which 
 curls round his face ? Can you guess ? Of what color is the 
 hair in that little locket which the gentleman himself occultly 
 wears ? A few months ago, I believe, a pale straw-colored wisp 
 of hair occupied that place of honor ; now it is a chestnut-brown, 
 as far as I can see, of precisely the same color as that which 
 waves round Charlotte Baynes' pretty face, and tumbles in 
 clusters on her neck, very nearly the color of Mrs. Paynter's 
 this last season. So, you see, we chop and we change : straw 
 gives place to chestnut, and chestnut is succeeded by ebony ; 
 and, for our own parts, we defy time ; and if you want a lock of 
 my hair, Belinda, take this pair of scissors, and look in that 
 cupboard, in the bandbox marked No. 3, and cut off a thick 
 glossy piece, darling, and wear it, dear, and my blessings go 
 with thee ! What is this .'' Am 1 sneering because Corydon 
 and Phyllis are wooing and happy ? You see I pledged myself 
 not to have any sentimental nonsense. To describe love-mak- 
 ing is immoral and immodest ; you know it is. To describe it 
 as it really is, or would appear to you and me as lookers-on, 
 would be to describe the most dreary farce, to chronicle the 
 most tautological twaddle. To take a note of sighs, hand- 
 squeezes, looks at the moon, and so forth — does this business 
 become our dignity as historiaui. .' Come away from those
 
 304 'J'lII^ ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 foolish young people — they don't want us ; and dreary as their 
 farce is, and tautological as their twaddle, you may be sure that 
 it amuses them, and that they are happy enough without us. 
 Happy? Is there any happiness like it, pray ? Was it not 
 rapture to watch the messenger, to seize the note, and fee the 
 bearer ? — to retire out of sight of all prying eyes, and read : — 
 " Dearest ! Mamma's cold is better this morning. The Joneses 
 came to tea, and Julia sang. I did not enjoy it, as my dear 
 was at his horrid diimer, where I hope he amused himself. 
 Send me a word by Buttles, who brings this, if only to say you 
 are your Louisa's own, own," &c., &c., &c. That used to be 
 the kind of thing. In such coy lines artless Innocence used to 
 whisper its little vows. So she used to smile ; so she used to 
 warble ; so she used to prattle. Young people, at present 
 engaged in the pretty sport, be assured your middle-aged 
 parents have played the game, and remember the rules of it. 
 \ es, under papa's bow-window of a waiscoat is a heart which 
 took very violent exercise when that waist was slim. Now he 
 sits tranquilly in his tent, and watches the lads going in for 
 their innings. Why, look at grandmamma in her spectacles 
 reading that sermon. In her old iieart there is a corner as 
 romantic still as when she used to read the " Wild Irish Girl " 
 or the " Scottish Chiefs '' in the days of her misshood. And as 
 for your grandfather, my dears, to see him now you would little 
 suppose that that calm, polished, dear old gentleman was once 
 as wild — as wild as Orson. * * * * Under my windows, as I 
 write, there passes an itinerant flower merchant. He has hii 
 roses and geraniums on a cart, drawn by a quadruped — a little 
 long-eared quadruped, which lifts up its voice, and sings after 
 its manner. When 1 was young, donkeys used to bray precisely 
 the same way ; and others will heehaw so, when we are silent 
 and our ears hear no more. 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 DRUM IST'S so VVOHL MIR IN DER WELT. 
 
 Our new friends lived for a while contentedly enough at 
 Boulogne, where they found comrades and acquaintances gath- 
 ered together from those many regions which they had visited 
 in the course of their military career. Mrs. Baynes, out of the
 
 ON HIS WAY TlIROl'Gir THE WORLD. 
 
 305 
 
 field, was the commanding officer over the General. She ordered 
 his clothes for him, tied his neckcloth into a neat bow, and, on 
 tea-party nights, pinned his brooch into his shirt-frill. She gave 
 him to understand when he had had enough to eat or drink at 
 dinner, and explained, with great frankness, how this or that dish 
 did not agree with him. If he was disposed to exceed, she would 
 call out, in a loud voice : " Remember, General, what you took 
 this morning ! " Knowing his constitution, as she said, slie 
 knew the remedies which were necessar}' for her husband, and 
 administered them to him with great liberality. Resistance was 
 impossible, as the veteran officer acknowledged. " The boys 
 have fought about the medicine "since we came home," he con- 
 fessed, " but she has me under her thumb, by George. She 
 really is a magnificent physician, now. She has got some 
 invaluable prescriptions, and in India she used to doctor tlie 
 whole station." She would ha\e taken the present writer's 
 little household under her care, and proposed several remedies 
 for my children, until their alarmed mother was obliged to keep 
 them out of her sight. I am not saying this was an agreeable 
 woman. Her voice was loud and harsh. The anecdotes which 
 she was for ever narrating related to militar)-' personages in 
 foreign countries, with whom I was unacquainted, and whose 
 history failed to interest me. She took her wine with much 
 spirit, whilst engaged in this prattle. I have heard talk not less 
 foolish in much finer company, and known people delighted to 
 listen to anecdotes of the duchess and the marchioness who 
 would yawn over the history of Captain Jones's quarrels with 
 his lady, or Mrs. IMajor Wolfe's monstrous flirtations with 
 young Ensign Kyd. My wife, with tlie mischievousness of her 
 sex, would mimic the Baynes' conversation very drolly, but 
 always insisted that she was not more really vulgar than many 
 much greater persons. 
 
 For all this, Mrs. General Baynes did not hesitate to declare 
 that we were " stuck up " people ; and from the very first setting 
 eyes on us she declared that she viewed us with a constant 
 darkling suspicion. Mrs. P. was a harmless, washed-out crea- 
 ture, with nothing in her. As for that high and mighty Mr. P. 
 and his airs, she would be glad to know if the wife of a British 
 general officer who had seen service in every part of the globe, 
 and met the most tUstinguished governors, generals, and their 
 ladies, several of whom were noblemen — she would be glad to 
 know whether such people were not good enough for, cS:c., cVr. 
 Who has not met with these difficulties in life, and who can 
 escape them ? " Hang it, sir," Phil would say, twirling the red 
 
 2
 
 3o6 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 mustache, " I like to be hated by some fellows ; " and it must 
 be owned that Mr. Philip got what he liked. I suppose Mr. 
 Philip's friend and biograpiier had something of the same feel- 
 ing. At any rate, in regard of this lady the hypocrisy of 
 politeness was very hard to keep up ; wanting us for reasons of 
 her own, she covered the dagger with which she would have 
 stabbed us : but we knew it was there clenched in her skinny 
 hand in her meagre pocket. She would pay us the most ful- 
 some compliments with anger raging out of her eyes — a little 
 hate-bearing woman, envious, malicious, but loving her cubs, 
 and nursing them, and clutching them in her lean arms with a 
 jealous strain. It was " Good-by, darling ! I shall leave you 
 here with your friends. Oh, how kind you are to her, Mrs. Pen- 
 dennis ! How can I ever thank you, and ]Mr. P., I am sure ;" 
 and she looked as if she could poison both of us, as she went 
 away, curtseying and darting dreary parting smiles. 
 
 This lady had an intimate friend and companion in arms, 
 Mrs. Colonel Bunch, in fact, of the — th Bengal Cavalry, w-ho 
 was now in Europe with Bunch and their children, who were 
 residing at Paris for the young folks' education. At first, as we 
 have heard, Mrs. Baynes' predilections had been all for Tours, 
 where her sister was living, and lodgings were cheap and food 
 reasonable in proportion. But Bunch happening to pass 
 through Bolougne on his way to his wife at Paris, and meeting 
 his old comrade, ga\-e General Baynes such an account of the 
 cheapness and the pleasures of the French capital as to induce 
 the (rcneral to think of bending his steps thither. Mrs. Baynes 
 would not hear of such a plan. She was all for her dear sister 
 and Tours ; but when, in the course of conversation, Colonel 
 Ilunch described a ball at the Tuileries, where he and Mrs. B. 
 had been received with the most flattering politeness, by the 
 royal family, it was remarked that jNIrs. Baynes' mind under- 
 went a change. When Bunch went on to aver that the balls at 
 Government House at Calcutta were nothing compared to those 
 at the Tuileries or the i*refecture of the Seine ; that tlie 
 English were invited and respected everywhere ; that the am- 
 bassador was most hospitable ; that the clergymen were admir- 
 able ; and that at their boarding-house, kept by Madame le 
 Ge'nerale J»aronne de Smolensk, at the " Petit Chateau d'P^s- 
 pange," Avenue de Valmy, Champs Elysees, they had balls twice 
 a month, the most comfortable apartments, the most choice 
 society, and every comfort and luxury at so many francs per 
 month, with an allowance for children — I say Mrs. Baynes was 
 very greatly moved. '' it is not," she said, "inconsequence
 
 ON HIS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. 307 
 
 of the balls at the Ambassador's or the Tuileries, for I ain 
 an old woman ; and in spite of what you say, Colonel, I can't 
 fancy, after Government House, anything more magnificent in 
 any French palace. It is not for ;«<?, goodness knows, I speak : 
 but the children should have education, and my Charlotte an 
 entre'e into the world ; and what you say of the invaluable 
 
 clergyman, Mr. X , I have been thinking of it all night ; but 
 
 above all, above all, of the chances of education for my dar- 
 lings. Nothing should give way to that — nothing ! " On this 
 a long and delightful conversation and calculation took place. 
 Bunch produced his bills at the Baroness de Smolensk's. The 
 two gentlemen jotted up accounts, and made calculations all 
 through the evening. It was hard even for Mrs. Baynes to 
 force the figures into such a shape as to make them accord 
 with the General's income ; but, driven away by one calculation 
 after another, she returned again and again to the charge, until 
 she overcame the stubborn arithmetical difiiculties, and the 
 pounds, shillings, and pence lay prostrate before her. They 
 could save upon this point ; they could screw upon that ; they 
 must must make a sacrifice to educate the children. " Sarah 
 Bunch and her girls go to Court, indeed ! Why shouldn't mine 
 go ? " she asked. On which her General said, " By George, 
 P^liza, that's the point you are thinking of." On which Eliza 
 said " No," and repeated '' No " a score of times, growing 
 more angry as she uttered each denial. And she declared 
 before heaven she did not want to go to any Court. Had she 
 not refused to be presented at home, though Mrs. Colonel 
 Flack went, because she did not choose to go to the wicked 
 expense of a train ? And it was base of the General, base and 
 mean of him to say so. And there was a fine scene, as I am 
 given to understand ; not that I was present at this family 
 fight : but Juy informant was Mr. Firmin ; and Ivlr. Firmin had 
 his information from a little person who, about this time, had 
 got to prattle out all the secrets of her young heart to him ; who 
 would have jumped off the pier-head with her hand in his if he 
 had said " Come," without his hand if he had said " Go : " a 
 little person whose whole life had been changed — changed for 
 a month past — changed in one minute, that minute when she 
 saw Philip's fiery whiskers and heard his great big voice saluting 
 her father amongst the commissioners on the qitai before the 
 custom-house. 
 
 Tours was, at any rate, a hundred and fifty miles farther off 
 than Paris from — from a city where a young gentleman lived in 
 whom Miss Charlotte Baynes fell an interest \ hence, I suppose,
 
 3o8 
 
 THE ADVENTURES OF PfriLIP 
 
 arose her delight that her parents had determined upon taking 
 up their residence in the larger and nearer city. Besides, she 
 owned, in the course of her artless confidences to my wife, that, 
 when together, mamma and aunt MacWhirter quarrelled un- 
 ceasingly ; and had once caused the old boys, the Major and 
 the General, to call each other out. She preferred, then, to live 
 away from aunt Mac. She had ne\'er had such a friend as 
 Laura, never. She had never been so happy as at Boulogne, 
 never. She should always love everybody in our house, that 
 she should, for ever and ever — and so forth, and so forth. The 
 ladies meet ; cling together ; osculations are carried round the 
 whole family circle, from our wandering eldest boy, who cries, 
 " I say, hullo ! what are you kissing me so about.?" to darling 
 baby, crowing and sputtering unconscious in the rapturous 
 young girl's embraces. I tell you, these two women were 
 making fools of themselves, and they were burning with enthu- 
 siasm for the " preserver " of the Baynes family, as they called 
 that big fellow yonder, whose biographer I have aspired to be. 
 The lazy rogue lay basking in the glorious warmth and sunshine 
 of early love. He would stretch his big limbs out in our gar- 
 den ; pour out his feelings with endless volubility ; call upon 
 hominuvi divumquc vohiptas, alma Venus ; vow that he had never 
 lived or been happy until now ; declared that he laughed pov- 
 erty to scorn and all her ills ; and fume against his masters of 
 the Pall Mall Gazette, because they declined to insert certain 
 love verses which Mr. Philip now composed almost every day. 
 Poor little Charlotte ! And didst thou receive those treasures 
 of song ; and wonder over them, not perhaps comprehending 
 them altogether ; and lock them up in thy heart's inmost cas- 
 ket as well as in thy little desk; and take them out in quiet 
 hours, and kiss them, and bless heaven for giving thee such 
 jewels ? 1 dare say. I can fancy all this, without seeing it. I 
 can read the little letters in the little desk, without picking lock 
 or breaking seal. Poor little letters ! Sometimes they are not 
 spelt right, quite ; but I don't know that the style is worse for 
 that. Poor little letters ! You are Hung to the winds some- 
 times and forgotten with all your sweet secrets and loving art- 
 less confessions ; but not always — no, not always. As for 
 Philip, who was the most careless creature alive, and left all his 
 clothes and haberdashery sprawling on his bedroom floor, he 
 had at this time a breast-pocket stuffed out with papers which 
 crackled in the most ridiculous wa}-. lie was always looking 
 down at this precious pocket, and putting one of his great 
 hands over it as though he would guard it. The pocket did
 
 ON ins WAY THROUGH TH1-: WORLD. 309 
 
 not contain bank-notes, you may be sure of that. It contained 
 documents stating tiiat mamma's cold is better ; the Joneses 
 came to tea, and Julia sang, &c. Ah, friend, however old you 
 are now, however cold you are now, however tough, I hope 
 you, too, remember how Julia sang, and the Joneses came to 
 tea. 
 
 Mr. Philip stayed on week after week, declaring to my wife 
 that she was a perfect angel for keeping him so long. Bunch 
 wrote from his boarding-house more and more enthusiastic re- 
 ports about the comforts of the establishment. For his sake, 
 Madame la Baronne de Smolensk would make unheard-of sacri- 
 fices, in order to accommodate the General and his distinguished 
 party. The balls were going to be perfectly splendid that 
 winter. There were several old Indians living near ; in fact 
 they could form a regular little club. It was agreed that Baynes 
 should go and reconnoitre the ground. He did go. Madame 
 de Smolensk, a most elegant woman, had a magnificent dinner 
 for him — quite splendid, I give you my word, but only what 
 they have every day. Soup, of course, my love ; fish, capital 
 wine, and, I should say, some five or six and thirty made dishes. 
 The General was quite enraptured. Bunch had put his boys to 
 a famous school, where they might " whop " the French boys, 
 and learn all the modern languages. The little ones would 
 dine early; the baroness would take the whole family at an 
 astonishingly cheap rate. In a word, the Baynes' column got 
 the route for Paris shortly before our family-party was crossing 
 the seas to return to London fogs and duty. 
 
 You have, no doubt, remarked how, under certain tender 
 circumstances, women will help one another. They help where 
 they ought not to help. When Mr. Darby ought to be separated 
 from Miss Joan, and the best thing that could happen for both 
 would be a lettre de cachet to whip off Mons. Darby to the 
 Bastile for five years, and an order from her parents to lock up 
 Mademoiselle Jeanne in a convent, some aunt, some relative, 
 some pitying female friend is sure to be found, who will give 
 the pair a chance of meeting, and turn her head away whilst 
 those unhappy lovers are warbling endless good-byes close up 
 to each other's ears. My wife, I have said, chose to feel this 
 absurd sympathy for the young people about whom we have 
 been just talking. As the days for Charlotte's departure drew 
 near, this wretched, misguiding matron would take the girl out 
 walking into I know not what unfrequented bye-lanes, quiet 
 streets, rampart-nooks, and the like ; and la ! by the most 
 singular coincidence, Mr. Philip's hulking boots would assuredly
 
 3TO 
 
 77//; ADVEA'TdKES OE PHILIP 
 
 come tramping after the women's little feet. What will you 
 say, when T tell you, that I myself, the father of the family, 
 the renter of the old-fashioned liouse, Rue Roucoule, Haute 
 Ville, Boulogne-sur-Mer — as I am going into my own study — ■ 
 am met at the threshold by Helen, my eldest daughter, who 
 puts her little arms before the glass door at which I was about 
 to enter, and says, " You must not go in there, papa ! Mamma 
 says we none of us are to go in there." 
 
 " And why, pray ? " T ask. 
 
 " Because Uncle Philip and Charlotte are talking secrets 
 there ; and nobody is to disturb them — nobody T' 
 
 Upon my word, wasn't this too monstrous ? Am I Sir 
 Pandarus of Troy become ? Am I going to allow a penniless 
 young man to steal away the heart of a young girl who has not 
 twopence halfpenny to her fortune t Shall I, I say, lend 
 myself to this most unjustifiable intrigue? 
 
 " Sir," says my wife (we happened to have been bred up 
 from childhood together, and I own to have had one or two 
 foolish initiatory flirtations before I settled down to matrimo- 
 nial fidelity) — " Sir," says she, " when you were so wild — so 
 spoony, I think is your elegant word — about Blanche, and used 
 to put letters into a hollow tree for her at home, I used to see 
 the letters, and I never disturbed them. These two people 
 have much warmer hearts, and are a great deal fonder of each 
 other, than you and Blanche used to be. I should not like 
 to separate Charlotte from Philip now. It is too late, sir. 
 She can never like anybody else as she likes him. If she lives 
 to be a hundred, she will never forget him. Why should not 
 the poor thing be happy a little, while she may .'' " 
 
 An old house, with a green old courtyard and an ancient 
 mossy wall, through breaks of which I can see the roofs and 
 gables of the quaint old town, the city below, the shining sea, 
 and the white English cliffs beyond ; a green old courtyard, 
 and a tall old stone house rising up in it, grown over with many 
 a creeper on which the sun casts flickering shadows ; and under 
 the shadows, and through the glass of a tall gray window, I can 
 just peep into a brown twilight parlor, and there I see two hazy 
 figures by a table. One slim figure has brown hair, and one 
 has flame-colored whiskers. Look, a ray of sunshine has just 
 peered into the room, and is lighting the whiskers up ! 
 
 " Poor little thing," whispers my wife, very gently. " They 
 are going away to-morrow. Let them have their talk out. She 
 is crying her little eyes out, I am sure. Poor little Charlotte ! " 
 
 Whilst my wife was pitying Miss Charlotte in this pathetic
 
 ON HIS WAV 77/A'Oro// Tlfl'. WORLD. 311 
 
 way, and was going, I dare say, to have recourse to her own 
 pocket-handkerchief, as I Uve there came a burst of laughter 
 from the darkling chamber where the two lovers were billing 
 and cooing. First came Mr. Philip's great boom (such a roar 
 — such a haw-haw, or hee-haw, 1 never heard any other fwo- 
 legged animal perform). Then follows Miss Charlotte's tinkling 
 peal ; and presently that young person comes out into the 
 garden, with her round face not bedewed with tears at all, but 
 perfectly rosy, fresh, dimpled, and good-humored. Charlotte 
 gives me a little curtsey, and my wife a hand and a kind glance. 
 They retreat through the open casement, twining round each 
 other, as the vine does round the window ; though which is the 
 vine and which is the window in this simile, I pretend not to 
 say — I can't see through either of them, that is the truth. 
 They pass through the parlor, and into the street beyond, 
 doubtless : and as for Mr. Philip, I presently see his head 
 popped out of his window in the upper floor with his great pipe 
 in his mouth. He can't " work " without his pipe, he says ; 
 and my wife believes him. Work indeed ! 
 
 Miss Charlotte paid us another little visit that evening, 
 when we happened to be alone. The children were gone to 
 bed. The darlings ! Charlotte must go up and kiss them. 
 Mr. Philip Firmin was out. She did not seem to miss him in 
 the least, nor did she make a single inquiry for him. We had 
 been so good to her — so kind. How could she ever forget our 
 great kindness ? She had been so happy — oh ! so happy ! 
 She had never been so happy before. She would write often 
 and often, and Laura would write constantly — wouldn't she ? 
 " Yes, dear child ! " says my wife. And now a little more 
 kissing, and it is time to go home to the Tintilleries. What a 
 lovely night ! Indeed the moon was blazing in full round in 
 the purple heavens, and the stars were twinkling by myriads. 
 
 " Good-by, dear Charlotte \ happiness go witlT you ! " I 
 seize her hand. I feel a paternal desire to kiss her fair, round 
 face. Her sweetness, her happiness, her artless good-humor, 
 and gentleness has endeared her to us all. As for me, I love 
 her with a fatherly affection. " Stay, my dear ! " I cr}', with a 
 happy gallantry, " I'll go home with 3^ou to the Tintilleries." 
 
 You should have seen the fair round face theji ! Such a 
 piteous expression came over it ! She looked at my wife ; and 
 as for that Mrs. Laura she pulled the tail of my coat. 
 
 " What do you mean, my dear ? " I ask. 
 
 " Don't go out on such a dreadful night. You'll catch 
 cold ! " says Laura.
 
 312 THE ADVENTURES OF PHI LIP 
 
 "Cold, my love 1 " I say. "Why, it's as fine a night as 
 ever " 
 
 " Oh ! you — you stoopid .f^ says Laura, and bcguis t(^ laugh. 
 And there goes Miss Charlotte tripping away from us without 
 a word more. 
 
 Philip came in about half an hour afterwards. And do you 
 know I very strongly suspect that he had been waiting round 
 the corner. Few things escape vu\ you see, when 1 have a 
 mind to be observant. And, certainly, if I had thought of 
 that possibility and that I might be spoiling sport, I should not 
 have proposed to Miss Charlotte to walk home with her. 
 
 At a very early hour on the next morning my wife arose, 
 and spent, in my opinion, a great deal of unprofitable time, 
 bread, butter, cold beef, mustard and salt, in compiling a heap 
 of sandwiches, which were tied up in a copy of the Pall Mall 
 Gazette. That persistence in making sandwiches, in providing 
 cakes and other refreshments for a journey, is a strange 
 infatuation in women ; as if there was not always enough to 
 eat to be had at road inns and railway stations ! What a good 
 dinner we used to have at Montreuil in the old days, before 
 railways were, and when the diligence spent four or six and 
 twenty cheerful hours on it% way to Paris ! I think the finest 
 dishes are not to be compared to that well-remembered frican- 
 deau of youth, nor do wines of the most dainty vintage surpass 
 the rough, honest, blue ordinaire which was served at the 
 plenteous inn-table. I took our bale of sandwiches down to 
 the office of the Messageries, whence our friends were to start. 
 We saw six of the Baynes family packed into the interior of 
 the diligence ; and the boys climb cheerily into the rotonde. 
 Charlotte's pretty lips and hands wafted kisses to us from her 
 corner. Mrs. General Baynes commanded the column, pushed 
 the little ones into their places in the ark, ordered the General 
 and young^nes hither and thither with her parasol, declined to 
 give the grumbling porters any but the smallest gratuity, and 
 talked a shrieking jargon of French and Hindostanee to the 
 people assembled round the carriage. My wife has that com- 
 mand over me that she actually made me demean myself so far 
 as to deliver the sandwich parcel to one of the Baynes boys. I 
 said, " Take this," and the poor wretch held out his hand 
 eagerly, evidently expecting that I was about to tip him with a 
 five-franc piece or some such coin. Fo2/ette, cochcr ! The 
 horses squeal. The huge machine jingles over the road, and 
 rattles down the street. Farewell, pretty Charlotte, with your 
 sweet face and .sweet voice and kind eyes ! But why, pray, is 
 Mr. Philip iMrmin not here to say farewell too?
 
 charlotte's CON'VnY.
 
 ON ins WAV THROUGH THE WORLD. 313 
 
 Before the diligence had got under way, the ]]aynes boys 
 had fought, and quarrelled, and wanted to mount on the 
 imperial or cabriolet of the carriage, where there was only one 
 passenger as yet. But the conductor called the lads off, saying 
 that the remaining place was engaged by a gentleman who they 
 were to take up on the road. And who should this turn out to 
 be ? Just outside the town a man springs up to the imperial ; 
 his liffht luofgraofe, it appears, was on the coach already, and 
 that luggage belonged to Philip iMrmm. Ah, monsieur ! and 
 that was the reason, was it, why they were so merry yesterday 
 — the parting day ? Because they were not going to part just 
 then. Because, 'when the time of execution drew near, they 
 had managed to smuggle a little reprieve ! Upon my con- 
 science, I never heard of such imprudence in the whole course 
 of mv life ! Why, it is starvation — certain misery to one and 
 the other. " I don't like to meddle in other people's affairs," 
 I say to my wife ; " but I have no patience with such folly, or 
 with myself for not speaking to General Baynes on the subject. 
 I shall write to the General." 
 
 " My dear, the General knows all about it," says Charlotte's, 
 
 Philip's (in my opinion) most injudicious friend. " We have 
 
 talked about it, and, like a man of sense, the General makes 
 
 light of it. ' Young folks will be young folks,' he says ; ' and, 
 
 by George ! ma'am, when I married — I should say, when Mrs. 
 
 B. ordered me to marry her — she had nothing, and I but my 
 
 captain's pay. People get on, somehow. Better for a young 
 
 man to marry, and keep out of idleness and mischief ; and I 
 
 promise you, the chap who marries my girl gets a treasure. I 
 
 like the boy for the sake of my old friend Phil Ringwood. 
 
 I don't see that the fellows with the rich wives are much the 
 
 happier, or that men should wait to marry until they are gouty 
 
 old rakes.' " And, it appears, the General instanced several 
 
 officers of his own acquaintance ; some of whom had married 
 
 when they were young and poor ; some who had married when 
 
 they were old and sulky ; some who had never married at all. 
 
 And he mentioned his comrade, my own uncle, the late INIajor 
 
 Pendennis, whom he called a selfish old creature, and hinted 
 
 that the Major had jilted some lady in early life, whom he 
 
 would have done much better to marr}-. 
 
 And so Philip is actually gone after his charmer, and is pur- 
 suing her smnma diligaitia ? The Baynes family has allowed 
 this "penniless young law student to make love to their daughter, 
 or accompany them to Paris, to appear as the almost recognized 
 son of the house. " Other people, when they were young,
 
 314 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 wanted to make impnulent marriages," says my wife (as if that 
 wretched tu qiioquc were any answer to my remark ! ) " This 
 penniless law student might have had a good sum of money if 
 he chose to press the Baynes family to pay him what, after all, 
 they owe him." And so poor little Charlotte was to be her 
 father's ransom ! To be sure little Charlotte did not object to 
 offer herself up in payment of her papa's debt ! And though I 
 objected as a moral man and a prudent man, and a father of a 
 family, I could not be very seriously angr)'. I am secretly of 
 the disposition of the time-honored /rr^ defamille in the come- 
 dies, the irascible old gentleman in the crop wig and George- 
 the-Second coat, who is always menacing " Tom the young 
 Dog " with his cane. When the deed is done, and Miranda 
 (the little sly-boots !) falls before my square-toes and shoe-buckles 
 and Tom, the young dog, kneels before me in his white ducks, 
 and they cry out in a pretty chorus, " Forgive, us grandpapa ! " 
 I say, " Well, you rogue, boys will be boys. Take her, sirrah ! 
 Be happy with her ; and, hark ye ! in this pocket-book you will 
 find ten thousand," (S:c., &c. You all know the story : I cannot 
 help liking it, however old it may be. In love, somehow, one 
 is pleased that young people should dare a little. Was not 
 Bessy Eldon famous as an economist, and Lord Eldon cele- 
 brated for wisdom and caution ? and did not John Scott marry 
 Elizabeth Surtees when they had scarcely twopence a year be- 
 tween them ? " Of course, my dear," I say to the partner of my 
 existence, " now this madcap fellow is utterly ruined, now is the 
 very time he ought to marry. The accepted doctrine is that a 
 man should spend his own fortune, then his wife's fortune, and 
 then he may begin to get on at the bar. Philip has a hundred 
 pounds, let us say ; Charlotte has nothing ; so that in about six 
 weeks we may look to hear of Philip being in successful 
 
 practice " 
 
 " Successful nonsense ! " cries the lady. " Don't go on like 
 a cold-blooded calculating machine ! You don't believe a word 
 of what you say, and a more imprudent person never lived than 
 you yourself were as a young man." This was departing from 
 the question, which women will do. " Nonsense ! " again says 
 my romantic being of a partner-of-existence. " Don't tell me, 
 sir. They will be provided for ! Are we to be for ever taking 
 care of the morrow, and not trusting that we shall be cared for.? 
 YoH may call your way of thinking prudence. I call it sinftil 
 worldiiness, sir," When my life-partner speaks in a certain 
 strain, I know that remonstrance is useless, and argument una- 
 vailing, and I generally resort to cowardly subterfuges, and
 
 ON HIS WAY TJf ROUGH THE WORLD. 
 
 3'5 
 
 sneak out of the conversation by a pun, a side joke, or some 
 other flippanc)'. Piesides, in this case, though I argue against 
 my wife, my sympathy is on her side. I know Mr. Philip is 
 imprudent and headstrong, but I should like him to succeed, 
 and be happy. I own he is a scapegrace, but I wish him well. 
 
 So, just as the diligence of Lafitte and Caillard is clearing 
 out of Boulogne town, the conductor causes the carriage to 
 stop, and a young fellow has mounted up on the roof in a twink- 
 ling ; and the postilion says " Hi ! " to his horses, and away 
 those squealing grays go clattering. And a young lady, hap- 
 pening to look out of one of the windows of the interieur, has 
 perfectly recognized the young gentleman who leaped up to the 
 roof so nimbly : and the two boys who were in the rotonde 
 would have recognized the gentleman, but that they were 
 already eating the sandwiches which my wife had provided. 
 And so the diligence goes on, until it reaches that hill, where 
 the giris used to come and offer to sell you apples ; and some 
 of the passengers descend and walk, and the tall young man 
 on the roof jumps down, and approaches the party in the in- 
 terior, and a young lady cries out " La ! " and her mamma looks 
 impenetrably grave, and not in the least surprised ; and her 
 father gives a wink of one eye, and says, " It's him, is it, by 
 George ! " and the two boys coming out of the rotonde, their 
 mouths full of sandwich, cry out, " Hullo ! It's Mr. Firmin." 
 
 " How do you, do ladies ? " he says, blushing as red as an 
 apple, and his heart thumping — but that may be from walking 
 up hill. And he puts a hand towards the carriage window, and 
 a little hand comes out and lights on his. And Mrs. General 
 Baynes, who is reading a religious work, looks up and says, 
 " Oh ! how do 3'ou do, Mr. Firmin ? " And this is the remark- 
 able dialogue that takes place. It is not very witty ; but 
 Philip's tones send a rapture into one young heart : and when 
 he is absent, and has climbed up to his place in the cabriolet, 
 the kick of his boots on the roof gives the said young heart 
 inexpressible comfort and consolation. Shine stars and moon. 
 Shriek gray horses through the calm night. Snore sweetly, 
 papa and mamma, in your corners, with your pocket-handker- 
 chiefs tied round your old fronts ! I suppose, under all the 
 stars of heaven, there is nobody more happy than that child in 
 that carnage — that wakeful girl, in sweet maiden meditation — 
 who has given her heart to the keeping of the champion who 
 is so near her. Has he not been always their champion and 
 preserver ? Don't they owe to his generosity ever}'thing in life ? 
 One of the little sisters wakes wildly, and cries in the night,
 
 3i6 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 and Charlotte takes the child into her arms and soothes her. 
 " Hush, dear ! He's there — he's there," she whispers, as she 
 bends over the child. Nothing wrong can happen with hhn 
 there, she feels. If the robbers were to spring out from yonder 
 dark pines, why, he would jump down, and they would all fly 
 before him ! The carriage rolls on through sleeping villages, 
 and as the old team retires all in a halo of smoke, and the 
 fresh horses come clattering up to their pole, Charlotte sees a 
 well-known white face in the gleam of the carriage lanterns. 
 Through the long avenues the great vehicle rolls on its course. 
 The dawn peers over the poplars : the stars quiver out of sight : 
 the sun is up in the sky, and the heaven is all in a flame. I'he 
 night is over — the night of nights. In all the round world, 
 whether lighted by stars or sunshine, there were not two people 
 more happy than these had been. 
 
 A ver)' short time afterwards, at the end of October, our 
 own little sea-side sojourn came to an end. That astounding 
 bill for broken glass, chairs, crockery, was paid. The London 
 steamer takes us all on board on a beautiful, sunny autumn 
 evening, and lands us at the Custom-house Quay in the midst 
 of a deep, dun fog, through which our cabs have to work their 
 way over greasy pavements, and bearing two loads of silent 
 and terrified children. Ah, that return, if but after a fortnight's 
 absence and holiday ! Oh, that heap of letters lying in a 
 ghastly pile, and yet so clearly visible in the dim twilight of 
 master's study ! We cheerfully breakfast by candlelight for the 
 first two days after my arrival at home, and I have the pleasure 
 of cutting a part of my chin off because it is too dark to shave 
 at nine o'clock in the morning. 
 
 My wife can't be so unfeeling as to laugh and be merry 
 because I have met with an accident which temporarily dis- 
 figures me. If the dun fog makes her jocular, she has a verj^- 
 queer sense of humor. She has a letter before her, over which 
 she is perfectly radiant. When she is especially pleased 1 can 
 see by her face and a particular animation and affectionateness 
 towards the rest of the family. On this present morning her 
 face beams out of the fog-clouds. The room is illuminated 
 by it, and perhaps by the two candles which are placed one 
 on either side of the urn. The fire crackles, and flames, and 
 spits most cheerfully ; and the sky without, which is of the hue 
 of brown paper, seems to set off the brightness of the little 
 interior scene. 
 
 " A letter from Charlotte, papa," cries one little girl, with 
 an air of consequence. " And a letter from Uncle Philiu
 
 ON HIS IV A Y THROUGH THE IVOKLD. 
 
 317 
 
 papa!" cries another, "and they like Paris so much," con- 
 tinues the Uttle reporter. 
 
 " And there, sir, didn't I tell you ? " cries the lady, handing 
 me over a letter. 
 
 " Mamma always told you so," echoes the child, with an 
 miportant nod of the head ; " and I shouldn't be surprised if 
 he were to be very rich, should you, mamma ? " continues this 
 arithmetician. 
 
 I would not put Miss Charlotte's letter into print if I could, 
 for do you know that little person's grammar was frequently in- 
 correct ; there were three or four words spelt wrongly ; and the 
 letter was so scored and juarked with dashes under every other 
 7vord, that it is clear to me her education had been neglected ; 
 and as I am very fond of her, I do not wish to make fun of her. 
 And I can't print Mr. Philip's letter, for I haven't kept it. Of 
 what use keeping letters? I say. Burn, burn, burn. No heart- 
 pangs. No reproaches. No yesterday. Was it happy, or 
 miserable ? To thinks of it is always melancholy. Go to ! I 
 dare say it is the thought of that fog, which is making this sen- 
 tence so dismal. Meanwhile there is Madame Laura's face 
 smiling out of the darkness, as pleased as may be ; and no 
 wonder, she is always happy when her friends are so. 
 
 Charlotte's letter contained a full account of the settlement 
 of the Baynes family at Madame Smolensk's boarding-house, 
 where they appear to have been really very comfortable, and to 
 have lived at a very cheap rate. As for Mr. Philip, he made 
 his way to a crib, to which his artist friends had recommended 
 him, on the Faubourg St. Germain side of the water — the 
 " Hotel Poussin," in the street of that name, which lies, you 
 know, between the Mazarin Library and the Musee des Beaux 
 Arts. In former days, my gentleman had lived in state and 
 bounty in the English hotels and quarter. Now he found him- 
 self very handsomely lodged for thirty francs per month, and 
 with five or six pounds, he has repeatedly said since, he could 
 carry through the month very comfortably. I don't say, my 
 young traveller, that you can be so lucky now-a-days. Are we 
 not telling a story of twenty years ago? Aye, marry. Ere 
 steam-coaches had begun to scream on French rails ; and when 
 Louis Philippe was king. 
 
 As soon as Mr. Philip Firmin is ruined he must needs fall 
 in love. In order to be near the beloved object, he must needs 
 follow her to Paris, and give up his promised studies for the bar 
 at home ; where, to do him justice, I believe the fellow would 
 never have done any good. And he has not been in Paris a
 
 3^8 
 
 THE ADVENTURES OF PIffLJP 
 
 fortnight when that fantastic jade Fortune, who had seemed to 
 fly away from him, gives him a smiling look of recognition, as 
 if to say, "Young gentleman, I have not quite done with you." 
 
 The good fortune was not much. Do not suppose that 
 Philip suddenly drew a twenty-thousand pound prize in a lottery. 
 P)Ut, being in much want of money, he suddenly found himself 
 enabled to earn some in a way pretty easy to himself. 
 
 In the first place, Philip found his friends Mr. and Mrs. 
 Mugford in a bewildered state in the midst of Paris, in which 
 city Mugford would never consent to have a laqiiais dc plaix, 
 being firmly convinced to the day of his death that he knew the 
 French language quite sufficiently for all purposes of conver- 
 sation. Philip, who had often visited Paris before, came to 
 the aid of his friends in a two-franc dining-house, which he fre- 
 quented for economy's sake ; and they, iDecause they thought 
 the banquet there provided not only cheap, but most magnif- 
 icent and satisfactory. He interpreted for them, and rescued 
 them from their perplexity, whatever it was. He treated them 
 handsomely to caffy on the bullyvard, as Mugford said on re- 
 turning home and in recounting the adventure to me. " He 
 can't forget that he has been a swell : and he does do things 
 like a gentleman, that Firmin does. He came back with us to 
 our hotel — Meurice's," said Mr. Mugford, " and who should 
 drive into the yard and step out of his carriage but Lord Ring- 
 wood — you know Lord Ringwood ? everybody knows him. As 
 he gets out of his carriage — ' What ! is that you, Philip ? ' says 
 his lordship, giving the young fellow his hand. ' Come and 
 breakfast with me to-morrow morning.' And away he goes 
 most friendly." 
 
 How came it to jrass that Lord Ringwood, whose instinct 
 of self-preservation was strong — who, I fear, was rather a self- 
 ish nobleman — and who, of late, as we have heard, had given 
 orders to refuse Mr. Philip entrance at his door — should all 
 of a sudden turn round and greet the young man with 
 cordiality ? In the first place, Philip had never troubled his 
 lordship's knocker at all ; and second, as luck would have it, 
 on this very day of their meeting his lordship had been 
 to dine with that well-known Parisan resident and bofi-vivant, 
 my Lord Viscount Trim, who had been governor of the Sago 
 Islands when Colonel Paynes was there with his regiment, the 
 gallant looth. And the General and his old West India gov- 
 ernor meeting at church, my Lord 'I'rim straightway asked 
 General Paynes to dinner, where Lord Ringwood was present, 
 along with other distinguished company, whom at present we
 
 OiV HIS IVA Y THROUGH THE WORLD. 
 
 319 
 
 need not particularize. Now it has been said that Philip Ring- 
 wood, my lord's brother, and Captain Baynes in early youth 
 had been close friends, and that the Colonel had died in the 
 Captain's arms. Lord Ringwood, who had an excellent memory 
 when he chose to use it, was pleased on this occasion to re- 
 member General Baynes and his intimacy with his brother in 
 old days. And of those old times they talked ; the General 
 waxing more eloquent, I suppose, than his wont over Lord 
 Trim's excellent wine. And in the course of conversation 
 Philip was named, and the General, warm with drink, poured 
 out a most enthusiastic eulogium on his young friend, and men- 
 tioned how noble and self-denying Philip's conduct had been in 
 his own case. And perhaps Lord Ringwood was pleased at 
 hearing" the praises of his brother's grandson ; and perhaps he 
 thought of old times, when he had a heart, and he and his 
 brother loved each other. And though he might think Philip 
 Firmin an absurd young blockhead for giving up any claims 
 which he might have on General Baynes, at any rate I have no 
 doubt his lordship thought, "This boy is not likely to come 
 begging money from me ! " Hence, when he drove back to his 
 hotel on the very night after this dinner, and in the courtyard 
 saw that Philip Firmin, his brother's grandson, the heart of the 
 old nobleman was smitten with a kindly sentiment, and he bade 
 Thilip to come and see him. 
 
 I have described some of Philip's oddities, and amongst 
 these was a very remarkable change in his appearance, which 
 ensued very speedily after his ruin. I know that the greater 
 number of story readers are young, and those who are ever so 
 old remember that their own young days occurred but a very, 
 very short while ago. Don't you remember, most potent, grave, 
 and reverend senior, when you were a junior, and actually 
 rather pleased with new clothes ? Does a new coat or a waist- 
 coat cause you any pleasure now ? To a well-constituted mid- 
 dle-aged gentleman, I rather trust a smart new suit causes a 
 sensation of uneasiness — not from the tightness of the fit, which 
 may be a reason — but from the gloss and splendor. When my 
 late kind friend, Mrs. , gave me the emerald tabinet waist- 
 coat, with the gold shamrocks, I wore it once to go to Rich- 
 mond to dine with her ; but I buttoned myself so closely in an 
 upper coat, that I am sure nobody in the omnibus saw what a 
 painted vest I had on. Gold sprigs and emerald tabinet, what 
 a gorgeous raiment ! It has formed for ten years the chief 
 ornament of my wardrobe ; and though I have never dared to 
 wear it since, I always think with a secret pleasure of possess-
 
 3 2 o fll^ ^^ ^ f^'-^^y 'i '( '/v7s .V or PHIL IP 
 
 ing that treasure. Do women, when they are sixty, like hand* 
 some and fashionable attire, and a youthful appearance ? Look 
 at Lady Jezebel's blushing cheek, her raven hair, her splendid 
 garments ! But this disquisition may be carried to too great a 
 length. I want to note a fact which has occurred not seldom in 
 my experience — that men who have been great dandies will 
 often and suddenly give up their long accustomed splendor of 
 dress, and walk about, most happy and contented, with the 
 shabbiest of coats and hats. No. The majority of men are 
 not vain about their dress. For instance, within a very few 
 years, men used to have pretty feet. See in what a resolute 
 way they have kicked their pretty boots off almost to a man, 
 and wear great, thick, formless, comfortable walking boots, of 
 shape scarcely more graceful than a tub ! 
 
 When Philip Firmin first came on the town, there were 
 dandies still ; there were dazzling waistcoats of velvet and 
 brocade, and tall stocks and cataracts of satin ; there were pins, 
 studs, neck-chains, I know not what fantastic splendors of 
 youth. His varnished boots grew upon forests of trees. He 
 had a most resplendent silver-gilt dressing-case, presented to 
 him by his father (for which, it is true, the doctor neglected to 
 pay, leaving that duty to his son). " It is a mere ceremony," 
 said the worthy doctor, " a cumbrous thing you may fancy at 
 first ; but take it about with you. It looks well on a man's 
 dressing-table at a country-house. \\. poses a man, you under- 
 stand. I have known women come in and peep at it. A trifle 
 you may say, my boy ; but what is the use of flinging any chance 
 in life away?" Now, when misfortune came, young Philip 
 flung away all these magnificent follies. He wrapped himself 
 virtute sua ; and 1 am bound to say a more queer-looking fellow 
 than friend Philip seldom walked the pavement of London or 
 Paris. He could not wear the nap off all his coats, or rub his 
 elbows into rags in six months ; but as he would say of himself 
 with much simplicity, " I do think I run to seed more quickly 
 than any fellow 1 ever knew. All my socks in holes, Mrs. 
 Pendennis ; all my shirt-buttons gone, I give you my word. 1 
 don't know how the things hold together, and why they don't 
 tumble to pieces. I suspect I must have a bad laundress." 
 vSuspect ! My children used to laugh and crow as they sowed 
 buttons on to him. As for the Little Sister, she broke into 
 his apartments in his alxscnce, and said that it turned her hair 
 gray to see the state of his poor wardrobe. 1 believe that Mrs. 
 Brandon put surreptitious linen into liis drawers. He did not 
 know. He wore the shirts in a contented spirit The glossy
 
 ON HIS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. 321 
 
 boots began to crack and then to burst, and Philip wore them 
 with perfect equanimity. Where were the beautiful lavender 
 and lemon gloves of last year? His great naked hands (with 
 which he gesticulates so grandly) were as brown as an Indian's 
 now. We had liked him heartily in his days of splendor ; we 
 loved him now in his threadbare suit. 
 
 I can fancy the young man striding into the room where his 
 lordship's guests were assembled. In the presence of great or 
 small, Philip has always been entirely unconcerned, and he is 
 one of the half-dozen men I have seen in my life upon whom 
 rank made no impression. It appears that, on occasion of this 
 breakfast, there were one or two dandies present who were 
 aghast at Philip's freedom of behavior. He engaged in con- 
 versation with a famous French statesman ; contradicted him 
 with much energy in his own language ; and when the states- 
 man asked whether monsieur was membre du Parlement } 
 Philip burst into one of his roars of laughter, which almost 
 breaks the glasses on a table, and said, " Je suis journaliste, 
 monsieur, a vos ordres ! " Young Timbury of the embassy was 
 aghast at Philip's insolence ; and Dr. Botts, his lordship's 
 travelling physician, looked at him with a terrified face. A 
 bottle of claret was brought, which almost all the gentlemen 
 present began to swallow, until Philip, tasting his glass, called 
 out, " Faugh ! It's corked ! " " So it is, and very badly 
 corked," growls my lord, with one of his usual oaths. "Why 
 didn't some of you fellows speak ? Do you like corked wine ? " 
 There were gallant fellows round that table who would have 
 drunk corked black dose, had his lordship professed to like 
 senna. The old host was tickled and amused. Your mother 
 was a quiet soul, and your father used to bow like a dancing- 
 master. You ain't much like him. I dine at home most days. 
 Leave word in the morning with my people, and come when 
 you like, Philip," he growled. A part of this news Philip 
 narrated to us in his letter, and other part was given verbally 
 by Mr. and Mrs. Mugford on their return to London. " I tell 
 you, sir," says Mugford, "he has been taken by the hand by 
 some of the tiptop people, and I have booked him at three 
 guineas a week for a letter to the Pall Mall Gazette.'" 
 
 And this was the cause of my wife's exultation and triumph- 
 ant " Didn't I tell you ! " Philip's foot was on the ladder ; and 
 who so capable of mounting to the top ? When happiness 
 and a fond and lovely girl were waiting for him there, would he 
 lose heart, spare exertion, or be afraid to climb ? He had no 
 truer well-wisher than myself, and no friend who liked him 
 
 21
 
 322 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 better, though, I dare say, man)' admired him much more than 
 I did. But these were women for the most part ; and women 
 become so absurdly unjust and partial to persons whom they 
 love, when these latter are in misfortune, that I am surprised 
 Mr. Philip did not quite lose his head in his poverty, with such 
 fond flatterers and sycophants round about him. Would you 
 crudge him the consolation to be had from these sweet uses of 
 adversity ! Many a heart would be hardened but for the 
 memory of past griefs ; when eyes, now averted, perhaps, were 
 full of sympathy, and hands, now cold, were eager to soothe 
 and succor. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 QU'ON EST BIEN A VINGT ANS. 
 
 A FAIR correspondent — and I would parenthetically hint 
 that-all correspondents are not fair — points out the discrepancy 
 existing between the text and the illustrations of our story ; 
 and justly remarks that the storj- dated more than twenty years 
 back, while the costumes of the actors of our little comedy are 
 of the fashion of to-day. 
 
 My dear madam, these anachronisms must bo, or you would 
 scarcely be able to keep any interest for our characters. What 
 would ioe a woman without a crinoline petticoat, for example ? 
 an object ridiculous, hateful, I suppose hardly proper. What 
 would you think of a hero who wore a large high black-satin 
 stock cascading over a figured silk waistcoat ; and a blue dress- 
 coat, with brass buttons, mayhap ? If a person so attired came 
 up to ask you to dance, could you refrain from laughing ? Time 
 was when young men so decorated found fa\"or in the eyes of 
 damsels who had never beheld hooped petticoats, except in 
 their grandmother's portraits. Persons who flourished in the 
 first part of the century never thought to see the hoops of our 
 ancestor's age rolled downwards to our contemporaries and 
 children. Did we ever imagine that a period would arrive when 
 our young men would part their hair down the middle, and 
 wear a piece of tape for a neckcloth ? As soon should we have 
 thought of their dyeing their bodies with woad, and arraying 
 themselves like ancient T-.ritons. So the ages have their dress 
 and undress ; and the gentlemen and ladies of Victoria's time
 
 ON HIS WA V THROUGH THE WORLD. 
 
 323 
 
 are satisfied with their manner of raiment ; as no doubt in 
 Boadicea's court they looked charming tattooed and painted 
 blue. 
 
 The times of which we write, the times of Louis Philippe 
 the king, are so altered from the present, that when Philip 
 Firmin went to Paris it was absolutely a cheap place to live in ; 
 and he has often bragged in subsequent days of having lived 
 well during a month for five pounds, and bought a neat waist- 
 coat with a part of the money. " A capital bedroom, an 
 premier, for a franc a day, sir," he would call all persons to 
 remark, " a bedroom as good as yours, my lord, at Meurice's. 
 Very good tea or coffee breakfast, twenty francs a month, with 
 lots of bread and butter. Twenty francs a month for washing, 
 and fifty for dinner and pocket-money — that's about the figure. 
 The dinner, I own, is shy, unless I come and dine with my 
 friends ; and then I make up for banyan days." And so saying 
 Philip would call out for more trufiled patridges, or affably filled 
 his goblet with my Lord Ringwood's best Sillery. '' At those 
 shops," he would observe, "where I dine, I have beer: I can't 
 stand the wine. And you see, I can't go to the cheap English 
 ordinaries, of which there are many, because English gentlemen's 
 servants are there, you know, and it's not pleasant to sit with a 
 fellow who waits on you the day after." 
 
 *' Oh ! the English servants go to the cheap ordinaries, do 
 they ? " asks my lord, greatly amused, " and you drink biere 
 de Mars at the shop where you dine ? " 
 
 "And dine very badly, too, I can tell you. Always come 
 away hungry. Give me some champagne — the dry, if you 
 please. They mix very well together — sweet and dry. Did 
 you ever dine at Flicoteau's, Mr. Pecker ? " 
 
 " / dine at one of your horrible two-franc houses ? " cries 
 Mr. Pecker, with a look of terror. " Do you know, my lord, 
 there are actually houses where people dine for two francs ? " 
 
 " Two francs ! Seventeen sous ! " bawls out Mr. Firmin. 
 " The soup, the beef, the roti, the salad, the dessert, and the 
 whitey-brown bread at discretion. It's not a good dinner, 
 certainl)^ — in fact, it is a dreadful bad one. But to dine so 
 would do some fellows a great deal of good." 
 
 " What do you say, Pecker ? Flicoteau's ; seventeen sous. 
 We'll make a little party and try, and Firmin shall do the 
 honors of his restaurant," says my lord, with a grin. 
 
 " Mercy ! " gasps Mr. Pecker. 
 
 " I had rather dine here, if you please, my lord," says the 
 young man. "This is cheaper, and certainly better."
 
 324 
 
 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 My lord's doctor, and many of the guests at his table, my 
 lord's henchmen, flatterers, and led captains, looked aghast at 
 the freedom of the young felIo\y in the shabby coat. If they 
 dared to be familiar with their host, there came a scowl over 
 that noble countenance which was awful to face. They drank 
 his corked wine in meekness of spirit. They laughed at his 
 jokes trembling. One after another, they were the objects of 
 his satire ; and each grinned piteously, as he took his turn of 
 punishment. Some dinners are dear, though they cost nothing. 
 At some great tables are not toads served along with the eti- 
 trccs ? Yes, and many amateurs are exceedingly fond of the 
 dish. 
 
 How do Parisians live at all .-' is a question which has often 
 set me wondering. How do men in public offices, with fifteen 
 thousand francs, let us say, for a salary — and this, for a French 
 official, is a high salary — live in handsome apartments ; give 
 genteel entertainments ; clothe themselves and their families 
 with much more sumptuous raiment than English people of the 
 same station can afford ; take their country holiday, a six weeks' 
 sojourn, aux eaux ; and appear cheerful and to want for noth- 
 ing ? Paterfamilias, with six hundred a year in London, knows 
 what a straitened life his is, with rent high, and beef at a 
 shilling a pound. Well, in Paris, rent is higher, and meat is 
 dearer; and yet madame is richly dressed when you see her; 
 monsieur has always a little money in his pocket for his club or 
 his cafe' ; and something is pretty surely put away every year 
 for the marriage portion of the young folks. " Sir," Philip used 
 to say, describing this period of his life, on which and on most 
 subjects regarding himself, by the way, he was wont to be very 
 eloquent, "when my income was raised to five thousand francs 
 a year, I give you my word I was considered to be rich by my 
 French acquaintance. I gave four sous to the waiter at our 
 dining-place : — in that respect I was always ostentatious : — and 
 I believe they called me Milor. I should have been poor in 
 the Rue de la Paix: but I was wealthy in the Luxembourg 
 quarter. Don't tell me about poverty, sir ! Poverty is a bully 
 if you are afraid of her, or truckle to her. Poverty is good- 
 natured enough if you meet her like a man. You saw how my 
 poor old father was afraid of her, and thought the world would 
 come to an end if Dr. Firmin did not keep his butler, and his 
 footman, and his fine house, and fine chariot and horses ? He 
 was a poor man, if you ]-)lease. He must have suffered agonies 
 in his struggle to make both ends meet. Everything he bought 
 must have cost him twice the honest price ; and when I think
 
 ON HIS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. 325 
 
 of nights that must have been passed without sleep — of that 
 proud man having to smirk and cringe before creditors — to 
 coax butchers, by George, and wheedle tailors — I pity him ; I 
 can't be angry any more. That man has suffered enough. As 
 for me, haven't you remarked that since I have not got a guinea 
 in the world, I swagger, and am a much greater swell than be- 
 fore } " And the truth is that a Prince Royal could not ha\-e 
 called for his gens with a more magnificent air than Mr. Philip 
 when he sununoned the waiter, and paid for \\\% pdit verre. 
 
 Talk of poverty, indeed ! That period, Philip vows, was 
 the happiest of his life. He liked to tell in after days of the 
 choice acquaintance of Bohemians which he had formed. Their 
 jug, he said, though it contained but small beer, was always 
 full. Their tobacco, though it bore no higher rank than that 
 of caporal, was plentiful and fragrant. He knew some admir- 
 able medical students ; some artists who only wanted talent 
 and industr}^ to be at the height of their profession : and one 
 or two of the magnates of his own calling, the newspaper cor- 
 respondents, whose houses and tables were open to him. It 
 was wonderful what secrets of politics he learned and trans- 
 mitted to his own paper. He pursued P'rench statesmen of 
 those days with prodigious eloquence and vigor. At the ex- 
 pense of that old king he was wonderfully M'itty and sarcastical. 
 He reviewed the affairs of Europe, settled the destinies of Rus- 
 sia, denounced the Spanish marriages, disposed of the Pope, and 
 advocated the Liberal cause in France with an untiring elo- 
 quence. " Absinthe used to be my drink, sir," so he was good 
 enough to tell his friends. " It makes the ink run, and imparts 
 a fine eloquence to the style. Mercy upon us, how I would 
 belabor that poor King of the French under the influence of 
 absinthe, in that cafe opposite the Bourse where I used to make 
 iny letter ! Who knows, sir, perhaps tlie influence of those let- 
 ters precipitated the fall of the Bourbon dynasty ! Before I 
 had an office, Gilligan, of the Century, and I, used to do our 
 letters at that cafe ; we compared notes and pitched into each 
 other amicably." 
 
 Gilligan of the Century, and Firmin of the Pall Mall Gazette, 
 were, however, very minor personages amongst the London 
 newspaper correspondents. Their seniors of the daily press 
 had handsome apartments, gave sumptuous dinners, were 
 closeted with ministers' secretaries, and entertained members 
 of the Chamber of Deputies. Philip, on perfectly easy terms 
 with himself and the world, swaggering al^out the embassy balls 
 — Philip, the friend and relative of Lord Ringwood — was viewed
 
 326 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 by his professional seniors and superiors with an eye of favor, 
 which was not certainly turned on all gentlemen following his 
 calling. Certainly poor Gilligan was never asked to those 
 dinners, which some of the newspaper ambassadors gave, where- 
 as Philip was received not inhospitably. Gilligan received but 
 a cold shoulder at Mrs. Morning Messenger's Thursdays ; and 
 as for being asked to dinner, " Bedad, that fellow, Firmin, has 
 an air with him which will carry him through anywhere ! " Phil's 
 brother correspondent owned. " He seems to patronize an 
 ambassador when he goes up and speaks to him ; and he says 
 to a secretary, ' My good fellow, tell your master that Mr. Fir- 
 min, of the Pall Mall Gazette, wants to see him, and will thank 
 him to step over to the Cafd de la Bourse.' " I don't think 
 Philip, for his part, would have seen much matter of surprise in 
 a Minister stepping over to speak to him. To him all folk were 
 alike, great and small ; and it is recorded of him that when, on 
 one occasion, Lord Ringwood paid him a visit at his lodgings 
 in the Faubourg St. Germain, Philip affably offered his lordship 
 a cornet of fried potatoes, with which, and plentiful tobacco of 
 course, Philip and one or two of his friends were regaling them- 
 selves when Lord Ringwood chanced to call on his kinsman. 
 
 A crust and a carafon of small beer, a correspondence with 
 a weekly paper, and a^remuneration such as that we have men- 
 tioned, — was Philip Firmin to look for no more than this pit- 
 tance, aixl not to seek for more permanent and lucrative em- 
 ployment ? Some of his friends at home were rather vexed at 
 what Philip chose to consider his good fortune ; namely, his 
 connection with the newspaper, and the small stipend it gave 
 him. He might quarrel with his employer any day. Indeed 
 no man was more likely to fling his bread and butter out of 
 window than Mr. Philip, He was losing precious time at the 
 bar ; where he, as hundreds of other poor gentlemen had done 
 before him, might make a career for himself. For what are 
 colonies made .-' Why do bankruptcies occur ? Why do peo- 
 ple break the peace and quarrel with policemen, but that bar- 
 risters maybe employed as judges, commissioners, magistrates? 
 A rejaorter to a newspaper remains all his life a newspaper 
 reporter. Philip, if he would but help himself, had friends in 
 the world who might aid effectually to advance him. So it was 
 we pleaded with him, in the language of moderation, urging 
 the dictates of common sense. As if moderation and common 
 sense could be got to move that mule of a Philip Firmin ; as if 
 any persuasion of ours could induce him to do anything but 
 what he liked to do best himself !
 
 ON HIS WA Y THROUGH THE WORLD. 
 
 327 
 
 "That you should be worldly, my poor fellow" (so Philip 
 wrote to his present biographer) — " that you should be think- 
 ing of money and the main chance, is no matter of surprise to 
 me. You have suffered under that curse of manhood, that 
 destroyer of generosity in the mind, that parent of selfishness 
 — a little fortune. You have your wretched hundreds " (my can- 
 did correspondent stated the sum correctly enough ; and I wish 
 it were double or treble ; but that is not here the point :) " paid 
 quarterly. The miserable pittance numbs your whole existence. 
 It prevents freedom of thought and action. It makes a screw 
 of a man who is certainly not without generous impulses, as I 
 know, my poor old Harpagon ; for hast thou not offered to open 
 thy purse to me ? I tell you I am sick of the way in which peo- 
 ple in London, especially good people, think about money. You 
 live up to your income's edge. You are miserably poor. You 
 brag and flatter yourselves that you owe no man anything ; but 
 your estate has creditors upon it as insatiable as any usurer, 
 and as hard as any bailiiT. You call me reckless, and prodigal, 
 and idle, and all sorts of names, because I live in a single 
 room, do as little work as I can, and go about with holes in my 
 boots : and you flatter yourself you are prudent, because you 
 have a genteel house, a grave flunkey out of liver)', and two 
 greengrocers to wait when you give your half-dozen dreary din- 
 ner-parties. Wretched man ! You are a slave : not a man. 
 You are a pauper, with a good house and good clothes. You 
 are so miserably prudent, that all your money is spent for you, 
 except the few wretched shillings which you allow yourself for 
 pocket-money. You tremble at the expense of a cab. I believe 
 you actually look at half-a-crown before you spend it. The 
 landlord is your master. The livery-stablekeeper is your master. 
 A train of ruthless, useless servants are your pitiless creditors, 
 to whom you have to pay exorbitant dividends every day. I, 
 with a hole in my elbow, who live upon a shilling dinner, and 
 walk on cracked boot soles, am called extravagant, idle, reck- 
 less, I don't know what ; while you, forsooth, consider yourself 
 prudent. Miserable delusion ! You are flinging away heaps 
 of money on useless flunkeys, on useless maid-servants, on 
 useless lodgings, on useless finery — and you say, ' Poor Phil ! 
 what a sad idler he is ! how he flings himself away ! in what a 
 wretched, disreputable manner he lives ! ' Poor Phil is as rich 
 as you are, for he has enough, and is content. Poor Phil can 
 afford to be idle, and you can't. You must work in order to keep 
 that great hulking footman, that great rawboned cook, that 
 army of babbling nurserj'-maids, and I don't know what more.
 
 328 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 And if you choose to submit to the slaver}^ and degradation 
 inseparable from your condition ; — the wretched inspection of 
 candle onds, which you call order; — the mean self-denials, 
 which you must daily practice — I pity you, and don't quarrel 
 with you. But I wish you would not be so insufferably virtu- 
 ous, and ready with your blame and pity for 7ne. If I am 
 happy, pray need you be disquieted ? Suppose I prefer inde- 
 pendence, and shabby boots ? Ar" not these better than to 
 be pinched by our abominable varnished conventionalism, and 
 to be denied the liberty of free action ? My poor fellow, I pity 
 you from my heart ; and it grieves me to think how those 
 fine honest children — honest, and hearty, and frank, and open 
 as yet — are to lose their natural good qualities, and to be 
 swathed, and swaddled, and stifled out of health and honesty 
 by that obstinate worldling their father. Don't tell 7ne about 
 the world ; I know it. People sacrifice the next world to it, 
 and are all the while proud of their prudence. Look at my 
 miserable relations, steeped in respectability. Look at my 
 father. There is a chance for him, now he is down and in 
 poverty, I have had a letter from him, containing more of 
 that dreadful worldly advice which you Pharisees give. If it 
 weren't for Laura and the children, sir, I heartily wish you 
 were ruined like your affectionate — P. F. 
 
 " N.B., P. S. — Oh, pen ! I am so happy ! She is such a little 
 darling 1 I bathe in her innocence, sir ! I strengthen myself 
 in her purity. I kneel before her sweet goodness and uncon- 
 sciousness of guile. I walk from my room, and see her every 
 morning before seven o'clock. I see her every afternoon. She 
 loves you and Laura. And you love her, don't you ? And to 
 think that six months ago I was going to marr)^ a woman with- 
 out a heart 1 Why, sir, blessings be on the poor old father for 
 spending our money, and rescuing me from that horrible fate ! 
 I might have been like that fellow in the ' Arabian Nights,' who 
 married Amina — the respectable woman, who dined upon grains 
 of rice, but supped upon cold dead body. Was it not worth all 
 the money I ever was heir to to have escaped from that ghoul ? 
 Lord Ringwood says he thinks I was well out of that. He 
 calls people by Anglo-Saxon names, and uses very expressive 
 monosyllables ; and of Aunt Twysden, of Uncle Twysden, of 
 the girls, and their brother, he speaks in a way which makes 
 me see he has come to just conclusions about them. 
 
 " P. S. No, 2. — Ah, Pen ! She is such a darling. I think 
 I am the happiest man in the world." 
 
 Aq,d this was what came of being ruined ! A scapegrace,
 
 ON HIS WA Y THROUGH THE WORLD. 329 
 
 who, when he had plenty of money in his pocket, was ill-tem- 
 pered, imperious, and discontented ; now that he is not worth 
 twopence, declares himself the happiest fellow in the world ! 
 Do you remember, my dear, how he used to grumble at our 
 claret, and what wry faces he made when there was only cold 
 meat for dinner? The wretch is absolutely contented wi^h 
 bread and cheese and small beer, even that bad beer which 
 they have in Paris ! 
 
 Now and again, at this time, and as our mutual avocations 
 permitted, I saw Philip's friend, the Little Sister. He wrote to 
 her dutifully from time to time. He told her of his love affair 
 with Miss Charlotte ; and my wife and I could console Caroline, 
 by assuring her that this time the young man's heart was given 
 to a worthy mistress. I say console, for the news, after all, 
 was sad for her. In the little chamber which she always kept 
 ready for him, he would lie awake, and think of some one 
 dearer to him than a hundred poor Carolines. She would de- 
 vise something that should be agreeable to the young lady. 
 At Christmas time there came to Miss Baynes a wonderfully 
 worked cambric pocket-handkerchief, with " Charlotte " most 
 beautifully embroidered in the corner. It was this poor widow's 
 mite of love and tenderness which she meekly laid down in the 
 place where she worshipped. " And I have six for him, too, 
 ma'am," Mrs. Brandon told my wife. " Poor fellow! his shirts 
 was in a dreadful way when he went away from here, and that 
 you know, ma'arn." So you see this wayfarer, having fallen 
 among undoubted thieves, yet found many kind souls to re- 
 lieve him, and many a good Samaritan ready with his twopence, 
 if need were. 
 
 The reason why Philip was the happiest man in the world 
 of course you understand. French people are very early risers ; 
 and at the little hotel where Mr. Philip lived, the whole crew 
 of the house were up hours before lazy English masters and 
 servants think of stirring. At ever so early an hour Phil had a 
 fine bowl of coffee and milk and bread for his breakfast ; and 
 he was striding down to the Invalides, and across the bridge 
 to the Champs Elysees, and the fumes of his pipe preceded 
 him with a pleasant odor. And a short time after passing the 
 Rond Point in the Elysian fields, where an active fountain was 
 flinging up showers of diamonds to the skj', — after, I say, leav- 
 ing the Rond Point on his right, and passing under umbra 
 geous groves in the direction of the present Castle of Flowers, 
 Mr. Phillip would see a little person. Soriietimes a young sis- 
 ter or brother came with the little person. Sometimes only a
 
 530 
 
 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 blush fluttered on her cheek, and a sweet smile beamed in her 
 face as she came forward to greet him. For the angels were 
 scarce purer than this young maid ; and Una was no more 
 afraid of the lion, than Charlotte of her companion with the 
 loud voice and the tawny mane. I would not have envied that 
 reprobate's lot who should have dared to say a doubtful word 
 to this Una : but the truth is, she never thought of danger, or 
 met with any. The workmen were going to their labor ; the dan- 
 dies M-ere asleep ; and considering their age, and the relation- 
 ship in which they stood to one another, I am not surprised at 
 Philip for announcing that this was the happiest time of his 
 life. In later days, when two gentlemen of mature age hap- 
 pened to be in Paris together, what must Mr. Philip Firmin 
 do but insist upon walking me sentimentally to the Champs 
 Elys^es, and looking at an old house there, a rather shabby old 
 house in a garden. " That was the place," sighs he. "That 
 was Madame de Smolensk's. That was the window, the third 
 one, with the green jalousie. By Jove, sir, how happy and how 
 miserable I have been behind that green blind ! " And my 
 friend shakes his large fist at the somewhat dilapidated man- 
 sion, whence Madame de Smolensk and her boarders have 
 long since departed. 
 
 I fear that baroness had engaged in her enterprise with in- 
 sufficient capital, or conducted it with such liberality that her 
 profits were eaten up by her boarders. I could tell dreadful 
 stories impugning the baroness's moral character. People said 
 she had no right to the title of baroness at all, or to the noble 
 foreign name of Smolensk. People are still alive who knew 
 her under a different name. The baroness herself was what 
 some amateurs call a fine woman, especially at dinner-time, 
 when she appeared in black satin and with cheeks that blushed 
 up as far as the eyelids. In her peignoir in the morning, she 
 was perhaps the reverse of fine. Contours which were round at 
 night, in the forenoon appeared lean and angular. Her roses 
 only bloomed half an hour before dinner-time on a cheek which 
 was quite yellow until five o'clock. I am sure it is very kind of 
 elderly and ill-complexioned people to supply the ravages of 
 time or jaundice, and present to our view a figure blooming 
 and agreeable, in place of an object faded and withered. Do 
 you quarrel with your opposite neighbor for painting his house 
 front or putting roses in his balcony ? You are rather thank- 
 ful for the adornment. Madame de Smolensk's front was so 
 decorated of afternoons. Geraniums were set pleasantly under 
 those first-floor windows, her eyes. Carcel lamps beamed
 
 ON HIS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. 
 
 ZZ^ 
 
 from those windows : lamps which she had trimmed with hef 
 own scissors, and into which that poor widow poured tlie oil 
 which she got somehow and anyhow. When tlic dingy break- 
 fast /<^?//7/(?/'^j were cast of an afternoon, what beautiful black 
 curls appeared round her brow ! The dingy /^////^/fj were put 
 away in the drawer : the peignoir retired to its hook behind the 
 door : the satin raiment came forth, the shining, the ancient, 
 the well-kept, the well-wadded : and at the same moment the 
 worthy woman took that smile out of some cunning box on her 
 scanty toilet-table — that smile which she wore all the evening 
 along with the rest of her toilette, and took out of her mouth 
 when she went to bed and to think — to think how both ends 
 were to be made to meet. 
 
 Philip said he respected and admired that woman : and 
 worthy of respect she was in her way. She painted her face 
 and grinned at poverty. She laughed and rattled with care 
 gnawing at her side. She had to coax the milkman out of his 
 human kindness : to pour oil — his own oil — upon the stormy 
 e'picier's soul : to melt the butterman : to tap the wine-mer- 
 chant : to mollify the butcher : to invent new pretexts for the 
 landlord : to reconcile the lady boarders, Mrs. General Baynes, 
 let us say, and the Honorable Mrs. Boldero, who were always 
 quarrelling : to see that the dinner, when procured, was cooked 
 properly ; that Francois, to whom she owed ever so many months' 
 wages, was not too rebellious or intoxicated ; that Auguste, also 
 her creditor, had his glass clean and his lamps in order. And 
 this work done and the hour of six o'clock arriving, she had to 
 carve and be agreeable to her table ; not to hear the growls of 
 the discontented (and at what table-d'hote are there not grum- 
 blers ?) ; to have a word for everybody present ; a smile and 
 a laugh for Mrs. Bunch (with whom there had been very likely 
 a dreadful row in the morning) ; a remark for the Colonel ; a 
 polite phrase for the General's lady ; and even a good word 
 and compliment for sulky iVuguste, who just before dinner-time 
 had unfolded the napkin of mutiny about his wages. 
 
 Was not this enough work for a woman to do ? To conduct 
 a great house without sufficient money, and make soup, fish, 
 roasts, and half a dozen entre'es out of wind as it were ? to con- 
 jure up wine in piece and by the dozen ? to laugh and joke 
 without the least gayety ? to receive scorn, abuse, rebuffs, inso- 
 lence, with gay good-humor ? and then to go to bed wearied 
 at night, and have to think about figures and that dreadful, 
 dreadful sum in arithmetic — given 5/. to pay 61. ? Lady Mac- 
 beth is supposed to have been a resolute woman : and great.
 
 332 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 tall, loud, hectoring females are set to represent the character, 
 I say No. She was a weak woman. She began to walk in hel 
 sleep, and blab after one disagreeable little incident had oc- 
 curred in her house. She broke down, and got all the people 
 away from her own table in the most abrupt and clumsy man- 
 ner, because that drivelling, epileptic husband of hers fancied he 
 saw a ghost. In Lady Smolensk's place Madame de Macbeth 
 would have broken down in a week, and Smolensk lasted for 
 years. If twenty gibbering ghosts had come to the boarding- 
 house dinner, madame would have gone on carving her dishes, 
 and smiling and helping the live guests, the paying guests ) 
 leaving the dead guests to gibber away and help themselves. 
 " My poor father had to keep up appearances," Phil would say, 
 recounting these things in after days ; " but how ? You know 
 he always looked as if he was going to be hung." Smolensk 
 was the gayest of the gay always. That widow would have 
 tripped up to her funeral pile and kissed her hands to her friends 
 with a smiling " Bon jour ! " 
 
 " Pray, who was Monsieur de Smolensk ? " asks a simple 
 lady who may be listening to our friend's narrative. 
 
 " Ah, my dear lady ! there was a pretty disturbance in the 
 house when that question came to be mooted, I promise you,^' 
 says our friend, laughing, as he recounts his adventures. And, 
 after all, what does it matter to you and me and this story who 
 Smolensk was .'' I am sure this poor lady had hardships enough 
 in her life campaign, and that Ney himself could not have faced 
 fortune with a constancy more heroical. 
 
 Well. When the Bayneses first came to her house, I tell 
 you Smolensk and all round her smiled, and our friends thought 
 they were landed in a real rosy Elysium in the Champs of that 
 name. Madame had a C/iarfick d V Itidieiinc prepared in com- 
 pliment to her guests. She had had many Indians in her estab- 
 lishment. She adored Indians. N'\'tait ce la polygamie — they 
 were most estimable people the Hindus. Surtout, she adored 
 Indian shawls. That of Madame la G(fnerale was ravishing. 
 The company at Madame's was pleasant. The Honorable Mrs. 
 Boldero was a dashing woman of fashion and respectability, 
 who had lived in the best world — it was easy to see that. The 
 young ladies' duets were very striking. The Honorable Mr. 
 Boldero was away shooting in Scotland at his brother. Lord 
 Strongitharm's, and would take Gaberlunzie Castle and the 
 duke's on his way south. Mrs. Baynes did not know T^ady 
 Kstridge, the ambassadress ? When the Estridges returned 
 from Chantilly, the Honorable Mrs. B. would be delighted to
 
 MORNING GREETINGS.
 
 ON HIS WA Y THROUGH THE WORLD. 333 
 
 introduce her. " Your pretty girl's name is Cliarlotte ? So is 
 Lady Estridge's — and very nearly as tall ; — fine girls the 
 Estridges ; fine long necks — large feet — but your girl, Lady 
 Baynes, has beautiful feet. Lady Baynes, I said ? Well, you 
 must be Lady Baynes soon. The General must be a K.C.B. 
 after his services. What, you know Lord Trim 1 He will, and 
 must, do it for you. If not, my brother Strongitharm shall." 
 I have no doubt Mrs. Baynes was greatly elated by the atten- 
 tions of Lord Strongitharm's sister ; and looked him out in the 
 Peerage, where his Lordship's arms, pedigree, and residence of 
 Gaberlunzie Castle are duly recorded. The Honorable Mrs, 
 Boldero's daughters, the Misses Minna and Brenda Boldero, 
 played some rattling sonatas on a piano which was a good deal 
 fatigued by their exertions, for the young ladies' hands were 
 very powerful. And madame said, "Thank you," with her 
 sweetest smile ; and Auguste handed about on a silver tray — I 
 say silver, so that the convenances may not be wounded — well, 
 say silver that was blushing to find itself copper — handed up 
 on a tray a white drink which make the Baynes boys cry out, 
 " I say, mother, what's this beastly thing ? " On which madame, 
 with the sweetest smile, appealed to the company, and said, 
 " They love orgeat, these dear infants ! " and resumed her 
 picquet with old M. Bidois — that odd old gentleman in the long 
 brown coat, with the red ribbon, who took so much snuff and 
 blew his nose so often and so loudly. One, two, three rattling 
 sonatas Minna and Brenda played ; Mr. Clancy, of Trinity 
 College, Dublin (M. de Clanci, madame called him), turning 
 over the leaves, and presently being persuaded to sing some 
 Irish melodies for the ladies, I don't think Miss Charlotte 
 Baynes listened to the music much. vShe was listening to 
 another music, wliich she and Mr. Firmin were performing 
 together. Oh, how pleasant that music used to be ! There 
 was a sameness in it, I dare say, but still it was pleasant to hear 
 the air over again. The pretty little duet a, qi/atre mains, where 
 the hands cross over, and hop up and down the keys, and the 
 heads get so close, so close. Oh, duets, oh, regrets ! Psha ! 
 no more of this. Go down stairs, old dotard. Take your hat 
 and umbrella and go walk by the sea-shore, and whistle a 
 toothless old solo, " These are our quiet nights," whispers M. 
 de Clanci to the Baynes ladies, when the evening draws to an 
 end, '• Madame's Thursdays are, I promise ye, much more 
 fully attended." Good night, good-night. A squeeze of a little 
 hand, a hearty hand-shake from papa and mamma, and Philip is 
 striding through the dark Elysian fields and over the Place of
 
 234 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 Concord to his lodgings in llie Faubourg St. Germain. Or, 
 stay ! What is that glowworm beaming by the wall opposite 
 Madame de Smolensk's house? — a glowworm that wafts an 
 aromatic incense and odor .? I do believe it is Mr. Philip's 
 cigar. And he is watching, watching a window by which a 
 slim figure flits now and again. Then darkness falls on the 
 little window. The sweet eyes are closed. Oh, blessings, 
 blessings be upon them ! The stars shine overhead. And 
 homeward stalks Mr. Firmin, talking to himself, and brandish- 
 ing a great stick. 
 
 I wish that poor Madame Smolensk could sleep as well as 
 the people in her house. But care, with the. cold feet, gets 
 under the coverlid, and says, " Here I am ; you know that bill 
 is coming due to-morrow." Ah, atra cura ! can't you leave the 
 poor thing a little quiet ? Hasn't she had work enough all 
 day? 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 COURSE OF TRUE LOVE. 
 
 We beg the gracious reader to remember that Mr. Philip's 
 business at Paris was only with a weekly London paper as yet ; 
 and hence that he had on his hands a great deal of leisure. 
 He could glance over the state of Europe ; give the latest 
 news from the salons, imparted to him, I do believe, for the 
 most part, by some brother hireling scribes ; be present at all 
 the theatres by deputy : and smash Louis Philippe or Mes- 
 sieurs Guizot and Thiers in a few easily turned paragraphs, 
 which cost but a very few hours' labor to that bold and rapid 
 pen. A wholesome though humiliating thought it must be to 
 great and learned public writers, that their eloquent sermons 
 are but for the day ; and that, having read what the philoso- 
 phers say on Tuesday or Wednesday, we think about their yes- 
 terday's sermons or essays no more. A score of years hence, 
 men will read the papers of 1861 for the occurrences narrated 
 — births, marriages, bankruptcies, elections, murders, deaths, 
 and so forth ; and not for the leading articles. " Though 
 there was some of my letters," Mr. Philip would say, in after 
 times, "that I fondly fancied the world would not willingly let
 
 OiV HIS WAY rilROUGII THE WORLD. t^t^^ 
 
 die. I wanted to have them or see them reprinted in a vol- 
 ume, but I could find no publisher willing to undertake the 
 risk. A fond being, who fancies there is genius in every- 
 thing I say or write, would have had me reprint my letters to 
 the Fall Mall Gazette ; but I was too timid, or she, perhaps, 
 was too confident. The letters never were republished. Let 
 them pass." They Jiave passed. And he sighs, in mentioning 
 this circumstance ; and I think tries to persuade himself, r^fther 
 than others, that he is an unrecognized genius. 
 
 " And then, you know," he pleads, " 1 was in love, sir, and 
 spending all my days at Omphale's knees. I didn't do jus- 
 tice to my powers. If I had had a daily paper, I still think I 
 might have made a good public writer ; and that I had the 
 stulT in me — the stuff in me, sir ! " 
 
 The truth is that, if he had had a daily paper, and ten 
 times as much work as fell to his lot, Mr. Philip would have 
 found means of pursuing his inclination, as he ever through 
 life has done. The being whom a young man wishes to see, he 
 sees. What business is superior to that of seeing her ? 'Tis a 
 little Hellespontine matter keeps Leander from his Hero ? He 
 would die rather than not see her. Had he swum out of that 
 difficulty on that stormy night, and carried on a few months 
 later, it might have been, " Beloved ! my cold and rheumatism 
 are so severe that the doctor says I must not think of cold 
 bathing at night ; " or, " Dearest ! we have a party at tea, 
 and you mustn't expect your ever fond Lambda to-night," and 
 so forth, and so forth. But in the heat of his passion water 
 could not stay him ; tempests could not frighten him ; and in 
 one of them he went down, while poor Hero's lamp was twink- 
 ling and spending its best fiame in vain. So Philip came from 
 Sestos to Abydos daily — across one of the bridges, and paying 
 a halfpenny toll very likely — and, late or early, poor little 
 Charlotte's virgin lamps were lighted in her e3^es, and watching 
 for him. 
 
 Philip made many sacrifices, mind you : sacrifices which 
 all men are not in the habit of making. When Lord Ring- 
 wood was in Paris, twice, thrice he refused to dine with his 
 lordship, until that nobleman smelt a rat, as the saying is — and 
 said, " Well, youngster, I suppose you are going where there is 
 metal more attractive. When you come to twelve lustres, my 
 boy, you'll find vanity and vexation in that sort of thing, and a 
 good dinner better, and cheaper, too, than the best of them." 
 And when some of Philip's rich college friends met him in his 
 exile, and asked him to the " Rocher "' or the " Trois Freres,"
 
 336 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 he would break away from those banquets ; and as fur meeting 
 at those feasts doubtful comiDanions, whom young men will 
 sometimes invite to their entertainments, Philip turned from 
 such with scorn and anger. His virtue was loud, and he pro- 
 claimed it loudly. He expected little Charlotte to give him 
 credit for it, and told her of his self-denial. And she believed 
 anything he said ; and delighted in everything he wrote ; and 
 copied out his articles for the Fall Mall Gazette ; and treas- 
 ured his poems in her desk of desks : and there never was in 
 all Sestos, in all Abydos, in all Europe, in all Asia Minor or 
 Asia Major, such a noble creature as Leander, Hero thought ; 
 never, never ! I hope, young ladies, you may all have a Lean- 
 der on his way to the tower where the light of your love is 
 burning steadfastly. I hope, young gentlemen, you have each 
 of you a beacon in sight, and may meet with no mishap in 
 swimming to it. 
 
 From my previous remarks regarding Mrs. Baynes, the 
 reader has been made aware that the General's wife was no 
 more faultless than the rest of her fellow-creatures ; and having 
 already candidly informed the public that the writer and his 
 family were no favorites of this lady, I have now the pleasing 
 duty of recording my own opinions regarding her. Mrs. Gen- 
 eral B. was an early riser. She was a frugal woman ; fond of 
 her young, or, let us say, anxious to provide for their mainten- 
 ance ; and here, with my best compliments, I think the catalogue 
 of her good qualities is ended. She had a bad, violent tem- 
 per ; a disagreeable person, attired in very bad taste ; a shriek- 
 ing voice ; and two manners, the respectful and the patroniz- 
 ing, which were both alike odious. When she ordered Baynes 
 to marry her, gracious powers ! why did he not run away ? 
 Who dared first to say that marriages are made in heaven ? 
 We know that there are not only blunders, but roguery in the 
 marriage office. Do not mistakes occur every day, and are not 
 the wrong people coupled ? Had heaven anything to do with 
 the bargain by which young Miss Blushrose was sold to old 
 Mr. Hoarfrost ? Did heaven order Miss Tripper to throw over 
 poor Tom Spooner, and marry the wealthy Mr. Bung? You may 
 as well say that horses are sold in heaven, as you know, are 
 groomed, are doctored, are chanted on to the market, and war- 
 ranted by dexterous horse-vendors as possessing every quality 
 of blood, pace, temper, age. Against these Mr. Greenhorn 
 has his remedy sometimes ; but against a mother who sells you 
 a warranted daughter, what remedy is there ? You have been 
 jockeyed by false representations into bidding for the Cecilia,
 
 OIV HIS WA Y THROUGH THE WORLD. 337 
 
 and the animal is yours for life. She shies, kicks, stumbles, 
 has an infernal temper, is a crib-biter — and she was warranted 
 to you by her mother as the most perfect, good-tempered crea- 
 ture, whom the most timid might manage ! You have bought 
 her. She is yours. Heaven bless you ! Take her home, and 
 be miserable for the rest of your days. You have no redress. 
 You have done the deed. Marriages were made in heaven, 
 you know ; and in yours you were as much sold as Moses 
 Primrose was when he bought the gross of green spectacles. 
 
 I don't think poor General Baynes ever had a proper sense 
 of his situation, or knew how miserable he ought by rights to 
 have been. He w-as not uncheerful at times : a silent man, 
 liking his rubber and his glass of wine ; a very weak person in 
 the common affairs of life, as his best friends must own ; but, 
 as I have heard, a very tiger in action. " I know your opinion 
 of the General," Philip used to say to me, in his grandiloquent 
 way. "You despise men who don't bully their wives ; you do, 
 sir ! You think the General weak, I know, I know. Other 
 brave men were so about w-omen, as I dare say you have heard. 
 This man, so weak at home, was mighty on the war-path ; and 
 in his wigwam are the scalps of countless warriors." 
 
 " In his wig what ? " say I. The truth is, on his meek 
 head the General wore a little curling chestnut top-knot, which 
 looked very queer and out of place over that wrinkled and 
 war-worn face. 
 
 " If you choose to laugh at your joke, pray do," says Phil, 
 majestically. " I make a noble image of a warrior. You 
 prefer a barber's pole. Bo7i ! Pass me the wine. The vet- 
 eran whom I hope to salute as father ere long — the soldier of 
 twenty battles ; — who saw my own brave grandfather die at his 
 side — die at Busaco, by George ; you_ laugh at on account of 
 his wig. It's a capital joke." And here Phil scowled and 
 slapped the table, and passed his hand across his eyes, as 
 though the death of his grandfather, which occurred long be- 
 fore Philip was born, caused him a very serious pang of grief. 
 Philip's newspaper business brought him to London on occa- 
 sions. I think it was on one of these visits that we had our 
 talk about General Baynes. And it was at the same time 
 Philip described the boarding-house to us, and its inmates, and 
 the landlady, and the doings there. 
 
 For that struggling landlady, as for all women in distress, 
 our friend had a great sympathy and liking ; and she returned 
 Philip's kindness by being very good to Mademoiselle Char- 
 lotte, and very forbearing with the General's wife and hisothei 
 
 22
 
 338 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 children. The appetites of those little ones were frightful, the 
 temper of Madame la Generale was almost intolerable, but 
 Charlotte was an angel, and the General was a mutton — a true 
 mutton. Her own father had been so. The brave are often 
 muttons at home. I suspect that, though Madame could have 
 made but little profit by the General's family, his monthly pay- 
 ments were very welcome to her meagre little exchequer, 
 " Ah ! if all my locataires were like him ! " sighed the poor 
 lady. "That Madame Boldero, whom the Generaless treats 
 always as Honorable, I wish I was as sure of her ! And others 
 again ! " 
 
 I never kept a boarding-house, but I am sure there must be 
 many painful duties attendant on that profession. What can 
 you do if a lady or gentleman doesn't pay his bill ? Turn him 
 or her out? Perhaps the very thing that lady or gentleman 
 would desire. They go. Those trunks which you have insanely 
 detained, and about which you have made a fight and a scandal, 
 do not contain a hundred francs' worth of goods, and your debt- 
 ors never come back again. You do not like to have a row in 
 a boarding-house any more than you would like to have a party 
 with scarlet fever in your best bedroom. The scarlet-fever 
 party stays, and the other boarders go away. What, you ask, 
 do I mean by this mystery ? I am sorry to have to give up 
 names, and titled names, I am sorry to say the Honorable 
 Mrs. Boldero did not pay her bills. She was waiting for remit- 
 tances, which the Honorable lioldero was dreadfully remiss in 
 sending. A dreadful man ! He was still at his Lordship's at 
 Gaberlunzie Castle, shooting the wild deer and hunting the roe. 
 And though the Honorable Mrs. B.'s heart was in the High- 
 lands, of course how could she join her Highland chief without 
 the money to pay Madame ? The Highlands, indeed ! One 
 dull day it came out that the Honorable Boldero was amusing 
 himself in the Highlands of Hesse Honiburg ■ and engaged in 
 the dangerous sport which is to be had in the green plains 
 about Loch Badenbadenoch ! 
 
 " Did you ever hear of such depravity ? The woman is a 
 desperate and unprincipled adventuress ! I wonder Madame 
 dares to put me and my children and my General down at table 
 with such people as those, Philip ! " cries Madame laGdndrale, 
 " I mean those opposite — that woman and her two daughters 
 who haven't paid madame a shilling for three months-— who 
 owes me five hundred francs, which she borrowed until next 
 Tuesday, expecting a remittance — a pretty remittance indeed — 
 from Lord Strongitharm, Lord Strongitharm, I dare say ! And
 
 ON HIS WA Y THROUGH THE WORLD. 335 
 
 she pretends to be most intimate at the embassy ; and that she 
 would introduce us there, and at the Tuileries : and she told 
 me Lady Garterton had the small-pox in the house ; and when 
 I said all ours had been vaccinated, and I didn't mind, she 
 fobbed me off with some other excuse ; and it's my belief that 
 the woman's a humbug. Overhear me ! I don't care if she 
 does overhear me. No. You may look as much as you like, my 
 Honorable Mrs. Boldero ; and I don't care if you do overhear 
 me. Ogoost ! Pomdytare pour le Generale ! How tough 
 madame's boof is, and it's boof, boof, boof every day, till I'm 
 sick of boof. Ogoost ! why don't you attend to my children ? " 
 And so forth. 
 
 By this report of the worthy woman's conversation, you will 
 see that the friendship which had sprung up between the two 
 ladies had come to an end, in consequence of painful pecuniary 
 disputes between them ; that to keep a boarding-house can't be 
 a very pleasant occupation ; and that even to dine in a board- 
 ing-house must be only bad fun when the company is frightened 
 and dull, and when there are two old women at table ready to 
 fling the dishes at each other's fronts. At the period of which 
 I now write, I jjromise you, there was very little of the piano- 
 duet business going on after dinner. In the first place, every- 
 body knew the girls' pieces ; and when they began, Mrs. General 
 Baynes would lift up a voice louder than the jingling old instru- 
 ment, thumped j\Iinna and Bi'enda ever so loudly. " Perfect 
 strangers to me, Mr. Clancy, I assure you. Had I known her, 
 you don't suppose I would have lent her the money. Honorable 
 Mrs. Boldero, indeed ! Five weeks she has owed me five 
 hundred frongs. Bong swor, Monseiur Bidois ! Sang song 
 frong pas payy encor ! Prommy pas payy ! " Fancy, I say, 
 what a dreary life that must have been at the select boarding- 
 house, where these two parties were doing battle daily after 
 dinner ! Fancy, at the select sorie'es, the General's lady seizing 
 upon one guest after another, and calling out her wrongs, and 
 pointing to the wrong-doer ; and poor Madame Smolensk, 
 smirking and smiling, and flying from one end of the salon to 
 the other, and thanking M. Pivoine for his charming romance, 
 and M. Brumm for his admirable performance on the violon- 
 cello, and even asking those poor Miss Bolderos to perform 
 their duet — for her heart melted towards them. Not ignorant 
 of evil, she had learned to succor the miserable. She knew 
 what poverty was, and had to coax scowling duns, and wheedle 
 vulgar creditors. " Tenez, Monsieur Philippe," she said, " the 
 Generale is too cruel. There are others here who might com-
 
 340 
 
 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 plain, and are silent." Philip felt all this ; the conduct of his 
 future mother-in-law filled him with dismay and horror. And 
 sometime after these remarkable circumstances, he told me, 
 blushing as he spoke, a humiliating secret. " Do you know, 
 sir," says he, "that that autumn 1 made a pretty good thing out 
 of it with one thing or another. I did my work for the Pall 
 Mall Gazette : and Smith of the Daily J7itdligc?iccr, wanting a 
 month's holiday, gave me his letter and ten francs a day. And 
 at that very time I met Redman, who had owed me twenty 
 pounds ever since we were at college, and who was just coming 
 back flush from Homburg, and paid me. Well, now. Swear 
 you won't tell. Swear on your faith as a Christian man ! With 
 this money I went, sir, privily to Mrs. Boldero. I said if she 
 would pay the dragon — I mean Mrs. Baynes — I would lend her 
 the money. And I did lend her the money, and the Boldero 
 never paid back Mrs. Baynes. Don't mention it. Promise me 
 you won't tell Mrs. Baynes. I never expected to get Redman's 
 money, you know, and am no worse off than before. One day 
 of the Grandes Eaux w-e went to Versailles, I think, and the 
 Honorable Mrs. Boldero gave us the slip. She left the poor 
 girls behind her in pledge, who, to do them justice, cried and 
 were in a dreadful way ; and when Mrs. Baynes, on her return, 
 began shrieking about her ' sang song frong,' Madame Smolensk 
 fairly lost patience for once, and said, ' Mais, Madame, vous 
 nous fatiguez, avec vos cinq cent francs;' on which the other 
 muttered something about 'Ansolong,' but was briskly taken 
 up by her husband, who said, ' By George, Eliza, madame is 
 quite right. And I wish the fi^•e hundred francs were in the 
 
 sea.' " 
 
 Thus, you understand, if Mrs. General Baynes thought some 
 people were "stuck-up people," some people can — and hereby 
 do by these presents — pay off Mrs. Baynes, by furnishing the 
 public with a candid opinion of that lady's morals, manners, 
 and character. How could such a shrewd woman be dazzled 
 so repeatedly by ranks and titles ? There used to dine at 
 Madame Smolensk's boarding-house a certain German baron, 
 with a large finger ring, upon a dingy finger, towards whom the 
 lady was pleased to cast the eye of fa\-or, and who chose to fall 
 in love with her pretty daughter ; young Mr. Clancy, the Irish 
 poet, was also smitten with the charms of the fair young lady ; 
 and this intrepid mother encouraged both suitors, to the un- 
 speakable agonies of Philip Firmin, who felt often that whilst 
 he was away at his work these inmates of Madame Smolensk's 
 house were near his charmer — at her side at lunch, ever hand-
 
 ON HIS WA Y THROUGH THE WORLD. 341 
 
 hig her the cup at breakfast, on the watch for her when slie 
 walked forth in the garden ; and 1 take the pangs of jealousy 
 to have formed a part of those unspeakable sufferings which 
 Philip said he endured in the house whither he came courting. 
 
 Little Charlotte, in one or two of her letters to her friends 
 in Queen Square, London, meekly complained of Philip's ten- 
 dency to jealousy. " Does he think, after knowing him, I can 
 think of these horrid men ?" she asked. " I don't understand 
 what Mr. Clancy is talking about, when he comes to me with 
 his ' pomes and potry ; ' and who can read poetry like Philip 
 himself.'' Then the German baron — who does not call e\en 
 himself baron : it is mamma who will insist upon calling him so 
 — has such very dirty things, and smells so of cigars, that I don't 
 like to come near him. Philip smokes too, but his cigars are 
 quite pleasant. Ah, dear friend, how could he ever think such 
 men as these were to be put in comparaison with him ! And 
 he scolds so ; and scowls at the poor men in the evening when 
 he comes ! and his temper is so high ! Do say a word to him 
 — quite cautiously and gently, you know — in behalf of your 
 fondly attached and most happy — only he v/ill make me un- 
 happy sometimes ; but you'll prevent him, won't you ? — Char- 
 lotte B." 
 
 I could fancy Philip hectoring through the. part of Othello, 
 and his poor young Desdemona not a little frightened at his 
 black humors. Such sentiments as Mr. Philip felt strongly, he 
 expressed with an uproar. Charlotte's correspondent, as usual, 
 made light of these little domestic confidences and grievances. 
 "Women don't dislike a jealous scolding," she said. " It may 
 be rather tiresome, but it is always a compliment. Some hus- 
 bands think so well of themselves, that they can't condescend 
 to be jealous." "Yes," I sa}^, "women prefer to have tyrants 
 over them. A scolding you think is a mark of attention. 
 Hadn't you better adopt the Russian system at once, and go 
 out and buy me a whip, and present it to me with a curtse}', 
 and your compliments ; and a meek prayer that I should use it." 
 " Present you a whip ! present you a goose ! " says the lady, 
 who encourages scolding in other husbands, it seems, but won't 
 suffer a word from her own. 
 
 Both disputants had set their sentimental hearts on the mar- 
 riage of this young man and this young woman. Little Char- 
 lotte's heart was so bent on the match, that it would break, we 
 fancied, if she were disappointed ; and in her mother's beha- 
 vior we felt, from the knovyledge we had of the woman's dispo- 
 sition, there was a serious cause for alarm. Should a better
 
 342 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 offer present itself, Mrs. Baynes, we feared, would fling over 
 poor riiilip : or it was in reason and nature, tliat he would come 
 to a quarrel with her, and in the course of the pitched battle 
 which must ensue between them, he would fire off expressions 
 mortally injurious. Are there not many peoiole, in every one's 
 acquaintance, who as soon as they have made a bargain, repent 
 of it ? Philip, as " preserver " of General Baynes, in the first 
 fervor of family gratitude for that act of self-sacrifice on the 
 young man's part, was very well. But gratitude wears out ; or 
 suppose a woman says, " It is my duty to my child to recall my 
 word ; and not allow her to fling herself away on a beggar." 
 Suppose that you and I, strongly incline to do a mean action, 
 get a good, available, and moral motive for it ? I trembled for 
 poor Philip's course of true love, and little Charlotte's chances, 
 when these surmises crossed my mind. There was a hope still 
 in the honor and gratitude of General Baynes. He would not 
 desert his young friend and benefactor. Now General Baynes 
 was a brave man of war, and so was John of Marlborough a 
 brave man of war ; but it is certain that both were afraid of 
 their wives. 
 
 We have said by whose invitation and encouragement Gen- 
 eral Baynes was induced to bring his family to the boarding- 
 house at Paris ;. the instigation, namely, of his friend and com- 
 panion in arms, the gallant Colonel Bunch. When the Baynes 
 family arrived, the Bunches were on the steps of madame's 
 house, waving a welcome to the new-comers. It was, " Here 
 we are, Bunch, my boy." " Glad to see you, Baynes. Right 
 well you're looking, and so's Mrs. B." And the General replies, 
 "And so are you. Bunch ; and so do jv«, Mrs. B." " How do, 
 boys ? How d'you do. Miss Charlotte ? Come to show the 
 Paris fellows what a pretty girl is, hey? Blooming like a rose, 
 Baynes ! " " I'm telling the General," cries the Colonel to the 
 General's lady, " the girl's the very image of her mother." In 
 this case poor Charlotte must have looked like a yellow rose, 
 for Mrs. Baynes was of a bilious temperament and complexion, 
 whereas Miss Charlotte was as fresh pink and white as — what 
 shall we say ? — as the very freshest strawberries mingled with 
 the very nicest cream. 
 
 The two old soldiers were of very great comfort to one 
 another. They toddled down to Galignani's together daily, 
 and read the papers there. They went and looked at the 
 reviews in the Carrousel, and once or twice to the Champ de 
 Mars : — recognizing here and there the numbers of the Regi 
 ments against which they had been engaged in the famous an-
 
 ON HIS WA V THROUGH THE WORLD. 
 
 343 
 
 cient wars. They did not brag in the least about their achieve- 
 ments, they winked and understood each other. They got their 
 old uniforms out of their old boxes, and took a voiturc dera?nse, 
 by Jove ! and went to be presented to Louis Philippe. They 
 bought a catalogue, and went to the Louvre, and wagged their 
 honest old heads before the pictures ; and, I dare say, winked 
 and nudged each other's brave old sides at some of the nymphs 
 in the statue gallery. They went out to Versailles with their 
 families ; loyally stood treat to the ladies at the restaurateur's. 
 (Bunch had taken down a memorandum in his pocket-book 
 from Benyon, who had been the duke's aide-de-camp in the 
 last campaign, to " go to Beauvillier's," only Beauvillier's had 
 been shut up for twenty years.) They took their families and 
 Charlotte to the Theatre Fran^ais, to a tragedy ; and they had 
 books : and they said it was the most confounded nonsense 
 they ever saw in their lives ; and I am bound to say that Bunch, 
 in the back of the box, snored so, that, though in retirement, 
 he created quite a sensation. " Corneal," he owns, was too 
 much for him : give him Shakespeare : give him John Kemble : 
 give him IMrs. Siddons : give him Mrs. Jordan. But as for this 
 sort of thing ? " I think our play days are over, Baynes, — 
 hey .-" " And I also believe that Miss Charlotte Baynes, whose 
 knowledge of the language was imperfect as yet, was very much 
 bewildered during the tragedy, and could give but an imperfect 
 account of it. But then Philip Firmin was in the orchestra 
 stalls ; and had he not sent three bouquets for the three ladies, 
 regretting that he could not come to see somebody in the Champs 
 Elyse'es, because it was his post day, and he must write his 
 letter for the Pall Mall Gazette? There he was, her Cid ; her 
 peerless champion : and to give up father and mother for him f 
 our little Chimene thought such a sacrifice not too difficult. 
 After that dismal attempt at the theatre, the experiment was 
 not repeated. The old gentlemen preferred their whist to those 
 pompous Alexandrines sung through the nose, which Colonel 
 Bunch, a facetious little Colonel, used to imitate, and, I am 
 given to understand, very badly. 
 
 The good gentlemen's ordinary amusement was a game at 
 cards after dinner ; and they compared Madame's to an East 
 Indian ship, quarrels and all. Sarah went on just in that way 
 on board the " Burrumpooter." Always rows about prece- 
 dence, and the services, and the deuce knows what. Women 
 always will. Sarah Bunch went on in that way : and Eliza 
 Baynes also went on in that way ; but I should think, from the 
 most trustworthy information, that Eliza was worse than Sarah.
 
 344 "^HE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 " About any person with a title, that woman will make a 
 fool of herself to the end of the chapter," remarked Sarah of 
 her friend. " Voii remember how she used to go on at Lar- 
 rackpore about that little shrimp, Stony Battersby, because he 
 was an Irish viscount's son ? See how sJie flings herself at the 
 head of this Mrs. Boldero, — with her airs, and her paint, and 
 her black front ! I can't bear the woman ! I know she has 
 not paid madame. I know she is no better than she should 
 be — and to see Eliza T5aynes coaxing her, and sidling up to 
 her, and flattering her ; — it's too bad, that it is ! A woman 
 who ow'^s ever so much to madame ! a woman who doesn't pay 
 her washerwoman ! " 
 
 " Just like the ' Burrumpooter ' over again, my dear," cries 
 Colonel Bunch. " You and Eliza Baynes were always quarrel- 
 ling, that's the fact. Why did you ask her to come here ? I 
 knew you would begin again, as soon as you met." And the 
 truth was that these ladies were always fighting and making up 
 again. 
 
 " So you and Mrs. Bunch were old acquaintances ? " asked 
 Mrs. Boldero of her new friend. " My dear Mrs. Baynes ! 1 
 should hardly have thought it : your manners are so different' 
 Your friend, if I may be so free as to speak, has the camp 
 manner. You have not the camp manner at all. I should 
 have thought you — excuse me the phrase, but I'm so open, and 
 always speak my mind out — you haven't the camp manner at 
 all. You seem as if you were one of us. Minna ! doesn't Mrs. 
 
 Baynes put you in mind of Lady Hm .^ " (The name is 
 
 inaudible, in consequence of Mrs. Boldero's exceeding .shyness 
 in mentioning names — but the girls see the likeness to dear 
 
 Lady Hm at once.) " And when you bring your dear girl 
 
 to London you'll know the lady I mean, and judge for )'our 
 self. I assure you I am not disparaging you, my dear Mrs. 
 Baynes, in comparing you to her ! " 
 
 And so the conversation goes on. If Mrs. Major Mac- 
 Whirter at Tours chose to betray secrets, she could give ex- 
 tracts from her sister's letters to show how profound was the 
 impression created in Mrs. General Baynes's mind by the pro 
 fessions and conversations of the Scotch lady. 
 
 " Didn't the General shoot and love deer-stalking 1 The 
 dear General must come to Gaberlunzie Castle, where she 
 would promise him a Highland welcome. Her brother 
 Strongitharm was the most amiable of men ; adored her and 
 her girls : there was talk even of marrying Minna to the Cap- 
 tain, but she, for her part, could not endure the marriage of
 
 ON HIS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD 345 
 
 first-cousins. There was a tradition against such marriages in 
 their family. Of three Bolderos and Strongitharms who mar- 
 ried their first-cousins, one was drowned in Gaberlunzie lake 
 three weeks after the marriage ; one lost his wife by a gallop- 
 ing consumption, and died a monk at Rome ; and the third 
 married a fortnight before the battle of Culloden, where he was 
 slain at the head of the Strongitharms. Mrs, Baynes had no 
 idea of the splendor of Gaberlunzie Castle ; seventy bedrooms 
 and thirteen company-rooms, besides the picture-gallery ! In 
 Edinburgh, the Strongitharm had the right to wear his bonnet 
 in the presence of his sovereign." " A bonnet ! how very odd, 
 my dear ! But with ostrich plumes, I dare say it may look 
 well, especially as the Highlanders wear frocks, too." " Lord 
 Strongitharm had no house in London, having almost ruined 
 himself in building his princely castle in the North. Mrs. 
 Baynes must come there and meet their noble relatives and all 
 the Scottish nobility." " Nor do / care about these vanities, 
 my dear, but to bring my sweet Charlotte into the world : is it 
 not a mother's duty .'' " 
 
 Nor only to her sister, but likewise to Charlotte's friends of 
 Queen Square, did Mrs. Baynes impart this delightful news. 
 But this is in the first ardor of the friendship which arises 
 between Mrs. Baynes and Mrs. Boldero, and before those 
 unpleasant money disputes of which we have spoken. 
 
 Afterwards, when the two ladies have quarrelled regarding 
 the memorable " sang song frong," I think Mrs. Bunch came 
 round to Mrs. Boldero's side. " Eliza Baynes is too hard on 
 her. It is too cruel to insult her before those two unhappy 
 daughters. The woman is an odious woman, and a vulgar 
 woman, and a schemer, and I always said so. But to box her 
 ears before her daughters — her honorable friend of last week ! 
 it's a shame of Eliza ! " 
 
 " My dear, you'd better tell her so ! " says Bunch, drily. 
 "But if you do, tell her when I'm out of the way, please!" 
 And accordingly, one day when the two old officers return from 
 their stroll, Mrs. Bunch informs the Colonel that she has had 
 it out with Eliza ; and Mrs. Baynes, with a heated face, tells the 
 General that she and Mrs. Colonel Bunch have quarrelled ; and 
 she is determined it shall be for the last time. So that poor 
 Madame de Smolensk has to interpose between Mrs. Baynes 
 and Mrs. Boldero ; between Mrs. Baynes and Mrs. Bunch , 
 and to sit surrounded by glaring eyes, and hissing inuendoes, 
 and in the midst of feuds unhealable. Of course, from the 
 women the quarrelling will spread to the gentlemen. That
 
 346 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 always happens. Poor maclame trembles. Again Bunch gives 
 his neighbor his word that it is like the " Burrumpooter '* East 
 Indiaman — the " Burrumpooter" in very bad weather, too. 
 
 " At any rate, lue won't be lugged into it, Baynes, my boy ! " 
 says the Colonel, who is of a sanguine temperament, to his 
 friend, 
 
 " Hey, hey ! don't be too sure. Bunch ; don't be too sure," 
 sighs the other veteran, who, it may be, is of a more despond- 
 ing turn, as, after a battle at luncheon, in which the Amazons 
 were fiercely engaged, the two old warriors take their walk to 
 Galignani's. 
 
 Towards his Charlotte's relatives poor Philip was respectful 
 by duty and a sense of interest, perhaps. Before marriage, 
 especially, men are very kind to the relatives of the beloved 
 object. They pay compliments to mamma ; they listen to papa's 
 old stories, and laugh appositely ; they bring presents for the 
 innocent young ones, and let the little brothers kick their shins, 
 Philip endured the juvenile Bayneses very kindly; he took the 
 boys to Franconi's, and made his conversation as suitable as he 
 could to the old people. He was fond of the old General, a 
 simple and worthy old man j and had, as we have said, a hearty 
 sympathy and respect for Madame Smolensk, admiring her 
 constancy and good-humor under her many trials. But those 
 who have pursued his memoirs are aware that Mr. Firmin could 
 make himself, on occasions, not a little disagreeable. When 
 sprawling on a sofa, engaged in conversation with his charmer, 
 he would not budge when other ladies entered the room. He 
 scowled at them, if he did not like them. He was not at the 
 least trouble to conceal his likes or dislikes. He had a manner 
 of fixing his glass in his eye, putting his thumbs into the arm- 
 holes of his waistcoat, and talking and laughing very loudly at 
 his own jokes or conceits, which was not pleasant or respectful 
 to ladies. 
 
 " Your loud young friend, with the cracked boots, is very 
 fnauvais fan, my dear Mrs. Baynes," Mrs. Boldero remarked to 
 her new friend, in the first ardor of their friendship. " A rela- 
 ative of Lord Ringwood's, is he ? Lord Ringwood is a very 
 queer person. A son of that dreadful Dr, Firmin, who ran 
 away after cheating everybody ? Poor young man ! He can't 
 help having such a father, as you say, and most good, and kind, 
 and generous of you to say so. And the General and the 
 Honorable Philip Ringwood were early companions together, 
 I dare say. But having such an unfortunate father as Dr. 
 Firmin, I think Mr. Firmin might be a little less prononce;
 
 ON JI/S IVA Y THROUGH THE WORLD. 
 
 347 
 
 don't you ? And to see him in cracked boots, sprawling over 
 the sofas, and hear him, when my loves are playing their duets, 
 laughing and talking so very loud, — -I confess isn't pleasant to 
 me. I am not used to that kind of monde, nor are my dear 
 loves. You are under great obligations to him, and he has 
 behaved nobl}', you say ? Of course. To get into your society 
 an unfortunate young man will be on his best behavior, though 
 he certainly does not condescend to be civil to us. But 
 * * * * What ! that young man engaged to that lo\-ely, inno- 
 cent, charming child, your daughter ? My dear creature, you 
 frighten me ! A man, with such a father ; and, excuse me, 
 with such a manner ; and without a penny in the world, en- 
 gaged to Miss Baynes ! Goodness, powers ! It must never 
 be. It shall not be, my dear Mrs. Baynes. Why, I have 
 written to my nephew Lenox to come over, Strongitharm's 
 favorite son and my favorite nephew. I have told him that 
 there is a sweet young creature here, whom he must and ought 
 to see. How well that dear child would look presiding at 
 Strongitharm Castle ? And you are going to give her to that 
 dreadful young man with the loud voice and cracked boots — 
 that smoky young man — oh, impossible ! " 
 
 Madame had, no doubt, given a very favorable report of her 
 new lodgers to the other inmates of her house ; and she and 
 Mrs. Boldero had concluded that all general officers returning 
 from India were iinmensely rich. To think that her daughter 
 might be the Honorable Mrs. Strongitharm, Baroness Strong- 
 itharm, and walk in a coronation in robes, with a coronet in 
 her hand ! Mrs. Baynes yielded in loyalty to no woman, but I 
 fear heV wicked desires .compassed a speedy royal demise, as 
 this thought passed through her mind of the Honorable Lenox 
 Strongitharm. She looked him out in the Peerage, and found 
 that young nobleman designated as the Captain of Strongith- 
 arm. Charlotte might be the Honorable Mrs. Captain of 
 Strongitharm ! When poor Phil stalked in after dinner that 
 evening in his shabby boots and smoky paletot, Mrs. Baynes 
 gave him but a grim welcome. He went and prattled uncon- 
 sciously by the side of his little Charlotte, whose tender eyes 
 dwelt upon his, and wdiose fair cheeks flung out their blushes of 
 welcome. He prattled away. He laughed out loud whilst 
 Minna and Brenda were thumping their duet. "Taisez-vous 
 done. Monsieur Philippe," cries madame, putting her finger to 
 her lip. The Honorable Mrs. Boldero looked at dear Mrs. 
 Baynes, and shrugged her shoulders. Poor Philip ! w'ould he 
 have laughed so loudly (and so rudely, too, as I own), had he
 
 348 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 known what was passing in the minds of those women ? Treason 
 was passing there : and before that glance of knowing scorn, 
 shot froni the Honorable Mrs. Boldero's eyes, dear Mrs. Gen- 
 eral Baynes faltered. How very curt and dry she was with 
 Philip ! how testy with Charlotte ! Poor Philip, knowing that 
 his charmer was in the power of her mother, was pretty humble 
 to this dragon ; and attempted, by uncouth flatteries, to soothe 
 and propitiate her. She had a queer, dry humor, and loved a 
 joke; but Phil's fell very fiat this night. Mrs. Baynes received 
 his pleasantries with an " Oh, indeed ! She was sure she heard 
 one of the children crying in their nursery. Do, pray, go and 
 see, Charlotte, what that child is crying about." And away 
 goes poor Charlotte, having but dim presentiment of misfortune 
 as yet. Was not mamma often in an ill humor ; and were they 
 not all used to her scoldings ? 
 
 As for Mrs. Colonel Bunch, I am sorry to say that, up to 
 this time, Philip was not only no favorite with her, but was 
 heartily disliked by that lady. I have told you our friend's 
 faults. He was loud : he was abrupt : he was rude often : and 
 often gave just cause of annoyance by his laughter, his disre- 
 spect, and his swaggering manner. To those whom he liked he 
 was as gentle as a woman ; and treated them with an extreme 
 tenderness and touching rough respect. But those jDersons 
 about whom he was indifferent, he never took the least trouble 
 to conciliate or please. If they told long stories, for example, 
 he would turn on his heel, or interrupt them by observations of 
 his own on some quite different subject. Mrs. Colonel Bunch, 
 then, positively disliked that young man, and I think had very 
 good reasons for her dislike. As far Bunch, Bunch said to 
 Baynes, " Cool hand, that young fellow ! " and winked. And 
 Baynes said to Bunch, " Queer chap. Fine fellow, as I have 
 reason to know pretty well. I play a club. No club .-' I mark 
 honcri and two tricks." And the game went on. Clancy hated 
 Philip : a meek man whom yet Firmin had managed to offend. 
 "That man," the poet Clancy remarked, "has a manner of 
 treading on me corrans which is intolerable to me ! " 
 
 The truth is, Philip was always putting his foot on some 
 other foot, and trampling it. And as for the Boldero clan, Mr, 
 Firmin treated them with the most amusing insolence, and 
 ignored them as if they were out of existence altogether. So 
 you see the poor fellow had not with his poverty learned the 
 least lesson of humility, or acquired the very earliest rudiments 
 of the art of making friends. I think his best friend in the 
 house was its mistress, Madame Smolensk. Mr. Philip treated
 
 ON HIS IVA Y TIIROUGir THE WORLD. 349 
 
 her as an equal : which mark of affability he was not in the 
 habit of bestowing on al! persons. Some great people, some 
 rich people, some would-be-fine people, he would patronize with 
 an insufferable audacity. Rank or wealth do not seem some- 
 how to influence this man, as they do common mortals. He 
 would tap a bishop on the waistcoat, and contradict a duke at 
 their first meeting. I have seen him walk out of church during 
 a stupid sermon, with an audible remark perhaps to that effect, 
 and as if it were a matter of course that he should go. If the 
 company bored him at dinner, he would go to sleep in the most 
 unaffected manner. At home we were always kept in a pleasant 
 state of anxiety, not only by what he did and said, but by the 
 idea of what he might do or say next. He did not go to sleep 
 at madame's boarding-house, preferring to keep his eyes open 
 to look at pretty Charlotte's. And were there ever such 
 sapphires as his ? she thought. And hers ? Ah ! if they have 
 tears to shed, I hope a kind fate will dry them quickly ! 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 TREATS OF DANCING, DINING, DYING. 
 
 Old schoolboys remember how, when pious ^neas was 
 compelled by painful circumstances to quit his country, he and 
 his select band of Trojans founded a new Troy, where they 
 landed ; raising temples to the Trojan gods ; building streets 
 with Trojan names ; and endeavoring, to the utmost of their 
 power, to recall their beloved native place. In like manner, 
 British Trojans and French Trojans take their Troy everywhere. 
 Algiers I have only seen from the sea ; but New Orleans and 
 Leicester Square I have vfcited ; and have seen a quaint old 
 France still lingering on the banks of the Mississippi ; a dingy 
 modern France round that great Globe of Mr. Wyld's, which they 
 say is coming to an end. There are French cafe's, billiards 
 estaminets, waiters, markers, poor Frenchmen, and rich French 
 men, in a new Paris — shabby and dirty, it is true — but offering the 
 emigrant the dominos, the chopine, the petit-verre of the patrie. 
 And do not British Trojans, who emigrate to the continent of 
 Europe, take their Troy with them ? You all know the quarters 
 of Paris which swarm with us Trojans. From Peace Street to 
 the Arch of the Star are collected thousands of refugees from 
 our Ilium. Under the arcades of the Rue de Rivoli you meet,
 
 350 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 at certain liours, as many of our Trojans as of the natives. In 
 the Trojan inns of " Mcurice," the " Louvre," &c., we swarm. 
 We have numerous Anglo-Trojan doctors and apothecaries, 
 who give us the dear pills and doses of Pergamus. We go to 
 Mrs. Guerre or kind Mrs. Colombin, and can purchase the 
 sandwiches of Troy, the pale ale and sherry of Troy, and the 
 dear, dear muffins of home. We live for years, never speaking 
 any language but our native Trojan ; except to our servants, 
 whom we instruct in the Trojan way of preparing toast for 
 breakfast ; Trojan bread-sauce for fowls and patridges ; Tro- 
 jan corned beef, &:c. We have temples where we worship 
 according to the Trojan rites. A kindly sight is that which 
 one beholds of a Sunday in the Elysian fields and the St. 
 Honore quarter, of processions of English grown people and 
 children, stalwart, red-cheeked, marching to their churches, 
 their gilded jDrayer-books in hand, to sing in a stranger's land 
 the sacred songs of their Zion. I am sure there are many Eng- 
 lish in Paris who never speak to any native above the rank of 
 a waiter or shopman. Not long since I was listening to a 
 Frenchman at Folkestone, speaking English to the waiters and 
 acting as interpreter for his party. He spoke pretty well and 
 very quickly. He was irresistibly comical. I wonder how we 
 maintained our gravity. And you and I, my dear friend, when 
 ^ve speak French, I dare say we arc just as absurd. As absurd ! 
 And why not ? Don't you be discouraged, young fellow. Cour- 
 age, mo7i jcune ami ! Remember, Trojans have a conquering 
 way with them. When /Eneas landed at Carthage, I dare say 
 he spoke Carthaginian with a ridiculous Trojan accent ; but, 
 for all that, poor Dido fell desperately in love with him. Take 
 example by the son of Anchises, my boy. Never mind the 
 grammar or the pronunciation, but tackle the lady, and speak 
 your mind to her as best you can. 
 
 This is the plan which the Vicom*e de Loisy used to adopt. 
 He was following ■xcourseoi English accordmg to the celebrated 
 mcthode yohson. The cours assembled twice a week : and the 
 Vicomte, with laudable assiduity, went to all English parties to 
 which he could gain an introduction, for the purpose of acquir- 
 ing the English language, and marrying iinc Atiglaise. This 
 industrious young man even went an Tepiple on Sundays for the 
 purpose of familiarizing himself with the English language ; and 
 as he sat under Doctor Murrogh Macmanus of T. C. D., a very 
 eloquent preacher at Paris in those days, the Vicomte acquired 
 a very fine pronunciation. Attached to the cause of unfortunate 
 monarchy all over the world, the Vicomte had fought in the
 
 ON HIS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. 351 
 
 Spanish-Carlist armies. He waltzed well : and madanie thought 
 his cross looked nice at her parties. Will it be believed that 
 Mrs. General Baynes took this gentleman into special favor; 
 talked with him at soiree after soiree ; never laughed at his Eng- 
 lish ; encouraged her girl to waltz with him (which he did to 
 perfection, whereas poor Philip was but a hulking and clumsy 
 performer) ; and showed him the very greatest favor, until one 
 day, on going into Mr. Bonus's, the house-agent (who lets lodg- 
 ings, and sells British pickles, tea, sherry, and the like), she 
 found the Vicomte occupying a stool as clerk in Mr. Bonus's 
 establishment, where for tweh'e hundred francs a year he gave 
 his invaluable services during the day! Mrs. Baynes took poor 
 madame severely to task for admitting such a man to her assem- 
 blies. Madame was astonished. Monsieur was a gentleman 
 of ancient family who had met with misfortunes. He was earn- 
 ing his maintenance. To sit in a bureau was not a dishonor. 
 Knowing that boutique meant shop and gar(on meant boy, Mrs. 
 Baynes made use use of the words boutique gargoji the next time 
 she saw the Vicomte. The little man wept tears of rage and 
 mortification. There was a very painful scene, at which, thank 
 mercy, poor Charlotte thought, Philip was not present. Were 
 it not for the General's cheveiix blancs (by which phrase the 
 Vicomte very kindly designated General Baynes's chestnut top- 
 knot), the Vicomte would have had reason from him. " Charm- 
 ing miss," he said to Charlotte, "your respectable papa is safe 
 from my sword ! Madame your mamma has addressed me 
 words which I qualify not. But you — you are too 'andsome, too 
 good, to despise a poor soldier, a poor gentleman ! " I have 
 heard the Vicomte still dances at boarding-houses and is still in 
 pursuit of an Anglaise. He must be a wooer now almost as 
 elderly as the good General whose scalp he respected. 
 
 Mrs. Baynes was, to be sure, a heavy weight to bear for 
 poor madame, but her lean shoulders were accustomed to many 
 a burden ; and if the General's wife was quarrelsome and 
 odious, he, as madame said, was as soft as a mutton ; and 
 Charlotte's pretty face and manners were the admiration of all. 
 The yellow Miss Bolderos, those hapless elderly orphans left in 
 pawn, might bite their lips with envy, but they never could 
 make them as red as Miss Charlotte's smiling mouth. To the 
 honor of Madame Smolensk be it said that, never by word or 
 hint, did she cause those unhappy young ladies any needless 
 pain. She never stinted them of any meal. No full-priced 
 pensioner of madame's could have breakfast, luncheon, dinners 
 served more regularly. The day after their mother's flight,
 
 352 THE ADVENTURES OF PIHLIP 
 
 that good Madame Smolensk took early cups of tea to the girls' 
 rooms, with her own hands ; and I believe helped to do the 
 hair of one of them, and otherwise to sooth them in their mis- 
 fortune. They could not keep their secret. It must be owned 
 that Mrs. Baynes never lost an opportunity of deploring their 
 situation and acquainting all new-comers with their mother's 
 flight and transgression. But she was good-natured to the cap- 
 tives in her grim way : and admired madame's forbearance 
 regarding them. The two old officers were now especially 
 polite to the poor things : and the General rapped one of his 
 boys over the knuckles for saying to Miss lirenda, " If your 
 uncle is a lord, why doesn't he give you any money ? " " And 
 these girls used to hold their heads above mine, and their 
 mother used to give herself such airs ! " cried Mrs. Baynes. 
 " And Eliza Baynes used to flatter those poor girls and their 
 mother, and fancy they were going to make a woman of fashion 
 of her ! " said Mrs. Bunch. " We all have our weaknesses. 
 Lords are not yours, my dear. Faith, I don't think you know 
 one," says stout little Colonel Bunch. " I wouldn't pay a 
 duchess such court as Eliza paid that woman ! " cried Sarah ; 
 and she made sarcastic inquiries of the General, whether Eliza 
 had heard from her friend the Honorable Mrs. Boldero ? But 
 for all this Mrs. Bunch pitied the young ladies, and I believe 
 gave them a little supply of coin from her private purse. A 
 word as to their private history. Their mamma became the 
 terror of boarding-house keepers : and the poor girls practised 
 their duets all over Europe. Mrs. Boldero's noble nephew, the 
 present Strongitharm (as a friend who knows the fashionable 
 world informs me) was victimized by his own uncle, and a most 
 painful affair occurred between them at a game at " blind 
 hookey." The Honorable Mrs. Boldero is living in the pre- 
 cincts of Holyrood ; one of her daughters is happily married to 
 a minister ; and the other to an apothecary who was called in 
 to attend her in quinsy. So I am inclined to think that phrase 
 about " select " boarding-houses is a mere complimentary term ; 
 and as for the strictest references being given and required, I 
 certainly should not lay out extra money for printing that ex- 
 pression in my advertisement, were I going to set up an estab- 
 lishment myself. 
 
 Old college friends of Philip's visited Paris from time to 
 time ; and rejoiced in carrying him off to " Borel's " or the 
 " Trois Erbres," and hospitably treating him who had been so 
 hospitable in his time. Yes, thanks be to heaven, there are 
 good Samaritans in pretty large numbers in this world, and
 
 ON- HIS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. 
 
 353 
 
 hands ready enough to succor a man in misfortune. I could 
 name two of three gentlemen who drive about in chariots and 
 look at people's tongues and write queer figures and queer 
 Latin on note-paper, who occultly made a purse containing some 
 seven or ten score fees, and sent them out to Dr. Firmin in his 
 banishment. The poor wretch had behaved as ill as might be, 
 but he was without a penny or a friend. I dare say Dr. Good- 
 enough, amongst other philanthropists, put his hands into his 
 pocket. Having heartily disliked and mistrusted Firmin in 
 prosjDcrity, in adversity he melted towards the poor fugitive 
 wretch : he even could believe that Firmin had some skill in 
 his profession, and in his jDractice was not quite a quack. 
 
 Philip's old college and school cronies laughed at hearing 
 that, now his ruin was complete, he was thinking about mar- 
 riage. Such a plan was of a piece with Mr. Firmin's known 
 prudence and foresight. But they made an objection to his 
 proposed union, which had struck us at home previously. Papa- 
 in-law was well enough, or at least inoffensive : but ah, ye 
 powers ! what a mother-in-law was poor Phil laying up for his 
 future days ! Two or three of our mutual companions made 
 this remark on returning to work and chambers after their 
 autumn holiday. We never had too much charity for Mrs. 
 Baynes ; and what Philip told us about her did not serve to in- 
 crease our regard. 
 
 About Christmas Mr. Firmin's own affairs brought him on a 
 brief visit to London. We were not jealous that he took up 
 quarters with his little friend, of Thornhaugh Street, w^ho was 
 contented that he should dine with us, provided she could have 
 the pleasure of housing him under her kind shelter. High and 
 mighty people as we were — for under what humble roofs does 
 not Vanity hold her sway ? — we, who knew Mrs. Brandon's vir- 
 tues, and were aware of her early story, would have conde- 
 scended to receive her into our society ; but it was the little lady 
 herself who had her pride, and held aloof. " My parents did 
 not give me the education you have had, ma'am," Caroline said 
 to my wife. " My place is not here, I know very w-ell ; unless 
 you should be took ill, and tJie^i, ma'am, 3'ou'll see that I will 
 be glad enough to come. Philip can come and see mc ; and a 
 blessing it is to me to set eyes on him. But I shouldn't be 
 happy in your drawing-room, nor you in having me. The dear 
 children look surprised at my way of talking; and no wonder: 
 and they laugh sometimes to one another, God bless 'em ! I 
 don't mind. INIy education was not cared for. I scarce had 
 ^ny schooling but what I taught myself. My Pa hadn't the 
 
 23
 
 354 
 
 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 means of learning me much : and it is too late to go to school 
 at forty odd. I've got all his stockings and things darned; 
 and his linen, poor fellow ! — beautiful : I wish they kep' it as 
 nice in P'rance, where he is ! You'll give my love to the young 
 lady, won't you, ma'am ? and oh ! it's a blessing to me to hear 
 how good and gentle she is ! He has a high temper, Philip 
 have : but them he likes can easy manage him. You have been 
 his best kind friends ; and so will she be, I trust ; and they 
 may be happy though they're poor. But they've time to get 
 rich, haven't they ? And it's not the richest that's the happiest, 
 that I can see in many a fine house where Nurse lirandon goes 
 and has her eyes open, though she don't say much, you know." 
 In this way Nurse Brandon would prattle on to us when she 
 came to see us. She would share our meal, always thanking 
 by name the servant who helped her. She insisted on call- 
 ing our children " Miss " and " Master," and I think those 
 young satirists did not laugh often or unkindly at her peculiari- 
 ties. I know they were told that Nurse Brandon was very 
 good ; and that she took care of her father in his old age ; and 
 that she had passed through very great griefs and trials ; and 
 that she had nursed Uncle Philiji when he had been very ill 
 indeed, and when many people would have been afraid to come 
 near him ; and that her life was spent in tending the sick, and 
 in doing good to her neighbor. 
 
 One day during Philip's stay with us we happen to read in 
 the paper Lord Ringwood's arrival in London. My lord had a 
 grand town-house of his own which he did not always inhabit. 
 He liked the cheerfulness of a hotel better. Ringwood House 
 was too large and too dismal. He did not care to eat a solitary 
 mutton-chop in a great dining-room surrounded by ghostly 
 images of dead Ringwoods — his dead son, a boy who had died 
 in his boyhood ; his dead brother attired in the uniform of his 
 day (in which picture there was no little resemblance to Philip 
 Firmin, the Colonel's grandson) ; Lord Ringwood's dead self, 
 finally, as he appeared still a young man, wlien Lawrence 
 painted him, and when he was the companion of the Regent 
 and his friends. " Ah ! that's the fellow I least like to look 
 at," the old man would say, scowling at the j^icturc, and 
 breaking out into the old-fashioned oaths which garnished 
 many conversations in his young days. " That fellow could 
 ride all day ; and sleep all night, or go without sleep as he 
 chose ; and drink his four bottles and never liave a headache ; 
 and break his collar-bone, and see the fox killed three hours 
 after. That was once a man, as old Marlborough said, looking
 
 ON HIS WA Y THROUGH THE WORLD. 
 
 355 
 
 at his own picture. Now my doctor's my master ; my doctor 
 and the infernal gout over him. I live upon pap and puddens, 
 like a baby; only I've shed all my teeth, hang 'em. If I drink 
 three glasses of sherry, my butler threatens me. You young 
 fellow, who haven't twopence in your pocket, by George, I 
 would like to change with you. Only you wouldn't, hang you, 
 you wouldn't. Why, I don't believe Todhunter would change with 
 me : would you, Todhunter ? — and you're about as fond of a 
 great man as any fellow I ever knew. Don't tell me. Yanare, 
 sir. Why, when I walked with you on Ryde sands one day, I 
 said to that fellow, ' Todhunter, don't you think I could order 
 the sea to stand still ? ' I did. And you had never heard of 
 King Canute, hanged if you had, and never read any book 
 except the Stud-book and Mrs. Glasse's Cooker}', hanged if 
 you did." Such remarks and conversations of his relative has 
 IMilIip reported to me. Two or three men about town had very 
 good imitations of this toothless, growling, blasphemous old 
 C3'nic. He was splendid and penurious ; violent and easily led ; 
 surrounded by flatterers and utterly lonely. He had old-world 
 notions, which I believe have passed out of the manners of 
 great folks now. He thought it beneath him to travel by 
 railway, and his post-chaise was one of the last on the road. 
 The tide rolled on in spite of this old Canute, and has long 
 since rolled over him and his post-chaise. Why, almost all his 
 imitators are actually dead j and only this year, when old 
 Jack Mummers gave an imitation of him at " Bays's " (where 
 Jack's mimicry used to be received with shouts of laughter but 
 a few years since), there was a dismal silence in the coffee- 
 room, except from two or three young men at a near table, who 
 said, " What is the old fool mumbling and swearing at now.? 
 An imitation of Lord Ringwood, and who was he ? " So our 
 names pass away, and are forgotten : and the tallest statues, 
 do not the sands of time accumulate and overwhelm them ? / 
 have not forgotten my lord ; any more than I have forgotten 
 the cock of my school, about whom, perhaps, you don't care to 
 hear. I see my lord's bald head, and hooked beak, and bushy 
 eyebrows, and tall velvet collar, and brass buttons, and great 
 black mouth, and trembling hand, and trembling parasites 
 around him, and I can hear his voice, and great oaths, and 
 laughter. You parasites of to-day are bowing to other great 
 people ; and tliis great one, who was alive only yesterday, is as 
 dead as George lY. or Nebuchadnezzar. 
 
 Well, we happen to read that Pliilip's noble relative Lord 
 Kingwood has arrived at Hotel, whilst Philip is staying
 
 356 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 with us ; and I own that I counsel my friend to go and wait 
 upon his lordship. He had been v^ery kind at Paris : he had 
 evidently taken a liking to Philip. Firmin ought to go and see 
 him. \A'ho knows ? Lord Ringwood might be inclined to do 
 something for his brother's grandson. 
 
 This was just the point which any one who knew Philip 
 should have hesitated to urge upon him. To try and make him 
 bow and smile on a great man with a view to future favors, was to 
 demand the imjDossible from Firmin. The king's men may lead 
 the king's horses to the water, but the king himself can't make 
 them drink. I own that I came back to the subject, and urged 
 it repeatedly on my friend. " I //^7Z'(? been," said Philip, sulkily. 
 " I have left a card upon him. If he wants me, he can send to 
 No. 1 20, Queen Square, Westminster, my jDresent hotel. But 
 if you think he will give me anything beyond a dinner, I tell 
 you you are mistaken." 
 
 We dined that day with Philip's employer, worthy Mr. 
 Mugford, of the Pall Alall Gazette, who was profuse in his 
 hospitalities, and especially gracious to Philip. Mugford was 
 pleased with Firmin's letters ; and you may be sure that severer 
 critics did not contradict their friend's good-natured patron. 
 We drove to the suburban villa at Hampstead, and steaming 
 odors of soup, mutton, onions, rushed out into the hall to give 
 us welcome, and to warn us of the good cheer in store for the 
 party, lliis was not one of Mr. Mugford's days for counter- 
 manding side dishes, I promise you. Men in black with noble 
 white cotton gloves were in waiting to receive us ; and Mrs. 
 Mugford, in a rich blue satin and feathers, a profusion of 
 flounces, laces, marabouts, jewels, and eau-de-Cologne, rose 
 to welcome us from a stately sofa, where she sat surrounded 
 by her children. These, too, were in brilliant dresses, with 
 shining new-combed hair. The ladies, of course, instantly 
 began to talk about their children, and my wife's unfeigned 
 admiration for Mrs. Mugford's last baby I think won 
 that worthy lady's good-will at once. I made some remark 
 regarding one of the boys as being the picture of his 
 father, which was not lucky. I don't know why, but I have it 
 from her husband's own admission, that Mrs. Mugford always 
 thinks I am " chafifing " her. One of the boys frankly informed 
 me there was goose for dinner ; and when a cheerful cloop was 
 heard from a neighboring room, told me that was Pa drawing 
 the corks. Why should Mrs. Mugford reprove the outspoken 
 child and say, "James, hold your tongue, do now?" IJetter 
 wine than was poured forth, when those corks were drawn,
 
 OJ\r HIS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. 357 
 
 never flowed from bottle. — I say, T never saw better wine nor 
 more bottles. If ever a table may be said to have groaned, that 
 expression might with justice be apphed to Mugford's mahog- 
 any. Talbot Twysden would have feasted forty people with the 
 meal here provided for eight by our most hospitable entertainer. 
 Though Mugford's editor was present, who thinks himself a 
 very fine fellow, I assure you, but whose name I am not at 
 liberty to divulge, all the honors of the entertainment were for 
 the Paris Correspotident, who was specially requested to take 
 Mrs. M. to dinner. As an earl's grand-nephew, and a lord's 
 great-grandson, of course we felt that this place of honor was 
 Firmin's rights. How Mrs. Mugford pressed him to eat ! She 
 carved — I am very glad she would not let Philip carve for her, 
 for he might have sent the goose into her lap — she carved, I 
 say, and I really think she gave him more stuffing than to any 
 of us, but that may have been mere envy on my part. Allusions 
 to Lord Ringwood were repeatedly made during dinner. " Lord 
 R. has come to town, Mr. F., I perceive," says Mugford, wink 
 ing. " You've been to see him, of course ? " Mr. Firmin 
 glared at me very fiercely, he had to own he//r/rt^been to call on 
 Lord Ringwood. Mugford led the conversation to the noble 
 lord so frequently that Philip madly kicked my shins under the 
 table. I don't know how many times I had to suffer from that 
 foot which in its time has trampled on so many persons : a kick 
 for each time Lord Ringwood's name, houses, parks, properties, 
 were mentioned, was a frightful allowance. Mrs. Mugford 
 would say, " May I assist you to a little pheasant, Mr. Firmin ? 
 I dare say they are not as good as Lord Ringwood's " (a kick 
 from Philip) ; or Mugford would exclaim, " Mr. F., try that 
 'ock ! Lord Ringwood hasn't better wine than that." (Dread- 
 ful punishment upon my tibia under the table.) "John ! Two 
 'ocks, me and Mr. Firmin. Join us, Mr. P.," and so forth 
 And after dinner, to the ladies — as my wife, who betrayed their 
 mysteries, informed me — Mrs. Mugford's conversation was in- 
 cessant regarding the Ringwood family and Firmin's relation- 
 ship to that noble house. The meeting of the old lord and 
 Firmin in Paris was discussed with immense interest. " His 
 lordship called him Philip most affable ! he was very fond of 
 Mr Firmin." A little bird had told Mrs. Mugford that some- 
 body else was very fond of Mr. Firmin. She hoped it would be 
 a match, and that his lordship -^'ould do the handsome thing by 
 his nepheto. What ? My wife wondered that Mrs. Mugford 
 should know about Philip's affairs .-' (and wonder indeed she 
 did). A little bird had told Mrs. M — , a friend of both ladies,
 
 358 THE ADVENTURES OF PHTLTP 
 
 that dear, good little nurse Brandon, who was engaged and 
 
 here the conversation went off into mysteries which I certainly 
 shall not reveal. Suffice it that Mrs. Alugford was one of Mrs. 
 Brandon's best, kindest, and most constant patrons — or might 
 I be permitted to say matrons ? — and had received a most 
 favorable report of us frqgii the little nurse. And here Mrs. 
 Pendennis gave a verbatim report not only of our hostess's 
 speech, but of her manner and accent. "Yes, ma'am," says 
 Mrs. Mugford to Mrs. Pendennis, " our friend IVfrs. B. lias told 
 me of a certain gaiflciium whose name shall be nameless. His 
 manner is cold, not to say 'aughty. He seems to be laughing 
 at people sometimes — don't say No ; I saw him once or twice 
 at dinner, both him and Mr. Firmin. But he is a true friend, 
 Mrs. Brandon says he is. And when you know him, his heart 
 is good." Is it ? Amen. A distinguished writer has com- 
 posed, in not very late days, a comedy of which the cheerful 
 moral is, that we are " not so bad as we seem." Aren't we 1 
 Amen, again. Give us thy hearty hand, lago ! Tartuffe, how 
 the world has been mistaken in you ! ?^facbeth ! put that little 
 affair of the murder out of your mind. It was a momentary 
 weakness ; and who is not weak at times ? Blifil, a more 
 maligned man than j^ou does not exist ! O humanity! how we 
 have been mistaken in you ! Let us e.xpunge tlie vulgar expres- 
 sion " miserable sinners " out of all prayer-books ; open the 
 port-holes of all hulks; bieak the chains of all convicts; and 
 unlock the boxes of all spoons. 
 
 As we discussed Mr. Mugford's entertainment on our return 
 home, I improved tlie occasion with Philip ; I pointed out the 
 reasonableness of the hopes which he might entertain of help 
 from his wealthy kinsman, and actually forced him to promise 
 to wait upon my lord the next day. Now, when Philip Firmin 
 did a thing against his will, he did it with a bad grace. When 
 he is not pleased, he does not pretend to be liappy ; and when 
 he is sulky, Mr. Firmin is a very disagreeable companion. 
 Though he never once reproached me afterwards with what hap- 
 pened, I own that I have had cruel twinges of conscience since. 
 If I had not sent him on that dutiful visit to his grand-uncle, 
 what occurred might never, perhaps, have occurred at all. I 
 acted for the best, and tliat I a\er ; however I may grieve for 
 the consequences which ensued when the poor fellow followed 
 my advice. 
 
 If Philip held aloof from Lord Ringwood in London, you 
 may be sure Philip's dear cousins were in waiting on his lord- 
 ship, and never lost an opportunity of showing their resjDectfuJ
 
 ON Ills ]VA Y THROUGH THE WORLD. 
 
 359 
 
 sympathy. Was Lord Ringwood ailing ? Mr. Twysden, or Mrs. 
 Twysden, or the dear girls, or Ringwood their brother, were 
 daily in his lordship's ante-chamber, asking for news of his 
 health. They bent down respectfully before Lord Ringwood's 
 major-domo. They would have given him money, as they 
 always averred, only what sum could they give to such a man 
 as Rudge ? They actually offered to bribe Mr. Rudge with 
 their wine, over w-hich he made horrible faces. They fawned 
 and smiled before him always. I should like to have seen that 
 calm Mrs. Twysden, that serene, high-bred w-oman, who would 
 cut her dearest friend if misfortune befell her, or the world 
 turned its back ; — I should like to have seen, and can see her 
 in my mind's eye, simpering and coaxing, and wheedling this 
 footman. She made cheap presents to Mr. Rudge t she smiled 
 on him and asked after his health. And of course Talbot 
 Twysden flattered him too in Talbot's jolly w^ay. It was a 
 wink, and nod, and a hearty " How do you do ? " — and (after 
 due inquiries made and answered about his lordship) it would 
 be, " Rudge ! I think my housekeeper has a good glass of port- 
 wine in her room, if you happen to be passing that way, and 
 my lord don't want you ! " And with a grave courtesy, 1 can 
 fancy Mr. Rudge bowing to Mr. and Mrs. Twysden, and thank- 
 ing them and descending to Mrs. Blenkinsop's skinny room 
 where the port-wine is ready — and if Mr. Rudge and Mrs. Blen- 
 kinsop are confidential, I can fancy their talking over the char- 
 acters and peculiarities of the folks up stairs. Servants some- 
 times actually do ; and if master and mistress are humbugs, 
 these wretched menials sometimes find them out. 
 
 Now, no duke could be more lordly and condescending in 
 his bearing than Mr. Philip Firmin toward the menial throng. 
 In those days when he had money in his pockets, he gave Mr. 
 Rudge out of his plenty ; and the man remembered his gener- 
 osity when he was poor ; and declared — in a select society, and 
 in the company of the relative of a person from whom 1 ha\e 
 the information — declared in the presence of Captain Gann at 
 the " Admiral B — ng Club " in fact, that Mr. Heff was always 
 a swell ; but since he was done, he, Rudge, " was blest if that 
 young chap warn't a greater swell than hever." And Rudge 
 actually liked this poor young fellow better than the family in 
 Beaunash Street, whom ]\Ir. R. pronounced to be " a shabby 
 lot." And in fact it was Rudge as well as myself, who advised 
 that Philip should see his lordship. 
 
 When at length Philip paid his second visit, Mr. Rudge said 
 " My lord will see you, sir, I think. He has beer speaking of
 
 360 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 you. He's very unwell. He's going to have a fit of the gout, 
 I think. I'll tell him you are here." And coming back to 
 Philip, after a brief disappearance, and with rather a scared 
 face, he repeated the permission to enter, and again cautioned 
 him, saying, that " my lord was very queer." 
 
 " In fact, as we learned afterwards, through the channel 
 previously indicated, my lord, when he heard that Philip had 
 called, cried, " He has, has he ? Hang him, send him in ; " 
 using, I am constrained to say, in place of the monosyllable 
 "hang," a much stronger expression. 
 
 " Oh, it's you, is it ? " says my lord. " You have been 
 in London ever so long, Twysden told me of 3'ou yesterday.' 
 
 " I have called before, sir," said Philip very quietly. 
 
 " I wonder you have the face to call at all, sir ! " cries the 
 old man. glaring at Philip. His lordship's countenance was of 
 a gamboge color : his noble e3'es were blood-shot and starting ; 
 his voice, always very harsh and strident, was now specially 
 unpleasant ; and from the crater of his mouth, shot loud ex- 
 ploding oaths. 
 
 " Face, my lord ? " says Philip, still very meek. 
 
 " Yes, if you call that a face which is covered over with 
 hair like a baboon ! " growled my lord, showing his tusks. " Twys- 
 den was here last night, and tells me some pretty news about 
 you." 
 
 Philip blushed ; he knew what the news most likely would be. 
 
 " Twysden says that now you are a pauper, by George, and 
 living by breaking stones in the street, — you have been such an 
 infernal, drivelling, hanged fool, as to engage yourself to another 
 pauper ! " 
 
 Poor Philip turned white from red ; and spoke slowly : " I 
 beg your pardon, my lord, you said " 
 
 " I said you were a hanged fool, sir!" roared the old man ; 
 *' can't you hear 1 " 
 
 " I believe I am a member of your family, my lord," says 
 Philip, rising up. In a quarrel, he would sometimes lose his 
 temper, and speak out his mind ; or sometimes, and then he 
 was most dangerous, he would be especially calm and Grandi- 
 sonian. 
 
 " Some hanged adventurer, thinking you were to get money 
 from me, has hooked you for his daughter, has he ? " 
 
 " I have engaged myself to a young lady, and I am the 
 poorer of the two," says Philip. 
 
 " She thinks you will get money from me," contmues his 
 lordsJiip.
 
 ON ms WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. 361 
 
 " Does she ? I never did ! " replied Philip. 
 
 " By heaven, you sha'n't, unless you give up this rubbish." 
 
 " I sha'n't give her up, sir, and I shall do without the money," 
 said Mr. Firmin very boldly. 
 
 " Go to Tartarus ! " screamed the old man. 
 
 On which Philip told us, " I said, ' Seniores priores, my 
 lord,' and turned on my heel. So you see if he was going to 
 leave me something, and he nearly said he was, that chance is 
 passed now, and I have made a pretty morning's work." And 
 a pretty morning's work it was : and it was I who had set him 
 upon it ! My brave Philip not only did not rebuke me for hav- 
 ing sent him on this errand, but took the blame of the business 
 on himself. "Since I have been engaged," he said, "I am 
 growing dreadfully avaricious, and am almost as sordid about 
 money as those Twysdens. I cringed to that old man : I 
 crawled before his gouty feet. Well, I could crawl from here 
 to Saint James's Palace to get some money for my little Char- 
 lotte." Philip cringe and crawl ! If there were no posture- 
 masters more supple than Philip Firmin, kotowing would be a 
 lost art, like the Menuet de la Coiir. But fear not, ye great ! 
 Men's backs were made to bend, and the race of parasites is 
 still in good repute. 
 
 When our friend told us how his brief interview with Lord 
 Ringwood had begun and ended, I think those who counselled 
 Philip to wait upon his grand-uncle felt rather ashamed of their 
 worldly wisdom and the advice which they had given. We 
 ought to have known our Huron sufficiently to be aware that it 
 was a dangerous experiment to set him bowing in lord's ante- 
 chambers. Were not his elbows sure to break some courtly 
 china, his feet to trample and tear some lace train ? So all the 
 good we had done was to occasion a quarrel between him and 
 his patron. Lord Ringwood avowed that he had intended to 
 leave Philip money ; and by trusting the poor fellow into the 
 old nobleman's sick-chamber, we had occasioned a quarrel be- 
 tween the relatives, who parted with mutual threats and anger. 
 " Oh, dear me ! " I groaned in connubial colloquies. " Let us 
 get him away. He will be boxing Mugford's ears next, and telling 
 Mrs. Mugford that she is vulgar, and a bore." He was eager 
 to get back to his work, or rather to his lady-love at Paris. We 
 did not try to detain him. For fear of further accidents we 
 were rather anxious that he should be gone. Crestfallen and 
 sad, I accompanied him to the Boulogne boat. He paid for 
 his place in the second cabin, and stoutly bade us adieu. A rough 
 night : a wet, slippery deck : a crowd of frowzy fellow-passen-
 
 362 THE ADVENTURES OF rillLTP 
 
 gers : and poor Philip in the midst of them in a thin cloak, his 
 yellow liair and beard blowing about : I see the steamer now, 
 and left her with I know not what feelings of contrition and 
 shame. Why had I sent Philip to call upon that savage, over- 
 bearing old patron of his ? Why compelled him to that boot- 
 less act of submission ? Lord Ringwood's brutalities were 
 matters of common notoriety. A wicked, dissolute, cynical old 
 man : and we must try to make friends with this mammon of 
 unrighteousness, and set poor Philip to bow before him and 
 flatter him ! Ah, men culpa, tnea culpa f The wind blew liard 
 that winter night, and many tiles and chimney-pots blew down : 
 and as I thought of poor Philip tossing in the frowzy second 
 cabin, I rolled about my own bed very uneasily. 
 
 " I looked into " Bay's Club " the day after, and there fell 
 on both the Twysdens. The parasite of a father was clinging 
 to the button of a great man when I entered : the little reptile 
 of a son came to the club in Captain Woolcomb's brougham, 
 and in that distinguished mullatto officer's company. They 
 looked at me in a peculiar way. I was sure they did. Talbot 
 Twysden, pouring his loud braggart talk in the ear of poor Lord 
 Lepel, eyed me with a glance of triumph, and talked and swag- 
 gered so that I should hear. Ringwood Twysden and Wool- 
 comb, drinking absinthe to whet their noble appetites, ex- 
 changed glances and grins. Woolcomb's eyes were of the 
 color of the absinthe he swallowed. I did not see that Twysden 
 tore off one of Lord Lepel's buttons, but that nobleman, 
 with a scared countenance, moved away rapidly from his little 
 persecutor. " Hang him, throw him over, and come to me ! " I 
 heard the generous Twysden say. " I expect Ringwood and 
 ■ one or two more." At this proposition, Lord Lepel, in a trem- 
 ulous way, muttered that he could not break his engagement, 
 and fled out of the club. 
 
 Twysden 's dinners, the polite reader has been previously 
 informed, were notorious ; and he constantly bragged of having 
 the company of Lord Ringwood. Now it so happened that on 
 this very evening. Lord Ringwood, with three of his followers, 
 henchmen, or led captains, dined at Pjays's Club, being deter- 
 mined to see a ]5antomime in which a very pretty young Colum 
 bine figured : and some one in the house joked with his lordship, 
 and said, "Why, you are going to dine with Talbot Twysden. 
 He said, just now, that he expected you." 
 
 " Did he ? " said his lordship. " 'Phen Talbot Twysden told 
 a hanged lie ! " And little Tom Eaves, my informant, remem- 
 bered these remarkable words, because of a circumstance which 
 now almost immediately followed.
 
 ON- HIS WA V THROUGH THE WORLD. 363 
 
 A very few clays after Philip's departure, our friend, the 
 Little Sister, came 'to us at our breakfast-table, wearini; an ex- 
 pression of much trouble and sadness on her kind little face ; 
 the causes of which sorrow she explained to us, as soon as our 
 children had gone away to their schoolroom. Amongst Mrs. 
 Brandon's friends, and one of her father's constant companions, 
 was the worthy Mr. Ridlej^ father of the celebrated painter of 
 that name, who was himself of much too honorable and noble 
 a nature to be ashamed of his humble paternal origin. Com- 
 panionship between father and son could not be very close or 
 intimate ; especially as in the younger Ridley's boyhood, his 
 father, who knew nothing of the fine arts, had looked upon the 
 child as a sickly, half-witted creature, who would be to his 
 parents but a grief and a burden. But when J. J. Ridley, Esq., 
 began to attain eminence in his profession, his father's eyes 
 were opened \ in place of neglect and contempt, he looked up 
 to his boy with a sincere, naive admiration, and often, with tears, 
 has narrated the pride and pleasure which he felt on the day 
 when he waited on John James at his master Lord Todmorden's 
 table. Ridley senior now felt that he had been unkind and 
 unjust to his boy in the latter's early days, and with a very 
 touching humility the old man acknowledged his previous injus- 
 tice, and tried to atone for it by present respect and affection. 
 
 Though fondness for his son, and delight in the company of 
 Captain Gann, often drew Mr. Ridley to Thornhaugh Street, 
 and to the " Admiral Byng " Club, of which both were leading 
 members, Ridley senior belonged to other clubs at the West 
 End, where Lord Todmorden's butler consorted with the confi- 
 dential butlers of others of the nobility : and I am informed that 
 in those clubs Ridley continued to be called " Todmorden " 
 long after his connection with that venerable nobleman had 
 ceased. He continued to be called Lord Todmorden, in fact, 
 just as Lord Popinjoy is still called by his old friends Popinjoy, 
 though his father is dead, and Popinjoy, as everybody knows, 
 is at present Earl of Pintado. 
 
 At one of these clubs of their order. Lord Todmorden's man 
 was in the constant habit of meeting Lord Ringwood's man, 
 when their lordships (master and man) were in town. These 
 gentlemen had a regard for each other ; and, when they met, 
 communicated to each other their views of society, and their 
 opinions of the characters of the various noble lords and influ- 
 ential commoners whom they served. Mr. Rudge knew every- 
 thing about Philip Firmin's affairs, about the Doctor's flight, 
 about Philip's generous behavior. "Generous! /call it ad-
 
 364 THE ADVENTURES OF PIIILTP 
 
 miral ! " old Ridley remarked, while narrating this trait ol 
 our friend's — and his present position. And Rudge contrasted 
 Philip's manly behavior with the conduct of some sneaks which 
 he would not name them, but which tliey were always speaking 
 ill of the poor young fellow behind his back, and sneaking up 
 to my lord, and greater skinflints and meaner humbugs ne\er 
 were : and there was no accountin<r for tastes, but he, Rudge, 
 would not marry his daughter to a black man. 
 
 Now : that day when Mr. Firmin went to see my Lord Ring- 
 wood was one of my lord's very worst days, when it was almost 
 as dangerous to go near him as to approach a Bengal tiger. 
 When he is going to have a fit of gout, his lordship (Mr. Rudge 
 remarked) " was hawful." He curse and swear, he do, at every 
 body ; even the clergy or the ladies — all's one. On that very 
 day when Mr. Firmin called he had said to Mr. Twysden, ' Get 
 out, and don't come slandering, and backbiting, and bullying 
 that poor devil of a boy any more. It's blackguardly, by 
 George, sir — it's blackguardly.' And Twysden came out with 
 his tail between his legs, and he says to me — ' Rudge,' says he, 
 ' my lord's uncommon bad to-day.' Well, he hadn't been gone 
 an hour when pore Philip comes, bad luck to him, and my lord, 
 who had just heard from Twysden all about that young woman 
 — that party at Paris, Mr. Ridley — and it is about as great a 
 piece of folly as ever I heard tell of — my lord turns upon the 
 pore young fellar and call him names worse than Twysden. 
 But Mr. Firmin ain't that sort of man, he isn't. He won't suffer 
 any man to call him names ; and I suppose he gave my lord his 
 own back again, for I heard my lord swear at him tremendous, 
 I did, with my own ears. When my lord has the gout flying 
 about I told you he is awful. When he takes his colchicum 
 he's worse. Now, we have got a party at Whipham at Christ- 
 mas, and at Whipham we must be. And he took his colchicum 
 night before last, and to-day he was in such a tremendous rage 
 of swearing, cursing, and blowing up everybody, that it was as 
 if he was red hot. And when Twysden and Mrs. Twysden 
 called that day — (if you kick that fellar out at the hall door, 
 I'm blest if he won't come smirking down the chimney) — he 
 wouldn't see any of them. And he bawled out after me, 'If 
 Firmin comes, kick him down stairs — do you hear?' with ever 
 so many oaths and curses against the poor fellow, while he 
 vowed he would never see his hanged impudent face again. 
 But this wasn't all, Ridley. He sent for J]radgate, his lawyer, 
 that very day. He had back his will, which I signed myself as 
 one of the witnesses — me and Wilcox, the master of the hotel—
 
 ON HIS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. 365 
 
 and I know he had left Firmin something in it. Take my word 
 for it. To that poor young fellow he means mischief." A full 
 report of this conversation Mr. Ridley gave to his little friend 
 Mrs. Brandon, knowing the interest which Mrs. Brandon took 
 in the young gentleman ; and with these unpleasant news Mrs. 
 Brandon came off to advise with those who — the good nurse 
 was pleased to say — were Philip's best friends in the world. 
 We wished we could give the Little Sister comfort : but all the 
 world knew what a man Lord Ringwood was — how arbitrary, 
 how revengeful, how cruel ! 
 
 I knew Mr. Bradgate the lawyer, with whom I had business, 
 and called upon him, more anxious to speak about Philip's 
 affairs than my own. I suppose I was too eager in coming to 
 my point, for Bradgate saw the meaning of my questions, and 
 declined to answer them. " My client and I are not the dear- 
 est friends in the world," Bradgate said, "but I must keep his 
 counsel, and nmst not tell you whether Mr. Firmin's name is 
 down in his lordship's will or not. How should I know ? He 
 may have altered his will. He may have left Firmin money ; 
 he may have left him none. I hope young Firmin does not 
 count on a legacy. That's all. He may be disappointed if he 
 does. Why, you may hope for a legacy from Lord Ringwood, 
 and you may be disappointed. I know scores of people who 
 do hope for something, and who won't get a penny." And this 
 was all the reply I could get at that time from the oracular little 
 lawyer. 
 
 I told my wife, as of course every dutiful man tells every- 
 thing to every dutiful wife : — but, though Bradgate discouraged 
 us, there was somehow a lurking hope still that the old noble- 
 man would provide for our friend. Then Philip would marry 
 Charlotte. Then he would earn ever so much more money by 
 his newspaper. Then he would be happy ever after. My^wife 
 counts eggs not only before they are hatched, but before they 
 are laid. Never was such an obstinate hopefulness of character. 
 I, on the other hand, take a rational and despondent view of 
 things ; and if they turn out better than I expect, as sometimes 
 they will, I affably own that I have been mistaken. 
 
 But an early day came when Mr. Bradgate was no longer 
 needful, or when he thought himself released from the obli- 
 gations of silence with regard to his noble client. It was two 
 days before Christmas, and I took my accustomed afternoon 
 saunter to " Bays's," where other habitues of the club were 
 assembled. There was no little buzzing and excitement among 
 the frequenters of the place. Talbot Twysden always arrived
 
 366 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 at "Bays's" at ten minutes past four, and scuffled for the 
 evening paper, as if its contents were matter of great importance 
 to Talbot. He would hold men's buttons, and discourse to 
 them the leading article out of that paper with an astounding 
 emphasis and gravity. On this day, some ten minutes after his 
 accustomed hour, he reached the club. Other gentlemen were 
 engaged in perusing the evening journal. The lamps on the 
 tables lighted up the bald heads, the gray heads, dyed heads, 
 and the wigs of many assembled fogies — murmurs went about 
 the room : " Very sudden." " Gout in the stomach." " Dined 
 liere only four days ago." " Looked very well." "Very well 1 
 No! Never saw a fellow look worse in my life." "Yellow as 
 a guinea." " Couldn't eat." " Swore dreadfully at the waiters, 
 and at Tom Eaves who dined with him." " Seventy-six, I see 
 — Born in the same year with the Duke of York." " Forty 
 thousand a year." " Forty ? fifty-eight thousand three hundred, 
 I tell you. Always been a saving man." " Estate goes to his 
 cousin, sir John Ringwood : not a member here — member of 
 ' Boodle's.' " " Hated each other furiously. Very violent 
 temper, the old fellow was. Never got over the Reform Bill, 
 they used to say." " Wonder whether he'll leave anything to 
 old bow-wow Twys— " Here enters Talbot Twysden, Esq. — 
 " Ha, Colonel ! How are you ? What's the news to-night .? 
 Kept late at my office, making up accounts. Going down to 
 Whipham to-morrow to pass Christmas with my wife's uncle — 
 Ringwood, you know. Always go down to Whipham at Christ- 
 mas. Keeps the pheasants for us. No longer a hunting man 
 myself. Lost my nerve, 1)y George." 
 
 Whilst the braggart little creature indulged in this pompous 
 talk, he did not see the significant looks which were fixed upon 
 him, or if he remarked them, was perhaps pleased by the 
 attention which he excited. " ]]ays's " had long echoed with 
 Twysden's account of Ringwood, 'the pheasants, his own loss 
 of nerve in hunting, and the sum which their family would in- 
 herit at the death of their noble relative. 
 
 " I think I have heard you say Sir John Ringwood inherits 
 after your relatives ? " asked Mr. Hookham. 
 
 " Yes ; the estate, not the tide. The earldom goes to my 
 lord and his heirs— Hookham. Why shouldn't he marry again ? 
 I often say to him, ' Ringwood, why don't you marry, ff it's 
 only to disappoint that Whig fellow. Sir ]ohn ? You are fresh 
 and hale, Ringwood. You may live twent}-"years, five-and-twenty 
 years. If you lea\e your niece and my chi'ldien anything, we're 
 not in a hurry to inherit,' I say ; ' why don't you marry"? ' "
 
 ON HIS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. 
 
 3^7 
 
 " Ah ! Twysden, he's past marrying," groans Mr. Hookham. 
 
 " Not at all. Sober man, now. Stout man. Immense 
 powerful man. Healthy man, but for gout. I often say to him, 
 ' Ringwood ! I say ' " 
 
 " Oh, for mercy's sake, stop this ! " groans old Mr. Tremlett, 
 who always begins to shudder at the sound of poor Twysden's 
 voice. "Tell him, somebody." 
 
 " Haven't you heard, Twysden t Haven't you seen ? Don't 
 you know ? " asks Mr. Hookham, solemnly. 
 
 " Heard, seen, known — what ? " cries the other. 
 
 " An accident has happened to Lord Ringwood. Look at 
 the paper. Here it is." And Twysden pulls out his great gold 
 eyeglasses, holds the paper as far as his little arm will reach, 
 
 and and merciful Powers ! but I will not venture 
 
 to depict the agony on that noble face. Like Timanthes the 
 painter, I hide this Agamemnon with a veil. I cast the Globe 
 newspaper over him. lllabatur orbis : and let imagination 
 depict our Twysden under the ruins. 
 
 What Tw}'sden read in the G/obe was a mere curt paragraph ; 
 but in next morning's Times there was one of those obituary 
 notices to which noblemen of eminence must submit from the 
 mysterious necrographer engaged by that paper. 
 
 CHAPTER XXn. 
 
 PULVIS ET UMBRA SUMUS. 
 
 The first and only Earl of Ringwood has submitted to the 
 fate which peers and commoners are alike destined to undergo. 
 Hastening to his magnificent seat of Whipham Market, where 
 he proposed to entertain an illustrious Christmas party, his lord- 
 ship left London scarcely recovered from an attack of gout to 
 which he has been for many years a martyr. The disease 
 must have flown to his stomach, and suddenly mastered him. 
 At Turreys Regum, thirty miles from his own princely habita- 
 tion, where he had been accustomed to dine on his almost royal 
 progresses to his home, he was already in a state of dread- 
 ful suffering, to which his attendants did not pay the attention 
 which his condition ought to have excited ; for when laboring 
 under this most painful malady his outcries were loud, and his 
 language and demeanor exceedingly violent. He angrily re-
 
 368 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 fused to send for medical aid at Turreys, and insisted on con- 
 tinuing his journey homewards. He was one of the old school, 
 who would never enter a railway (though his fortune was 
 greatly increased by the passage of the railway through his 
 property) ; and his own horses always met him at " Popper's 
 Tavern," an obscure hamlet, seventeen miles from his princely 
 seat. He made no sign on arriving at " Poppers," and spoke 
 no word, to the now serious alarm of his servants. When they 
 came to light his carriage-lamps, and look into his post-chaise, 
 the lord of many thousand acres, and according to report, of 
 immense wealth, was dead. The journey from Turreys had 
 been the last stage of a long prosperous, and, if not a famous, 
 at least a notorious and magnificent career. 
 
 "The late John George, Earl and Paron Ringwood and Vis- 
 count Cinqbars, entered into public life at the dangerous period 
 before the French Revolution ; and commenced his career as 
 the friend and companion of the Prince of Wales. When his 
 Royal Highness seceded from the Whig party, Lord Ringwood 
 also joined the Tory side of politicians, and an earldom was the 
 price of his fidelity. But on the elevation of Lord Steyne to a 
 marquisate. Lord Ringwood quarrelled for awhile with his royal 
 patron and friend, deeming his own services unjustly slighted, 
 as a like dignity was not conferred on himself. On several oc- 
 casions he gave his vote against Government, and caused 
 his nominees in the House of Commons to vote with the 
 Whigs. He never was reconciled to his late Majesty George 
 IV., of whom he was in the habit of speaking with character- 
 istic bluntness. The approach of the Reform Bill, however, 
 threw this nobleman definitively on the Tory side, of which he 
 has ever since remained, if not an eloquent, at least a violent 
 supporter. He was said to be a liberal landlord, so long as his 
 tenants did not thwart him in his views. His only son died 
 early j and his lordship, according to report, has long been on 
 ill terms with his kinsman and successor. Sir John Ringwood, 
 of Appleshaw, Baronet. The Barony has been in this ancient 
 family since the reign of George I., when Sir John Ringwood 
 was ennobled, and Sir Francis, his brother, a Baron of the Ex- 
 chequer, was advanced to the dignity of Baronet by the first of 
 our Hanoverian sovereigns." 
 
 This was the article which my wife and I read on the morn- 
 ing of Christmas eve, as our children were decking lamps and 
 looking-glasses with holly and red berries for the approaching 
 festival. I had despatched a hurried note, containing the news, 
 to Philij) on the night previous, \^'e were painfully anxious
 
 ON- HIS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. 369 
 
 about his fate now, when a few clays would decide it. Again 
 my business or curiosity took nie to see Mr. Bradgate, the 
 lawyer. He was in possession of the news of course. He was 
 not averse to talk about it. The death of his client unsealed 
 the lawyer's lips partially : and I must say Bradgate spoke in a 
 manner not flattering to his noble deceased client. The brutal- 
 ities of the late nobleman had been very hard to bear. On oc- 
 casion of their last meeting his oaths and disrespectful behavior 
 had been specially odious. He had abused almost every one 
 of his relatives. His heir, he said, was a prating, republican 
 humbug. He had a relative (whom Bradgate said he would 
 not name) who was a scheming, swaggering, swindling lick- 
 spittle parasite, always cringing at his heels and longing for 
 his death. And he had another relative, the impudent son of 
 a swindling doctor, who had insulted him two hours before in 
 his own room ; — a fellow who was a pauper, and going to prop- 
 agate a breed for the workhouse ; for, after his behavior of 
 that day, he would be condemned to the lowest pit of Acheron, 
 before he, Lord Ringwood, would give that scoundrel a penny of 
 his money. " And his lordship desired me to send him back 
 his will," said Mr. Bradgate. And he destroyed that will be- 
 fore he went away : it was not the hrst he had burned. " And 
 I mav tell vou, now all is over, that he had left his brother's 
 grandson a handsome legacy in that will, which your poor friend 
 might have had, but that he went to see my lord in his unlucky 
 fit of gout." Ah, mea culpa ! mea culpa ! And who sent 
 Philip to see his relative in that unlucky fit of gout ? Who was 
 so worldly-wise — so Twysden-like, as to counsel Philip to flattery 
 and submission ? But for that advice he might be wealthy now ; 
 he might be happy ; he might be ready to marry his young 
 sweetheart. Our Christmas turkey choked me as I ate of it. 
 The lights burned dimly, and the kisses and laughter under the 
 mistletoe were but melancholy sport. But for my advice, how 
 happy might my friend have been ! I looked askance at the 
 honest faces of my children. What would they say if they 
 knew their father had advised a friend to cringe, and bow, and 
 humble himself before a rich, wicked old man? I sat as mute 
 at the pantomime as at a burial ; the laughter of the little ones 
 smote me as with a reproof. A burial } With plumes and 
 lights, an upholsterers' pageantry, and mourning by the yard 
 measure, they were burj-ing my Lord Ringwood, who might 
 have made Philip Firniin rich but forme. 
 
 All lingering hopes regarding our friend were quickly put to 
 an end. A will was found at Whipham, dated a year back in 
 
 24
 
 370 THE ADVENTURES OE rUlLTP 
 
 which no mention was made of poor Philip Firmin. Small lej:ja^ 
 cies — disgracefully shabby, and small, Twysden said — were left 
 to the Twysden family, willi the full-length portrait of the late earl 
 in his coronation robes, which, I should think, must have given 
 but small satisfaction to his surviving relatives ; for his lordship 
 was but an ill-favored nobleman, and the price of the carriage 
 of the large picture from Whipham was a tax which poor Tal- 
 bot made very wry faces at paying. Had the picture been ac- 
 companied by thirty or forty thousand pounds, or fifty thousand 
 — wliy should he not have left them fifty thousand ? — how dif- 
 ferent Talbot's grief would have been ! Whereas when Talbot 
 counted up the dinners he had given to Lord Ringwood, all of 
 which he could easily calculate by his cunning ledgers and 
 journals in which was noted down every feast at which his lord- 
 ship attended, every guest assembled, and every bottle of wine 
 drunk, Twysden found that he had absolutely spent more money 
 upon my lord than the old man had paid back in his will. But 
 all the family went into mourning, and the Twysden coachman 
 and footman turned out in black worsted epaulettes in honor of 
 the illustrious deceased. It is not everv dav that a man gets a 
 chance of publicly bewailing the loss of an earl his relative. I 
 suppose Twysden took many hundred people into his confidence 
 on this matter, and bewailed his uncle's death and his own 
 wrongs whilst clinging to many scores of button-holes. 
 
 And how did poor Philip bear the disappointment ? He 
 must have felt it, for I fear we ourselves had encouraged him 
 in the hojDe that his grand-uncle would do something to relieve 
 his necessity. Philip put a bit of crape round his hat, wrapped 
 himself in his shabby old mantle, and declined any outward 
 show of grief at all. If the old man had left him money, it had 
 been well. As he did not, — a puff of cigar, perhaps, ends the 
 sentence, and our philosopher gives no further thought to his 
 disappointment. Was not Philip the poor as lordly and inde- 
 pendent as Philip the rich ? A struggle with poverty is a whole- 
 some wrestling-match at three or five and twenty. The sinews 
 are young, and are braced by the contest. It is upon the aged 
 that the battle falls hardly, who are weakened by failing health, 
 and perhaps enervated by long years of prosperity. 
 
 Firmin's broad back could carry a heavy burden, and he was 
 glad to take all the work which fell in his way. Phipps, of the 
 Daily Jntr/ligc/iicr, wanting an assistant, Philip gladly sold four 
 hours of his day to ]\Ir. Phipps : translated page after page of 
 newspapers, French and German ; took an occasional turn at 
 the Chamber of Deputies, and gave an account of a sitting of
 
 ON HIS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. 371 
 
 importance, and made himself quite an active lieutenant. He 
 began positively to save money. He wore dreadfully shabby 
 clothes, to be sure: for Charlotte could not go to his chamber 
 and mend his rags as the Little Sister had done : but when 
 Mrs. Eaynes abused him for his shabby appearance — and indeed 
 it must have been mortifying sometimes to see the fellow in his 
 old clothes swaggering about in Madame Smolensk's apart- 
 ments, talking loud, contradicting, and laying down the law — 
 Charlotte defended her maligned Philip. " Do you know why 
 Monsieur Philip has those shabby clothes ? " she asked of 
 Madame de Smolensk. " Because he has been sending money 
 to his father in America." And Smolensk said that Monsieur 
 Philip was a brave young man, and that he might come dressed 
 like an Iroquois to her soiree, and he should be welcome. And 
 Mrs. Baynes was rude to Philip when he was present, and scorn- 
 ful in her remarks when he was absent. And Philip trembled 
 before Mrs. Baynes ; and he took her boxes on the ear with 
 much meekness ; for was not his Charlotte a hostage in her 
 mother's hands, and might not Mrs. General B. make that poor 
 little creature suffer ? 
 
 One or two Indian ladies of Mrs. Baynes' acquaintance hap- 
 pened to pass this winter in Paris, and these persons, who had 
 furnished lodgings in the Faubourg St. Honore', or the Champs 
 Elysees, and rode in their carriages with -Cer}^ likely, a footman on 
 the box, rather looked down upon Mrs. Baynes for living in a 
 boarding-house, and keeping no equipage. No woman likes to 
 be looked down upon by any other woman, especially by such a 
 creature as Mrs. Batters, the lawyer's wife, from Calcutta, who 
 was not in society, and did not go to Government House, and 
 here was driving about in the Champs Elyse'es, and giving herself 
 such airs, indeed ! So was Mrs. Doctor Macoon, with her 
 ladys-maid, and her fnan-cook, and her oJ>en carnage, and her 
 close carriage. (Pray read these words with the most withering 
 emphasis which you can lay upon them.) And who was Mrs. 
 Macoon, pray ? Madame Be'ret, the French milliner's daughter, 
 neither more nor less. And this creature must scatter her mud 
 over her betters who went on foot. " I am telling my poor 
 girls, madame," she would say to Madame Smolensk, " that if I 
 had been a milliner s girl, or their father had been a pettifogging 
 attorney, and not a soldier, who has served his sovereign in 
 every quarter of the world, they would be better dressed than 
 they are now, poor chicks ! — we might have a fine apartment 
 in the Faubourg St. Honore' — we need not live at a boarding- 
 house."
 
 372 THE ADVENTURES OF miLIP 
 
 "And if /had been a milliner, Madame la Gent'rale, ' cried 
 Smolensk, with spirit, " perhaps I should not have had need to 
 keep a boarding-house. My father was a general officer, and 
 served his emperor too. IJut what will you ? We have all to 
 do disagreeable things, and to live with disagreeable people, 
 madame ! " And with this Smolensk makes Mrs. General 
 Baynes a fine curtsey, and goes off to other affairs or guests. 
 She was of the opinion of many of Philip's friends. " Ah, 
 Monsieur Philip," she said to him, "when you are married, you 
 will live far from that woman ; is it not ? " 
 
 Hearing that Mrs. Patters was going to the Tuileries, T am 
 sorry to say a violent emulation inspired Mrs. Paynes, and she 
 never was easy until she persuaded her General to take her to the 
 ambassador's and to the entertainments of the citizen king who 
 governed Prance in those days, ft would cost little or nothing, 
 Charlotte nmst be brought out. Her aunt, MacWhirter, from 
 Tours, had sent Charlotte a present of money for a dress. To 
 do Mrs. J^aynes justice, she spent very little money upon her 
 own raiment, and extracted from one of her trunks a costume 
 which had done duty at Parrackpore and Calcutta. " After 
 hearing that Mrs. Patters went, f knew she never would be 
 easy," General P)aynes said, with a sigh. His wife denied the 
 accustion as an outrage ; said that men always imputed the 
 worst motives to women, whereas her wish, heaven knows, was 
 only to see her darling child properly presented, and her hus- 
 band in his proper rank in the world. And Charlotte looked 
 lovely, upon the evening of the ball ; and Madame Smolensk 
 dressed Charlotte's hair very prettily, and offered to lend 
 Augusteto accompany the General's carriage ; but Ogoost revolt- 
 ed,\ind said, " Non, mcrci ! he would do anything for the Gen- 
 eral and Miss Charlotte — but for the Gene'rale, no, no, no ! " 
 and he made signs of violent abnegation. And though Charlotte 
 looked as sweet as a rosebud, she had little pleasure in her ball, 
 Philip not being present. And how could he be present, who had 
 but one old coat, and holes in his boots ? 
 
 So you see, after a sunny autumn, a cold winter comes, 
 when the wind is bad for delicate chests and muddy for little 
 shoes. How could Charlotte come out at eight o'clock through 
 mud or snow of a winter's morning, if she had been out at an 
 evening party late over-night ? Airs. General Baynes began to 
 go out a good deal to the Paris evening parties — I mean to the 
 parties of us Trojans — parlies where there are forty Knglish 
 people, three Frenchmen, and a (German who plays the piano. 
 Charlotte was very much admired. The fame of her good
 
 01^ ms WAY THROUGIt THE ll'ORLb. 3^ J 
 
 looks spread abroad. I promise you that there were persons 
 of much more importance than tlie poor Vicomte de Garcou' 
 boutique^ who were charmed by her liright eyes, her bright smiles, 
 her artless, rosy beauty. Why, little Hely, of the Embassy, 
 actually invited himself to Mrs. Doctor Macoon's, in order to 
 see this young beauty, and danced with her without ceasing : 
 Mr. Hely, who was the pink of fashion, you know ; who danced 
 with ro3'al princesses ; and was at all the grand parties of the 
 Faubourg St. Germain. He saw her to her carriage (a very 
 shabby fly, it must be confessed ; but Mrs Baynes told him they 
 had been accustomed to a very different kind of equipage in 
 India). He actually called at the boarding-house, and left his 
 card, AT. WahinghuDi Hely, attacJie a P Amhassade dc S. M. 
 Brifan/iique, for General Ilaynes and liis lady. To what balls 
 would Mrs. Bavnes like to go ? to the Tuileries ? to the Em- 
 bassy ? to the Faubourg St. Germain ? to the Faubourg St. 
 Honore ? I could name many more persons of distinction who 
 were fascinated by pretty Miss Charlotte. Her mother felt 
 more and more ashamed of the shabby fly, in which our \oung 
 lady was conveyed to and from her parties ; — of the shabby fly, 
 and of that shabby cavalier who was waiting sometimes to put 
 Miss Charlotte into her carriage. Charlotte's mother's ears 
 were only too acute when disparaging remarks were made about 
 that cavalier. What .-' engaged to that queer red-bearded 
 fellow, with the ragged shirt-collars, who trod upon everybody 
 in the polka ? A newspaper writer, was he ? The son of that 
 doctor who ran away after cheating everybody .'' What a very 
 odd thing of General Baynes to think of engaging his daughter 
 to such a person ! 
 
 So Mr. Firmin w-as not asked to many distinguished houses, 
 where his Charlotte was made welcome ; where there was 
 dancing in the salon, very mild negus and cakes in the 
 salle-a-manger, and cards in the lady's bedroom. And he did 
 not care to be asked ; and he made himself very arrogant and 
 disagreeable when he was asked ; and he would upset tea-trays, 
 and burst out into roars of laughter at all times, and swagger 
 about the drawing-room as if he were a man of importance — he 
 indeed — giving himself such airs, because his grandfather's 
 brother was an earl ! And what had the earl done for him, 
 pray ? And what right had he to burst out laughing when 
 Miss Crackley sang a little out of tune ? What could General 
 Baynes mean by selecting such a husband for that nice, modest 
 young girl ? 
 
 The old General sitting in the best bedroom, placidly play-
 
 374 "^^^J^ ADVENTURES OE PIl/L/P 
 
 ing at whist with the other British fogies, does not hear these 
 remarks, perhaps, but little Mrs. liaynes with her eager eyes 
 and ears sees and knows everything. Many people have told 
 /ler that Philip is a bad match for her daughter. She has heard 
 him contradict calmly quite wealthy people. Mr. Hobday, who 
 has a house in Carlton Terrace, London, and goes to the first 
 houses in Paris, Philip has contradicted him point blank, until 
 Mr. Hobday turned quite red, and Mrs, Hobday didn't know 
 where to look. Mr. Peplow, a clergyman and a baronet's eldest 
 son, who will be one day the Rev. Sir Charles Peplow of Peplow 
 Manor, was praising Tomlinson's poems, and offered to read 
 them out at Mr. Badger's — he reads very finely, though a little 
 perhaps through his nose — and when he was going to begin, 
 Mr. I'irmin said, '4J\Ty dear Peplow, for heaven's sake don't 
 give us any of that rot. I would as soon hear one of your own 
 prize poems." Rot, indeed ! What an expression ! Of course 
 Mr. Peplow was very much annoyed. And this from a mere 
 newspaper writer. Never heard of such rudeness ! Mrs. Tuffin 
 said she took her line at once after seeing this Mr. P'irmin. 
 " He may be an earl's grand-nephew, for what I care. He may 
 have been at college, he has not learned good manners there. 
 He may be clever, I don't profess to be a judge. But he is 
 most overbearing, clumsy, and disagreeable. I shall not ask 
 him to my Tuesdays ; and Emma, if he asks you to dance, I beg 
 you will do no such thing!" A bull, you understand, in a 
 meadow, or on a prairie with a herd of other buffaloes, is a noble 
 animal : but a bull in a china-shop is out of place ; and even 
 so was Philip amongst the crockery of those little simple tea- 
 parties, where his mane, and hoofs, and roar, caused endless 
 disturbance. 
 
 These remarks concerning the accepted son-in-law Mrs. 
 Baynes heard and, at proper moments, repeated. She ruled 
 Baynes ; but was very cautious, and secretly afraid of him. 
 Once or twice she had gone too far in her dealings with the 
 quiet old man, and he had revolted, put her down and never 
 forgiven her. Beyond a certain point, she dared not provoke 
 her husband. She would say, " Well, Baynes, marriage is a 
 lottery : and I am afraid our poor Charlotte has not pulled 
 a prize : " on which the General would reply, " No more have 
 others, my dear ! " and so drop the subject "for the time being. 
 On another occasion it would be, "You heard how rude Philip 
 Firmin was to Mr. Hobday .? " and the General would answer, 
 " I was at cards, my dear." Again she might say, " Mrs. 
 Tuffin says she will not have Philip I'irmin to her Tuesdays,
 
 ON HIS WAY TIIROUCIT THE WORLD. 
 
 375 
 
 my dear ; " and the General's rejoinder would be, " Begad, 
 so much the better for him ! " " Ah," she groans, " he's 
 always offending some one 1 " "I don't think he seems to 
 please yon much, h^liza ! " responds the General : and she 
 answers, " No, he don't, and that I confess ; and I don't like 
 to think, Baynes, of my sweet child given up to certain poverty, 
 and such a man ! " At which the General with some of his 
 garrison phrases would break out with a " Hang it, Eliza, do 
 you suppose I think it is a very good match ? " and turn to the 
 wall, and, I hope, to sleep. 
 
 As for poor little Charlotte, her mother is not afraid of little 
 Charlotte : and when the two are alone the poor child knows 
 she is to be made wretched by her mother's assaults upon 
 Philip. Was there ever anything so bad as his behavior, to 
 burst our laughing when Miss Crackley was singing ? Was he 
 called upon to contradict Sir Charles Peplow in that abrupt 
 way, and as good as tell him he was a fool ? It was very wrong 
 certainly, and poor Charlotte thinks, with a blush perhaps, how 
 she was just at the point of admiring Sir Charles Peplow's 
 reading very much, and had been prepared to think Tomlin- 
 son's poems delightful, until Philip ordered her to adopt a 
 contemptuous opinion of the poet. " And did you see how 
 he was dressed ? a button wanting on his waistcoat, and a hole 
 in his boot .-' " 
 
 " Mamma," cries Charlotte, turning very red. " He might 
 have been better dressed — if — if " 
 
 " That is, you would like your own father to be in prison, 
 your mother to beg her bread, your sisters to go in rags, and 
 your brothers to starve, Charlotte, in order that we should pay 
 Philip Firm in back the money of which his father robbed him ! 
 Yes. That's your meaning. You needn't explain yourself. I 
 can understand quite well, thank you. Good-night. I hope 
 youll sleep well ; /sha'n't after this conversation. Good-night, 
 Charlotte ! " Ah, me. O course of true love, didst thou ever 
 run smooth ? As we peep into that boarding-house ; whereof 
 I have already described the mistress as wakeful with racking 
 care regarding the morrow ; wherein lie the Miss Bolderos, who 
 must naturally be very uncomfortable, being on sufferance and 
 as it were in pain, as they lie on their beds ; — what sorrows do 
 we not perceive brooding over the nightcaps ? There is poor 
 Charlotte who has said her prayer for her Philip ; and as she 
 lays her young eyes on the pillow, they wet it with their tears. 
 Why does her mother for ever and for ever speak against him ? 
 Why is her father s^ '^\d when Philip's name is mentioned ?
 
 376 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 Could Charlotte ever think of any but liim ? Oh, never, never 1 
 And so the wet eyes are veiled at last ; and close in doubt and 
 fear and care. And in the next room to Charlotte's, a little 
 yellow old woman lies stark awake ; and in the bed by her side 
 an old gentleman can't close his eyes for thinking — my poor 
 girl is promised to a beggar. All the fine hopes which we had 
 of his getting a legacy from that lord are over. Poor child, 
 poor child, what will become of her ? 
 
 Now, Two Sticks, let us fly over the river Seine to Mr, 
 Philip Firmin's quarters : to Philip's house, who has not got a 
 penny ; to Philip's bed, who has made himself so rude and 
 disagreeable at that tea-party. He has no idea that he has 
 offended anybody. He has gone home perfectly well pleased. 
 He has kicked off the tattered boot. He has found a little fire 
 lingering in his stove by which he has smoked the pipe of 
 thought. Ere he has jumped into his bed he has knelt a 
 moment beside it ; and with all his heart — oh ! with all his 
 heart and soul — has committed the dearest one to heaven's 
 loving protection ! And now he sleeps like a child. 
 
 CHAPTER XXHI. 
 
 IN WHICH WE STILL HOVER ABOUT THE ELYSIAN FIELDS. 
 
 The describer and biographer of my friend Mr. Philip Fir- 
 min has tried to extenuate nothing ; and, 1 hope, has set down 
 naught in malice. If Philip's boots had holes in them, I have 
 written that he had holes in his boots. If he had a red beard, 
 there it is red in this story. I might have oiled it with a tinge 
 of brown, and painted it a rich auburn. Towards modest 
 people he was very gentle and tender ; but I must own that in 
 general society he was not always an agreeable companion. He 
 was often haughty and arrogant : he was impatient of old 
 stories : he was intolerant of commonplaces. Mrs. Paynes' 
 anecdotes of her garrison experiences in India and Europe got 
 a very impatient hearing from Mr. Philip ; and though little 
 Charlotte gently remonstrated with him, saying, " Do, do let 
 mamma tell her story out ; and don't turn away and talk about 
 something else in the midst of it ; and don't tell her you have 
 heard the story before, you rude man ! If she is not pleased 
 with you, she is angry with me, and I have to suffer when you
 
 ON- HIS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. 
 
 377 
 
 are gone away." Miss Charlotte did not say how much she 
 had to suffer when Philip was absent ; how constantly her 
 mother found fault with him ; what a sad life, in consequence of 
 her attachment to him, the young maiden had to lead ; and I 
 fear that clumsy ]'hilip, in his selfish thoughtlessness, did not 
 take enough count of the sufferings which his behavior brought 
 on the girl. You see I am acknowledging that there were many 
 faults on his side, which, perhaps, may in some degree excuse 
 or account for those which Mrs. General Baynes certainly com- 
 mitted towards him. She did not love Philip naturally ; and 
 do you suppose she loved him because she was under great 
 obligations to him ? Do you love your creditor because you 
 owe him more than you can ever pay ? If I ne\er paid my 
 tailor, should I be on good terms with him .'' I might go on 
 ordering suits of clothes from now to the year nineteen hundred ; 
 but I should hate him worse year after year. I should find 
 fault with his cut and his cloth : I dare say I should end by 
 thinking his bills extortionate, though I never paid them. 
 Kindness is very indigestible. It disagrees with very proud 
 stomachs. I wonder was that traveller who fell among the 
 thieves grateful afterwards to the Samaritan w'ho rescued 
 him } He gave money certainly ; but he did not miss it. The 
 religious opinions of Samaritans are lamentably heterodox. 
 
 brother ! may ^ help the fallen still though they never pay 
 us, and may we lend without exacting the usury of gratitude ! 
 
 Of this I am determined, that whenever I go courting again, 
 
 1 will not pay my addresses to my dear creature — day after 
 day, and from year's end to year's end, very likely, with the 
 dear girl's mother, father, and half-a-dozen young brothers and 
 sisters in the room. I shall begin by being civil to the old 
 lady, of course. She is flattered at first by having a young 
 fellow coming courting to her daughter. She calls me " dear 
 Edward;" works me a pair of braces ; writes to mamma and 
 sisters, and so forth. Old gentleman says, " Brown, mv boy'' 
 (I am here fondly imagining i-;iyself to be a young fellow named 
 Edward Brown, attached, let us say, to Miss Kate Thompson) 
 — Thompson, I say, says, " Brown, my boy, come to dinner at 
 seven. Cover laid for you always." And of course, delicious 
 thought ! that cover is by dearest Kate's side. But the dinner 
 is bad sometimes. Sometimes I come late. Sometimes things 
 are going badly in the City. Sometimes Mrs. Thompson is out 
 of humor ; — she always thought Kate might have done better 
 And in the midst of these doubts and delays, suppose Jones 
 appears, who is older, but of a better temper, a better family,
 
 *75? THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 and — plague on him ! — twice as rich? What are engagements? 
 What are promises ? It is sometimes an affectionate mother's 
 DUTY to break lier promise, and tliat duty the resolute matron 
 will do. 
 
 Then Edward is Edward no more, but Mr. Brown ; or, worse 
 still, nameless in the house. Then the knife and fork are re- 
 moved from poor Kate's side, and she swallows her own sad 
 meal in tears. Then if one of the little Thompsons says, art- 
 lessly, "• Papa, I met Teddy Brown in Regent Street ; he looked 
 
 so " '' Hold your tongue, unfeeling wretch ! " cries 
 
 mamma. " Look at that dear child ! " Kate is swooning. She 
 has sal-volatile. The medical man is sent for. And presently 
 — Charles Jones is taking Kate Thompson to dinner. Long 
 voyages are dangerous ; so are long courtships. In long 
 voyages passengers perpetually quarrel (for that Mrs. General 
 could vouch) ; in long courtships the same danger exists ; and 
 how much the more when in that latter ship you have a mother 
 who is for ever putting in her oar ! And then to think of the an- 
 noyance of that love voyage when you and the beloved and be- 
 loved's papa, mamma, half-a-dozen brothers and sisters, are all 
 in one cabin ! For economy's sake the Bayneses had no sitting- 
 room at Madame's — for you could not call that room on the 
 second floor a sitting-rooni which had two beds in it, and in 
 which the young ones practised the piano, '\^h poor Charlotte 
 as their mistress. Philip's courting had to take place for the 
 most part before the whole family ; and to make love under 
 such, difficulties would have been horrible and maddening and 
 impossible almost, only we have admitted that our young friends 
 had little walks in the Champs Elyse'es ; and then you must 
 own that it must have been delightful for them to write each 
 other perpetual little notes, which were delivered occultly under 
 the very nose of papa and mamma, and in the actual presence of 
 the other boarders at Madame's, who, of course, never saw any- 
 thing that was going on. Yes, those sly monkeys actually made 
 little post-offices about the room. There was, for instance, the 
 clock on the mantel-piece in the salon on which was carved the 
 old French allegory, '"' Le temps fait passer ramour." One of 
 those artful young people would pop a note into Time's boat, 
 where you may be sure no one saw it. The trictrac board was 
 another post-office. So was the drawer of the music-stand. So 
 was the Sevres china flower-pot, (S:c., &c. ; to each of which 
 repositories in its turn the lovers confided the delicious secrets 
 of their wooing. 
 
 Have you ever looked at your love-letters to Darby, when
 
 OAT ins IVAV THROUGH TJIE WORLD. 37^ 
 
 you were courting, dear Joan ? They are sacred pages to read. 
 You have his tied up somewhere in a faded ribbon. You scarce 
 need spectacles as you look at them. The hair grows black ; 
 the eyes moisten and brighten ; the cheeks fill and blush again. 
 I protest there is nothing so beautiful as Darby and Joan in the 
 world. I hope Philip and his wife will be Darby and Joan to 
 the end. I tell you they are married ; and don't want to make 
 any mysteries about the business. I disdain that sort of artifice. 
 In the days of the old three-volume novels, didn't you always 
 look at the end, to see that Louisa and the earl (or young 
 clergyman as the case might be) were happy. If they died, or 
 met with other grief, for my part T put the book away. This 
 pair, then, are well ; are married ; are, I trust, happy ; but 
 before they married, and afterwards, they had great griefs and 
 troubles, as no doubt you have had, dear sir or madam, since 
 you underwent that ceremony. Married ? Of course they are. 
 Do you suppose I would have allowed little Charlotte to meet 
 Philip in the Champs Elyse'es with only a giddy little boy of a 
 brother for a companion, who would turn away to see Punch, 
 Guignol, the soldiers marching by, the old woman's gingerbread 
 and toffy stall and so forth 1 Do you, I say, suppose I would 
 have allowed those two to go out together, unless they were to 
 be married afterwards ? Out walking together they did go ; 
 and once, as they were arm-in-arm in the Champs Elyse'es, 
 whom should they see in a fine open carriage but young Twys- 
 den and Captain and Mrs. Woolcomb, to whom, as they passed, 
 Philip doffed his hat with a profound bow, and whom he 
 further saluted with a roar of immense laughter. Woolcomb 
 must have heard the peal. I dare say it brought a little blush 
 into Mrs. Woolcomb's cheek ; and — so, no doubt, added to the 
 many attractions of that elegant lady. I have no secrets about 
 my characters, and speak my mind about them quite freely. 
 They said that Woolcomb was the most jealous, stingy, ostenta- 
 tious, cruel little brute ; that he led his wife a dismal life. 
 Well, if he did i I'm sure I don't care. "There is that 
 swaggering bankrupt beggar Firmin ! " cries the tawny bride- 
 groom, biting his mustache. " Impudent ragged blackguard," 
 says Twysden minor, ' I saw him." 
 
 " Hadn't you better stop the carriage, and abuse him to 
 himself, and not to me ? " says Mrs. Woolcomb, languidly, 
 flinging herself back on her cushions. 
 
 " Go on, hang you ! Ally ! Vite ! " cry the gentlemen in 
 the carriage to the laquais de place on the box. 
 
 " I can fancy you don't care about seeing him," resumes
 
 3^0 ^//^ ADVENTURES OF PJI/LIP 
 
 Mrs. Woolcomb. " He has a violent temper, and I would not 
 have you quarrel for the world." So I suppose Woolcomb 
 again swears at the laquais de place : and the liappy couple, as 
 the saying is, roll away to the Bois de Boulogne. 
 
 " What makes you laugh so ? " says little Charlotte, fondly, 
 as she trips along by her lover's side. 
 
 " Because I am so happy, my dearest 1 " says the other, 
 squeezing to his heart the little hand that lies on his arm. As 
 he thinks on yonder woman, and then looks into the pure eager 
 face of the sweet girl beside him, the scornful laughter occa- 
 sioned by the sudden meeting which is just over hushes ; and 
 an immense feeling of thankfulness fills the breast of the young 
 man : — thankfulness for the danger from which he has escaped, 
 and for the blessed prize which has fallen to him. 
 
 But Mr. Philip's walks were not to be all as pleasant as 
 this walk ; and we are now coming to a history of wet, slij^pery 
 roads, bad times, and winter weather. All I can promise about 
 this gloomy part is, that it shall not be a long story. You will 
 acknowledge we made very short work with the love-making, 
 which I give you my word I consider to be the very easiest 
 part of the novel-writer's business. As those rapturous scenes 
 between the captain and the heroine are going on, a writer who 
 knows his business may be thinking about anything else — about 
 the ensuing chapter, or about what he is going to having for din- 
 ner, or what you will ; therefore, as we passed over the raptures 
 and joys of the courting so very curtly, you must please to gratify 
 me by taking the grief in a very short measure. If our young 
 people are going to suffer, let the pain be soon over. " Sit down 
 in the chair. Miss Baynes, if you please, and you, Mr. Firmin, in 
 this. Allow me to examine you ; just open your mouth, if you 
 please ; and — oh, oh, my dear miss — there it is out ! A little 
 eau-de-Cologne and water, my dear. And now, Mr. Firmin, if you 
 please, we will^what fangs ! what a big one ! Two guineas. 
 Thank you. Good-morning. Come tome once a year. John, show 
 in the next party." About the ensuing jDainful business, then, 
 I protest I don't intend to be much longer occupied than the 
 humane and dexterous operator to whom I have made so bold 
 as to liken myself. If my pretty Charlotte is to have a tooth 
 out, it shall be removed as gently as possible, poor dear. As 
 for Philip, and his great red-bearded jaw, I don't care so much 
 if the tug makes ///;;/ roar a little. And yet they remain, they 
 remain and throb in after life, those wounds of early days. 
 Have I not said how, as I chanced to walk with Mr. Firmin in 
 Paris, many years after the domestic circumstances here
 
 ON Ills WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. 381 
 
 recorded, lie paused before the window of that house near the 
 Champs Elyse'es where Madame Smolensk once held her pen- 
 sion^ shook his fist at -xjixlousic of the now dingy and dilapidated 
 mansion, and intimated to me that he had undergone severe 
 sufferings in tlie chamber lighted by yonder window ? So have 
 we all suffered ; so, very likely, my dear young miss or master 
 who peruses this modest page, will you have to suffer in your 
 time. You will not die of the operation, most probably : but it 
 is painful : it makes a gap in the mouth, voyez-vous ? and years 
 and years, maybe, after, as you think of it, the smart is renewed, 
 and the dismal tragedy enacts itself over again. 
 
 Philip liked his little maiden to go out, to dance, to laugh, 
 to be admired, to be happy. In her artless way she told him 
 of her balls, her tea-parties, her pleasures, her partners. In a 
 girl's first little season nothing escapes her. Have you not 
 wondered to hear them tell about the events of the evening, 
 about the dresses of the dowagers, about the compliments of 
 the young men, about the behavior of the girls, and what not ? 
 
 Little Charlotte used to enact the over-night's comedy for 
 Philip, pouring out her young heart in her prattle as her little 
 feet skipped by his side. And to hear Philip roar with laughter ! 
 It would have done you good. You might have heard him 
 from the Obelisk to the Etoile. People turned round to look 
 at him, and shrugged their shoulders wonderingly, as good- 
 natured French folks will do. How could a man who had 
 been lately ruined, a man who had just been disappointed of a 
 great legacy from the Earl his great-uncle, a man whose boots 
 were in that lamentable condition, laugh so, and have such high 
 spirits? To think of such an impudent ragged blackguard, 
 as Ringwood Twysden called his cousin, daring to be happy ! 
 The fact is, that clap of laughter smote those three Twysden 
 people like three boxes on the ear, and made all their cheeks 
 tingle and blush at once. At Philip's merriment clouds which 
 had come over Charlotte's sweet face would be chased away. 
 As she clung to him doubts which throbbed at the girl's heart 
 would vanish. When she was acting those scenes of the past 
 night's entertainment, she was not always happy. As she 
 talked and prattled, her own spirits would rise ; and hope and 
 natural joy would spring in her heart again, and come flushing 
 up to her cheek. Charlotte w\as being a hypocrite, as, thank 
 heaven, all good women sometimes are. She had griefs : she 
 hid them from him. She had doubts and fears : they fled when 
 he came in view, and she clung to his strong arm, and looked 
 in hjs honest blue eyes. She did not tell him of those painfu)
 
 382 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 nights when he?- eyes were wakeful and tearful. A yellow old 
 woman in a white jacket, with a nightcap and a night-light, 
 would come, night after night, to the side of her little bed \ 
 and there stand, and with her grim \'oice bark against Philip. 
 That old woman's lean finger would point to all the rents in 
 poor Philip's threadbare paletot of a character — point to the 
 holes and tear them w'ider open. She would stamp on those 
 muddy boots. She would throw up her peaked nose at the idea 
 ;>f the poor fellow's pipe, — his pipe, his great companion and 
 comforter when his dear little mistress was away. She would 
 discourse on the partners of the night ; the evident attentions 
 of this gentleman, the politeness and high breeding of that. 
 
 And when that dreary nightly torture was over, and Char- 
 lotte's mother had left the poor child to herself, sometimes 
 Madame Smolensk, silting up over her ledgers and bills, and 
 wakeful with her own cares, would steal up and console poor 
 Charlotte ; and bring her some tisane, excellent for the nerves ; 
 and talk to her about — about the subject of which Charlotte 
 best liked to hear. And though Smolensk was civil to Mrs. 
 Baynes in the morning, as her professional duty obliged her to 
 be, she has owned that she often felt a desire to strangle Mad- 
 ame la Ge'ne'rale for her conduct to her little angel of a daughter ; 
 and all because Monsieur Philippe smells the pipe, parbleu ! 
 •' What ? a family that owes you the bread wdiich they eat ; and 
 they draw back for a pipe ! The cowards, the cowards ! A 
 soldier's daughter is not afraid of it. Merci ! Tenez, M. 
 Philippe," she said to our friend when matters came to an 
 extremity. " Do you know what in your place I would do ? To 
 a Frenchman I would not say so ; that understands itself. But 
 these things make themselves otherwise in England. 1 have no 
 money, but I have a cachemire. Take him ; and if I were you, 
 I would make a little voyage to Gretna Grin." 
 
 And now, if you please, we will quit the Champs Elysees. 
 We will cross the road from Madame's boarding-house. We 
 will make our way into the Faubourg St. Honors, and actually 
 enter a gate over which the L-on, the Un-c-rn, and the R-y-1 
 Cr-wn and A -ms of the Three K-ngd-ms are sculptured, and 
 going under the porte-cochere, and turning to the right, ascend 
 a little stair, and ask of the attendant on the landing who is 
 in the chancellerie ? The attendant says, that several of those 
 messieurs y sont. In fact, on entering the room, you find Mr. 
 Montcomb, — let us say — Mr. Lawndes, Mr. Halkin, and our 
 young friend Mr. Walsingham Hely, seated at their respective 
 tables in the midst of considerable smoke. Smoking in the
 
 ON HIS WA V THROUGH THE WORLD. 383 
 
 midst of these gentlemen, and bestriding his chair, as though it 
 were his horse, sits tliat galhint 3oung. Irish chieftian, The 
 O'Rourke. Some of the gentlemen are copying, in a large hand- 
 writing, despatches on foolscap paper. I would rather be torn 
 to pieces by O'Rourke's wildest horses, than be understood to 
 hint at what those despatches, at what those despatch-boxes 
 contain. Perhaps they contain some news from the Court of 
 Spain, where some intrigues are carried on, a knowledge of 
 which would make your hair start off your head ; perhaps tliat 
 box, for which a messenger is waiting in a neighboring apart- 
 ment, has locked up twenty-four yards of Chantilly lace for Lady 
 Belweather, and six new French farces for Tom Tiddler of the 
 Foreign Office, who is mad about the theatre. It is years and 
 years ago ; how should I know what there is in those despatch- 
 boxes ? 
 
 But the work, whatever it maybe, is not very pressing — for 
 there is only Mr. Chesham — did I say Chesham before, by the 
 way ? You may call him j\Ir. Sloanestreet if you like. There 
 is only Chesham (and he always takes things to the grand 
 serious) who seems to be much engaged in writing ; and the 
 conversation goes on. 
 
 " Who gave it ? " asks Montcomb. 
 
 " The black man, of course, gave it. We would not pretend 
 to compete with such a long purse as his. You should have 
 seen what faces he made at the bill ! Thirty francs a bottle for 
 Rhine wine. He grinned with the most horrible agony when 
 he read the addition. He almost turned yellow. He sent 
 away his wife early. How long that girl was hanging about 
 London ; and think of her hooking a millionaire at last ! 
 Othello is a frightful screw, and diabolically jealous of his wife." 
 
 "What is the name of the little man who got so dismally 
 drunk, and began to cry about old Ringwood ? " 
 
 " Twysden — the woman's brother. Don't you know Hum- 
 bug Twysden, the father ? The youth is more offensive than 
 the parent." 
 
 " A most disgusting little^ beast. Would come to the 
 Varie'te's, because we said we were going : would go to Lamoig- 
 non's, where the Russians gave a dance and a lansquenet. 
 Why didn't you come, Llely ? " 
 
 Mr. Hdy. — I tell you I hate the whole thing. Those 
 painted old actresses give me the horrors. What do I want 
 with winning Montcomb's money who hasn't got any.'' Do you 
 think it gives me any pleasure to dance with old Caradol ? She 
 puts me in mind of my grandmother — only she is older. Do
 
 384 
 
 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 you think I want to go and see that insane old Boutzoff leering 
 at Corinne and Palmyrine, and making a group of three old 
 women together ! I wonder how you fellows can go on. Aren't 
 you tired of truffles and ecrevisses ii la Bordelaise ; and those 
 old opera people, whose witliered old carcases are stuffed with 
 them ? 
 
 The C"7?.— There was Ce'risette, 1 give ye me honor. Ye 
 never saw. She fell asleep in her cheer 
 
 Mr. Lowndes. — in her /nu/iat, O'R. ? 
 
 lyie O'R — Well, in her chair then ! And Figaroff smayred 
 her feece all over with the craym out of a Charlotte Roose. 
 She's a regular bird and mustache, you know, Ce'risette has. 
 
 Mr. Zft'/)'.— Charlotte, Charlotte ! Oh ! (^He clutches his 
 hair madly. His elbows are on the table.) 
 
 Mr. Lowndes. — It's that girl he meets at the tea-parties, 
 where he goes to be admired. 
 
 Mr. ILcly. — It is better to drink tea than, like you fellows, 
 to muddle what brains you have with bad champagne. It is 
 better to look, and to hear, and to see, and to dance with a 
 modest girl, than, like you fellows, to be capering about in 
 taverns with painted old hags like that old Ce'risette, who has 
 got a face like a pomme ciiite, and who danced before Lord 
 Malmesbury at the Peace of Amiens. She did, I tell you ; and 
 before Napoleon. 
 
 Mr. Chesham. — {Looks up from his writing) — There was no 
 Napoleon then. It is of no consequence, but 
 
 Loicndes. — Thank you, I owe you one. You're a most 
 valuable man, Chesham, and a credit to your father and 
 mother. 
 
 Mr. Chesham. — Well, the First Consul was Bonaparte. 
 
 Lowndes. — I am obliged to you. I say I am obliged to you, 
 Chesham, and if you would like any refreshment order it meis 
 sumptibus, old boy — at my expense. 
 
 Chesham. — These fellows will never be serious. {LLeresufnes 
 his writing.') 
 
 LLcly. — {Iterum, but very low) — Oh, Charlotte, Char 
 
 Mr, Lowndes. — Hely is raving about that girl — that girl with 
 the horrible old mother in yellow, don't you remember.? and 
 old father — good old military party, in a shabby old coat — who 
 was at the last ball. What was the name ? O'Rourke, what is 
 the rhyme for Baynes ? 
 
 The O'R — Pays, and be hanged to you. You're always 
 niakin' fun on me, you little cockney ! 
 
 Mr, Montcomb, — Hely was just as bad about the Danish
 
 ON 1/IS IV A Y THROUGH THE WORLD. 
 
 385 
 
 giri. Vou know, Walse, you composed ever so many verses to 
 her, and wrote home to your mother to ask leave to marry lier ! 
 
 The O' R. — I'd think him big enough to marry without any- 
 body's leave — only they wouldn't have him because he's so ugly. 
 
 Mr. Hely. — Very good, O'Rourke. Very neat and good. 
 You were diverting the company with an anecdote. Will you 
 proceed .? 
 
 The O'R. — Well, then, the Ce'risette had been dancing both 
 on and off the stage till she was dead tired, 1 suppose, and so 
 she fell dead asleep, and Figaroff, taking the what-d'ye-call-'im 
 out of the Charlotte Roose, smayred her face all 
 
 Voice without. — Deet Mosho Ringwood Twysden, sivoplay, 
 poor I'honorable Moshoo Lownds ! 
 
 Servant. — Monsieur Twysden ! 
 
 Mr. Twysden. — Mr. Lowndes, how are you ? 
 
 Mr. Lowndes. — Very well, thank you ; how are you ? 
 
 Mr. Hely. — Lowndes is uncommonly brilliant to-day. 
 
 Mr. Iwysden. — Not the worse for last night ? Some of us 
 were a little elevated, I think ! 
 
 Mr. Lowtides. — Some of us quite the reverse. (Little cad, 
 what does he want } Elevated ! he couldn't keep his little legs !) 
 
 Mr. Twysden — Eh ! Smoking, I see. Thank you. I very 
 seldom do — but as you are so kind — puff. Eh — uncommonly 
 handsome person that, eh — Madame Cerisette. 
 
 The OR. — Thank ye for telling us. 
 
 Mr. Lowndes. — If she meets with jiw^r applause, Mr. Twys- 
 den, I should think Mademoiselle Cerisette is all right. 
 
 The O'R. — Maybe they'd raise her salary if ye told her. 
 
 Mr. Twysden. — Heh — I see you're chafling me. We have 
 a good deal of that kind of thing in Somerset — in our — in — 
 hem ! This tobacco is a little strong. I am a little shaky this 
 morning. Who, by the way, is that Prince Boutzoff who played 
 lansquenet with us ? Is he one of the Livonian Boutzoffs, or 
 one of the Hessian r>outzoffs ? I remember at my poor uncle's, 
 Lord Ringwood, meeting a Prince Blucher de Boutzoff, some- 
 thing like this man, by the way. You knew my poor uncle 1 
 
 Mr. Lowndes. — Dined with him here three months ago at 
 the " Trois Freres." 
 
 Mr. Twysaen. — Been at Whipham, I dare say ? I was bred 
 up there. It was said once that I was to have been his heir. 
 He was very fond of me. He was my godfather. 
 
 The OR. — Then he gave you a mug, and it wasn't a beauty 
 {sot to 7'oce). 
 
 Mr. T7vysden. — You said somethin' ? I was speaking of 
 
 25
 
 386 THE ADVENTURES OF J'JI/J./P 
 
 Whipham, Mr. Lowndes — one of the finest places in England, 
 I should say, except Chatsworth, you know, and thai sort of 
 thing. My grandfather built it — 1 mean my ^/r«/ grandfather, 
 for I'm of the Ringwood family. 
 
 Mr. Lowndes. — Then was Lord Ringwood your grandfather, 
 or your grand godfather ? 
 
 Mr. Iwysden. — He ! he ! My mother was his own niece. 
 My grandfather was his own brother, and I am 
 
 Mr. Lowndes. — Thank you. I see now, 
 
 Mr. Ha/kin. — Das ist sehr interessant Ich versichere 
 ihnen das ist sehj< interessant. 
 
 Mr. Twysde?i. — Said somethin' ? (This cigar is really — I'll 
 throw it away, please.) I was saying that at Whipham, where 
 I was bred up, we would be forty at dinner, and as many more 
 in the upper servants' hall. 
 
 Afr. Lowndes. — And you dined in the — you had pretty good 
 dinners ? 
 
 Mr. Twysden. — A French chef. Two aids, besides turtle 
 from town. Two or three regular cooks on the establishment, 
 besides kitchen-maids, roasters, and that kind of thing, you un- 
 derstand. How many have you here now .^ In Lord Estridge's 
 kitchen you can't do, I should say, at least wuthout, — let me 
 see — why, in our small way — and if you come to London my 
 father will be dev'lish glad to see you — we— — 
 
 Mr. L.owndes. — How is Mrs. Woolcomb this morning ? That 
 was a fair dinner \\'oolcomb gave us yesterday. 
 
 Mr. Twysdeji — He has plenty of money, plenty of money. 
 I hope, Lowndes, when 3'ou come to town — the first time you 
 come, mind — to give you a hearty welcome and some of my 
 father's old por 
 
 Mr. LLely. — Will nobody kick this little beast out ? 
 
 Scfvant. — Monsieur Chesham peut-il voir M. Firmin? 
 
 Mr. Chesham. — Certainly. Come in, Firmin ! 
 
 Mr. Twysden. — Mr. Fearmang — Mr. Fir — Mr. who ? You 
 don't mean to say you receive that icWow, Mr. Chesham? 
 
 Mr. Chesham. — What fellow ? and what do you mean, Mr. 
 What-d'ye-call-'im ? 
 
 Mr. Twysdeji. — That blackg oh — that is, 1 — I beg 
 
 your- 
 
 i\ 
 
 Mr. Firmin {entering and going up to Mr. Chesham^. — I say, 
 give me a bit of news of to-day. What were you saying about 
 that — hum and hum and liaw — mayn't I have it? (^He is talk- 
 ing confidentially with Afr. Cheshafn, ivhen he sees Mr. Twysden.) 
 What 1 you have got that little cad here ?
 
 ON //IS irAV TI/ROl'G// T///i WORLD. 38) 
 
 Mr. Lowndes. — You know Mr. Twysden, Mr. Firmin. He 
 was just speaking about you. 
 
 Mr. Firmin — Was he .' So much the worse for me. 
 
 Mr. Twysden. — Sir ! We don't speak. You've no right to 
 speak to me in this manner ! Don't speak to me : and I won't 
 speak to you, sir — there ! Good-morning, Mr. Lowndes ! Re- 
 member your promise to come and dine with us when you come 
 to town. And — one word — (//<? holds Mr. Lozandes by the button. 
 By the way, he has very curious resemblances to Twysden senior) 
 — we shall be here for ten days certainly. I think Lady Est- 
 ridge has something next week. I have left our cards, and 
 
 Mr. Lowndes. — Take care. Lie will be there {pointing to 
 Mr. Firmin). 
 
 Mr. Twysden. — What ? That beggar ? You don't mean 
 
 to say Lord Estridge will receive such a fellow as Good-by, 
 
 good-by ! {Exit Mr. Twysden^ 
 
 Mr. Firmin. — I caught that little fellow's eye. He's my 
 cousin, you know. We have had a quarrel. I am sure he was 
 speaking about me. 
 
 Mr. Lozandes. — Well, now you mention it, he zvas speaking 
 about you. 
 
 Mr. Firmin. — Was he ? Then don't believe him, Mr. Lowndes. 
 That is my advice. 
 
 Mr. LLely {at his desk composing). — " Maiden of the blushing 
 
 cheek, maiden of the — oh, Charlotte, Char " he bites his 
 
 pen and dashes off rapid rhymes on Government paper. 
 
 Mr. Firmin. — What does he say .' He said Charlotte. 
 
 Mr. Lowndes. — He is always in love and breaking his heart, 
 and he puts it into poems ; he wraps it up in paper, and falls 
 in love with somebody else. Sit down and smoke a cigar, 
 won't you ? 
 
 Mr. Firmin. — Can't stay. Must make up my letter. W^e 
 print to-morrow. 
 
 Mr. Lowndes. — Who wrote that article pitching into Peel ? 
 
 Mr. Firmin. — Family secret — can't say — good-by, {Exit 
 Mr. Firmin.) 
 
 Mr. Chesham. — In my opinion a most ill-advised and intem- 
 perate article. That journal, the Pall Mall Gazette, indulges 
 in a very needless acrimony, I think. 
 
 Mr. Lowjides. — Chesham does not like to call a spade a 
 spade. He calls it a horticultural utensil. You have a great 
 career before you, Chesham. You have a wisdom and gra\ity 
 beyond your years. You bore us slightly, but we all respect 
 you— we do indeed. What was the text at church last Sun-
 
 388 
 
 THE ADVENTURES OF PHlLrP 
 
 day ? Oh, by the way, Hely, you little miscreant, jw/; were at 
 church ! 
 
 Mr. Chcsham. — You need not blush, Hely. I am not a 
 joking man ; but this kind of jesting does not strike me as 
 being particularly amusing, Lowndes. 
 
 Mr. Lowndes. — You go to church because you are good, 
 because your aunt was a bishop or something. But Hely goes 
 because he is a little miscreant. You hypocritical little beggar, 
 you got yourself up as if you were going to a dcjeune, and you 
 had your hair curled, and you were seen singing out of the 
 same hymn-book with that pretty Miss ]>aynes, you little 
 wheedling sinner ; and you walked home with the family — my 
 sisters saw you — to a boarding-house where they live — by 
 Jove ! you did. And I'll tell your mother ! 
 
 Mr. Chesham. — I wish you would not make such a noise, 
 and let me do my work, Lowndes. You 
 
 Here Asmodeus whisks us out of the room, and we lose the 
 rest of the young men's conversation. But enough has been 
 overheard, I think, to show what direction young Mr. Hely's 
 thoughts had taken. Since he was seventeen years of age (at 
 the time when we behold him he may be twenty-three), this 
 romantic youth has been repeatedly in love : with his elderly 
 tutor's daughter, of course ; with a young haberdasher at the 
 university ; with his sister's confidential friend ; with the bloom- 
 ing young Danish beauty last year ; and now, I very much 
 fear, a young acquanitance of ours has attracted the attention 
 of this imaginative Don Juan. Whenever Hely is in love, he 
 fancies his passion will last for ever, makes a confidant of the 
 first person at hand, weeps plenteously, and writes reams of 
 verses. Do you remember how in a previous chapter we told 
 you that Mrs. TufBn was determined she would not ask Philip to 
 her soirees, and declared him to be a forward and disagreeable 
 young man ? She was glad enough to receive young Walsingham 
 Hely, with his languid air, his drooping head, his fair curls, and 
 his rtower in his button-hole ; and Hely, being then in hot pursuit 
 of one of the tall Miss Black locks, went to Mrs. Tuffin's, was 
 welcomed there with all the honors ; and there, fluttering away 
 from Miss Blacklock, our butterfly lighted on Miss Baynes. 
 Now Miss Baynes would have danced with a mop-stick, she 
 was so fond of dancing : and Hely, who had practised in a 
 thousand Chaumieres, Mabilles (or whatever was the public 
 dance-room then in vogue), was a most amiable, agile, and 
 excellent partner. And she told Philip next day what a nice 
 little partner she had found — poor Philip, who was not asked
 
 a.v uis ivAV rriRouGH the world. 
 
 389 
 
 to that paradise of a party. And Philip said that he knew the 
 Uttle man ; that he believed he was rich ; that he wrote pretty 
 little verses : — in a word, Philip, in his leonine ways, regarded 
 little Hely as a lion regards a lapdog. 
 
 Now this little Slyboots had a thousand artful little wavs. 
 He had a very keen sensibility and a fine taste, which was most 
 readily touched by innocence and beauty. He had tears, I 
 won't say at command ; for they were imder no command, and 
 gushed from his fine eyes in spite of himself. Charlotte's 
 innocence and freshness smote him with a keen pleasure. Bon 
 Dieu ! What was that great, tall Miss Blacklock who had 
 tramped through a thousand ball-rooms, compared to this art- 
 less, happy creature .'' Pie danced awav from Miss Placklock 
 and after Charlotte the moment he saw our vouncr friend ; and 
 the Placklocks, wlio knew all about him, and his monev. and 
 his mother, and his expectations — who had his verses in their 
 poor album, by whose carriage he had capered day after day in 
 the Bois de Boulogne — stood scowling and deserted, as this 
 young fellow danced off with that Miss Baynes, who lived in a 
 boarding-house, and came to parties in a cab with her horrid 
 old mother ! The Blacklocks were as though they were not 
 henceforth for Mr. Hely. They asked him to dinner. Bless 
 my soul, he utterly forgot all about it ! He never came to 
 their box on their night at the opera. Not one twinge of 
 remorse had he. Not one pang of remembrance. If he did 
 remember them, it was when they bored him, like those tall 
 tragic women in black who are always coming in their great 
 long trains to sing sermons to Don Juan. Ladies, your name 
 is down in his lordship's catalogue ; his servant has it ; and 
 you, Miss Anna, are number one thousand and three. 
 
 But as for Miss Charlotte, that is a different affair. What 
 innocence! ^\\-3X?t. fraicheur ! What a merry good-humor! 
 Don Slyboots is touched, he is tenderly interested : her artless 
 voice thrills through his frame ; he trembles as he waltzes with 
 her ; as his fine eyes look at her, psha ! what is that film com- 
 ing over them ? O Slyboots, Slyboots ! And as she has nothing 
 to conceal, she has told him all he wants to know before long. 
 This is her first winter in Paris : her first season of coming out. 
 She has only been to two balls before, and two plays and an 
 opera. And her father met Mr. Hely at Lord Trim's. That 
 was her fatliCr playing at whist. And they lived at Madame 
 Smolensk's boarding-house in the Champs Elysees. And they 
 had been to !Mr. Dash's, and to Mrs. Blank's, and she believed 
 they were going to Mrs. Star's on Friday. And did they go
 
 390 THE ADVENTURES OF I'll I LIP 
 
 to Church ? Of course they went to church, to the Rue 
 d'Aguesseau, or wherever it might be. And Slyboots went to 
 church next Sunday. You may perhaps guess to what cluirch. 
 And he went the Sunday after. And he sang his own 
 songs, accompanying himself on the guitar, at his lodgings. 
 And he sang elsewhere. And he had a ver}' pretty little voice, 
 Slyboots had. I believe those poems under the common title 
 of " Gretchen " in our Walsingham's charming vokime were all 
 inspired by Miss Baynes. He began to write about her and 
 himself the very first night after seeing her. He smoked cigar- 
 ettes and drank green tea. He looked so pale — so pale and 
 sad that he quite pitied himself in the looking-glass in his apart- 
 ments in the Rue Mirom6iil. And he compared himself to a 
 wrecked mariner, and to a grave, and to a man entranced and 
 brought to life. And he cried quite freely and satisfactorily by 
 himself. And he went to see his mother and sister next day 
 at the " Hotel de la Terrasse," and cried to them and said he 
 was in love this time for ever and ever. And his sister called 
 him a goose. And after crying he ate an uncommonly good 
 dinner. And he took every one into his confidence, as he al- 
 ways did whenever he was in love : always telling, always mak- 
 ing verses, and always crying. As for Miss "Blacklock, he 
 buried the dead body of that love deep in the ocean of his soul. 
 The waves engulphed Miss B. The ship rolled on. The 
 storm went down. And the stars rose, and the dawn was in 
 his soul, &c. Well, well ! The mother was a vulgar woman, 
 and I am glad you are out of it. And what sort of people are 
 General Baynes and Mrs. Baynes. 
 
 " Oh, delightful people ! Most distinguished officer, the 
 father; modest — doesn't say a word. The mother, a most 
 lively, brisk, agreeable woman. You must go and see her, 
 ma'am. I desire you'll go immediately." 
 
 " And leave cards with P. P. C. for the Miss Blacklocks ! " 
 says Miss Hely, who was a plain lively person. And both 
 mother and sister spoiled this young Hely ; as women ought 
 always to spoil a son, a brother, a father, husband, grandfather 
 — any male relative, in a word. 
 
 To see this spoiled son married was the good-natured 
 mother's fond prayer. An eldest son had died a rake ; a victim 
 to too much money, pleasure, idleness. The widowed mother 
 would give anything to save this one from the career through 
 which the elder had passed. The young man would be one 
 day so wealthy, that she knew many and many a schemer 
 would try and entrap him. Perhaps, she had been made to
 
 ON fTIS VVA Y THKOUGH THE WORLD 
 
 391 
 
 marry his father because he was rich ; and she remembered 
 the gloom and wretchedness of her own union. Oh, that she 
 could see her son out of temptation, and the husband of an 
 honest girl ! It was the young lady's first season ? So much 
 the more likely that she should be unworldly. "The General 
 — don't you remember a nice old gentleman — in a — well, in a 
 wig — that day we dined at Lord Trim's, when that horrible old 
 Lord Ringwood was there ? That was General Baynes ; and 
 he broke out so enthusiastically in defence of a poor young 
 man — Dr. Firmin's son — who was a bad man, I believe ; but I 
 shall never have confidence in another doctor again, that I 
 sha'n't. And we'll call on these people, Fanny. Yes, in a brown 
 wig — the General, 1 perfectly well remember him, and Lord 
 Trim said he was a most distinguished officer. And I have no 
 doubt his wife will be a most agreeable person. Those Gen- 
 erals' wives who have travelled over the world must have ac- 
 quired a quantity of delightful information. At a boarding- 
 house, are they ? I dare say very pleasant and amusing. And 
 we'll drive there and call on them immediately." 
 
 On that day, as Macgrigor and Moira Baynes were disporting 
 in the little front garden of Madame Smolensk's, I think Moira 
 was just about to lick Macgrigor, when his fratricidal hand was 
 stopped by the sight of a large yellow carriage — a large London 
 dowager family carriage — from which descended a large London 
 family footman, with side-locks begrimed with powder, with 
 calves such as only belong to large London family footmen, 
 and with cards in his hand. " Ceci Madame Smolensk ? " says 
 the large menial. '" Oui," says the boy, nodding his head ; on 
 which the footman was puzzled, for he thought from his readi- 
 ness in the use of the French language that the boy was a 
 Frenchman. 
 
 " Ici demure General Bang ? " continued the man. 
 
 " Hand us over the cards, John. Not at home," said Moira. 
 
 " Who ain't at 'ome .'' " inquired the menial. 
 
 " General Baynes, my father, ain't at home. He shall have 
 the pasteboard when he comes in. ' Mrs. Hely ? ' Oh, Mac, 
 it's the same name as that young swell who called the other 
 day ! Ain't at home, John. Gone out to pay some visits. 
 Had a fly on purpose. Gone out with my sister. 'Pon my 
 word, they have John." And from this accurate report of the 
 boy's behavior, I fear that the young liaynes must have been 
 brought up at a classical and commercial academy, where 
 economy was more studied then politeness. 
 
 Philip comes trudging up to dinner, and as this is not his
 
 392 THE ADVENTURES OF PHI UP 
 
 post day, arrives early ; he hopes, perhaps, for a walk with Miss 
 Charlotte, or a coze in Madame Smolensk's little private room. 
 He finds the two boys in the forecourt; and they have Mrs. 
 Hely's cards in their hands ; and they narrate to him the 
 advent and departure of the lady in the swell carriage, the 
 mother of the young swell with the flower in his button-hole, 
 who came the other day on such a jolly horse. " Yes. And 
 he was at church last Sunday, Philip, and he gave Charlotte a 
 hymn-book. And he sang: he sang like the piper who played 
 before Moses, Pa said. And Ma said it was wicked, but it 
 wasn't : only Pa's fun, you know. And Ma said you never 
 came to church. Why don't you } " 
 
 Philip had no taint of jealousy in his magnanimous composi- 
 tion, and would as soon have accused Charlotte of flirting with 
 other men as of stealing Madame's silver spoons. " So you 
 have had some fine visitors," he says, as the fly drives up. " I 
 remember that rich Mrs. Hely, a patient of my father's. My 
 poor mother used to drive to her house." 
 
 " Oh, we have seen a great deal of Mr. Hely, Philip ! " cries 
 Miss Charlotte, not heeding the scowls of her mother, who is 
 nodding and beckoning angrily to the girl. 
 
 " You never once mentioned him. He is one of the greatest 
 dandies about Paris : quite a lion," remarks Philip. 
 
 " Is he ? What a funny little lion ! I never thought about 
 him," says Miss Charlotte, quite simply. O ingratitude ! 
 ingratitude ! And we have told how Mr. Walsingham was 
 crying his eyes out for her. 
 
 " She never thought about him ? " cries Mrs. Baynes, quite 
 eagerly. 
 
 " The piper, is it, you're talking about .'' " asks papa. " I 
 called him piper, you see, because he piped so sweetly at ch — 
 Well, my love?" 
 
 Mrs. liayneswas nudging her Ceneral at this moment. She 
 did not wish that the piper should form the subject of conversa 
 tion, I suppose. 
 
 *' The piper's mother is very rich, and the piper will inherit 
 after her. She has a fine house in London. She gives very 
 fine parties. She drives in a great carriage, and she has come 
 to call upon you. and ask you to her balls, I suppose." 
 
 Mrs. Baynes was delighted at this call. And when she saicL 
 "I'm sure /don't value fine people, or their fine parties, or 
 their fine carriages, but I wish that my dear child should see 
 the world," — I don't believe a word which Mrs. Baynes said. 
 She was much more pleased than Charlotte at the idea 6t
 
 ON HIS WA V THROUGH THE WORLD. 
 
 393 
 
 I'isiting this fine lady ; or else, why should she have coaxed, 
 and wheedled, and been so particularly gracious to the (General 
 all the evening ? She wanted a new g^wn. The truth is, her 
 yellow was very shabby ; whereas Charlotte, in plain white 
 muslin, looked pretty enough to be able to dispense with the 
 aid of any French milliner. I fancy a consultation with Madame 
 and Mrs. Bunch. I fancy a fly ordered, and a visit to the 
 milliner's thf next day. And when the pattern of the gown is 
 settled with the milliner, I fancy the terror on Mrs. Baynes's 
 weazened face when she ascertains the amount of the bill. To 
 do her justice, the General's wife had spent little upon her own 
 homely person. She chose her gowns ugly, but cheap. There 
 were so many backs to clothe in that family that the thrifty 
 mother did not heed the decoration of her own. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 NEC DULCES AMORES SPERNE, PUER, NEQUE TU CHOREAS. 
 
 " My DEAR," Mrs. Baynes said to her daughter, " You are 
 going out a great deal in the world now. You will go to a 
 great number of places where poor Philip cannot hope to be 
 admitted." 
 
 " Not admit Philip, mamma ! then I'm sure I don't want 
 to go," cries the girl. 
 
 " Time enough to leave off going to parties when you can't 
 afford it and marry him. When I was a lieutenant's wife, I 
 didn't go to any parties out of the regiment, my dear ! " 
 
 " Oh, then, I am sure I shall never want to go out ! " Char- 
 lotte declares. 
 
 " You fancy he will always stop at home, I dare say. Men 
 are not all so domestic as your papa. Very few love to stop at 
 home like him. Indeed, I may say I have made his home 
 comfortable. But one thing is clear, my child. Philip can't 
 always expect to go where we go. He is not in the position in 
 life. Recollect, your father is a general officer. C.B., and may 
 be K.C.B. soon, and your mother is a general officer's lady. 
 We may go anywhere. I might have gone to the drawing- 
 room at home if I chose. Lady Biggs would have been 
 delighted to present me. Your aunt has been to the drawing-
 
 ;594 ^-^^ ADVENTCRES OF miLIP 
 
 room, and she is only Mrs. Major MacWhirter ; and most 
 absurd it was of Mac to let her go. But she rules him in 
 everything, and they have no children. I have, goodness 
 knows ! I sacrifice myself for my children. You little know 
 what I deny myself for my children. I said to Lady Biggs, 
 ' No, Lady Biggs ; my husband may go. He should go. He 
 has his uniform, and it will cost him nothing except a fly and a 
 bouquet for the man who dri\'es ; but /will not spend money on 
 myself for the hire of diamonds and feathers, and, though I 
 yield in loyalty to no person, I dare say my Sovereign won''t 
 miss me.' And I don't think her Majesty did. She has other 
 things to think of Ijesides Mrs. General Baynes, I suppose. 
 She is a mother, and can appreciate a mother's sacrifices for 
 her children." 
 
 If I have not hitherto given you detailed reports of Mrs, 
 General Baynes' conversation, I don't think, my esteemed 
 reader, you will be very angry. 
 
 " Now, child," the General's lady continued, " let me warn 
 you not to talk much to Philip about those places to which you 
 go without him, and to which his position in life does not 
 allow of his coming. Hide anything from him ? Oh, dear, no ! 
 Only for his own good, you understand. T don't tell every- 
 thing to your papa. I should only worrit him and vex him. 
 When anything will please him, and make him happy, then I 
 tell him. And about Philip ? Philip, I must say it, my dear — 
 I must as a mother say it — has his faults. He is an envious 
 man. Don't look shocked. He thinks very well of himself ; 
 and having been a great deal spoiled, and made too much of 
 in his unhappy father'^; time, he is so proud and haughty that 
 he forgets his position, and thinks he ought to live with the 
 highest society. Had Lord Ringwood left him a fortune, as 
 Philip led us to expect when we gave our consent to this most 
 unlucky match — for that my dear child should marry a beggar 
 is most unlucky and most deplorable ; I can't help saying so, 
 Charlotte, — if I were on my deathbed I couldn't help saying 
 so ; and I wish with all my heart we had never seen or heard 
 of him. — There ? Don't go off in one of your tantrums ! 
 What was T saying, pray ? I say that Philip is in no position, 
 or rather in a very humble one, which — a mere newspaper- 
 writer and a subaltern too — everybody acknowledges it to be. 
 And if he hears us talking about our parties to which we have 
 a right to go — to which you have a right to go with your 
 mother, a general officer's lady — why he'll be offended. He 
 won't like to hear about them and think he can't be invited :
 
 ON HIS WA Y THROUGH THE IVORLD. 391, 
 
 and you had better not talk about them at all, or about the 
 people you meet and dance with. At Mrs. Ilely's you may 
 dance with Lord Headbury, the ambassador's son. And if you 
 tell Philip he will be offended. He will say that you boast 
 about it. When I was only a lieutenant's wife at Barrackpore, 
 Mrs. Captain Capers used to go to Calcutta to the Government 
 House balls. I didn't go. But I was offended, and I used to 
 say that Flora Capers gave herself airs, and was always boast- 
 ing of her intimacy with the Marchioness of Hastings. We 
 don't like our equals to be better off than ourselves. Mark 
 my words. And if you talk to Philip about the people whom 
 you meet in society, and whom he can't from his unfortunate 
 station expect to know, you will offend him. That was why I 
 nudged you to-day when you weie going on about Mr. Hely. 
 Anything so absurd ! I saw Philip getting angry at once, and 
 biting his mustaches, as he always does when he is angry — 
 and swears quite out loud — so vulgar ! There ! you are going 
 to be angry again, my love ; I never saw anything like you ! Is 
 this my Charly who never was angry ? I know the world, dear, 
 and you don't. Look at me, how I manage your papa, and I 
 tell you don't talk to Philip about things which offend him ! 
 Now, dearest, kiss your poor old mother who loves you. Go 
 up stairs and bathe your eyes, and come down happy to dinner." 
 And at dinner Mrs. General Baynes was uncommonly gracious 
 to Philip : and when gracious she was especially odious to 
 Philip, whose magnanimous nature accommodated itself ill to 
 the wheedling artifices of an ill-bred old woman. 
 
 Following this wretched mother's advice, my poor Charlotte 
 spoke scarcely at all to Philip of the parties to which she went, 
 and the amusements which she enjoyed without him. I dare 
 say Mrs. Baynes was quite happy in thinking that she was 
 " guiding " her child rightly. As if a coarse woman, because 
 she is mean, and greedy, and hypocritical, and fifty years old, 
 has a right to lead a guileless nature into wrong ! Ah ! if some 
 of us old folks were to go to school to our children, I am sure, 
 madam, it would do us a great deal of good. There is a fund 
 of good sense and honorable feeling about my great-grandson 
 Tommy, which is more valuable than all his grandpapa's 
 experience and knowledge of the world. Knowledge of the 
 world forsooth ! Compromise, selfishness modified, and double 
 dealing, Tom disdains a lie : when he wants a peach, he roars 
 for it. If his mother wishes to go to a party, she coaxes, and 
 wheedles, and manages, and smirks, and curtseys for months, 
 in order to get her end ; takes twenty rebuffs and comes up to
 
 396 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 the scratdi again smiling ; — and tliis woman is forever lecturing 
 her daughters, and preaching to her sons upon virtue, honesty, 
 and moral behavior ! 
 
 Mrs. Hely's little party at the "Hotel de la Terrasse " was 
 very pleasant and bright; and Miss Charlotte enjoyed it, 
 although her swain was not present. Rut Philip was pleased 
 that his little Charlotte should be happy. She beheld with 
 wonderment Parisian duchesses, American millionaires, dandies 
 from the embassies, deputies and peers of France with large 
 stars and wigs like papa. She gayly described her party to 
 Philip ; described, that is to say, ever}'thing but her own 
 success, which was undoubted. There were manv beauties at 
 Mrs. Hely's, but nobody fresher or prettier. The Miss Black- 
 locks retired very early and in the worst possible temper. 
 Prince Slyboots did not in the least heed their going away. 
 His thoughts were all fixed upon little Charlotte. Charlotte's 
 mamma saw the impression which the girl made, and was filled 
 with a hungry joy. Good-natured Mrs. Hely complimented 
 her on her daughter. " Thank God, she is as good as she 
 is pretty," says her mother, I am sure speaking seriously this 
 time regarding her daughter. Prince Slyboots danced with 
 scarce anybody else. He raised a perfect whirlwind of com- 
 pliments round about Charlotte. She was quite a simple per- 
 son, and did not understand one-tenth part of what he said 
 to her. He strewed her path with roses of poesy : he scat- 
 tered garlands of sentiment before her all the way from the 
 ante-chamber down stairs, and so to the fly which was in waiting 
 to take her and parents home to the boarding-house. " By 
 George, Charlotte, I think you have smitten that fellow," cries 
 the Genera], who was infinitely amused by young Hely — his 
 raptures, his affectations, his long hair, and what Baynes called 
 his low dress. A slight white tape and a ruby button confined 
 Hely's neck. His hair waved over his shoulders. Baynes had 
 never seen such a specimen. At the mess of the stout 120th, 
 the lads talked of their dogs, horses, and sport. A young 
 civilian, smattering in poetry, chattering in a dozen languages, 
 scented, smiling, perfectly at ease with himself and the world, 
 was a novelty to the old officer. 
 
 And now the Queen's birthday arrived — and that it may 
 arrive for many scores of years yet to come is, I am sure, the 
 prayer of all of us — and with the birthday his Excellency Lord 
 Estridge's grand annual fete in honor of his sovereign. A card 
 for their ball was left at Madam Smolensk's, for General, Mrs, 
 and Miss Baynes ; and no doubt Monsieur Slyboots Walsing-
 
 MISS CHARLOTTE AND HER PARTNERS.
 
 ON HIS WA Y THROUGH THE WORLD. 
 
 397 
 
 ham Hely was the artful agent by whom the invitation was 
 forwarded. Once more the General's veteran uniform came out 
 from the tin-box, with its dingy epaulets and little cross and 
 ribbon. His wife urged upon him strongly the necessity of 
 having a new wig, wigs being very cheap and good at Paris — 
 but Baynes said a new wig would make his old coat look very 
 shabby, and a new uniform would cost more money than he 
 would like to afford. So shabby he went de cap a pied, with a 
 moulting feather, a threadbare suit, a tarnished wig, and a 
 worn-out lace, sibi constans. Boots, trousers, sash, coat, were 
 all old and worse for wear, and "faith," says he, "my face 
 follows suit." A brave, silent man was Baynes ; with a twinkle 
 of humor in his lean, wrinkled face. 
 
 And if General Baynes was shabbily attired at the Embassy 
 ball, I think I know a friend of mine who was shabby too. In 
 the days of his prosperity, Mr. Philip was parens cultor et 
 infrcquens of balls, routs, and ladies' company. Perhaps 
 because his father was angered at Philip's neglect of his social 
 advantages and indifference as to success in the world, Philip 
 was the more neglectful and indifferent. The elder's comedy- 
 smiles, and solemn, hypocritical politeness caused scorn and 
 revolt on the part of the younger man. Philip despised the 
 humbug, and the world to which such humbug could be welcome. 
 He kept aloof from tea-parties then': his evening-dress clothes 
 served him for a long time. I cannot say how old his dress- 
 coat was at the time of which we are writing. But he had been 
 in the hahit of respecting that garment and considering it new 
 and handsome for many years past. Meanwhile the coat had 
 shrunk, or its wearer had grown stouter ; and his grand 
 embroidered, embossed, illuminated, carved and gilt velvet 
 dress waistcoat, too, had narrowed, had become absurdly tight 
 and short, and I dare say was the laughing-stock of many of 
 Philip's acquaintances, whilst he himself, poor simple fellow, 
 was fancying that it was a most splendid article of apparel. 
 You know in the Palais Royal they hang out the most splendid 
 reach-me-down dressing-gowns, waistcoats, and so forth. 
 " No," thought Philip, coming out of his cheap dining-house, 
 and swaggering along the arcades, and looking at the tailors' 
 shops, with his hands in his pockets. " My brown velvet dress 
 waistcoat with the gold sprigs, which I had made at college, is 
 a much more tasty thing than these gaudy ready-made articles. 
 And my coat is old certainly, but the brass buttons are still 
 very bright and handsome, and, in fact, it is a most becoming 
 and gentlemanlike thing." And under this delusion the honest
 
 3g8 thp: adventures of philip 
 
 fellow dressed himself in his old clothes, lighted a pair of 
 candles, and looked at himself with satisfaction in the looking- 
 f;lass, drew on a pair of cheap gloves which he had bought, 
 walked by the Quays, and over the Deputies' Bridge, across the 
 Place I.ouis XV., and strutted up the Faubourg St. Honore to 
 the Hotel of the British Embassy. A half-mile quene of 
 carriages was formed along the street, and of course the 
 entrance to the hotel was magnificently illuminated. 
 
 A plague on those cheap gloves ! Why had not Philip 
 paid three francs for a pair of gloves, intead of twenty-nine 
 sous ? Mrs. Baynes had found a capital cheap glove shop, 
 whither poor Phil had gone in the simplicity of his heart ; and 
 now as he went in under the grand illuminated porte-cochere^ 
 Philip saw that the gloves had given way at the thumbs, and 
 that his hands appeared through the rents, a^ red as raw beef- 
 steaks. It is wonderful how red hands will look through holes 
 in white gloves. " And there's that hole in my boot, too," 
 thought Phil ; but he had put a little ink over the seam, and 
 so the rent was imperceptible. The coat and waistcoat were 
 tight, and of a past age. Never mind. The chest was broad, 
 the arms were muscular and long, and Phil's face, in the midst 
 of a halo of fair hair and flaming whiskers, looked brave, hon- 
 est, and handsome. For awhile his eyes wandered fiercely and 
 restlessly all about the room from group to group ; but now — • 
 ah ! now — they were settled. They had met another pair of 
 eyes, which lighted up with glad welcome when they beheld 
 him. Two young cheeks mantled with a sweet blush. These 
 were Charlotte's cheeks: and hard by them were mamma's, of 
 a very different color. But Mrs. General Baynes had a know- 
 ing turban on, and a set of garnets round her old neck, like 
 gooseberries set in gold. 
 
 They admired the rooms : they heard the names of the 
 great folks who arrived, and beheld many famous personages. 
 '1 hey made their curtseys to the ambassadress, Confusion ! 
 With a great rip, the thumb of one of those cheap gloves of 
 Philip's parts company from the rest of the glove, and he is 
 obliged to wear it crumpled up in liis hand : a dreadful mishap 
 — for he is going to dance with Charlotte, and he will have to 
 give his hand to the vis-a-7)is. 
 
 Who comes up smiling, with a low neck, with waving curls 
 and whiskers, pretty little hands exquisitely gloved, and tiny 
 feet? 'Tis Hcly \Valsingham, lightest in the dance. Most 
 affably does Mrs. General Baynes greet the young fello\\ . Very 
 brightly and happily do Charlotte's eyes glance towards her
 
 OA' HIS WAY THROUGH TflE WORLD 
 
 399 
 
 favorite partner. It is certain that poor Phil can't hope at all 
 to dance lil<.e Hely. " And see what nice neat feet and hands 
 he has got," says Mrs. Baynes. " Comme il est bien gante ! A 
 gentleman ought to be always well gloved." 
 
 " Why did you send me to the twenty-nine-sous-shop ? " 
 says poor Phil, looking at his tat t; red hand-shoes and red ob- 
 trusive thumb. 
 
 " Oh, you ! " — (here Mrs. Baynes shrugs her yellow old 
 shoulders.) " You7- hand would burst through any gloves ! 
 How do you do, Mr. Hely ? Is your mamma here ? Of course 
 she is ! What a delightful party she gave us ! The dear am- 
 bassadress looks quite unwell — most pleasing manners, I am 
 sure ; Lord Estridge, what a perfect gentleman ! " 
 
 The Bayneses were just come. For what dance was Miss 
 Baynes disengaged ? " As many as eyer you like ! " cries 
 Charlotte, who, in fact, called Hely her little dancing-master, 
 and never thought of him except as a partner. " Oh, too much 
 happiness ! Oh, that this could last for ever ! " sighed Hely, 
 after a waltz, polka, mazurka, I know not what, and fixing on 
 Charlotte the full blaze of his beauteous blue eyes. " For 
 ever.-"" cries Charlotte, laughing. "I'm very fond of danc- 
 ing, indeed ; and you dance beautifully ; but I don't know that 
 I should like to dance for ever." Ere the words are over, he 
 is whirling her round the room again. His little feet fly with 
 surprising agility. His hair floats behind him. He scatters 
 odors as he spins. The handkerchief with which he fans his 
 pale brow is like a cloudy film of muslin — and poor old Philip 
 sees with terror that his pocket-handkerchief has got three 
 great holes in it. His nose and one eye appeared through one 
 of the holes while Phil was wiping his forehead. It was very 
 hot. He was very hot. He was hotter, though standing still, 
 than young Hely who was dancing. " He ! he ! I compliment 
 you on your gloves, and your handkerchief, I'm sure," sniggers 
 Mrs. Baynes, with a toss of her turban. Has it not been said 
 that a bull is a strong, courageous, and noble animal, but a 
 bull in a china-shop is not in his place ? " There you go. 
 Thank you ! I wish you'd go somewhere else," cries Mrs. 
 Baynes, in a fury. Poor Philip's foot has just gone through 
 her flounce. How red is he! how much hotter than ever! 
 There go Hely and Charlotte, whirling round like two opera- 
 dancers ! Philip grinds his teeth, he buttons his coat across 
 his chest. How very tight it feels ! How savagely his eyes 
 glare ! Do young men still look savage and solemn at balls } 
 An ingenuous young Englishman ought to do that duty of
 
 400 'J'^'t'' ADVENTCKES OE PHI LI 1' 
 
 dancing, of course. Society calls upon him. Hut I doubt 
 whetiier he ought to look cheerful during the performance, or 
 flippantly engage in so grave a matter. 
 
 As Charlotte's sweet round face beamed smiles upon Philip 
 over Hely's shoulders, it looked so happy that he never thought 
 of grudging her her pleasure : and happy he might have re- 
 mained in this contemplation, regarding not the circle of dancers 
 who were galloping and whirling on at their usual swift rate, 
 but her, who was the centre of all joy and pleasure for him ; — 
 when suddenly a shrill voice was heard behind liim, crying, 
 •' Get out of the way, hang you ! " and suddenly there bounced 
 against him Ringwood Twysden, pulling Miss Flora Trotter 
 round the room, one of the most powerful and intrepid dancers 
 of the season at Paris. They hurtled past Philip ; they shot 
 him forward against a pillar. He heard a screech, an oath, and 
 another loud laugh from Twysden, and beheld the scowls of 
 Miss Trotter as that rapid creature bumped at length into a 
 place of safety. 
 
 I told you about Philip's coat. It was very tight. The 
 daylight had long been struggling to make an entry at the 
 seams. As he staggered up against the wall, crack ! went a 
 great hole at his back ; and crack ! one of his gold buttons 
 came off, leaving a rent in his chest. It was in those days 
 when gold buttons still lingered on the breasts of some brave 
 men, and we have said simple Philip still thought his coat a 
 fine one. 
 
 There was not only a rent of the seam, there was not only 
 a burst button, but there was also a rip in Philip's rich cut- 
 velvet waistcoat, with the gold sprigs, which he thought so 
 handsome — a great, heart-rending scar. What was to be 
 done ? Retreat was necessary. He told Miss Charlotte of the 
 hurt he had received, wliose face wore a very comical look of 
 pity at his misadventure — he covered part of his wound with 
 his gibus hat — and he thouirht he would try and make his way 
 out by the garden of the hotel, which, of course, was illuminated, 
 and bright, and crowded, but not so very bright and crowded 
 as the salons, galleries, supper-rooms, and halls of gilded 
 light in which the company, for the most part, assembled. 
 
 So our poor, wounded friend wandered into the garden, over 
 which the moon was shining with the most blank indifference 
 at the fiddling, feasting, and parti-colored lamps. He says that 
 his mind was soothed by the aspect of yonder placid moon and 
 twinkling stars, and he had altogether forgotten his trumpery 
 little accident and torn coat and waistcoat : but I doubt about
 
 oj\r Tf/s IV. IV TiiKocGir Tin-: world. 
 
 401 
 
 the entire truth of this statement, for there have been some 
 occasions when he, Mr. PhiHp. has mentioned h . subject, and 
 owned that he was mortified and in a rage. 
 
 Well. He went into the garden ; and was calmmg himself 
 by contemplating the stars, when, just by that fountain where 
 there is Pradier's little statue of — Moses in the Bulrushes, let 
 us say — round whicli there was a beautiful row of illuminated 
 lamps, lighting up a great coronal of flowers, .vhich my dear 
 readers are at liberty to select and arrange accord ng to their 
 own exquisite taste ; — near this little fountain he found three 
 gentlemen talking together. 
 
 The high voice of one Philip could hear, and knew from old 
 days. Ringwood Twysden, Esquue, always liked to talk and 
 to excite himself with other persons' liquor He had been 
 drinking the Sovereign's health with great assiduity, I suppose, 
 and was exceedingly loud and happy. With Ringwood was Mr. 
 Woolcomb, whose countenance the lamps lit up in a fine lurid 
 manner, and whose eyeballs gleamed in the twilight : and the 
 third of the group was our young friend Mr. Lowndes. 
 
 " I owed him one, you see, Lowndes," said Mr. Ringwood 
 Twysden. " I hate the fellow ! Hang him, always did ! I 
 saw the great hulkin' brute standin' there. Couldn't help my- 
 self. Give you my honor, couldn't help myself. I just drove 
 Miss Trotter at him — sent her elbow well into him, and spun 
 him up against the wall. The buttons cracked off the beggar's 
 coat, begad ! What business had he there, hang him ? Gad, 
 sir, he made a cannon off an old woman in blue, and went 
 into * * * * " 
 
 Here Mr. Ringwood's speech came to an end : for his 
 cousin stood before him, grim and biting his mustache. 
 
 " Hullo ! " piped the other. " Who wants you to overhear 
 my conversation } Dammy, I say ! i * * * * " 
 
 Philip put out that hand with the torn glove. The glove 
 was in a dreadful state of disruption now. He worked the 
 hand well into his kinsman's neck, and twisting Ringwood 
 round into \ proper position, brought that poor old broken 
 boot so to bear upon the proper quarter, that Ringwood was 
 discharged into the little font, and lighted amidst the flowers, 
 and the water, and the oil-lamps, and made a dreadful mess 
 and splutter amongst them. And as for Philip's coat, it was 
 torn worse than ever. 
 
 1 don't know how many of the brass buttons had revolted 
 and parted company from the poor old cloth, which cracked 
 eind split, and tore under the agitation of that beating angry 
 
 2^
 
 402 
 
 Till-: Aj)\-E.\TiRi:s OF rifirjp 
 
 bosom. I blush as I think of Mr. Fiiniin in this ragged state, 
 a great rent all across his back, and his prostrate enemy lying 
 howling in the water, amidst the sputtering, crashing oil-lamps 
 at his feet. When Cinderella quitted her first ball, just after 
 the clock struck twelve, we all know how shabby she looked. 
 Philip was a still more disreputable object when he slunk away. 
 I don't know by what side door j\Ir. Lowndes eliminated him. 
 He also benevolently took charge of Philip's kinsman and 
 antagonist, Mr. Ringwood Twysden. Mr. Twysden's hands, 
 coat-tails, &c., were very much singed and scalded by the oil, 
 and cut by the broken glass, which was all extracted at the 
 Beaujon Hospital, but not without much suffering on the part 
 of the patient. Cut though young Lowndes spoke up for 
 Philip, in describing the scene (I fear not without laughter), 
 his E.xcellency caused Mr. Firmin's name to be erased from 
 his party lists : and I am sure no sensible man will defend 
 Philip's conduct for a moment. 
 
 Of this lamentable fracas which occurred in the "Hotel 
 Garden, Miss Baynes and her parents had no knowledge for 
 awhile. Charlotte was too much occupied with her dancing, 
 which she pursued with all her might; papa was at cards witli 
 some sober male and female veterans, and mamma was looking 
 with delight at her daughter, whom the young gentlemen of many 
 embassies were charmed to choose for a partner. When Lord 
 Headbury, Lord Estridge's son, was presented to Miss Baynes, 
 her mother was so elated that she was ready to dance too. I 
 do not envy Mrs. ALijor ]\LicWhirter, at Tours, the perusal of 
 that immense manuscript in which her sister recorded the 
 events of the ball. Here was Charlotte, beautiful, elegant, 
 accomplished, admired everywhe?-e, with young men, young 7ioble- 
 men of immense property and expectations, wild about her ; and 
 engaged by a promise to a rude. r2igged, p?rsui/i/>tHous, ill-bred 
 young man, without a penny in t.'te world — wasn't it provoking? 
 Ah, poor Philip ! How that little sour, yellow mother-in-law 
 elect did scowl at him when he came with rather a shamefaced 
 look to pay his duty to his sweetheart on the jday after the 
 ball ! Mrs. Baynes caused her daughter to dress with extra 
 smartness, had forbidden the poor child to go out, and coaxed 
 her, and wheedled her, and dressed her with I know not what 
 ornaments of her own, with a fond exi)ecla(ion that Lord Head- 
 bury, that the yellow young Spanish attache, that the sprightly 
 Prussian secretary, and Walsingham Hely, Charlotte's partners 
 at the ball, would certainly call ; and the only equipage that 
 appeared at Madame Smolensk's gate was a hack cab, which
 
 ON HIS WAY THROUGH Tllh WORLD. 403 
 
 drove up at evening, and out of which poor Philip's well-known 
 tattered boots came striding. Such a fond mother as Mrs. 
 Baynes may well have been out of humor. 
 
 As for Philip, he was unusually shy and modest. He had 
 been sitting at liome all the morning in state, and in company 
 with a Polish colonel, who lived in his hotel, and whom Philip 
 had selected to be his second in case the battle of the previous 
 night should have any suite. He had left that colonel in com- 
 pany with a bag of tobacco and an order for unlimited beei*, 
 whilst he himself ran up to catch a glimpse of his beloved. 
 The Bayneses had not heard of the battle of the previous night. 
 They were full of the ball, of Lord Estridge's affability, of the 
 Golconda ambassador's diamonds, of the appearance of the 
 royal princes who honored the fete, of the most fashionable 
 Paris talk in a word. Philip was scolded, snubbed, and coldly 
 received by mamma ; but he was used to that sort of treat- 
 ment, and greatly relieved by finding that she was unacquainted 
 with his own disorderly behavior. He did not tell Charlotte 
 about the quarrel : a knowledge of it might alarm the little 
 maiden ; and so for once our friend was discreet, and held his 
 tongue. 
 
 ' But if he had any influence with the editor of Galtgnani's 
 Messenger, why did he not entreat the conductors of that admir- 
 able journal to forego all mention of the fracas at the Embassy 
 ball .'' Two days after the fete, I am sorry to say, there appeared 
 a paragraph in the paper narrating the circumstances of the 
 fight. And the guilty Philip found a copy of that paper on the 
 table before Mrs. Baynes and the, General when he came to the 
 Champs Elysees according to his wont. Behind that paper sat 
 Major-General Baynes, C.B., looking confused, and beside him 
 his lady frowning like Rhadamanthus. But no Charlotte was 
 in the room. 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 INFANDI DOLORES. 
 
 Philip's heart beat very quickly at seeing this grim pair, 
 and the guilty newspaper before them, on which Mrs. IJaynes' 
 lean right hand was laid. "So, sir," she cried, "you still 
 honor us with your company : after distinguishing yourself ag
 
 404 ^^^^ ADVENTURES OF PfrrTJP 
 
 you (lid the night before last. Fighting- and boxing like a 
 porter at his F.xcellency's ball. It's disgusting! I have no 
 other word for it : disgusting ! " And here I suppose she 
 nudged the General, or gave him some look or signal by which 
 he knew he was to come into action ; for Baynes straightway 
 advanced and delivered his fire. 
 
 " Faith, sir, more bub-ub-blackguard conduct I never heard 
 of in my life 1 That's the only word for it : the only word for 
 it," cries Baynes. 
 
 " The General knows what blackguard conduct is, and 
 yours is that conduct, Mr. Firmin ! It is all over the town : is 
 talked of everywhere : will be in all the newspapers. When his 
 lordship heard of it, he was furious. Never, never, will you be 
 admitted into the Embassy again, after disgracing yourself as 
 you have done," cries the lady. 
 
 " Disgracing yourself, that's the word. — And disgraceful 
 
 your conduct was, begad ! " cries the officer second in command. 
 
 " You don't know my provocation," pleaded poor Philip. 
 
 " As I came up to him Twysden was boasting that he had 
 
 struck me — and — and laughing at me." 
 
 " And a pretty figure you were to come to a ball. Who 
 could help laughing, sir .'' " 
 
 " He bragged of having insulted me, and I lost my temper, 
 and struck him in return. The thing is done and can't be 
 helped," growled Philip. 
 
 " Strike a little man before ladies ! Very brave indeed ! " 
 cries the lady. 
 
 " Mrs. Baynes ! " 
 
 " I call it cowardly. In the army we consider it cowardly 
 to quarrel before ladies," continues Mrs. General B. 
 
 " I have waited at home for two days to see if he wanted 
 any more," groaned Philip. 
 
 " Oh, yes ! After insulting and knocking a little man down, 
 you want to murder him ! And you call that the conduct of a 
 Christian — the conduct of a gentleman ! " 
 
 " The conduct of a ruffian, by George ! " says General Baynes. 
 " It was prudent of you to choose a very little man, and to 
 have the ladies within hearing ! " continues Airs. Baynes. " Why, 
 I wonder you ha\en't beaten my dear children next. Don't 
 you, General, wonder he has not knocked down our poor boys ? 
 They are quite small. And it is evident that ladies being pres- 
 ent is no hindrance to Mr. Firmin's boxmg-fnaiches.'' 
 
 " The conduct is gross and unworthy of a gentleman," 
 reiterates the General.
 
 ox ins ir.i V through the world. 
 
 405 
 
 " You hear what that man says — that old man, who never 
 says an unkind word ? That veteran, who has been in twenty 
 battles, and never struck a man before women yet ? Did you, 
 Charles ? He has given you his opinion. He has called you a 
 name which I won't soil my lips with repeating, but which you 
 deserve. And do you suppose, sir, that I will give my blessed 
 child to a man who has acted as you have acted, and been 
 
 called a ? Charles ! General ! I will go to my grave rather 
 
 than see my daughter given up to a such a man ! " 
 
 " Good heavens ! " said Philip, his knees trembling under 
 him. " You don't mean to say that you intend to go from your 
 word, and "• 
 
 " Oh ! you threaten about money do you ? Because your 
 father was a cheat, you intend to try and make us suffer, do 
 you 1 " shrieks the lady. " A man who strikes a little man be- 
 fore ladies will commit any act of cowardice, I dare say. And 
 if you wish to beggar my family, because your father was a 
 rogue " 
 
 " My dear ! " interposes the General. 
 
 " Wasn't he a rogue, Baynes ? Is there any denying it } 
 Haven't you said so a hvuidred and a hundred times 1 A nice 
 family to marry into ! No, Mr. Firmin ! You may insult me 
 as you please. You may strike little men before ladies. You 
 may lift your great wicked hand against that poor old man, in 
 one of your tipsy fits : but I know a mother's love, a mother's 
 duty — and I desire that we see you no more." 
 
 " Great Powers ! " cries Philip, aghast. " You don't mean 
 to — to separate me from Charlotte, General ? I have )^our 
 word. You encouraged me. I shall break my heart. I'll go 
 down on my knees to that fellow. I'll — oh ! — you don't mean 
 what you say ! " And, scared and sobbing, the poor fellow 
 clasped his strong hands together, and appealed to the General. 
 
 Baynes was under his wife's eye. " I think," he said, "your 
 conduct has been confoundedly bad, disorderly, and ungentle- 
 manlike. You can't support my child, if you marry her. And 
 if you have the least spark of honor in you, as you say you 
 have, it is you, Mr. Firmin, who will break off the match, and 
 release the poor child from certain misery. By George, sir, 
 how is a man who fights and quarrels in a nobleman's ball-room 
 to get on in the world ? How is a man, who can't afford a de- 
 cent coat to his back, to keep a wife ? The more I have known 
 you, the more I have felt that the engagement would bring 
 misery upon my child ! Is that what you want .'' A man of 
 honor "(" -^(?«<?r.''" in italics, from Mrs. Baynes.) "Hush,
 
 4o6 "rilE .{/)} F.NTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 my dear!— A man of spirit would give lier up, sir. What have 
 you to ofler but beggary, by George ? Do you want my girl to 
 come home to your lodgings, and mend your clothes ? "- — — " I 
 think 1 put that point pretty well, launch, my boy," said the 
 General, talking of the matter afterwards. " I hit him there, sir." 
 
 The old soldier did indeed strike his adversary there with a 
 vital stab. Philip's coat, no doubt, was ragged, and his purse 
 but light. He had sent money to his father out of his small 
 stock. There were one or two servants in the old house in 
 Parr Street, who had been left without their wages, and a part 
 of these debts Philip had paid. He knew his own violence of 
 temper, and his unruly independence. He thought very humbly 
 of his talents, and often doubted of his capacity to get on in 
 the world. In his less hopeful moods, he trembled to think 
 that he might be bringing poverty and unhappiness upon his 
 dearest little maiden, for whom he would joyfully have sacrificed 
 his blood, his life. Poor Philip sank back sickening and faint- 
 ing almost under Paynes's words. 
 
 " You'll let me — you'll let me see her } " he gasped out. 
 
 " She's unwell. She is in her bed. She can't appear to- 
 day ! " cried the mother. 
 
 " Oh, Mrs. Paynes ! I must — I must see her," Philip said ; 
 and fairly broke out in a sob of pain. 
 
 " This is the man that strikes men before women ! " said 
 Mrs. Baynes. " Very courageous, certainly ! " 
 
 " By George, Eliza ! " the General cried out, starting up, 
 " its too bad " 
 
 " Infirm of purpose, give me the daggers ! " Philip yelled 
 out, whilst describing the scene to his biographer in after days. 
 " Macbeth would never have done the murders but for that lit- 
 tle quiet woman at his side. When the Indian prisoners are 
 killed, the squaws always invent the worst tortures. You 
 should have seen that fiend and her livid smile, as she was 
 drilling her gimlets into my heart. I don't know how I of- 
 fended her. I tried to like her, sir. I had humbled myself 
 before her. I went on her errands. I played cards with her. 
 I sat and listened to her dreadful stories about Barrackpore 
 and the Governor-General. I wallowed in the dust before her, 
 and she hated me. I can see her face now : her cruel yellow 
 face, and her sharp teeth, and her gray eyes. It was the end 
 of August, and pouring a storm that day. I suppose my poor 
 child was cold and suffering up stairs, for I heard the poking of 
 a fire in her little room. \\'hen I hear a fire poked overhead 
 now — twenty years after — the whole thing comes back to me ;
 
 ON HIS ]VA Y THROUGH THE WORLD. 407 
 
 and I suffer over a^^ain IhaL infernal agony. \\''ere I to li\e a 
 thousand years, I could not forgive her. I never did her a 
 wrong, but I can't forgive her. Ah, my heaven, how that woman 
 tortured me ! " 
 
 " I think I know one or two similar instances," said Mr. 
 Firmin's biographer. 
 
 " You are always speaking ill of women," said Mr. Firmin's 
 biographer's wife. 
 
 *' No, thank heaven I " said the gentleman. " I think I 
 know some of whom I never thought or spoke a word of evil. 
 My dear, will you give Philip some more tea? " and with this 
 the gentleman's narrative is resumed. 
 
 The rain was beating down the avenue as Philip went into 
 the street. He looked up at Charlotte's window: but there 
 was no sign. There was a flicker of a fire there. The j^oor 
 girl had the fever, and was shuddering in her little room, weep- 
 ing and sobbing on Madame Smolensk's shoulder. " Que 
 c'etait pitie' a voir," Madame said. Her mother had told her 
 she must break from Philip ; had invented and spoken a hun- 
 dred calumnies against him ; declared that he ne\'er cared for 
 her ; that he had loose principles, and was for ever haunting 
 theatres and bad company. " It's not true, dear mother, it's 
 not true ! " the little girl had cried, flaming up in revolt for a 
 moment : but she soon subsided in tears and misery, utterly 
 broken by the thought of her calamity. Then her father had 
 been brought to her, who had been made to believe some of 
 the stories against poor Philip, and who was commanded by his 
 wife to impress them upon the girl. And Paynes tried to obey 
 orders ; but he was scared and cruelly pained by the sight of 
 his little maiden's grief and suffering. He attempted a weak 
 expostulation, and began a speech or two. But his heart failed 
 him. He retreated behind his wife. SJie never hesitated in 
 speech or resolution, and her language became more bitter as 
 her ally faltered. Philip was a drunkard ; Philip was a prodi- 
 gal ; Philip was a frequenter of dissolute haunts and loose 
 companions. She had the best authority for what she said. 
 Was not a mother anxious for the welfare of her own child ? 
 (" Begad, you don't suppose your own mother would do any- 
 thing that was not for your welfare, now ? " broke in the Gen- 
 eral, feebly.) " Do you think if he had not been drunk he would 
 have ventured to commit such an atrocious outrage as that at 
 the Embassy ? And do you suppose I want a drunkard and a 
 beggar to marr)^ my daughter ? Your ingratitude, Ch.arlotte, 
 is horrible ! " cries mamma. And poor Philip, charged with
 
 4o8 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 drunkenness, had dined for seventeen sous, witli a carafon of 
 beer, and had counted on a supper that night by Httle Char- 
 lotte's side : so, while the child lay sobbing on her bed, the 
 mother stood over her, and lashed her. For General Ba!ynes, 
 — a brave man, a kind-hearted man, — to have to look on whilst 
 this torture was inliicted, must have been a hard duty. He 
 could not eat the boarding-house dinner, though lie took his 
 place at the table at the sound of the dismal bell. Madame 
 herself was not present at the meal ; and you know poor Char- 
 lotte's i^lace was vacant. Her father went up stairs, and paused 
 by her bedroom door, and listened. He heard murmurs within, 
 and madame's voice, as he stumbled at the door, cried harshly, 
 " Qui est 1^ .? " He entered. Madame was sitting on the bed, 
 with Charlotte's head on her lap. The thick brown tresses 
 were falling over the child's white night-dress, and she lay 
 almost motionless, and sobbing feebly. " Ah, it is you, Gen- 
 eral ! " said madame. " You have done a joretty work, sir ! " 
 " Mamma says, won't you take something, Charlotte dear ? "' 
 faltered the old man. " Will you leave her tranquil ! " said 
 madam, with her deep voice. The father retreated. When 
 madame went out presently to get that panacea, une tasse de 
 the, for her poor little friend, she found the old gentleman 
 seated on a portmanteau at his door. '' Is she — is she a little 
 better now ^ " he sobbed out. Madame shrugged her shoulders, 
 and looked down on the veteran with superb scorn. " Vous 
 n'etes qu'un poltron, Ge'ne'ral ! " she said, and swej^t down stairs. 
 Baynes was beaten indeed. He was suffering horrible pain. 
 He was quite unmanned, and tears were trickling down his old 
 cheeks as he sat wretchedly there in the dark. His wife did 
 not leave the table as long as dinner and dessert lasted. She 
 read Galignaiii resolutely afterwards. She told the children 
 not to make a noise, as their sister was up stairs with a bad 
 headache. But she revoked that statement as it were (as she 
 revoked at cards presently), by asking the Miss Bolderos to 
 play one of their duets. 
 
 I wonder whether IMiilip walked up and down before the 
 bouse that night .^ Ah ! it was a dismal night for all of them • 
 a racking pain, a cruel sense of shame, throbbed under liaynes's 
 cotton tassel ; and as for Mrs. Baynes, T hope there was not 
 much rest or comfort under her old nightcap. Madame passed 
 the greater part of the night in a great chair in Charlotte's bed- 
 room, where the poor child heard the hours toll one after the 
 other, and found no comfort in the dreary rising of the dawn. 
 
 At a \-ery early hour of the dismal rainy morning, what made
 
 ON ]//S WAY THROUGn THE WORLD. 
 
 409 
 
 poor little Charlotte fling her arms round niadaiiic, aiirl cry out, 
 " Ah, que je vous aime ! ah, que vous etes bonne, niadame ! " 
 and smile almost happily through her tears ? In the first place, 
 madame went to Charlotte's dressing-table, whence she took 
 a pair of scissors. Then the little maid sat up on her bed, with 
 her brown hair clustering over her shoulders; and madame 
 took a lock of it, and cut a thick curl ; and kissed poor little 
 Charlotte's red eyes ; and laid her pale cheek on the jDillow, 
 and carefully covered her; and bade her, with many tender 
 words, to go to sleep. " If you are very good, and will go to 
 sleep, he shall have it in half an hour," madame said. "And 
 as I go down stairs, I will tell Fran^oise to have some tea ready 
 for you when you ring." And this promise, and the thought of 
 what madame was going to do, comforted Charlotte in her 
 misery. And with many fond, fond prayers for Philip, and con- 
 soled by thinking, " Now she must have gone the greater part 
 of the way ; now she must be with him ; now he knows I will 
 never, never lov^e any but him," she fell asleep at last on her 
 moistened pillow : and was smiling in her sleep, and I dare say 
 dreaming of Philip, when the noise of the fall of a piece of 
 furniture roused her, and she awoke out of her dream to see 
 the grim old mother, in her white nightcap and white dressing- 
 gown, standing by her side. 
 
 Never mind. " She has seen him now. She has told him 
 now," was the child's very first thought as her e\^es fairly 
 opened. " He knows that I never, never will think of any but 
 him." She felt as if she was actually there in Philip's room, 
 speaking herself to him ; murmuring vow^s which her fond lips 
 had whispered many and many a time to her lover. And now 
 he knew she would never break them, she was consoled and 
 felt more courage. 
 
 " You have had some sleep, Charlotte ? " asks Mrs. Baynes. 
 
 " Yes, I have been asleep, mamma." As she speaks, she 
 feels under the pillow a little locket containing — what ? I sup- 
 pose a scrap of Mr. Philip's lank hair. 
 
 " I hope you are in a less wicked frame of mind than when 
 I left you last night," continues the matron. 
 
 " Was I wicked for loving Philip ? Then I an'' wicked still, 
 mamma ! " cries the child, sitting up in her bed. And she 
 clutches that little lock of hair which nestles under her pillow. 
 
 " What nonsense, child ! This is what you get out of your 
 stupid novels. I tell you he does not think about you. He is 
 quite a reckless, careless libertine." 
 
 "Yes, so reckless and careless that we owe him the bread
 
 41 o THE ADVEXrrRF.S OF PlffLTr 
 
 we eat. He doesn't think of me ! Doesn't l.e ? Ah — " Here 
 she paused as a clock in a neigliboring chamber began to strike. 
 "Now," she thought, "lie has got my message!" A smile 
 dawned over her face. She sank back on her pillow, turning 
 her head from her mother. She kissed the locket, and mur- 
 mured : " Not think of me ! Don't 3-ou, don't you, my dear ! " 
 She (lid not heed the woman by her side, hear her voice, or for 
 a moment seem aware of her presence. Charlotte was away in 
 Philip's room ; she saw him talking with her messenger ; heard 
 his voice so deep and so sweet ; knew that the promises he had 
 spoken he never would break. With gleaming eyes and flush- 
 ing cheeks she looked at her mother, her enemy. She held 
 her talisman locket and pressed it to her heart. No, she would 
 never be untrue to him ! No, he would never, never desert her ! 
 And as Mrs. Baynes looked at the honest indignation beaming 
 in the child's face, she read Charlotte's revolt, defiance, per- 
 haps victory. The meek child who never before had questioned 
 an order, or formed a wish which she would not sacrifice at her 
 mother's order, was now in arms asserting independence. But 
 I should think mamma is not going to give up the command 
 after a single act of revolt ; and that she will try more attempts 
 than one to cajole or coerce her rebel. 
 
 Meanwhile let P'ancy leave the talisman locket nestling on 
 Charlotte's little heart (in which soft shelter methinks it were 
 pleasant to linger). Let her wrap a shawl round her, and affix 
 to her feet a pair of stout goloshes ; let her walk rapidly 
 through the muddy Champs Elysees, where, in this inclement 
 season, only a few policemen and artisans are to be found 
 moving. Let her pay a halfpenny at the Pont des Invalides, 
 and so march stoutly along the quays, by the Chamber of Dep- 
 uties, where as yet deputies assemble : and trudge along the 
 river side, until she reaches Seine Street, into which, as you all 
 know, the Rue Poussin debouches. This was the road brave 
 Madame Smolensk took on a gusty, rainy autumn morning, 
 and on foot, for five-franc pieces were scarce with the good 
 woman. Before the " Hotel Poussin " {ah, gii'on y itait bien d, 
 vingf ans f) is a little painted wicket which opens, ringing, and 
 then there is the passage, you know, with the stair leading to 
 the upper regions, to Monsieur Philippe's room, which is on 
 the first floor, as is that of Bouchard, the painter, who has his 
 atelier over the way. A bad painter is Bouchard, but a worthy 
 friend, a cheery companion, a modest, amiable gentleman. 
 And a rare good fellow is Laberge of the second floor, the poet 
 from Carcassonne, who pretends to be studying law, but whose
 
 ON HIS \VA y THROUGH T//F. WORLD. 
 
 411 
 
 heart is with the Muses, and whose talk is of A'iclor Hugo and 
 Alfred de Musset, whose verses he will repeat to all comers. 
 Near Laberge (I think T have heard Philip say) lived Escasse, 
 a Southern man too — a capitalist — a clerk in a bank, qtioi ! — • 
 whose apartment was decorated sumptuously with his own fur- 
 niture, who had Spanish wine and sausages in cupboards, and 
 a bas: of dollars for a friend in need. Is Escasse alive still .'* 
 Philip Firmin wonders, and that old Colonel, who lived on the 
 same floor, and who had been a prisoner in England ? What 
 wonderful descriptions that Colonel Dujarret had of ks Meess 
 Anglaiscs and their singularities of dress and behavior ! Though 
 conquered and a prisoner, what a conqueror and enslaver he 
 was, when in our country ! You see, in his rough way, Philip 
 used to imitate these people to his friends, and we almost fancied 
 we could see the hotel before us. It w^as very clean ; it was 
 very cheap ; it was very dark ; it was very cheerful ; — capital 
 coffee and bread-and-butter for breakfast for fifteen sous ; capi- 
 tal bedroom au pretnier for thirty francs a month — dinner if 
 you would for I forget how little, and a merry talk round the 
 pipes and the grog afterwards — the grog, or the modest eau 
 sucrec. Here Colonel Dujarret recorded his victories over both 
 sexes. Here Colonel Tymowski sighed over his enslaved Po- 
 land. Tymowski was the second who was to act for Philip, in 
 case the Ringwood Twysden affair should have come to any 
 violent conclusion. Here Laberge bawled poetry to Philip, 
 who no doubt in his turn confided to the young Frenchman his 
 own hopes and passion. Deep into the night he would sit 
 talking of his love, of her goodness, of her beauty, of her in- 
 nocence, of her dreadful mother, of her good old father. Que 
 sfais-j'e ? Have we not said that when this man had anything 
 on his mind, straightway he bellowed forth his opinions to the 
 universe .' Philip, away from his love, would roar out her 
 praises for hours and hours to Laberge, until the candles burned 
 down, until ihe hour for rest was come and could be delayed 
 no longer. Then he w^ould hie to bed with a prayer for her; 
 and the very instant he awoke begin to think of her, and bless 
 her, and thank God for her love. Poor as Mr. Philip was, yet 
 as the possessor of health, content, honor, and that priceless 
 pure jewel the girl's love, I think we will not pity him much ; 
 though, on the night when he received his dismissal from Mrs. 
 Baynes, he must have passed an awful time, to be sure. Toss, 
 Philip, on your bed of pain, and doubt, and fear. Toll, heavy 
 hours, from night till dawn. Ah ! 'twas a weary night through 
 which two sad young hearts heard you tolling.
 
 412 
 
 THE ADVENTURES OF PJIILIP 
 
 At a pretty early hour the various occupants of the crib at 
 the Rue Poussin used to appear in the clingy little salle-a-man- 
 ger, and partake of the breakfast there provided. Monsieur 
 Menou, in his shirt-sleeves, shared and distributed the meal. 
 Madame Menou, with a Madras handkerchief round her griz- 
 zling head, laid down the smoking coffee on the shining oil- 
 cloth, whilst each guest helped himself out of a little museum of 
 napkins to his own particular towel. The room was small : the 
 breakfast was not fine :' the guests who partook of it were cer- 
 tainly not remarkable for the luxury of clean linen ; but Philip 
 — who is many years older now than when he dwelt in this 
 hotel, and is not pinched for money at all you will be pleased 
 to hear, (and between ourselves has become rather a gour- 
 mand), — declares he was a very happy youth at this humble 
 *' Hotel Poussin," and sighs for the days when he was sighing 
 for Miss Charlotte. 
 
 Well, he has passed a dreadful night of gloom and terror. 
 I doubt that he has bored Laberge very much with his tears 
 and despondency. And now morning has come, and, as he is 
 having his breakfast with one or more of the before-named 
 worthies, the little l)oy-of-all-work enters, grinning, his pliimet 
 under his arm, and cries " Une dame pour M. Philippe ! " 
 
 " Une dame ! " says the French colonel, looking up from 
 his paper. " Allez, mau\ais sujet ! " 
 
 " Grand Dieu ! what has happened .-' " cries Philip, running 
 forward, as he recognizes Madame's tall figure in the passage. 
 They go up to his room, I suppose, regardless of the grins and 
 sneers of the little boy with the p/iimef, who aids the maid- 
 servant to make the beds ; and who thinks Monsieur Philippe 
 has a very elderly acquaintance. 
 
 Philip closes the door upon his visitor, who looks at him 
 with so much hope, kindness, confidence in her eyes, that the 
 poor fellow is encouraged almost ere she begins to speak. 
 " Ves, you have reason ; I come from the little person," Mad- 
 ame Smolensk said-. " The means of resisting that poor dear 
 angel ! She has passed a sad night ! What ? You, too, have 
 not been to bed, poor young man ! " Indeed Philip had only 
 thrown himself on his bed, and had kicked there, and had 
 groaned there, and had tossed there ; and had tried to read, 
 and, I dare say, remembered afterwards, with a strange interest, 
 the book he read, and that other thought which was throbbing 
 in his brain all the time whilst he was reading, and whilst the 
 wakeful hours went wearily tolling by. 
 
 '' No, in effect," says poor Philip, rolling a dismal cigar
 
 ox HIS WAY THRO ran THE WORLD. 413 
 
 ette ; " the night has not been too fine. And she has suffered 
 too ? Heaven bless her ! " And then Madame Smolensk told 
 how the little dear angel had cried all the night long, and how 
 the Smolensk had not succeeded in comforting her, until she 
 promised she would go to I^hilip, and tell him that his Char- 
 lotte would be his for ever and ever ; that she never could think 
 of any man but him ; that he was the best, and the dearest, 
 and the bravest, and the truest Philip, and that she did not be- 
 lieve one word of those wicked stories told against him by 
 
 " Hold, Monsieur Philippe, I suppose Madame la Ge'ne'rale 
 has been talking about you, and loves you no more," cried 
 Madame Smolensk. " We other women are assassins — assas- 
 sins, see you ! But Madame la Gene'rale went too far with the 
 little maid. She is an obedient little maid, the dear Miss ! — trem- 
 bling before her mother, and always ready to yield — only now 
 her spirit is roused • and she is yours only. The little dear, 
 gentle child ! Ah, how pretty she was, leaning on my shoulder. 
 I held her there — yes, there, my poor gar^on, and I cut this 
 from her neck, and brought it to thee. Come, embrace me. 
 Weep; that does good, Philip. I love thee well. Go — and 
 thy little — it is an angel ! " And so, in the hour of their pain, 
 myriads of manly hearts have found woman's love ready to 
 soothe their anguish. 
 
 Leaving to Philip that thick curling lock of brown hair, 
 (from a head where now, mayhap, there is a line or two of 
 matron silver,) this Samaritan plods her way back to her own 
 house, where her own cares await her. But though the way is 
 long, madame's step is lighter now, as she thinks how Char- 
 lotte at the journey's end is waiting for news of Philip ; and I 
 suppose there are more kisses and embraces, when the good 
 soul meets with the little suffering girl, and tells her how Philip 
 will remain for ever true and faithful ; and how true love must 
 come to a happy ending ; and how she, Smolensk, will do all 
 in her power to aid, comfort, and console her young friends. 
 As for the writer of Mr. Philip's memoirs, you see I never try 
 to make any concealments. I have told you, all along, that 
 Charlotte and Philip are married, and I believe they are happy. 
 But it is certain that they suffered dreadfully at this time of 
 their lives ; and my wife says that Charlotte, if she alludes to 
 the period and the trial, speaks as though they had both under- 
 gone some hideous operation, the remembrance of which for 
 ever causes a pang to the memory. So, my young lady, will 
 you have your trial one day, to be borne, pray heaven, with a 
 meek spirit. Ah, how surely the turn comes to all of us !
 
 ^14 THE ADVENTURES OF PrmjP 
 
 Look at M;u'uinic Smolensk at her luncheon-table, this day 
 after her visit to Philip at his lodging, after comforting little 
 Charlotte in her pain. How brisk she is ! How good-natured ! 
 How she smiles ! How she speaks to all her company, and 
 carves for her guests ! You do not suppose she has no griefs 
 and cares of her own ? You know better. I dare say she is 
 tliinking of her creditors ; of her poverty ; of that accepted 
 bill which will come due next week, and so forth. The Samari- 
 tan who rescues you, most likely, has been robbed and has 
 bled in his day, and it is a wounded arm that bandages yours 
 when bleeding. 
 
 If Anatole, the boy who scoured the plain at the " Hotel 
 Poussin," with his ////»/<?/ in his jacket-pocket, and his slippers 
 soled with scrubbing brushes, saw the embrace between Philip 
 and his good friend, I believe, in his experience at that hotel, 
 he never witnessed a transaction more honorable, generous, and 
 blameless. Put what construction you will on the business, 
 Anatole, you little imp of mischief ! your mother never gave 
 you a kiss more tender than that which Madame Smolensk 
 bestowed on Philip — than that which she gave Philip — than 
 that which she carried back from him and faithfully placed on 
 poor little Charlotte's pale round cheek. The world is full of 
 love and pity, I say. Had there been less suffering, there 
 would have been less kindness. I, for one, almost wish to be 
 ill again, so that the friends who succored me might once more 
 come to my rescue. 
 
 To poor little wounded Charlotte in her bed, our friend the 
 mistress of the boarding-house brought back inexpressible 
 comfort. Whatever might betide, Philip would never desert 
 her ! " Think you I would ever have gone on such an embassy 
 for a French girl, or interfered between her and her parents .-* " 
 madame asked. " Never, never ! But you and Monsieur 
 Philippe are already betrothed before heaven ; and 1 should 
 despise you, Charlotte, I should despise him, were either to 
 draw back." This little point being settled in Miss Charlotte's 
 mind, 1 can fancy she is immensely soothed and comforted ; 
 that hope and courage settle in her heart ; that the color comes 
 back to her young cheeks ; that she can come and join her 
 family as she did yesterday. " I told you she never cared 
 about him," says Mrs. Baynes to her husband. " J'"aith, no: 
 she can't have cared for him nmch," says Baynes, with some- 
 thing of a sorrow that his girl should be so light-minded. But 
 you and F, who ha\e been behind the scenes, who have peeped 
 into Philip's bedroom and l)ehin(l poor Charlotte's modest cur-
 
 ox ///s ir.iv TiiROii;!/ rifE world. 415 
 
 tains, know that the girl had revolted from her parents ; and 
 so children will if the authority exercised over them is too 
 tyrannical or unjust. Gentle Charlotte, who scarce ever re- 
 sisted, was aroused and in rebellion : honest Charlotte, who 
 used to speak all her thoughts, now hid them, and deceived 
 father and mother; — yes, deceived: — what a confession to 
 make regarding a young lady, the prima donna of our opera ! 
 Mrs. Baynes is, as usual, writing her lengthy scrawls to sister 
 MacWhirter at Tours, and informs the Major's lady that she 
 has very great satisfaction in at last being able to announce 
 " that that most imprudent and in all respects ineligible engage- 
 ment between her Charlotte and a certain young man, son of a 
 bankrupt London physician, is come to an end. Mr. F's con- 
 duct has been so wild, so gross, so disorderly and luigcnilonan- 
 like, that the General (and you know, Maria, how soft and 
 sweet a tempered man Baynes is) has told Mr. Firmin his opinion 
 in unmistakable words, and forbidden him to continue his visits. 
 After seeing him every day for six months, during which time 
 she has accustomed herself to his peculiarities, and his often 
 coarse and odious expressions and conduct, no wonder the 
 separation has been a shock to dear Char, though I believe the 
 young man feels nothing who has been the cause of all this grief. 
 That he cares but little for her, has been my opinion all along, 
 though she, artless child, gave him her whole affection. He 
 has been accustomed to throw over women ; and the brother 
 of a young lady whom Mr. Y. had courted and left (and who ha? 
 made a most excellent match since), showed his indignation at 
 Mr. F.'s conduct at the Embassy ball the other night, on which 
 the young man took advantage of his greatly superior size and 
 strength to begin a vulgar boxing-match, in which both parties 
 were severely wounded. Of course you saw the paragraph in 
 Galignani about the whole affair. I sent our dresses, but it did 
 not print them, though our names appeared as amongst the 
 company. Anything more singular than the appearance of 
 Mr. F. you cannot well imagine. I wore my garnets ; Char- 
 lotte (who attracted universal admiration) was in &c., &c. Of 
 course the separation has occasioned her a good deal of pain ; 
 for Mr. F. certainly behaved with much kindness and forbear- 
 ance on a previous occasion. But the General will not hear 
 of the continuance of the connection. He says the young 
 man's conduct has been too gross and shameful ; and when 
 once roused, you know, 1 might as well attempt to chain a tiger 
 as Baynes. Our poor Char will suffer no doubt in consequence 
 of the behavior of this brute, but she has ever been an obedient
 
 4i6 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIF 
 
 cliild, who knows how to honor licr father and mother. She 
 hears up woiidcrfiiUy^ though, of course, the dear child sulTers 
 at the parthig. I think if she were to go to you and Mac Whir ter 
 at Tours for a tnonth or two, she would be all the better for 
 change of air, too, dear Mac. Come and fetch her, and we will 
 pay the dajok. She would go to certain poverty and wretched- 
 ness did she marry this most violent and disreputable young 
 man. The General sends regards to Mac, and I am," cSrc. 
 
 That these were the actual words of Mrs. iJavnes's letter I 
 cannot, as a veracious biographer, take upon myself to say. I 
 never saw tlie document, though I have had the good fortune 
 to peruse others from the same hand. Charlotte saw the letter 
 some time after, upon one of those not unfrequent occasions, 
 when a quarrel occurred between the two sisters — Mrs. Major 
 and Mrs. Ceneral — and Charlotte mentioned the contents of 
 the letter to a friend of mine who has talked to me about his 
 affairs, and especially his love affairs, for many and many a 
 h)ng hour. And shrewd old woman as Mrs. Baynes may be, 
 you may see how utterly she was mistaken in fancying that her 
 daughter's obedience was still secure. The little maid had 
 left father and mother, at lirst with their eager sanction ; her 
 love had been given to Tirmiu ; and an inmate — a prisoner if 
 you will — under her father's roof, her heart remained with 
 Philip, liowever time or distance might separate them. 
 
 And now, as we have the command of Philip's desk, and 
 are free to open and read the private letters which relate to his 
 history, I take leave to put in a document which was penned 
 in his place of exile by his worthy father, upon receiving the 
 news of the quarrel described in the last chapter of these 
 memoirs : — 
 
 A star House, Neiv i'or/.; Sepiemher 27. 
 '■ Dear Philip, — I received the news in voiii- last kind and affectionate letter with not 
 unmingled pleasure : but ah, what pleasure in life does not carry its auiari aliquid alonj; 
 with it ! That you are hearty, cheerful, and industrious, earning a small competence, I am 
 |)leased indeed to think : that you talk about being married to a in-inii less gul I can't say 
 gives uie a very sincere pleasure. With your good looks, good manners, attainments, you 
 might have hoped for a Ix'ttcr match than a half-jiay officer's daughter. P.ut 'tis useless 
 specidating on what might have been. We are puppets in the hands of fate, most of us. We 
 are carried along by a power stronger th.ui ourselves. It has driven me, at sixty years of 
 age, from competence, general resjiect, high position, to poverty and exile. So be it ! 
 laiido ina7iente>ii, as my delightful old friend and philosopher teaches me — si celercs qiiatit 
 pennas — you know the rest. Whatever our fortune may l>e, I hope tliat my Philip and his 
 father will bear it witli the courage of gentlemen. 
 
 "'Our papers have announced the death of your poor mother's uncle. Lord Ringwood, 
 and I had a fond lingering hope that he might have left some token of remembrame to his 
 brother's grandson. He has not. You have firolmiii fmtipcrient sine dote. You have 
 courage, health, strength, and talent. 1 was in greater straits than you are at your age. 
 My father was not as indulgeiit as yours, I hope an<l trust, has been. From debt and 
 dependence I worked myself up to a proud jjosition by my own efforts. That the storm 
 i>verto<ik me ami engulphed me afterwards, is true. IJut \ am like the merchant of my
 
 ON HIS WA Y THROUGH THE WORLD. 
 
 4f7 
 
 favorit ; poet : I still hope — ay, at 63! — 10 mend my shattered ships, ;'«</£>c/y« /lauferietn 
 pati. I still hope to pay back to my dear boy that fortune which ought to have been his, and 
 which wentdown in my own shipwreck. Somethini^ tells me I must — 1 will ! 
 
 "I agree with you that your escape from Agnes Twysden has hcttn 3. piece of good 
 fortune for you, and am much diverted by your account of her dusky itianiorato ! 
 Between ourselves, the fondness of the Twysdens for money amounted to meanness. And 
 though 1 always received Twysden in dear old Parr Street, as I trust a gentleman should, 
 his company was insufferably tedious to me, and his vulgar loquacity odious. His son also 
 was little to my ta-ite. Indeed I was lieartily relieved whew I found your connection with 
 that family was over, knowing their rapacity about money, and that it was your fortune, not 
 you, they were anxious to secure for Agnes. 
 
 " You will be glad to hear that I am in not inconsiderable practice already. My reputa- 
 tion as a physician had preceded me to this country. My work on Gout was favorably 
 noticed here, and in Philadelphia^ and in Boston, by the scientific journals of those great 
 cities. People are more generous and compassionate towards misfortune here than in our 
 cold-hearted island. I could mention several gentlemen of New York who have suffered 
 shipwreck like myself, and are now prosperous and respected. I had the good fortune to be 
 of considerable professional service to Colonel J. B. Fogle, of New York, on our voyage 
 out ; and the Colonel, who is a leading personage here, has shown himself not at all ungrate- 
 ful. Those who fancy that at New York people cannot appreciate and understand the 
 manners of a gentleman, are not a little mistaken ; and a man who, like myself, has lived 
 with the best society in London, has, I flatter myself, not lived in that society r;/iite in vain. 
 The Colonel is proprietor and editor of one of the most brilliant and influential journals of 
 the city. You know that arms and the toga are often worn here by the same individual, 
 and 
 
 ■' 1 had actually written thus far when I read in the Colonel's paper — ^.'^lu York 
 Emerald — an account of your battle with your cousin at the Embassy ball! Oh, you 
 pugnacious Philip! Well, young Twysden was very vulgar, very rude and overbeanng, 
 and, I have no doubt, deserved the chastisement you gave him. By the way, the correspon- 
 dent of the £'/«£rrrj/(^ makes some droll blunders regarding you in his letter. We are all 
 fair game for publicity in this country, where the press is free with a z>eng-eance ; and your 
 private affairs, or mine, or the President's, or our gracious Queen's, for the matter of that, 
 ^are discussed witha freedom which certaXMy amounts to licence. The Colonel's lady is 
 passing the winter in Paris, where I should wish you to pay your respects to her. Her 
 husband has been most kind to me. I am told that Mrs. F. lives in the very choicest French 
 society, and the friendship of this family may be useful to you as to your affectionate father, 
 
 "G. B. F. 
 
 "Address as usual, until you hear further from me, as Dr. Brandon, New York. I 
 -wonder whether Lord Estridge has asked you after his old college friend? When he was 
 Headbury and at Trinity, he and a certain pensioner whom men used to nickname Brum- 
 mell Firmin were said to be the best dressed men in the university. Estridge has advanced 
 to rank, to honors! You may rely on it, that he will have one of the very next vacant 
 garters. What a different, what an unfortunate career, has been his quondam friend's! — 
 an exile, an inhabitant of a small room in a great hotel, where I sit at a scrambling public 
 table with all sorts of coarse people ! The way in which they bolt their dinner, often with 
 a liiiifc. shocks me. Your remittance was most welcome, small as it was. It shows my 
 Philip has a kind heart. Ah 1 why, why are you thinking of marriage, who are so poor? 
 By the way, your encouraging account of your circumstances has induced me to draw upon 
 you for 100 dollars. The bill will go to Europe by the packet which carries this letter, and 
 has kindly been cashed for me by my friends, Messrs. Plaster and Shinman, of Wall Street, 
 respected bankers of this city. Leave your card with Mrs. Fogle. Her husband himself 
 may be useful to you and your ever attached 
 
 " Father." 
 
 We take the New York E^neraM at " Bays's," and in it I 
 had read a very amiLsing account of our friend Philip, in an 
 ingenious correspondence entitled " Letters from an Attache," 
 which appeared in that journal. I even copied the paragraph 
 to show to my wife, and perhaps to forward to our friend. 
 
 " I promise you," wrote the attache, " the new country did 
 not disgrace the old at the British Embassy ball on Queen Vic's 
 birthday. Colonel Z. B. Hoggins's lady, of Albany, and the 
 
 27
 
 4 1 8 THE A D J 'EN TURES OE PIUL fP 
 
 peerless bride of Elijah J. Dibbs, of Twenty-ninth Street in 
 your city, were the observed of all observers for splendor, for 
 elegance, for refined native beauty. The Royal Dukes danced 
 with nobody else ; and at the attention of one of the Princes to 
 the lovely Miss Dibbs, I observed his Royal Duchess looked 
 as black as thunder. Supper handsome. Back Delmonico to 
 beat it. Champagne so-so. ]^y the way, the young fellow who 
 writes here for the Pall Mall Gazette got too much of the 
 champagne on board — as usual, I am told. The Honorable R. 
 Twysden, of London, was rude to my young chap's partner, or 
 winked at him offensively, or trod on his toe, or I don't know 
 what — but young F. followed him into the garden ; hit out at 
 him ; sent him flying like a spread eagle into the midst of an 
 illumination, and left him there sprawling. \\'ild, rampageous 
 fellow this young F. ; has already spent his own fortune, and 
 ruined his poor old father, who has been forced to cross the 
 water. Old Louis Philippe went away early. He talked long 
 with our Minister about his travels in our country. I was 
 standing by, but in course ain't so ill-bred as to say what 
 passed between them." 
 
 In this way history is written. I dare say about others 
 besides Philip, in English papers as well as American, have 
 fables been narrated. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 CONTAINS A TUG OF WAR. 
 
 Who was the first to spread the report that Philip was a 
 prodigal and had ruined his poor confiding father 1 T thought 
 I knew a jjerson who might be interested in getting under any 
 shelter, and sacrificing even his own son for his own advantage. 
 I thought I knew a man who had done as much already, and 
 surely might do so again ; but my wife flew into one of her 
 tempests of indignation, when I hinted something of this, 
 clutched her own children to her heart, according to'her mater- 
 nal wont, asked me was there any power would cause me to 
 belie thevi ? and sternly rebuked me for daring to be so wicked, 
 heartless, and cynical. My dear creature, wrath is no answer. 
 You call me heartless and cynic, for saying men are false and
 
 ON ins WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. 419 
 
 ivicked. Have you never heard to what lengths some bank 
 rupts will go ? To appease the wolves who chase them in the 
 winter forest, have you not read how some travellers will cast all 
 their provisions out of the sledge ? then, when all the provis- 
 ions are gone, don't you know that they will fling out perhaps 
 the sister, perhaps the mother, perhaps the baby, the little dear 
 tender innocent ? Don't you see him tumbling among the howl- 
 ing pack, and the wolves gnashing, gnawing, crashing, gobbling 
 him up in the snow ? O horror — horror ! My wife draws all the 
 young ones to her breast as I utter these fiendish remarks. 
 She hugs them in her embrace, and says, " For shame ! " and 
 that I am a monster, and so on. Go to ! Go down on your 
 knees, woman, and acknowledge the sinfulness of our human- 
 kind. How long had our race existed ere murder and vio- 
 lence be2;an ? and how old was the world ere brother slew 
 brother ? 
 
 Well, my wife and I came to a compromise. I might have 
 my opinion, but w^as there any need to communicate it to poor 
 Philip ? No, surely. So I never sent him the extract from 
 the New York Emerald; though, of course, some other good- 
 natured friend did, and I don't think my magnanimous friend 
 cared much. As for supposing that his own father, to cover 
 his own character, would lie away his son's — such a piece of 
 artifice was quite beyond Philip's comprehension, who has been 
 all his life slow in appreciating roguery, or recognizing that 
 there is meanness and double-dealing in the world. When he 
 once comes to understand the fact ; when he once comprehends 
 that Tartuffe is a humbug and swelling Bufo is a toady ; then 
 my friend becomes as absurdly indignant and mistrustful as 
 before he was admiring and confiding. Ah, Philip! Tartuffe 
 has a number of good, respectable qualities ; and Bufo, though 
 an underground odious animal, may have a precious jewel in 
 his head. 'Tis you are cynical, /see the good qualities in 
 these rascals whom you spurn. I see. I shrug my shoulders. 
 I smile : and you call me cynic. 
 
 It was long before Philip could comprehend why Charlotte's 
 mother turned upon him, and tried to force her daughter to 
 forsake him. " I ha\'e offended the old woman in a hundred 
 ways," he would say. "'My tobacco annoys her; my old 
 clothes offend her ; the very English I speak is often Greek to 
 her, and she can no more construe my sentences than I can the 
 Hindostanee jargon she talks to her husband at dinner.'' '' My 
 dear fellow, if you had ten thousand a year she would try and 
 construe your sentences, or accept them even if not understood,"
 
 420 'J'f^'-' ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 I would reply. And some men, whom you and I know to he. 
 mean, and to be false, and to be flatterers and parasites, and 
 to be inexorably hard and cruel in their own private circles, will 
 surely pull a long face to-morrow, and say, " Oh ! the man's so 
 cynical." 
 
 I acquit Baynes of what ensued. I hold Mrs. B. to have 
 been the criminal — the stupid criminal. The husband, like 
 many other men extremely brave in active life, was at home 
 timid and irresolute. Of two heads that lie side by side on the 
 same pillow for thirty years, one must contain the stronger 
 power, the more enduring resolution. Baynes, away from his 
 wife, was shrewd, courageous, gay at times : when with her he 
 was fascinated, torpid under the power of this baleful superior 
 creature. " Ah, when we were subs together in camp in 1803, 
 what a lively fellow Charley Baynes was ! " his comrade, Col- 
 onel Bunch, would say. " That was before he ever saw his 
 wife's yellow face ; and what a slave she has made of him ! " 
 
 After that fatal conversation which ensued on the day suc- 
 ceeding the ball, Pliilip did not come to dinner at Madame's 
 according to his custom. Mrs. Baynes told no family stones, 
 and Colonel Bunch, who had no special liking for the young 
 gentleman, did not trouble himself to make any inquiries about 
 him. One, two, three days passed, and no Philip. At last the 
 Colonel says to the General, with a sly look at Charlotte, 
 " Baynes, where is our young friend with the mustache ? We 
 have not seen him these three days." And he gives an arch 
 look at poor Charlotte. A burning blush flamed up in little 
 Charlotte's pale face, as she looked at her parents and then at 
 their old friend. " Mr. Firmin does not come, because papa 
 and mamma have forbidden him," says Charlotte. " I suppose 
 he only comes where he is welcome." And, having made this 
 audacious speech, I suppose the little maid tossed her little 
 head up ; and wondered, in the silence which ensued, whether 
 all the company could hear her heart thumping. 
 
 Madame, from her central place, where she v.? carving, sees, 
 from the looks of her guests, the indignant flushes on CHiarlotte's 
 face, the confusion on her father's, the wratli on Mrs. Baynes's, 
 that some dreadful words are passing ; and in vain endeavors 
 to turn the angry current of talk. " Un petit canard delicieux, 
 goutez-en, madame ! " she cries. Honest Colonel Bunch sees 
 the little maid with eyes flashing with anger, and trembling in 
 every limb. Tiie offered duck having failed to create a diver- 
 sion, he, too, tries a feeble commonplace. " A little difference, 
 my dear," he says, in an under voice. "There will be such in
 
 OI\r HIS WA V THROUGH THE WORLD. 4.2 1 
 
 the best-regulated families. Canard sauvage tr^s bong, madame, 
 avec '' but he is allowed to speak no more, for • 
 
 "What would you do, Colonel Bunch," little Charlotte 
 breaks out with her poor little ringing, trembling voice — " that 
 is, if you were a young man, if another young man struck you, 
 and insulted you ? " I say she utters this in such a clear voice, 
 that Franc^oise, thQfemme-de-c/iambtr, that Auguste, the footman, 
 that all the guests hear, that all the knives and forks stop their 
 clatter. 
 
 "Faith, my dear, Fd knock him down if I could," says 
 Bunch ; and he catches hold of the little maid's sleeve, and 
 would stop her speaking if he could. 
 
 "And that is what Philip did," cries Charlotte aloud ; "and 
 mamma has turned him out of the house — yes, out of the house, 
 for acting like a man of honor ! " 
 
 " Go to your room this instant, Miss ! " shrieks mamma. 
 As for old Baynes, his stained old uniform is not more dingy- 
 red than his wrinkled face and his throbbing temples. He 
 blushes under his wig, no doubt, could we see beneath that 
 ancient artifice. 
 
 " What is it .'' madame your mother dismisses you of my 
 table ? I will come with you, my dear Miss Charlotte ! " says 
 madame, with much dignity. " Serve the sugared plate, 
 Auguste ! My ladies, you will excuse me ! I go to attend the 
 dear miss, who seems to me ill." And she rises up, and she 
 follows poor little blushing, burning, weeping Charlotte: and 
 again, I have no doubt, takes her in her arms, and kisses, and 
 cheers, and caresses her — at the threshold of the door — there 
 by the staircase, among the cold dishes of the dinner, where 
 Moira and Macgrigor had one moment before been marauding. 
 
 " Courage, ma fille, courage, mon enfant ! Tenez ! Behold 
 something to console thee ! " and madame takes out of her 
 pocket a little letter, and gives it to the girl, who at sight of it 
 kisses the superscription, and then, in an anguish of love, and 
 joy, and grief, falls on the neck of the kind woman, who con- 
 soles her in her misery. Whose writing is it Charlotte kisses 1 
 Can you guess by any means ? Upon my word, Madame 
 Smolensk, I never recommend ladies to take daughters to youf 
 boarding-house. And I like you so much, I would not tell of 
 you, but you know the house is shut up this many a long day. 
 Oh ! the years slip away fugacious ; and the grass has grown 
 over graves ; and many and many joys and sorrows have been 
 born and have died since then for Charlotte and Philip: but 
 that grief aches still in their bosoms at times ; and tliat sorrow
 
 422 
 
 ■J-JJE ADVENTURES OE PJJJLJP 
 
 throbs at (Charlotte's heart again whenever she looks at a little 
 yellow letter in her trinket-box : and she says to her children, 
 " Papa wrote that to me before we were married, my dears." 
 There are scarcely half-a-dozen words in the little letter, 1 
 believe ; and two of them are "for ever." 
 
 1 could draw a ground-plan of Madame's house in the 
 Champs Elyse'es if I liked, for has not Philip shown me the 
 place and described it to me many times.'' In front, and facing 
 the road and garden, were Madame's room and the salon ; to 
 the back was the salle-a-manger ; and a stair ran up the house 
 (where the dishes used to be laid during dinner-time, and where 
 Moira and Macgrigor fingered the meats and puddings). Mrs. 
 General Baynes's rooms were on the first floor, looking on the 
 Champs Elysees, and into the garden-court of the house below. 
 And on this day, as the dinner was necessarily short (owing to 
 unhappy circumstances), and the gentlemen were left alone 
 glumly drinking their wine or grog, and Mrs. Paynes had gone 
 up stairs to her own apartment, had slapped her boys and was 
 looking out of window — was it not provoking that of all days 
 in the world young Hely should ride up to the house on his 
 capering mare, with his flower in his button-hole, with his little 
 varnished toe-tips just touching his stirrups, and after perform- 
 ing various caracolades and gambadoes in the garden, kiss his 
 yellow-kidded hand to Mrs. General Paynes at the window, 
 hope Miss Paynes was quite well, and ask if he might come in 
 and take a cup of tea ? Charlotte, lying on madame's bed 
 in the ground-floor room, heard Mr. Hely's sweet voice asking 
 after her health, and the crunching of his horse's hoofs on the 
 gravel, and she could even catch glimpses of that little form as 
 the horse capered about in the court, though of course he could 
 not see her where she was lying on the bed with her letter in 
 her hand. Mrs. Paynes at her window had to wag her withered 
 head from the casement, to groan out, " My daughter is lying 
 down, and has a bad headache, I am sorr}' to saj'," and then 
 she must have had the mortification to see Hely caper off, after 
 waving her a genteel adieu. The ladies in the front salon, who 
 assembled after dinner witnessed the transaction, and Mrs. 
 Buncli, I dare say, had a grim pleasure at seeing Eliza Baynes's 
 young sprig of fashion, of whom Eliza was for ever bragging, 
 come at last, and obliged to ride away, not bootless, certainly, 
 for where were feet more beautifully chaussis 1 but after a boot- 
 less errand. 
 
 Meanwhile the gentlemen sat awhile in the dining-room, 
 after the Pritish custom which such \eterans liked too well to
 
 ON ins WAY TI/KOrCIf THE WORLD. 423 
 
 give up. Other two gentlemen boarders went away, rather 
 alarmed by that storm and outbreak in which Charlotte had 
 quitted the dinner-table, and left the old soldiers together, to 
 enjoy, according to their after-dinner custom, a sober glass of 
 "something hot," as the saying is. In truth, Madame's wine 
 was of the poorest ; but what better could you expect for the 
 money ? 
 
 Baynes was not eager to be alone with Bunch, and I have 
 no doubt began to blush again when he found himself tete-a-tcte 
 with his old friend. But what was to be done ? The General 
 did not dare to go up stairs to his own quarters, where poor 
 Charlotte was probably crjang, and her mother in one of her 
 tantrums. Then in the salon there were the ladies of the 
 boarding-house party, and there Mrs. Bunch would be sure to 
 be at him. Indeed, since the Bayneses were launched in the 
 great world, Mrs. Bunch was untiringly sarcastic in her remarks 
 about lords, ladies, attache's, ambassadors, and fine people in 
 general. So Baynes sat with his friend, in the falling evening, 
 in much silence, dipping his old nose in the brandy-and-water. 
 
 Little square-faced, red-faced, whisker-dyed Colonel Bunch 
 sat opposite his old companion, regarding him not without 
 scorn. Bunch had a wife. Bunch had feelings. Do you sup- 
 pose those feelings had not been worked upon by that wife in 
 private colloquies ? Do you suppose — when two old women 
 have lived together in pretty much the same rank of life — if 
 one suddenly gets promotion, is carried off to higher spheres, 
 and talks of her new friends, the countesses, duchesses, am- 
 bassadresses, as of course she will — do you suppose, I say, that 
 the unsuccessful woman will be pleased at the successful 
 woman's success ? Your knowledge of your own heart, my 
 dear lady, must tell you the truth in this matter. I don't want 
 you to acknowledge that you are angry because your sister has 
 been staying with the Duchess of Fitzbattleaxe, but you are, 
 you know. You have made sneering remarks to your husband 
 on the subject, and such remarks, I have no doubt, were made 
 by Mrs. Colonel Bunch to her husband, regarding her poor 
 friend Mrs. General Baynes. 
 
 During this parenthesis we have left the General dipping 
 his nose in the brandy-and-water. He can't keep it there for 
 ever. He must come up for air presently. His face must come 
 out of the drink, and sigh over the table. 
 
 " What's this business, Baynes ? " says the Colonel. 
 " What's the matter with poor Charley ? " 
 
 " Family affairs — differences will happen," says the General.
 
 42 4 THE ADVENTURES OF rH/LlP 
 
 " I do liope and trust nothing has gone wrong with her and 
 young Firmin, P.aynes ? " 
 
 The General does not like those fixed eyes staring at him 
 under those bushy eyebrows, between those bushy, blackened 
 whiskers. 
 
 " Well, then, yes, Uunch, something /las gone wrong ; and 
 given me and — and Mrs. Kaynes — a deuced deal of pain too. 
 The young fellow has acted like a blackguard, brawling and 
 fighting at an ambassador's ball, bringing us all to ridicule. 
 He's not a gentleman ; that's the long and short of it, Eunch ; 
 and so let's change the subject." 
 
 "Why, consider the provocation he had ! " cries the other, 
 disregarding entirely his friend's prayer. " I heard them talk- 
 ing about the business at Gah'gnanPs this very day. A fellow 
 swears at Firmin ; runs at him ; brags that he has pitched him 
 over ; and is knocked down for his pains. 15y George ! I 
 think Firmin was quite right. Were any man to do as much 
 to me or you, what should we do, even at our age "i " 
 
 " We are military men. I said I didn't wish to talk about 
 the subject, Bunch," says the General in rather a lofty manner. 
 
 " You mean that Tom Bunch has no need to put his oar 
 in?" 
 
 " Precisely so," says the other, curtly. 
 
 " Mum's the word ! Let us talk about the dukes and duch- 
 esses at the ball. Thafs more in your line, now," says the 
 Colonel, with rather a sneer. 
 
 " What do you mean by duchesses and dukes ? What do 
 you know about them, or what the deuce do I care ? " asks the 
 General. 
 
 " Oh, they are tabooed too ! Hang it, there's no satisfying 
 you," growls the Colonel. 
 
 " Look here. Bunch," the General broke out ; " I must 
 speak, since you won't leave me alone. I am unhapp\\ You 
 can see that well enough. For two or three nights past I ha\ e 
 had no rest. This engagement of my child and Mr. Firmin 
 can't come to any good. You see what he is — an overbearing, 
 ill-conditioned, quarrelsome fellow. What chance has Charley 
 of being happy with such a fellow ? " 
 
 " I hold my tongue, 1-aynes. You told me not to put my 
 oar in," growls the Colonel. 
 
 " Oh, if that's the way yon take it, Bunch, of course there's 
 no need for me to go on any more," cries General Baynes. 
 " If an old friend won't give an old friend advice, by George, 
 or help him in a strait, or say a kind word when he's unhappy,
 
 On HIS WAY THROr'GII TIU-. WORLD. 42 C 
 
 I have done. T have known you for forty years, and I am 
 mistaken in you — that's all." 
 
 "There's no contenting you. You say, ' Hold your tongue,' 
 and I shut my mouth. I hold my tongue, and you say, * Why 
 don't you speak ? ' Why don't I .'' Because you won't like 
 what I say, Charles Baynes : and so what's the good of more 
 talking ? " 
 
 " Confound it ! " cries Baynes, with a thump of his glass on 
 the table, "but what do j'-ou say ? " 
 
 " I say, then, as you will have it," cries the other, clenching 
 his fists in his pockets, — " I say you are wanting a pretext 
 for breaking off this match, Baynes. I don't say it is a good 
 one, mind ; but your word is passed, and your honor engaged 
 to a young fellow to whom you are under deep obligation." 
 
 " What obligation ? Who has talked to you about my pri- 
 vate affairs ? " cries the General, reddening. " Has Philip 
 Firmin been bragging about his ? " 
 
 " You have yourself, Baynes. When you arrived here, you 
 told me over and over again what the young fellow had done : 
 and you certainly thought he acted like a gentlemen then. If 
 you choose to break your word to him now " 
 
 " Break my word ! Great powers, do you know what you 
 are saying. Bunch ? " 
 
 "Yes, and what you are doing, Baynes." 
 
 " Doing ? and what t " 
 
 " A damned shabby action ; that's what you are doing, if 
 you want to know. Don't tell vie. Why, do you suppose 
 Sarah — do you suppose everybody doesn't see what you are at .-• 
 You think you can get a better match for the girl, and you and 
 Eliza are going to throw the young fellow over : and the fellow 
 who held his hand, and might have ruined you, if he liked. I 
 say it is a cowardly action ! " 
 
 " Colonel Bunch, do you dare to use such a word to me ? " 
 calls out the General, starting to his feet. 
 
 " Dare be hanged ! I say it's a shabby action ! " roars the 
 other, rising too. 
 
 " Hush ! unless you wish to disturb the ladies ! Of course 
 you know what your expression means. Colonel Bunch ? " and 
 the General drops his voice and sinks back to his chair, 
 
 " I know what my words mean, and 1 stick to 'em, Baynes," 
 growls the other; "which is more than you can say of yours." 
 
 " I am dee'd if any man alive shall use this language to 
 me," says the General, in the softest whisper, " without account- 
 ing to me for it."
 
 426 THE ADVENTlfKES or PI/ILIP 
 
 " Did you ever find nic l)ack\vard, Baynes, at that kind of 
 thing? " growls the Colonel, with a face like a lobster and eyes 
 starting from his head. 
 
 " Very good, sir. To-morrow, at your earliest convenience. 
 I shall be at GalignaiiPs from eleven till one. With a friend, 
 if possible. — What is it, my lo\'e t A game at whist ? Well, 
 no, thank you ; I think I won't play cards to-night."' 
 
 It was Mrs. Baynes who entered the room w^hen the two 
 gentlemen were quarrelling; and the bloodthirsty hypocrites 
 instantly smoothed their ruffled brows and smiled on her with 
 perfect courtesy. 
 
 "Whist — no ! I was thinking should we send out to meet 
 him ? He has never been in Paris." 
 
 " Never been in Paris ? " said the General, puzzled." 
 
 " lie will be here to-night, you know. Madame has a room 
 ready for him." 
 
 " The very thing, the very thing ! " cries General Baynes, 
 with great glee. And Mrs. Baynes, all unsuspicious of the 
 quarrel between the old friends, proceeds to inform Colonel 
 Bunch that Major MacWhirter was expected that evening. 
 And then that tough old Colonel Bunch knew the cause of 
 Baynes's delight. A second was provided for the General — 
 the very thing Baynes wanted. 
 
 We have seen how Mrs. Baynes, after taking counsel with 
 her General, had privately sent for MacWhirter. Her plan was 
 that Charlotte's uncle should take her for awhile to Tours, and 
 make her hear reason. Then Charley's foolish passion for 
 Philip would pass away. Then, if he dared to follow her so 
 far, her aun" and uncle, two dragons of virtue and circumspec- 
 tion, would watch and guard her. Then, if Mrs. Hely w as still 
 of the same mind, she and her son might easily take the post 
 to Tours, where, Philip being absent, young Walsingham might 
 plead his passion. The best part of the plan, perhaps, was the 
 separation of our young couple. Charlotte would recover. 
 Mrs. Baynes was sure of that. The little girl had made no 
 outbreak until that sudden insurrection at dinner which we 
 have witnessed ; and her mother, who had domineered over 
 the child all her life, thought she was still in her power. She 
 did not know that she had passed the bounds of authority, 
 and that with her behavior to Philip her child's allegiance had 
 revolted. 
 
 Bunch then, from Baynes's look and expression, perfectly 
 understood what his adversary meant, and that the General's 
 second was found. His own he had in his eye — a tough little
 
 ON HIS WAY TJ /ROUGH TJJE WORLD. 4^7 
 
 old army surgeon of Peninsular and Indian times, who lived 
 hard by, who would aid as second and doctor too, if need were 
 —and so kill two birds with one stone, as they say. The Colonel 
 *fould go forth that very instant and seek for Dr. Martin, and 
 Ve hanged to Baynes, and a plague on the whole transaction 
 and the folly of two old friends burning powder in such a 
 quarrel. But he knew what a bloodthirsty little fellow that 
 henpecked, silent Baynes was when roused ; and as for himself 
 — a fellow use that kind of language to viei By George, Tom 
 Bunch was not going to baulk him ! 
 
 Whose was that tall figure prowling about Madame's house 
 in the Champs Elysees when Colonel Bunch issued forth in 
 quest of his friend ; who had been watched by the police and 
 mistaken for a suspicious character ; who had been looking up 
 at Madame's windows now that the evening shades had fallen? 
 Oh, you goose of a Philip ! (for of course, my dears, you guess 
 that the spy was P. F., Esq.) you look up at the premier, and 
 there is the Beloved in Madame's room on the ground floor ^ 
 — in yonder room, where a lamp is burning and casting a faint 
 light across the bars of the jalousie. If Philip knew she was 
 there he would be transformed into a clematis, and climb up 
 the bars of the window, and twine round them all night. But 
 you see he thinks she is on the first floor ; and the glances of 
 his passionate eyes are taking aim at the wrong windows. And 
 now Colonel Bunch comes forth in his stout strutting way, in 
 his little military cape — quick march — and Philip is startled 
 like a guilty thing surprised, and dodges behind a tree in the 
 avenue. 
 
 The Colonel departed on his murderous errand. Philip 
 still continues to ogle the window of his heart (the wrong win- 
 dow), defiant of the policeman, who tells him to circulcr. He 
 has not watched here many minutes more, ere a hackney-coach 
 drives up with portmanteaus on the roof and a lady and gen- 
 tleman within. 
 
 You see Mrs. MacWhirter thought she, as well as her hus- 
 band, might have a peep at Paris. As Mac's coach-hire was 
 paid, Mrs. Mac could afford a little outlay of money. And if 
 they were to bring Charlotte back — Charlotte in grief and agita- 
 tion, poor child — a m'atron, an aunt, would be a much fitter 
 companion for her than a major, however gentle. So the pair 
 of MacWhirters journeyed from Tours — a long journey it was 
 before railways were invented — and after four-and-twenty hours 
 of squeeze in the diligence, presented themselves at nightfall 
 at Madame Smolensk's.
 
 42l 
 
 THE A J) VENTURES OF Plf/LrP 
 
 The T>aynes' boys dashed into the garden at the sound of 
 wheels. " Mamma — mamma ! it's uncle Mac ! " these inno- 
 cents cried: as they ran to the railings. "Uncle Mac! what 
 could bring him ? Oh ! they are going to send me to liini ! 
 they are going to send me to him ! " thought Charlotte, starl- 
 ing on her bed. And on this I dare say, a certain locket was 
 kissed more vehemently than ever. 
 
 " I say, Ma ! " cries the ingenuous Moira, jumping back to 
 the house ;"it's uncle Mac, and aunt Mac, too ! " 
 
 ^'■WhatV cries mamma, with anything but pleasure in liei 
 voice ; and then turning to the dining-room, where her husband 
 still sat, she called out, " General ! here's MacWhirter and 
 Emily ! " 
 
 Mrs. Baynes gave her sister a very grim kiss. 
 
 " Dearest Eliza, 1 thought it was such a good opportunity of 
 coming, and that I might be so useful, you know!" pleads 
 Emily. 
 
 "Thank you. How do you do, MacWhirter ?" says the 
 grim General. 
 
 " Glad to see you, Baynes my boy ! " 
 
 " How d'ye do, Emily "> Boys, bring your uncle's traps. 
 Didn't know Emily was coming Mac. Hope there's room for 
 her! " sighs the General, coming forth from his parlor. 
 
 The Major was struck by the sad looks and pallor of his 
 brother-in-law. " By George, Baynes, you look as yellow as a 
 guinea. How's Tom Bunch t " 
 
 ' Come into this room along with me. Have some brandy- 
 and-water, Mac. Auguste ! Odevie O sho ! " calls the General ; 
 and Auguste, who out of the new comers' six packages has 
 daintily taken one very small mackintosh cushion, says " Com- 
 ment ? encore du grog, Ge'ne'ral .'' " and, shrugging liis shoulders, 
 disappears to procure the refreshment at his leisure. 
 
 The sisters disappear to their embraces • the brothers-in-law 
 retreat to the salle-^z-manger, where General Baynes has been 
 sitting, gloomy and lonely, for half an hour past, thinking of his 
 quarrel with his old comrade. Bunch. He and Bunch ha\e 
 been chums for more than forty years. They have been in 
 action together, and honorably mentioned in the same report. 
 They have had a great regard for each Other ; and each knows 
 the other is an obstinate old mule, and, in a quarrel, will die 
 rather than give way. They have had a dispute out of which 
 there is only one issue. Words have passed which no man, how- 
 ever old, by George ! can brook from any friend, however inti- 
 mate, by Jove ! No wonder Baynes is grave. His family is 
 
 &
 
 ON HIS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. 429 
 
 large ; his means are small. To-morrow he may be under fire 
 of an old friend's pistol. In such an extremity he knows how 
 each will behave. No wonder, I say, the General is solemn. 
 
 "What's in the wind now, Baynes?" asks the Major, after 
 a little diink and a long silence. "How is poor little Char ? " 
 
 " Infernally ill — I mean behaved infernally ill," says the 
 General, biting his lips. 
 
 " Bad business ! Bad business ! Poor little child ! " cries 
 
 the Major. 
 
 " Insubordinate little devil ! " says the pale General, grind- 
 ing his teeth. ' We'll see which shall be master ! " 
 
 " What ! you liave had words ? '' 
 
 " At this table, this very day. She sat here and defied her 
 mother and me, by George ! and flung out of the room like a 
 tragedy queen. She must be tamed, Mac, or my name's not 
 Baynes." 
 
 MacWhirter knew his relative of old, and that this quiet, 
 submissive man, when angry, worked up to a white heat as it 
 were. " Sad affair ; hope you'll both come round, Baynes," 
 sighs the Major, trying bootless commonplaces ; and seeing 
 this last remark had no effect, he bethought him of recurring 
 to their mutual friend. " How's Tom Bunch ? " the Major 
 asked, cheerily. 
 
 At this question Baynes grinned in such a ghastly way that 
 MacWhirter eyed him with wonder. *' Colonel Bunch is very 
 well," the General said, in a dismal voice ; " at least, he was 
 half an hour ago. He was sitting there;" and he pointed to 
 an empty spoon lying in an empty beaker, whence the spirit 
 and water had departed. 
 
 " What has been the matter, Baynes ? " asked the Major. 
 " Has anything happened between you and Tom } " 
 
 " I mean that, half an hour ago. Colonel Bunch used words 
 to me which I'll bear from no man alive : and you have arrived 
 just in the nick of time, MacWhirter, to take my message to 
 him. Hush ! here's the drink." 
 
 *' Voici, Messieurs ! " Auguste at length has brought up a 
 second supply of brandy-and-water. The veterans mingled 
 their jorums ; and whilst his brother-in-law spoke, the alarmed 
 MacWhirter sipped occasionally intentusque ora tenebat.
 
 430 THE ADiEA-ruREs OF nuLir 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 1 CHARGE YOU, DROP YOUR DAGGERS ! 
 
 General Baynes began the story which you and I have 
 heard at length. He told it in his own way. He grew very 
 angry with himself whilst defending himself. He had to abuse 
 Philip very fiercely, in order to excuse his own act of treason. 
 He had to show that his act was not his act ; that, after all, he 
 never had promised ; and that, if he had promised, Philip's 
 atrocious conduct ought to absolve him from any previous prom- 
 ise. I do not wonder that the General was abusive, and out 
 of temper. Such a crime as he was committing can't be per- 
 formed cheerfully by a man who is habitually gentle, generous, 
 and honest. I do not say that men cannot cheat, cannot lie, 
 cannot inflict torture, cannot commit rascally actions, without 
 in the least losing their equanimity; but these are men habitu- 
 ally false, knavish, and cruel. They are accustomed to break 
 their promises, to cheat their neighbors in bargains, and what 
 not. A roguish word or action more or less is of little matter 
 to them : their remorse only awakens after detection, and they 
 don't begin to repent till they come sentenced out of the docl^. 
 But here was an ordinarily just man withdrawing from his prom- 
 ise, turning his back on his benefactor, and justifying himself 
 to himself by maligning the man whom he injured. It is not 
 an uncommon event, my dearly beloved brethren and esteemed 
 miserable sister sinners ; but you like to say a preacher is 
 "cynical" who admits this sad truth — and, perhaps, don't care 
 to hear about the subject on more than one day in the week. 
 
 So, in order to make out some sort of case for himself, our 
 poor good old General P.avnes chose to think and declare that 
 Philip was so violent, ill-conditioned, and abandoned a fellow, 
 that no faith ought to be kept with him ; and that Colonel 
 Punch had behaved with such brutal insolence that Baynes must 
 call liim to account. As for the fact that there was another, a 
 richer, and a much more eligible suitor, who was likely to offer 
 for his daughter, Baynes did not happen to touch on this point 
 at all ; preferring to s])eak of Philip's homeless poverty, dis- 
 reputable conduct, and gross and careless behavior. 
 
 Now MacWhirter, having, 1 suppose, little to do at Tours, 
 had read Mrs. Baynes's letters to her sister family, and re- 
 membered them. Indeed, it was but very few months since
 
 ox Ills WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. 431 
 
 Eliza Baynes's letters had been full of praise of Philip, of his 
 love for Charlotte, and of his noble generosity in foregoing the 
 great claim which he had upon the General, his motlier's care- 
 less trustee. Philip was the first suitor Charlotte had had : in 
 her first glow of pleasure, Charlotte's mother had covered yards 
 of paper with compliments, interjections, and those scratches or 
 dashes under her words, by which some ladies are accustomed 
 to point their satire or emphasize their delight. He was an 
 admirable young man — wild, but generous, handsome, noble ! 
 He had forgiven his father thousands and thousands of pounds 
 which the doctor owed him — all his mother's fortune ; and he 
 had acted most nohly by her trustees — that she must say, though 
 poor dear weak Baynes was one of them ! Baynes Mho was as 
 simple as a child. Major Mac and his wife had agreed that 
 Philip's forbearance was very generous and kind, but after all 
 that there was no special cause for rapture at the notion of their 
 niece marrying a struggling young fellow without a penny in the 
 world; and they had been not a little amused witli the change 
 of tone in Eliza's later letters, when she began to go out in the 
 great world, and to look coldly upon poor, penniless Firmin, 
 her hero of a few months since. Then Emily remembered how 
 Eliza had always been fond of great people ; how her head was 
 turned by going to a few parties at Government House ; how 
 absurdly she went on with that little creature Fitzrickets (be- 
 cause he was an Honorable, forsooth,) at Dumdum. Eliza was 
 a good wife to Baynes ; a good mother to the children ; and 
 made both ends of a narrow income meet with surprising dex- 
 terity ; but Emily was bound to say of her sister Eliza, that a 
 more, &c., &:c., &c. And when the news came at length that 
 Philip was to be thrown overboard, Emily clapped her hands 
 together and said to her husband, " Now, Mac, didn't I always 
 tell you so ? If she could get a fashionable husband for Char- 
 lotte, I knew my sister would put the doctor's son to the door 1 " 
 That the poor child would suffer considerably, her aunt was as- 
 sured. Indeed, before her own union with T\Iac, Emily had 
 undergone heart-breakings and pangs of separation on her ac- 
 count. The poor child would want comfort and companionship. 
 She would go to fetch her niece. And though the Major said, 
 " My dear, you want to go to Paris, and buy a new bonnet," 
 Mrs. MacWhirter spurned the insinuation, and came to Paris 
 from a mere sense of duty. 
 
 So Baynes poured out his history of wrongs to his brother- 
 in-law, who marvelled to hear a man, ordinarily chary of words 
 and cool of demeanor, so angry and so voluble. If he had
 
 432 THE A D I 'EXTi 'RES OF FI/IL IP 
 
 done a bad action, at least, after doing it, Baynes had the grace 
 to be very much out of humor. If I ever, for my part, do any- 
 thing wrong in my family, or to them, I accompany that action 
 with a furious rage and blustering passion. I won't have wife 
 or children question it. No querulous Nathan of a family 
 friend (or an incommodious conscience, maybe,) shall come 
 and lecture me about my ill-doings. No — no. Out of the 
 house with him ' Away, you preaching bugbear, don't try to 
 frighten me f Baynes, I suspect, to browbeat, bully, and outtalk 
 the Nathan pleading in his heart — Baynes will outbawl that 
 prating monitor, and thrust that inconvenient preacher out of 
 sight, out of hearing, drive him with angry words from the gate. 
 Ah ! in vain we expel him ; and bid John say, not at home ! 
 There he is when we wake, sitting at our bedfoot. We throw 
 him overboard for daring to put an oar in our boat. Whose 
 ghastly head is that looking up from the water and swimming 
 alongside us, row we never so swiftly ? Fire at him. Brain 
 him with an oar, one of you, and pull on ! Flash goes the 
 pistol. Surely that oar has stove the old skull in ? See ! there 
 comes the awful companion popping up out of water again, and 
 crying, " Remember, remember, I am here, I am here ! " 
 Baynes had thought to bully away one monitor by the threat 
 of a pistol, and here was another swimming alongside of his 
 boat. And would you have it otherwise, my dear reader, for 
 you, for me ? That you and T shall commit sins, in this, and 
 ensuing years, is certain ; but 1 hope — I hope they won't be 
 past praying for. Here is Baynes, having just done a bad ac- 
 tion, in a dreadfully wicked, murderous, and dissatisfied state 
 of mind. His chafing, bleeding temper is one raw ; his whole 
 soul one rage, and wrath, and fever. CMiarles Baynes, thou old 
 sinner, I pray that heaven may turn thee to a better state of 
 mind. 1 will kneel down by thy side, scatter ashes on my own 
 bald pate, and we will quaver out Peccavtmus together. 
 
 "in one word, the young man's conduct has been so out- 
 rageous and disreputable that I can"- Mac, as a father of a 
 family, consent to my girl's ma'fyi.ig him. Out of a regard for 
 her happiness, it is my duty to oreak off the engagement," cries 
 the General, finishing .ne stcy. 
 
 " Has he formally released you from that trust business ? " 
 asked the Major, 
 
 " Good heavens, Mac ! " cries the General, turning very red. 
 " You know I am as innocent of all wrong towards him as you 
 are ! " 
 
 " Innocent — only you did not look to your trust "
 
 ON HIS VVA V THROUGH THE WORLD. 433 
 
 " I think ill of him, sir. I think lie is a wild, reckless, over- 
 bearing young fellow," calls out the General, very quickly, 
 " who woi. Id make my child miserable ; but I don't think he is 
 such a blackguard as to come down on a retired elderly man 
 with a poor family — a numerous family ; a man who has bled 
 and fought for his sovereign in the Peninsula, and in India, as 
 the ' Army List' will show you, by George ! I don't think 
 Firmiii will be such a scoundrel as to come down on me, I say ; 
 and I must say, MacWhirter, I think it most unhandsome of 
 you to allude to it — most unhandsome, by George ! " 
 
 " Why, you are going to break off your bargain with him ,- 
 why should he keep his compact with you ? " asks the grufiE 
 Major. 
 
 '' Because," shouted the General, " it would be a sin and a 
 shanije that an old man with seven children, and broken health, 
 who has served in every place — yes, in the West and East 
 Indies, by George ! — in Canada — in the Peninsula, and at New 
 Orleans ; — because he has been deceived and humbugged by a 
 miserable scoundrel of a doctor into signing a sham paper, by 
 George ! should be ruined, and his poor children and wife driven 
 to beggary, by Jove ! as you seem to recommend young Firmin 
 to do. Jack MacWhirter ; and I'll tell you what. Major Mac- 
 Whirter, I take it dee'd unfriendly of you ; and I'll trouble you 
 not to put your oar into w_v boat, and meddle with my affairs, 
 that's all, and I'll know who's at the bottom of it, by Jove ! 
 It's the gray mare, Mac — it's your better half, MacWhirter — 
 it's that confounded, meddling, sneaking, backbiting, domineer- 
 
 mg- 
 
 What next ? "' roared the Major. " Ha, ha, ha ! Do you 
 think I don't know, Paynes, who has put you on doing what I 
 have no hesitation in calling a most sneaking and rascally 
 action — yes, a rascally action, by George ! I am not going to 
 mince matters ! Don't come your Major-General or your Mrs. 
 Major-General over me ! It's Eliza that has set you on. And 
 if Tom Bunch has been telling you that you have been breaking 
 from your word, and are acting shabbily, Tom is right ; and you 
 may get somebody else to go out with you, General Baynes, for, 
 by George, I won't ! " 
 
 " Ha\e you come all the way from Tours, Mac, in order to 
 hisult me?" asks the General. 
 
 " I came to do you a friendly turn ; to take charge of your 
 poor girl, upon whom you are being ver}' hard, Baynes. And 
 this is tiie reward I get ! Thank you. No more grog ! What 
 J have had is rather too strong forme alreadv." And the Major 
 
 28
 
 434 
 
 THE ADVENTURES OF I'J/TLTP 
 
 looks down with an expression of scorn at the emptied beaker, 
 the idle spoon before him. 
 
 As the warriors were quarrelling over their cups, there came 
 to them a noise as of brawling and of female voices without. 
 " Mais, madame ! " pleads Madame Smolensk, in her grave way. 
 " Taisez-vous, madame, laissez-moi tranquille, s'il vous plait ! " 
 exclaims the well-known voice of Mrs. General Bavnes, which I 
 own was never very pleasant to me, either in anger or good- 
 humor. " And your Little, — who tries to sleep in my chamber ! " 
 again pleads the mistress of the boarding-house. "Vous 
 n'avez pas droit d'appeler Mademoiselle Baynes petite ! " calls 
 out the General's lady. And Baynes, who was fighting and 
 quarrelling himself just now, trembled when he heard her. Mis 
 angry face assumed an alarmed expression. He looked for 
 means of escape. He appealed for protection to MacWhirter, 
 whose nose he had been ready to pull anon. Samson was a 
 mighty man, but he was a fool in the hands of a woman. 
 Hercules was a brave man and a strong, but Omphale twisted 
 him round her spindle. Even so Baynes, who had fought in 
 India, Spain, America, trembled before the partner of his bed 
 and name. 
 
 It was an unlucky afternoon. Whilst the husbands had 
 been quarrelling in the dining-room over brandy-and-water, the 
 wives, the sisters, had been fighting over their tea in the salon. 
 I don't know what the other boarders were about. Philip never 
 told me. Perhaps they had left the room to give the sisters a 
 free opportunity for embraces and confidential communication. 
 Perhaps there were no lady boarders left. Ilowbeit, Emily 
 and Eliza had tea ; and before that refreshing meal was con- 
 cluded, those dear women were fighting as hard as their hus- 
 bands in the adjacent chamber. 
 
 Eliza, in the first place, was very angry at Emily's coming 
 without invitation. Emily, on her part, was angry with Eliza 
 for being angry. "I am sure, P^liza,"' said the spirited and 
 injured MacWhirter, " that is the third time you have alluded 
 to it since we have been here. Had you and all your family 
 come to Tours, Mac and I would have made them welcome — 
 children and all ; and I am sure yours make trouble enough in 
 a house." 
 
 " A private house is not like a boarding-house, Emily. 
 Here Madame makes us pay frightfully for extras," remarks 
 Mrs. Baynes. 
 
 " I am sorry I came, Eliza. Let us say no more about it, 
 I can't go away to night," says the other.
 
 ON ins ]VA Y THROUGH THE WORLD. 
 
 435 
 
 " And most unkind it is that speech to make, Emily. Any 
 more tea ? " 
 
 " Most unpleasant to have to make that speech. Eliza. To 
 travel a whole day and night — and I never able to sleep in a 
 diligence — to hasten to my sister because I thought she was in 
 trouble, because I thought a sister might comfort her ; and to 
 be received as you re — as you — oh, oh, oh — boh ! How stoopid 
 I am ! " A handkerchief dries the tears : a smelling-bottle 
 restores a little composure. " When you came to us at Dum- 
 dum, with two — o — o children in the whooping-cough, I am sure 
 Mac and I gave you a very different welcome. " 
 
 The other was smitten with remorse. She remembered her 
 sister's kindness in former days. " I did not mean, sister, to 
 give you pain," she said. "But I am very unhappy myself, 
 Emily. My child's conduct is making me most unhappy. " 
 
 " And very good reason you have to be unhappy, Eliza, if 
 woman ever had," savs the other. 
 
 "Oh, indeed, yes ! " gasps the General's lady. 
 
 " If any woman ought to feel remorse, Eliza Baynes, I am 
 sure it's you. Sleepless nights ! What was mine in the dili- 
 gence, compared to the nights you must have ? I said so to 
 myself. ' I am wretched, ' I said, ' but what must she be ? ' " 
 
 " Of course, as a feeling mother, I feel that poor Charlotte 
 is unhappy, my dear." 
 
 " But what makes her so, my dear } " cries Mrs. MacWhirter, 
 who presently showed that she was mistress of the whole con- 
 troversy. " No wonder Charlotte is unhappy, dear love ! Can 
 a girl be engaged to a young man, a most interesting young. 
 man, a clever, accomplished, highly educated young man " 
 
 ''What? " cries Mrs. Baynes. 
 
 " Haven't I your letters ? I have them all in my desk. 
 They are in that hall now. Didn't you tell me so over and 
 over again ; and rave about him, till I thought you were in love 
 with him yourself almost ? " cries Mrs. Mac. 
 
 " A most indecent observation ! " cries out Eliza Baynes, in 
 her deep, awful voice. " No woman, no sister, shall say that to 
 me !" 
 
 " Shall I go and get the letters ? It used to be, ' Dear 
 Philip has just left us. Dear Philip has been more than a son 
 to me. He is our preserver ! ' Didn't you write all that to me 
 over and over again ? And because you have found a richer 
 husband for Charlotte, you are going to turn your preserve! 
 out of doors ! " 
 
 " Emily MacWhirter, am I to sit here and be accused of
 
 436 THE ADVENTURES OF nil [.IP 
 
 crimes, uninrifed, mind — uninvited, mind, by my sister ? Is 
 a general officer's lady to be treated in this way by a brevet- 
 major's wife ? Though you are my senior in age, Emily, I am 
 yours in rank. Out of any room in England, but this, I go 
 before you ! And if you have come uninvited all the way from 
 Tours to insult me in my own house " 
 
 " House, indeed ! pretty house ! Everybody else's house as 
 well as yours ! " 
 
 " Such as it is, I never asked you to come into it, Emily ! " 
 
 " Oh, yes ! You wish me to go out in the night. Mac ! 
 I say ! " 
 
 " Emily ! " cries the Generaless. 
 
 " Mac, I say ! " screams the Majoress, flinging open the 
 door of the salon, " my sister wishes me to go. Do you 
 hear me ? " 
 
 " Au nom de Dieu, madame, pensez h. cette pauvre petite, 
 qui soufifre a cote', " cries the mistress of the house, pointing to 
 her own adjoining chamber, in which, we have said, our poor 
 little Charlotte was lying. 
 
 " Nappley pas Madamaselle Baynes petite, sivoplay 1 " 
 booms out Mrs. Baynes' contralto. 
 
 " MacWhirter, I say. Major MacWhirter ! " cries Emily, 
 flinging open the door of the dining-room where the two gentle- 
 men were knocking their own heads together. " MacWhirter! 
 My sister chooses to insult me, and say that a brevet-major's 
 wife " 
 
 " By George ! are you fighting, too ? " asks the General. 
 
 " Baynes, Emily MacWhirter has insulted me ! " cries Mrs. 
 Baynes. 
 
 " It seems to have been a settled thing beforehand," yells 
 the General. " Major MacWhirter has done the same thing 
 by me ! He has forgotten that he is a gentleman, and that I 
 am." 
 
 " He only insults you because he thinks you are his relative, 
 and must bear everything from him," says the General's wife. 
 
 " By George ! I will not bear everything from him ! " shouts 
 the General. The two gentlemen and their two wives are 
 squabbling in the hall. Madame and the servants are peering 
 up from the kitchen-regions. I dare say the boys from the 
 topmost banisters are saying to each other, " Row between Ma 
 and Aunt Mac ! " I dare say scared litde Charlotte, in her 
 temporary apartment, is, for awhile, almost forgetful of her 
 own grief ; and wondering what quarrel is agitating her aunt 
 and mother, her father and uncle ? Place the remaining male
 
 ox HIS WA Y THROUGH THE WORLD. 
 
 437 
 
 and female hoarders about the corridors and on the landings, 
 in various attitudes expressive of interest, of satiric commen- 
 tary, wrath at being disturbed by unseemly domestic quarrel : 
 — in what posture you will. As for Mrs. Colonel Bunch, she, 
 poor thing, does not know that the General and her own 
 Colonel have entered on a mortal quarrel. She imagines the 
 dispute is only between Mrs. Baynes and her sister as yet ; and 
 she has known this pair quarrelling for a score of years past. 
 "Toujours comme ga, fighting vous savez, et puis make it up 
 again. Oui," she explains to a French friend on the landing. 
 
 In the very midst of this storm Colonel Bunch returns, his 
 friend and second. Dr. Martin, on his arm. He does not 
 know that two battles have been fought since his own combat. 
 His, we will say, was Ligny. Then came Quatre-Bras, in 
 which Baynes and MacWhirter were engaged. Then came the 
 general action of Waterloo. And here enters Colonel Bunch, 
 quite unconscious of the great engagements which have taken 
 place since his temporary retreat in search of reinforcements. 
 
 " How are you, MacWhirter ? " cries the Colonel of the pur- 
 ple whiskers. " My friend. Dr. Martin ! " And as he addresses 
 himself to the General, his eyes almost start out of his head, as 
 if they would shoot themselves into the breast of that officer. 
 
 " My dear, hush ! Emily MacWhirter, had we not better 
 defer this most painful dispute ? The whole house is listening 
 to us ! " whispers the General, in a rapid low voice. " Doctor 
 — Colonel Bunch — Major MacWhirter, had we not better go 
 into the dining-room ? " 
 
 The General and the Doctor go first, Major MacWhirter 
 and Colonel Bunch pause at the door. Says Bunch to Mac- 
 Whirter : " Major, you act as the General's friend in this affair ? 
 It's most awkward, but, by George ! Baynes has said things to 
 me that I won't bear, were he my own flesh and blood, by 
 George ! And I know him a deuced deal too well to think he 
 will ever apologize ! " 
 
 " He has said things to me, Bunch, that I won't bear from 
 fifty brother-in-laws, by George ! growls MacWhirter. 
 
 " What ? Don't you bring me any message from him ? " 
 
 " I tell you, Tom Bunch, I want to send a message to him. 
 Invite me to his house, and insult me and Emily when we 
 come ! By George, it makes my blood boil ! Insult us after 
 travelling twenty-four hours in a confounded diligence, and say 
 we're not invited ! He and his little catamaran." 
 
 " Hush ! " interposed Bunch. 
 
 '*I say catamaran, sir! don't tell me! They came and
 
 438 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 stayed with us four months at Dumckuii — the children ill with 
 the pip, or some confounded thing — went to Europe, and left 
 me to pay the doctor's bill ; and now, by " 
 
 Was the Major going to invoke George, the Cappadocian 
 champion, or Olympian Jove ? At this moment a door, by 
 whicli they stood, opens. You may remember there were three 
 doors, all on that landing ; if you doubt me, go and see the 
 house (Avenue de Valmy, Champs Elyse'es, Paris). A third 
 door opens, and a young lady comes out, looking very pale and 
 sad, her hair hanging over her shoulders ; — her hair, which 
 hung in rich clusters generally, but I suppose tears have put it 
 all out of curl. 
 
 " Is it you, uncle Mac ? I thought I knew your voice, and I 
 heard aunt Emily's," says the little person. 
 
 " Yes, it is I, Charley," says uncle Mac. And he looks 
 into the round face, which looks so wild and is so full of grief 
 unutterable that uncle Mac is quite melted, and takes the child 
 to his arms, and says, " What is it, my dear } " And he quite 
 forgets that he proposes to blow her father's brains out in the 
 morning. " How hot your little hands are ! " 
 
 '' Uncle, uncle ! " she says, in a swift febrile whisper, 
 "you're come to take me away, I know. I heard you and papa, 
 I heard mamma and aunt Emily speaking quite loud ! But if 
 I go — I'll — I "11 never love any but him !" 
 
 " But whom, dear } " 
 
 " But Philip, uncle." 
 
 " By George, Char, no more you shall ! " says the Major. 
 And herewith the poor child, who had been sitting up on her bed 
 whilst this quarrelling of sisters, — whilst this brawling of ma- 
 jors, generals, colonels, — whilst this coming of hackney-coaches, 
 — whilst this arrival and departure of visitors on horseback, — ■ 
 had been taking place, gave a fine hysterical scream, and fell 
 into her uncle's arms laughing and crying wildly. 
 
 This outcry, of course, brought the gentlemen from their 
 adjacent room, and the ladies from theirs. 
 
 '' What are you making a fool of yourself about } " growls 
 Mrs. Baynes, in her deepest bark. 
 
 " By George, Eliza, you are too bad ! " says the General, 
 quite white. 
 
 " Eliza, you are a brute ! " cries Mrs. MacWhirter. 
 
 " So SHE IS ! " shrieks Mrs. Bunch from the landing place 
 overhead, where other lady-boarders were assembled looking 
 down on this awful family battle. 
 
 Eliza Baynes knew she had gone too far. Poor Charley
 
 ON ms IVA V THROUGH THE WORLD. 
 
 439 
 
 was scarce conscious by this time, and wildly screaming, 
 " Never, never | " * * * * When, as I live, who should 
 burst into the premises but a young man with fair hair, with 
 flaming whiskers, with flaming eyes, who calls out, " What is 
 it ? I am here, Charlotte, Charlotte ! " 
 
 Who is that young man ? We had a glimpse of him, prowl- 
 ing about the Champs Elysees just now, and dodging beliind a 
 tree when Colonel Bunch went out in search of his second. 
 Then the young man saw the MacWhirter hackney-coach 
 approach the house. Then he waited and waited, looking 
 to that upper window behind which we know his beloved was 
 not reposing. Then he beheld Bunch and Doctor Martin 
 arrive. Then he passed through the wicket into the garden, 
 and heard Mrs. Mac and Mrs. Baynes fighting. Then there 
 came from the passage — where you see, this battle was going 
 on — that ringing dreadful laugh and scream of poor Charlotte ; 
 and Philip Firmin burst like a bombshell into the midst of the 
 hall where the battle was raging, and of the family circle who 
 were fighting and screaming. 
 
 Here is a picture I protest. We have — first, the boarders 
 on the first landing, whither, too, the Baynes children have 
 crept in their night-gowns. Secondly, we have Auguste, 
 Frangoise the cook, and the assistant coming up from the base- 
 ment. And, third, we have Colonel Bunch, Doctor Martin, 
 Major MacWhirter, with Charlotte in his arms ; Madame, Gen- 
 eral B., Mrs. Mac, Mrs. General B., all in the passage, when 
 our friend the bombshell bursts in amongst them. 
 
 " Wliat is it ? Charlotte, I am here ! " cries Philip, with 
 his great voice ; at hearing which, little Char gives one final 
 scream, and, at the next moment, she has fainted quite dead — ■ 
 but this time she is on Philip's shoulder. 
 
 " You brute, how dare you do this .-' " asks Mrs. Baynes, 
 glaring at the young man. 
 
 " It is you who have done it, Eliza ! " says aunt Emily. 
 
 " And so she has, Mrs. MacWhirter ! " calls out Mrs. Col- 
 onel Bunch, from the landing above. 
 
 And Charles Baynes felt he had acted like a traitor, and 
 hung down his head. He had encouraged his daughter to give 
 her heart away, and she had obeyed him. When he saw 
 Philip I think he was glad : so was the Major, though Firmin, 
 to be sure, pushed him quite roughly up against the wall. 
 
 " Is this vulgar scandal to go on in the passage before the 
 whole house ? " gasped Mrs. Baynes. 
 
 "Bunch brought me here to prescribe for this young lady,"
 
 440 
 
 THE ADVEXTCKES OF P////./J' 
 
 says little Doctor Martin, in a very courtly way. " Madame, 
 will you get a little sal-volatile from Anjubeau's in the 
 Faubourg ; and let her be kept very quiet ! " 
 
 "Come, Monsieur Philippe, it is enough like ihat ! " cries 
 Madame, who can't repress a smile. " Come to your chamber, 
 dear little ! " 
 
 " Madame," cries Mrs. I'aynes, " une mere "" 
 
 Madame shrugs her shoulders. " Une mere, une belle 
 mere, ma foi ! " she says. Come, mademoiselle !'" 
 
 There were only very few people in tlie boarding-house : if 
 they knew, if they saw, what happened, how can we help our- 
 selves } But that they had all been sitting over a powder- 
 magazine, which might have blown up and destroyed one, two, 
 three, five people, even Philip did not know, until afterwards, 
 when, laughing, Major MacWhirter told him how that meek 
 but most savage Paynes had first challenged Bunch, had then 
 challenged his brother-in-law, and how all sorts of battle, mur- 
 der, sudden death might have ensued had the quarrel not come 
 to an end. 
 
 Were your humble servant anxious to harrow his reader's 
 feelings, or display his own graphical powers, you understand 
 that 1 never would have allowed those two gallant officers to 
 quarrel and threaten each other's very noses, without having 
 the insult wiped out in blood. The liois de Boulogne is hard 
 by the Avenue de Valmy, with plenty of cool fighting ground. 
 The octroi officers never stop gentlemen going out at the neigh- 
 boring barrier upon duelling business, or prevent the return of 
 the slain victim in the hackney-coach when the dreadful combat 
 is over. From my knowledge of Mrs, Baynes's character I 
 have not the slightest doubt that she would have encouraged 
 her husband to fight ; and, the General down, would have put 
 pistols into the hands of her boys, and bidden them carry on 
 the vendetta ; but as I do not, for my part, love to see brethren 
 at war, or Moses and Aaron tugging white handfuls out of each 
 other's beards, I am glad there is going to be no fight between 
 the veterans, and that cither's stout old breast is secure from 
 the fratricidal bullet. 
 
 Major Mac\Miirter forgot all about bullets and battles when 
 poor little Charlotte kissed him, and was not in the least jeal- 
 ous when he saw the little maiden clinging on Philip's arm. 
 He was melted at the sight of that grief and innocence, when 
 Mrs. Paynes still continued to bark out her private rage, and 
 said : " If the General won't protect me from insult, I think J 
 had better go."
 
 ON nrs WAY TI [ROUGH THE WORLD. 441 
 
 ** Ry Jove, I think you had ! " exclaimed MacWhirter, to 
 which remark the eyes of the Doctor and Colonel Jiunch gleamed 
 an approval. 
 
 '■'' Allons^ Monsieur Philippe. Enough like that — let me 
 take her to bed again," madame resumed. " Come, dear miss 1 " 
 
 What a pit}^ that the bedroom was but a yard from where 
 they stood ! Philip felt strong enough to carry his little Char- 
 lotte to the Tuileries. The thick brown locks, which had fallen 
 over his shoulders, are lifted away. The little wounded heart 
 that had lain against his own, parts from him with a reviving 
 throb. Madame and her mother carry away little Charlotte. 
 The door of the neighboring chamber closes on her. The sad 
 little vision has disappeared. The men, quarrelling anon in 
 the passage, stand there silent. 
 
 " I heard her voice outside," said Philip, after a little pause 
 (with love, with grief, with excitement, I suppose his head was 
 in a whirl). " I heard her voice outside, and I couldn't help 
 coming in." 
 
 " By George, I should think not, young fellow ! " says 
 Major MacWhirter, stoutly shaking the young man by the hand. 
 
 " Hush, hush ! " whispers the Doctor ; " she must be kept 
 quite quiet. She has had quite excitement enough for to-night. 
 There must be no more scenes, my young fellow." 
 
 And Philip says, when in this his agony of grief and doubt 
 he found a friendly hand put out to him, he himself was so 
 exceedingly moved that he was compelled to fly out of t!-!e 
 company of the old men, into the night, where the rain was 
 pouring — the gentle rain. 
 
 While Philip, without Madame Smolensk's premises, is say« 
 ing his tenderest prayers, offering up his tears, heart-throbs and 
 most passionate vows of love for little Charlotte's benefit, the 
 warriors assembled within once more retreat to a colloquy in 
 the salle-a-manger ; and, in consequence of the rainy state o{ 
 the night, the astonished Auguste has to bring a third supply 
 of hot-water for the four gentlemen attending the congress. 
 The Colonel, the Major, the Doctor, ranged themselves on one 
 side the table, defended, as it were, by aline of armed tumblers, 
 flanked by a strong brandy-bottle and a stout earth-work, from 
 an embrasure in which scalding water could be discharofed. 
 Behmd these fortifications the veterans awaited their enemy, 
 who, after marching up and down the room for awhile, takes 
 position finally in their front and prepares to attack. The 
 General remounts his his cheval de bafaille, but cannot bring 
 the animal to charge as fiercely as before. Charlotte's white
 
 442 THE ADVENTURES OE PiriLlE 
 
 apparition has come amongst them, and flung her fair arms be- 
 tween the men of war. In vain JJaynes tries to get up a bluster, 
 and to enforce his passion with b)- Georges, by Jo\es, and 
 words naughtier still. That weak, meek, quiet, henpecked, but 
 most bloodthirsty old General found himself forming his own 
 minority, and against him his old comrade }>unch, whom he 
 had insulted and nose-pulled ; his brother-in-law MacWhirter, 
 whom he had nose-pulled and insulted ; and the Doctor, who 
 had been called in as the friend of the former. As they faced 
 him, shoulder to shoulder, each of those three acquired fresh 
 courage from his neighbor. Each, taking his aim, deliberately 
 poured his fire into Baynes. To yield to such odds, on the 
 other hand, was not so distasteful to the veteran, as to have to 
 give up his sword to any single adversary. Before he would 
 own himself in the wrong to any individual, he would eat that 
 individual's ears and nose : but to be surrounded by three 
 enemies, and strike your flag before such odds, was no disgrace ; 
 and Baynes could take the circumbendibus way of apology to 
 which some proud spirits will subanit. Thus he could say to 
 the Doctor, "Well, Doctor, perhaps I was hasty in accusing 
 Bunch of employing bad language to me. A bystander can 
 see these things sometimes when a principal is too angry ; and 
 as you go against me — well — there, then, I ask Bunch's par- 
 don." That business over, the MacWhirter reconciliation was 
 very speedily brought about. " Fact was, was in a confounded 
 ill-temper — ver}^ much disturbed by events of the day — didn't 
 mean anything but this, that, and so forth." If this old chief 
 had to eat humble pie, his brave adversaries were anxious that 
 he should gobble up his portion as quickly as possible, and 
 turned away their honest old heads as he swallowed it. One of 
 the party told his wife of the quarrel which had arisen, but 
 Baynes never did. " I declare, sir," Philip used to say, " had 
 she known anything about the quarrel that night, Mrs. Baynes 
 would have made her husband turn out of bed at midnight, and 
 challenge his old friends over again ! " But then there was no 
 love between Philip and Mrs. Baynes, and in those whom he 
 hates he is accustomed to see little good. 
 
 Thus, any gentle reader who expected to be treated to an 
 account of the breakage of the sixth commandment w-ill close 
 this chapter disappointed. Those stout old rusty swords which 
 were fetched off their hooks by the warriors, their owners, were 
 returned undrawn to their flannel cases. Hands were shaken 
 after a fashion — at least no blood was shed. But, though the 
 words spoken between tiie old boys were civil enough, Buncli,
 
 OjV his JVA V THROUGH THE WORLD. 443 
 
 Baynes, and the Doctor could not alter their opinion that 
 Philip had been hardly used, and that the benefactor of his 
 family merited a better treatment from General Baynes. 
 
 Meanwhile, that benefactor strode home through the rain 
 in a state of perfect rapture. The rain refreshed him, as did 
 his own tears. The dearest little maiden had sunk for a 
 moment on his heart, and, as she lay there, a thrill of hope 
 vibrated through his whole frame. Her father's old friends 
 had held out a hand to him, and bid him not despair. Blow 
 wind, fall autumn rains ! In the midnight, under the gusty 
 trees, amidst which the lamps of the reverberes are tossing, the 
 young fellow strides back to his lodgings. He is poor and un- 
 happy, but he has Hope along with him. He looks at a certain 
 breast-button of his old coat ere he takes it off to sleep. " Her 
 cheek was lying there," he thinks — " just there." My poor 
 little Charlotte ! what could she have done to the breast-button 
 of the old coat ? 
 
 CHAPTER XXVni. 
 
 IN WHICH MRS MACWHIRTER HAS A NEW BONNET. 
 
 Now though the unhappy Philip slept quite soundly, so that 
 his boots, those tramp-worn sentries, remained en faction at his 
 door until quite a late hour next morning ; and though little 
 Charlotte, after a prayer or two, sank into the sweetest and 
 most refreshing girlish slumber, Charlotte's father and mother 
 had a bad night ; and, for my part, I maintain that they did not 
 deserve a good one. It was very well for Mrs. Baynes to 
 declare that it was MacWhirter's snoring which kept them 
 awake (Mr. and Mrs. Mac being lodged in the bedroom over 
 their relatives) — I don't say a snoring neighbor is pleasant — • 
 but what a bedfellow is a bad conscience ! Under Mrs. Baynes's 
 night-cap the grim eyes lie open all night ; on Baynes's pillow 
 is a silent, wakeful head that hears the hours toll. " A plague 
 upon the young man ! " thinks the female bonnet de nuit ; " how 
 dare he come in and disturb everything ? How pale Charlotte 
 will look to-morrow when Mrs. Hely calls with her son ! When 
 she has been crying she looks hideous, and her eyelids and 
 nose are quite red. She may fly out, and say something wicked 
 and absurd, as she did to-day. I wish I had never seen that 
 insolent young man, with his carroty beard and vulgar blucher
 
 ^^^ 'the a n I -KNtURES OF PHlUP 
 
 boots ! If my boys were grown up, he should not come hectof- 
 ing about the house as he does ; they would soon find a way of 
 punishing his impudence!" Baulked revenge and a hungry 
 disappointment, I think, are keeping that old woman awake ; 
 and, if she hears the hours tolling, it is because wicked thoughts 
 make her sleepless. 
 
 As for Baynes, I believe that old man is awake, because he 
 is awake to the shabbyness of his own conduct. Mis con- 
 science has got the better of him, which he has been trying to 
 bully out of doors. Do what he will, that reflection forces 
 itself upon him. Mac, Bunch, and the Doctor all saw the 
 thing at once, and went dead against him. He wanted to break 
 his word to a young fellow, who, whatever his faults might 
 be, had acted most nobly and generously by the Baynes family. 
 He might have been ruined but for Philip's forbearance ; and 
 showed his gratitude by breaking his promise to the young 
 fellow. He was a henpecked man — that was the fact. He 
 allowed his wife to govern him : that little old plain, cantank- 
 erous woman asleep yonder. Asleep was she ? No. He knew 
 ~she wasn't. Both were lying quite still, wide awake, pursuing 
 their dismal thoughts. Only C^harles was owning that he was 
 a sinner, whilst Eliza his wife, in a rage at her last defeat, was 
 meditating how she could continue and still win her battle. 
 
 Then Baynes reflects how persevering his wife is ; how, all 
 through life, she has come back and back and back to her 
 point, until he has ended by an almost utter subjugation. He 
 will resist for a day : she will fight for a year, for a life. If 
 once she hates people, the sentiment always remains with her 
 fresh and lively. Her jealousy never dies ; nor her desire to 
 rule. What a life she will lead poor Charlotte now she has 
 declared against Philip ! The poor child will be subject to a 
 dreadful tyranny : the father knows it. As soon as he leaves 
 the house on his daily walks the girl's torture will begin. 
 Baynes knows how his wife can torture a woman. As she 
 groans out a hollow cough from her bed in the midnight, the 
 guilty man lies quite mum under his own counterpane. If she 
 fancies him awake, it will be his turn to receive the torture. 
 Ah, Othello fuon ami ! when you look round at married life, 
 and know what you know, don't you wonder that the bolster is 
 not used a great deal more freely on both sides ? Horrible 
 cynicism ! Yes — I know. These propositions sensed raw are 
 savage, and shock your sensibility; cooked with a little piquant 
 sauce, they are welcome at quite polite tables. 
 
 " Poor child ! Yes, by George ! What a life her mother
 
 ox Ills J FA V THROUGir THE WORLD. .j ^^ 
 
 will lead her ! " thinks the General, rolling uneasy on the niicl- 
 night pillow, " No rest for her, day or night, until she marries 
 the man of her mother's choosing. And she has a delicate 
 chest — Martin says she has ; and she wants coaxing and sooth- 
 ing, and pretty coaxing she will have from her mamma ! " 
 Then, I dare say, the past rises up in that wakeful old man's 
 uncomfortable memory. His little Charlotte is a child again, 
 laughing on his knee, and playing with his accoutrements as he 
 comes home from parade. He remembers the fever which she 
 had, when she would take medicine from no other hand ; and 
 how, though silent with her mother, with him she would never 
 tire prattling, prattling. Guilt-stricken old man ! are those 
 tears trickling down thy old nose ? It is midnight. We cannot 
 see. When you brought her to the river, and parted with her 
 to send her to Europe, how the little maid clung to you, and 
 cried, " Papa, papa ! " Staggering up the steps of the ghaut, 
 how you wept yourself — yes, wept tears of passionate, tender 
 grief at parting with the darling of your soul. And now, delib- 
 erately, and for the sake of money, you stab her to the heart, 
 and break your plighted honor with your child. " And it is 
 yonder cruel, shrivelled, bilious, plain old woman who makes 
 me do all this, and trample on my darling, and torture her ! '' 
 he thinks. In Zoifany's famous picture of Garrick and Mrs. 
 Pritchard as Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, Macbeth stands in 
 an attitude hideously contorted and constrained, while lady 
 Mac is firm and easy. Was this the actor's art, or the poet's 
 device ? Baynes is wretched, then. He is wrung with remorse, 
 and shame and pity. Well, I am glad of it. Old man, old 
 man ! how darest thou to cause that child's tender little bosom 
 to bleed ? How bilious he looks the next morning ! I declare 
 as yellow as his grim old wife ! When Mrs. General B. hears 
 the children their lessons, how she will scold them ! It is my 
 belief she will bark through the morning chapter, and scarce 
 understand a word of its meaning. As for Charlotte, when 
 she appears with red eyes, and ever so little color in her round 
 cheek, there is that in her look and demeanor which warns her 
 mother to refrain from too familiar abuse or scolding. The 
 girl is in rebellion. All day Char was in a feverish state, her 
 eyes flashing war. There was a song which Philip loved in 
 those days : the song of Ruth. Char sat down to the piano, 
 and sang it with a strange energy. " Thy people shall be my 
 people " — she sang witii all her heart — " and thy God my God ! " 
 The slave had risen. The little heart was in arms and mutiny. 
 The mother was scared by her defiance.
 
 4^6 Tfff-- ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 As for the guilty old father ; jDursued by the fiend remorse, 
 he fled early from his house, and read all the papers at Galig- 
 nani's without comprehending them. Madly regardless of ex- 
 pense, he then plunged into one of those luxurious restaurants 
 in the Palais Royal, where you get soup, three dishes, a sweet, 
 and a pint of delicious wine for two frongs, by George ! But 
 all the luxuries there presented to him could not drive away 
 care, or create appetite. Then the poor old wretch went off, 
 and saw a ballet at the Grand Opera. In vain. The pink 
 nymphs had not the slightest fascination for him. He hardly 
 was aware of their ogles, bounds, and capers. He saw a little 
 maid with round, sad eyes : — his Iphigenia whom he was stab- 
 bing. He took more brandy-and-water at cafes on his way 
 home. In vain, in vain, I tell you ! The old wife was sitting 
 up for him, scared at the unusual absence of her lord. She 
 dared not remonstrate with him when he returned. His face 
 was pale. His eyes were fierce and bloodshot. When the 
 General had a particular look, Eliza Baynes cowered in silence. 
 Mac, the two sisters, and I think, Colonel Bunch (but on this 
 point my informant, Philip, cannot be sure) were having a dreary 
 rubber when the General came in. Mrs. B. knew by tlie 
 General's face that he had been having recourse to alcoholic 
 stimulus. But she dared not speak. A tiger in a jungle was 
 not more savage than Baynes sometimes. " Where's Char .? " 
 he asked in his dreadful, his ]31uebeard voice. " Char was gone 
 to bed," said mamma, sorting her trumps. " Hm ! Augoost, 
 Odevee, Osho ! " Did Eliza Baynes interfere, though she knew 
 he had had enough ? As soon interfere with a tiger, and tell 
 him he had eaten enough Sepoy. After Lady Macbeth had in.- 
 duced Mac to go through that business with Duncan, depend 
 upon it she was very deferential and respectful to her general. 
 No groans, prayers, remorses could avail to bring his late 
 majesty back to life again. As for you, old man, though your 
 deed is done, it is not past recalling. Though yoli have with- 
 drawn from your word on a sordid money pretext ; made two 
 hearts miserable, stabbed cruelly that one which you love best 
 in tlie world ; acted with wicked ingratitude towards a young 
 man, who has been nobly forgiving towards you and yours ; and 
 are suffering with rage and remorse, as you own your crime to 
 yourself ; — your deed is not past recalling as yet. You may 
 soothe that anguish, and dry those tears. It is but an act of 
 resolution on your part, and a firm resumption of your marital 
 authority. Mrs. Baynes, after her crime, is quite humble and 
 gentle. She has half murdered her child, and stretched Philip
 
 ON- HIS \VA Y riTROUGir Tllh WORLD. 447 
 
 on an infernal rack of torture ; but she is quite civil to every- 
 body at Madame's house. Not one word does she say respect- 
 ing Mrs. Colonel Bunch's outbreak of the night before. She 
 talks to sister Emily about Paris, the fashions, and Emily's 
 walks on the Boulevard and the Palais Royal with her Major. 
 She bestows ghastly smiles upon sundry lodgers at table. She 
 thanks Augoost when he serves her at dinner — and says, " Ah, 
 madame, que le boof est bong aujourdhui, rien que j'aime 
 comme le potofou." Oh, you old hypocrite ! But you know I, 
 for my part, always disliked the woman, and said her good- 
 humor was more detestable than her anger. You hypocrite ! 
 I say again : — ay, and avow that there were other hypocrites at 
 the table, as you shall presently hear. 
 
 When Baynes got an opportunity of speaking unobserved, 
 as he thought, to madame, you ma\- be sure the guilty wretch 
 asked her how his little Charlotte was. Mrs. Baynes trumped 
 her partner's best heart at that moment, but pretended to 
 observe or overhear nothing. " She goes better — she sleeps," 
 madame said. " Mr. the Doctor Martin has commanded her a 
 calming potion."' And what if I were to tell you that somebody 
 had taken a little letter from Charlotte, and actually had given 
 fifteen sous to a Savoyard youth to convey that letter to some- 
 body else? What if I were to tell you that the party to whom 
 that letter was addressed, straightway wrote an answer — 
 directed to Madame de Smolensk, of course ? I know it was 
 very wrong ; but I suspect Philip's prescription did quite as 
 much good as Doctor Martin's, and don't intend to be very 
 angry with madame for consulting the unlicensed practitioner. 
 Don't preach to me, madame, about morality, and dangerous 
 examples set to young people. Even at your present mature 
 age, and with your dear daughters around you, if your ladyship 
 goes to hear the " Barber of Seville," on which side are your 
 sympathies — on Dr. Bartolo's, or Miss Rosina's .■' 
 
 Although, then, Mrs. Baynes was most respectful to her hus- 
 band, and by many grim blandishments, humble appeals, and 
 forced humiliations, strove to conciliate and soothe him, the 
 General turned a dark, low'ering face upon the partner of his 
 existence : her dismal smiles were no longer pleasing to him : 
 he returned curt " Ohs ! " and " Ahs ! " to her remarks. When 
 Mrs. Hely and her son and her daughter drove up in their 
 family coach to pay yet a second visit to the Baynes family, the 
 General fiew in a passion, and cried, " Bless my soul, Eliza, you 
 can't think of receiving visitors, with our poor child sick in the 
 next room ? It's inhuman ! " The scared woman ventured on
 
 448 THE ADVF.Xri'RKS Ol' PHIL IP 
 
 no remonstrances. She was so frightened that she did not 
 attempt to scold the younger clnldren. She took a piece of 
 \vorl<, and sat amongst them, furtively weeping. Their artless 
 queries and unseasonable laughter stabbed and punished the 
 matron. You sec people do wrong, though they are long past 
 fifty years of age. It is not only the scholars, but the ushers, 
 and the head-master himself, who sometimes deserve a chastise- 
 ment. I, for my part, hope to remember this sweet truth, though 
 1 live into the year 1900. 
 
 To those other ladies boarding at madame's establishment, 
 to Mrs. Mac and Mrs. Colonel Dunch, th-^ugh they had declared 
 against him, and expressed their opinions in the frankest way 
 on the night of the battle royal, the General was provokingly 
 polite and amiable. They had said, but twenty-four hours 
 since, that the General was a brute ; and Lord Chesterfield 
 could not have been more polite to a lovely young duchess 
 than was Baynes to these matrons next day. You have heard 
 how Mrs. Mac had a strong desire to possess a new Paris bon- 
 net, so that she might appear with proper lustre among the 
 ladies on the promenade at Tours ? Major and Mrs. Mac and 
 Mrs. Bunch talked of going to the Palais Royal (where Mac- 
 Whirter said he had remarked some uncommonly neat things, 
 by George ! at the corner shop under the glass galler)'). On 
 this, Baynes started up, and said he would accompany his 
 friends, adding, " You know, Emily, I had promised you a hat 
 ever so long ago ! " And those four went away together, and 
 not one offer did Baynes make to his wife to join the party ; 
 though her best bonnet, poor thing, was a dreadfully old perform- 
 ance, with moulting feathers, rumpled ribbons, tarnished flowers, 
 and lace bought in St. Martin's Alley months and months be- 
 fore. Emily, to be sure, said to her sister, " Eliza, won't you be 
 of the party ? We can take the omnibus at the corner, which 
 will land us at the very gate." But as Emily gave this unlucky 
 invitation, the General's face wore an expression of ill-will so 
 savage and terrific, that Eliza Baynes said, " No, thank you, 
 Emily ; (.Charlotte is still unwell, and I — I may be wanted at 
 home." And the party went away without Mrs. Baynes \ and 
 they were absent I don't know how long: and Emily Mac- 
 Whirter came back to the boarding-house in a bonnet — the 
 sweetest thing you ever saw ! — green pique velvet, with a rncht 
 full of rosebuds, and a bird of paradise perched on the top, 
 pecking at a bunch of the most magnificent grapes, popfj^ies, 
 ears of corn, barley, &:c., all indicative of the bounteous autumn 
 season. Mrs. General l^avnes had to see her sister return home
 
 OIV HIS WA Y THROUGH THE WORLD. 
 
 449 
 
 in this elegant bonnet ; to welcome her ; to acquiesce in Emily's 
 remark that the General had clone the genteel thing ; to hear 
 how the party had further been to Tortoni's and had ices ; and 
 then to go up stairs to her own room, and look at her own bat- 
 tered, blowsy old chapean, wdth its limp streamers, hanging from 
 its peg. This humiliation, I say, Eliza Baynes had to bear in 
 silence, without wincing, and, if possible, with a smile on her 
 face. 
 
 In consequence of circumstances before indicated, Miss 
 Charlotte was pronounced to be ver}- much better when her 
 papa returned from his Palais Royal trip. He found her seated 
 on madame's sofa, pale, but with the wonted sw^eetness in her 
 smile. He kissed and caressed her with many tender words. 
 I dare say he told her there was nothing in the world he loved 
 so much as his Charlotte. He would never willingly do any- 
 thing to give her pain, never ! She has been his good girl, and 
 his blessing, all his life ! Ah ! that is a prettier little picture 
 to imagine — that repentant man, and his child clinging to him 
 — than the tableau overhead, viz., Mrs. Baynes looking at her 
 old bonnet. Not one word was said about Philip in the talk 
 between Baynes and his daughter, but those tender paternal 
 looks and caresses carried hope into Charlotte's heart ; and 
 when her papa went away (she said afterwards to a female 
 friend), " I got up and followed him, intending to show him 
 Philip's letter. But at the door I saw mamma coming down 
 the stairs ; and she looked so dreadful, and frightened me so, 
 that I went back." There are some mothers I have heard of, 
 who won't allow their daughters to read the works of this 
 humble homilist, lest they should imbibe " dangerous " notions, 
 &c., &c. My good ladies, give them " Goody Twoshoes " if 
 you like, or whatever work, combining instruction and amuse- 
 ment, you think most appropriate to their juvenile understand- 
 ings ; but I beseech you to be gentle with them, I never saw 
 people on better terms with each other, more frank, affec- 
 tionate, and cordial, than the parents and the grown-up )-oung 
 folks in the United States. And why "i Because the children 
 were spoiled, to be sure ! I say to you, get the confidence of 
 yours — before the day comes of revolt and independence, after 
 which love returneth not. 
 
 Now, when Mrs. Baynes went in to her daughter, who had 
 been sitting pretty comfortably kissing her father on the sofa 
 in madame's chamber, all those soft tremulous smiles and 
 twinkling dew-drops of compassion and forgiveness which anon 
 had come to soothe the little maid, fled from cheek and eyes. 
 
 29
 
 45 c THE ADVENTTURES OF rniLIP 
 
 They began to flash again with their febrile brightness, and her 
 heart to throb with dangerous rapidity. " How are you now ? " 
 asks mamma, with her deep voice. " I am much the same," 
 says the girl, beginning to tremble. " Leave the child ; you 
 agitate her, madam," cries the mistress of the house, coming in 
 after Mrs. Baynes. That sad, humiliated, deserted mother 
 goes out from her daughter's presence, hanging her head. She 
 put on the poor old bonnet, and had a walk that evening on 
 the Champs Elysees with her little ones, and showed them 
 Guignol : she gave a penny to Guignol's man. It is my belief 
 that she saw no more of the performance than her husband 
 had seen of the ballet the night previous, when Taglioni, and 
 Noblet, and Duvernay, danced before his hot eyes. But then, 
 you see, the hot eyes had been washed with a refreshing water 
 since, which enabled them to \iew the world much more cheer- 
 fully and brightly. Ah, gracious heaven gives us eyes to see 
 our own wrong, however dim age may make them ; and knees 
 not too stiff to kneel, in spite of years, cramps, and rheumatism 1 
 That stricken old woman, then, treated her children to the 
 trivial comedy of Guignol. She did not cry out when the two 
 boys climbed up the trees of the Elysian Fields, though the 
 guardians bade them descend. She bought pink sticks of 
 barley-sugar for the young ones. Withdrawing the glistening 
 sweetmeats from their lips, they pointed to ]\Irs. Hely's splendid 
 barouche as it rolled citywards from the Bois de Boulogne. 
 The gray shades were falling, and Auguste was in the act of 
 ringing the first dinner-bell at Madame Smolensk's establish- 
 ment, when Mrs. General Baynes returned to her lodgings. 
 
 ]\Ieanwhile, aunt MacWhirter had been to jDay a visit to 
 little Miss Charlotte, in the new bonnet which the General, 
 Ciiarlotte's papa, had bought for her. This elegant article had 
 furnished a subject of pleasing conversation between niece and 
 aunt, who held each other in very kindly regard, and all the 
 details of the bonnet, the blue flowers, scarlet flowers, grapes, 
 sheaves of corn, lace, &c., were examined and admired in detail. 
 Charlotte remembered the dowdy old English thing which aunt 
 Mac wore when she went out ? Charlotte did remember the 
 bonnet, and laughed when Mrs. Mac described how papa, in the 
 hackney-coach on their return home, insisted upon taking the 
 old wretch of a bonnet, and flinging it out of the coach window 
 into the road, where an old chiffonnier passing picked it ujd 
 with his iron hook, put it on his own head, and walked away 
 grinning. I declare, at the recital of this narrative, Charlotte 
 laughed as pleasantly and happily as in former days ; and, no
 
 01^ HIS WA V Til ROUGH THE WORLD. 
 
 45 J 
 
 doubt, there were more kisses between this poor little maid and 
 her aunt. 
 
 Now, you will remark, that the General and his party, though 
 they returned from the Palais Royal in a hackney-coach, went 
 thither on foot, two and two — viz., Major MacWhirter leading, 
 and giving his arm to Mrs. Bunch, (who, I promise you, knew 
 the shops in the Palais Royal well,) and the General following 
 at some distance, with his sister-in-law for a partner. 
 
 In that walk a conversation very important to Charlotte's 
 interests took place between her aunt and her father. 
 
 "Ah, Baynes ! this is a sad business about dearest Char," 
 Mrs. Mac broke out with a sigh. 
 
 " It is, indeed, Emily," says the General, with a very sad 
 groan on his part. 
 
 " It goes to my heart to see you, Baynes ; it goes to Mac's 
 heart. We talked about it ever so late last night. You were 
 suffering dreadfully ; and all the brandy-pawnee in the world 
 won't cure you, Charles." 
 
 "No, faith," says the General, with a dismal screw of the 
 mouth. " You see, Emily, to see that child suffer, tears my 
 heart out — by George, it does. She has been the best child, 
 and the most gentle, and the merriest, and the most obedient, 
 and I never had a word of fault to find with her ; and — poo- 
 ooh ! " Here the General's eyes, which ha\e been winking with 
 extreme rapidity, give way ; and at the signal pooh ! there issue 
 out from them two streams of that eye-water which we have said 
 is sometimes so good for the sight. 
 
 " My dear kind Charles, you were always a good creature," 
 says Emily, patting the arm on which hers rests. Meanwhile 
 Major-General Baynes, C.B., puts his bamboo cane under his 
 disengaged arm, extracts from his hind pocket a fine large 
 yellow bandanna pocket-handkerchief, and performs a prodi- 
 gious loud obligato — ^just under the spray of the Rond-point 
 fountain, opposite the Bridge of the Invalides, over which poor 
 Philip has tramped many and many a day and night to see his 
 little maid. 
 
 " Have a care with your cane, there, old imbecile ! " cries an 
 approaching foot-passenger, whom the General meets and 
 charges with his iron feru: . 
 
 " Mille pardong, mosoo; je vous demande mille pardong," 
 says the old man, quite meekly. 
 
 " You are a good soul, Charles," the lady continues ; " and 
 my little Char is a darling. You never v^'ould have done this 
 of your own accord. Mercy ! And see what it was coming to !
 
 452 'J'J^^ ADVENTURES OE EJIlLir 
 
 Mac only told me last night. You horrid, bloodthirsty creature ! 
 IVo challenges — and dearest Mac as hot as pepper ! Oh, 
 Charles Baynes, I tremble when I think of the danger from 
 which you have all been rescued ! Suppose you brought home 
 to Eliza — suppose dearest Mac brought home to me killed by 
 this arm on which I am leaning. Oh, it is dreadful, dreadful ! 
 We are sinners all, that we are, Baynes ! " 
 
 " I humbly ask jDardon for having thought of a great crime. 
 I ask pardon," says tlie General, very pale and solemn. 
 
 "If you had killed dear Mac, would you ever have had rest 
 again, Charles ? " 
 
 " No ; I think not. I should not deserve it," answers the 
 contrite Baynes. 
 
 " You have a good heart. It was not you who did this. I 
 know who it was. She always had a dreadful temper. The 
 way in which she used to torture our poor dear Louisa who is 
 dead, I can hardly forgive now, Baynes. Poor suffering angel ! 
 Eliza was at her bedside nagging and torturing her up to the 
 very last day. Did you ever see her with nurses and servants 
 in India ? The way in which she treated them was " 
 
 " Don't say any more. I am aware of my wife's faults of 
 temper. Heaven knows it has made me suffer enough ! " says 
 the General, hanging his head down. 
 
 " \\'hy, man — do you intend to give way to her altogether? 
 I said to Mac last night, * Mac, does he intend to give way to 
 her altogether ? The "Army List" doesn't contain the name 
 of a braver man than Charles Baynes, and is my sister Eliza to 
 rule him entirely, Mac ! ' I said. No, if you stand up to Eliza, 
 I know from experience she will give way. We have had 
 quarrels, scores and hundreds, as you know, Baynes." 
 
 "Faith, I do," owns the General, with a sad smile on his 
 countenance. 
 
 " And sometimes she has had the best and sometimes I have 
 had the best, Baynes ! But I never yielded, as you do, without 
 a figlit for my own. No, never, I^aynes ! And me and Mac 
 are shocked, I tell you fairly, when we see the way in which 
 you give up to her ! " 
 
 " Come, come ! I think you have told me often enough 
 that I am henpecked," says the General. 
 
 " And you give up not yourself only, Charles, but your dear, 
 dear child — poor little suffering love ! " 
 
 " The young man's a beggar ! " cries the General, biting 
 his lips. 
 
 " What were you, what was Mac and me when we married ?
 
 ON HIS IVA Y THROUGH THE WORLD. 453 
 
 We hadn't much beside our pay, had we ? we rubbed on 
 throu<]jh bad weather and good, managing as best we could, 
 loving each other, God be praised ! And here we are, owing 
 nobody anything, and me going to have a new bonnet ! " and 
 she tossed up her head and gave her companion a good-natured 
 look through her twinkling eyes. 
 
 '■ Emily, you have a good heart 1 that's the truth," says the 
 General. 
 
 " And you have a good heart, Charles, as sure as my 
 name's MacWhirter ; and I want you to act upon it, and I 
 propose- 
 
 " What ? " 
 
 " Well, I propose that " But now they have reached 
 
 the Tuileries garden gates, and pass through, and continue 
 their conversation in the midst of such a hubbub that we can- 
 not overhear them. They cross the garden, and so make their 
 way into the Palais Royal, and the purchase of the bonnet 
 takes place ; and in the midst of the excitement occasioned by 
 that event, of course all discussion of domestic affairs becomes 
 uninteresting. 
 
 But the gist of Baynes's talk with his sister-in-law may be 
 divined from the conversation which presently occurred be- 
 tween Charlotte and her aunt. Charlotte did not come in to 
 the public dinner. She was too weak for that ; and " //// hon 
 bouillon " and a wing of fowl were served to her in the private 
 apartment, where she had been reclining all day. At dessert, 
 however, Mrs. MacWhirter took a fine bunch of grapes and a 
 plump rosy peach from the table, and carried them to the little 
 maid, and their interview may be described with sufficient 
 accuracy, though it passed without other witnesses. 
 
 From the outbreak on the night of quarrels, Charlotte knew 
 that her aunt was her friend. The glances of Mrs. Mac- 
 Whirter's eyes, and the expression of her bonny, homely face, 
 told her sympathy to the girl. There were no pallors now, no 
 angry glances, no heart-beating. Miss Char could even make 
 a little joke when her aunt appeared, and say, " What beautiful 
 grapes ! Why, aunt, you must have taken them out of the 
 new bonnet." 
 
 " You should have had the bird of paradise, too, dear, only 
 I see you have not eaten your chicken. She is a kind woman, 
 Madame Smolensk. I like her. She gives very nice dinners. 
 I can't think how she does it for the money, I am sure ! " 
 
 " She has been very, very kind to me ; and I love her with 
 all my heart ! " cries Charlotte.
 
 454 
 
 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 " Poor darling ! We have all our trials, and yours hav© 
 begun, my love ! " 
 
 " Yes, indeed, aunt ! " whimpers the young person ; upon 
 which osculation possibly takes place. 
 
 " My dear ! wlien your papa took me to buy the bonnet, we 
 had a long talk, and it was about you." 
 
 " About me, aunt ? " warbles Miss Charlotte. 
 
 " He would not take mamma ; he would only go with me, 
 alone. I knew he wanted to say something about you ; and 
 what do you think it was ? My dear, you have been very much 
 agitated here. You and your poor mamma are likely to dis- 
 agree for some time. She will drag you to those balls and fine 
 parties, and bring you \\\o^q fine partners ^ 
 
 " Oh, I hate them ! " cries Charlotte. Poor little Walsing- 
 ham Hely, what had he done to be hated ? 
 
 '' Well. It is not for me to speak of a mother to her own 
 daughter. But you know mamma has a way with her. She 
 expects to be obeyed. She will give you no peace. She will 
 come back to her point again and again. You know how she 
 speaks of some one — a certain gentleman ? If ever she sees 
 him, she will be rude to him. Mamma can be rude at times — 
 that I must say of my own sister. As long as you remain 
 here " 
 
 " Oh, aunt, aunt ! Don't ' take me away, don't take me 
 away ! " cries Charlotte. 
 
 " My dearest, are you afraid of your old aunt, and your 
 uncle Mac, w'ho is so kind, and has always loved you ? Major 
 MacWhirter has a will of his own, too, though of course I 
 make no allusions. We know how admirably somebody has 
 beha\'ed to your family. Somebody who has been most ?/«- 
 gratefully treated, though of course I make no allusions. If 
 you had given away your heart to your father's greatest bene- 
 factor, do you suppose I and uncle Mac will quarrel with you ? 
 When Eliza married Baynes (your father was a penniless 
 subaltern, then, my dear, — and my sister was certainly neither 
 a fortune nor a beauty,) didn't she go dead against the wishes 
 of our father ? Certainly she did ! But she said she w^as of 
 age — that she was, and a great deal more, too — and she would 
 do as she liked, and she made Baynes marry her. Why should 
 you be afraid of coming to us, love ? You are nearer some- 
 body here, but can you see him ? Your mamma will never let 
 you go out, but she will follow you like a shadow. You may 
 write to him. Don't tell me, child. Haven't I been young 
 myself ; and when there was a difficulty between Mac and
 
 ON Ills WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. 
 
 455 
 
 poor papa, didn't Mac write to me, though he hates letters, 
 poor dear, and certainly is a stick at them. And, though we 
 were forbidden, had we not twenty wMys of telegrapliing to 
 each other ? Law ! your poor dear grandfather was in such a 
 rage with me once, when he found one, that he took down his 
 great buggy whip to me, a grown girl ! " 
 
 Charlotte, who has plenty of humor, would have laughed at 
 this confession some other time, but now she was too mucl/ 
 agitated by that invitation to quit Paris, which her aunt had 
 just given her. Quit Paris ? Lose the chance of seeing her 
 dearest friend, her protector ? If he was not with her was he 
 not near her ? Yes, near her always ! On that horrible night, 
 when all was so desperate, did not her champion burst forward 
 to her rescue ? Oh, the dearest and bravest ! Oh, the tender 
 and true ! 
 
 " You are not listening, you poor child ! " said aunt Mac, 
 surveying her niece with looks of kindness. " Now listen to me 
 once more. Whisper ! " And sitting down on the settee by 
 Charlotte's side, aunt Emily first kissed the girl's round cheek, 
 and then whispered into her ear. 
 
 Never, I declare, was medicine so efficacious, or rapid of 
 effect, as that wondrous distilment which aunt Emily poured 
 into her niece's ear ! " Oh, you goose ! " she began by saying, 
 and the rest of the charm she whispered into that pearly little 
 pink shell round which Miss Charlotte's soft brown ringlets 
 clustered. Such a sweet blush rose straightway to the cheek ! 
 Such sweet lips began to cry, " Oh, you dear, dear aunt," 
 and then began to kiss aunt's kind face, that, I declare, if I 
 knew the spell, I would like to pronounce it right off, with such 
 a sweet young patient to practice on, 
 
 " When do we go .'' To-morrow, aunt, n'est-ce pas ? Oh, I 
 am quite strong ! never felt so well in my life ! I'll go and 
 pack up this instant,^'' cries the young person. 
 
 " Doucement ! Papa knows of the plan. Indeed, it was he 
 who proposed it." 
 
 " Dearest, best father ! " ejaculates Miss Charlotte. 
 
 " But mamma does not ; and if you show yourself very eager, 
 Charlotte, she may object, you know. Heaven forbid that 1 
 should counsel dissimulation to a child ; but under the circum- 
 stances, my love At least I own what happened between 
 
 Mac and me. Law ! / didn't care for papa's buggy whip ! I 
 knew it would not hurt ; and as for Baynes, I am sure he would 
 not hurt a fl}'. Ne\er was man more sorry for what he has 
 done. He told me so whilst we walked away from the bonnet-
 
 456 THE ADVENTURES OF rillLIP 
 
 shop, wliilst he was carrying my old yellow. We met somebody 
 near the Uourse. How sad he looked, and how handsome, too ! 
 /bowed to him, and kissed my hand to him, that is, the knob 
 of my i^arasol. Papa couldn't shake hands with him, because 
 of my bonnet, you know, in the brown-paper bag. He has a 
 grand beard, indeed ! He looked like a wounded lion. I said 
 so to papa. And I said, ' It is you who wound him, Charles 
 Baynes ! ' * I know that,' papa said. ' I have been thinking of 
 it. I can't sleep at night for thinking about it : and it makes 
 me dee'd unhappy.' You know what papa sometimes says ? 
 Dear me ! You should have heard them, when Eliza and I 
 joined the army, years and years ago ! " 
 
 For once, Charlotte }iaynes was happy at her father's being 
 unhappy. The little maiden's heart had been wounded to think 
 that her father could do his Charlotte a wrong. Ah ! take 
 warning by him, ye graybeards ! And however old and tooth- 
 less, if you have done wrong, own that you have done so ; and 
 sit down and say grace, and mumble your humble pie ! 
 
 The General, then, did not shake hands with Philip ; but 
 Major MacWhirter went up in the most marked way, and gave 
 the wounded lion his own paw, and said, " Mr, Firmin, glad to 
 see you! If ever you come to Tours, mind, don't forget my 
 wife and me. Fine day. Little patient much better ! Bon 
 courage, as they say ! " 
 
 I wonder what sort of a bungle Philip made of his corre- 
 spondence with the Pall Mall Gazette that night ? Every man 
 who lives by his pen, if by chance he looks back at his writings 
 of former years, lives in the past again. Our griefs, our 
 pleasures, our youth, our sorrows, our dear, dear friends, 
 resuscitate. How we tingle with shame over some of those fine 
 passages ! How dreary are those disinterred jokes ! It was 
 Wednesday night. Philip was writing off at home, in his inn, 
 one of his grand tirades, dated " Paris, Thursday " — so as to 
 be in time, you understand, for the post of Saturday, when the 
 little waiter comes and says, winking, " Again that lady, 
 Monsieur Philippe ! " 
 
 " What lady t " asks our own intelligent correspondent. 
 
 " That old lady who came the other day, you know." 
 
 " C'est moi, mon ami ! " cries Madame Smolensk's well- 
 known grave voice. " Here is a letter, d'abord. But that says 
 nothing. It was written before thegrande nouvelle — the great 
 news — the good news ! " 
 
 " What good news } " asks the gentleman. 
 
 *' In two days miss goes to Tours with her aunt and uncle
 
 THE POOR HELPING THE POOR.
 
 ,N HIS WA V TimOUGlI THE WORLD. 
 
 45? 
 
 — tliis good Macvirtcrrc. Tliey liave taken lhe;r places by the 
 diligence of Lafitte and Caillard. They are thy friends. Papa 
 encourages her going. Here is their card of visit. Go thou 
 also ; they will receive thee with open arms. What hast thou, 
 my son ? " 
 
 Philip looked dreadfully sad. An injured and unfortunate 
 gentleman at New York had drawn upon him, and he had paid 
 away everything he had but four francs, and he was living on 
 credit until his next remittance arrived. 
 
 " Thou hast no money ! I have thought of it. Behold of 
 it ! Let him wait — the proprietor ! " And she takes out a 
 bank-note, which she puts in the young man's hand. 
 
 " Tiens, il I'embrasse encor c'te vieille ! " says the little 
 knife-boy. " J'aimerai pas 9a, moi, par examp ! " 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX. 
 
 IN THE DEPARTMENTS OF SEINE, LOIRE AND STYX (iNFERIEURJ. 
 
 Our dear friend Mrs. Baynes was suffering under the influ- 
 ence of one of those panics which sometimes seized her, and 
 during which she remained her husband's most obedient Eliza 
 and vassal. When Baynes wore a certain expression of coun- 
 tenance, we have said that his wife knew resistance to be 
 useless. That expression, I suppose, he assumed, when he an- 
 nounced Charlotte's departure to her mother, and ordered Mrs. 
 General Baynes to make the necessary preparations for the 
 girl. " She might stay some time with her aunt," Baynes stated. 
 " A change of air would do the child a great deal of good. Let 
 everything necessary in the shape of hats, bonnets, winter 
 clothes, and so forth, be got ready." " Was Char, then, to stay 
 away so long ? " asked Mrs. B. " She has been so happy here 
 that you want to keep her, and fancy she can't be happy with- 
 out you ! " I can fancy the General grimly replying to the 
 partner of his existence. Hanging down her withered head, 
 with a tear mayhap trickling down her cheek, I can fancy the 
 old woman silently departing to do the bidding of her lord. 
 She selects a trunk out of the store of Baynes's baggage. A 
 young lady's trunk was a trunk in those days. Now it is a two 
 or three storied edifice of wood, in which two or three full-grown
 
 458 THE ADVENTURES OF 2'IIILIP 
 
 bodies of young ladies (without crinoline) might be packed, I 
 saw a little old countrywoman at the Folkesone station last 
 year with her travelling baggage contained in a band-box tied 
 up in an old cotton handkerchief hanging on her arm ; and she 
 surveyed Lady Knightsbridge's twenty-three black trunks, each 
 wellnigh as large as her ladyship's opera-box. Before these 
 great edifices that old woman stood wondering dumbly. That 
 old lady and I had lived in a time when crinoline was not ; and 
 yet, I think, women looked even prettier in that time than they 
 do now. Well, a trunk and a band-box were fetched out of the 
 baggage heap for little Charlotte, and I dare say her little 
 brothers jumped and danced on the box with much energy to 
 make the lid shut, and the General brought out his hammer 
 and nails, and nailed a card on the box with " Mademoiselle 
 Baynes " thereon printed. And mamma had to look on and 
 witness those preparations. And Walsingham Hely had called ; 
 and he wouldn't call again, she knew ; and that fair chance for 
 the establishment of her child was lost by the obstinacy of her 
 self-willed, reckless husband. That woman had to water her 
 soup witli her furtive tears, to sit of nights behind hearts and 
 spades, and brood over her crushed hopes. If I contemplate 
 that wretched old Niobe much longer, I shall begin to pity her. 
 Away softness ! Take out thy arrows, the poisoned, the barbed, 
 the rankling, and prod me the old creature well, god of the 
 silver bow ! Eliza Baynes had to look on, then, and see the 
 trunks packed ; to see her own authority over her own daughter 
 wrested away from her ; to see the undutiful girl prepare with 
 perfect delight and alacrity to go away, without feeling a pang 
 at leaving a mother who had nursed her through adverse ill- 
 nesses : who had scolded her for seventeen years. 
 
 The General accompanied the party to the diligence office. 
 Little Char was very pale and melancholy indeed when she took 
 her place in the coupe. " She should have a corner : she had 
 been ill, and ought to have a corner," uncle Mac said, and 
 cheerfully consented to be bodkin. Our three special friends 
 are seated. The other passengers clamber into their places. 
 Away goes the clattering team, as the General waves an adieu 
 to his friends. " Monstrous fine horses those gray Normans ; 
 famous breed, indeed," he remarks to his wife on his return. 
 
 " Indeed," she echoes. " Pray, in what part of the carriage 
 was Mr. Firmin 1 " she presently asks. 
 
 " In no part of the carriage at all ! " Baynes answers fiercely, 
 turning beet-root red. And thus, though she had been silent, 
 obedient, hanging her head, the woman showed that she was
 
 O.V //IS IVAY riJROUGII THE WORLD. 
 
 459 
 
 aware of her master's schemes, and why her girl had been taken 
 away. She knew; but she was beaten. It remained for her 
 but to be silent and bow lier head. I dare say she did not 
 sleep one wink that night. She followed the diligence in its 
 journey. "Char is gone," she thought. "Yes; indue time 
 he will take from me the obedience of my other children, and tear 
 them out of my lap." He — that is, the General — was sleeping 
 meanwhile. He had had in the last few days four awful battles 
 — with his child, with his friends, with his wife — in which latter 
 combat he had been conqueror. No wonder Baynes was tired, 
 and needed rest. Any one of those engagements was enough 
 to weary the veteran. 
 
 If we take the liberty of looking into double-bedded rooms 
 and peering into the thoughts which are passing under private 
 nightcaps, may we not examine the coupe of a jingling diligence 
 with an open window, in which a young lady sits wide awake 
 by the side of her uncle and aunt .-' These perhaps are asleep ; 
 but she is not. Ah ! she is thinking of another journey ! that 
 blissful one from Boulogne, when he was there yonder in the 
 imperial, by the side of the conductor. When the MacWhirter 
 party had come to the diligence office, how her little heart had 
 beat ! How she had looked under the lamps at all the people 
 lounging about the court ! How she had listened when the 
 clerk called out the names of the passengers ; and, mercy, 
 what a fright she had been in, lest he should be there after all, 
 while she stood yet leaning on her father's arm ! But there 
 
 was no well, names, I think, need scarcely be mentioned. 
 
 There was no sign of the individual in question. Papa kissed 
 her, and sadly said good-by. Good madame Smolensk came 
 with an adieu and an embrace for her dear Miss, and whis- 
 pered, " Courage, mon enfant," and then said, " Hold, I have 
 brought you some bonbons." There they were in a little 
 packet. Little Charlotte put the packet into her little basket. 
 Away goes the diligence, but the individual had made no sign. 
 
 Away goes the diligence ; and every now and then Charlotte 
 feels the little packet in her little basket. What does it contain 
 — oh, what } If Charlotte could but read with her heart, she 
 would see in that little packet — the sweetest bonbon of all per- 
 haps it might be, or, ah me ! the bitterest almond ! Through 
 the night goes the diligence, passing relay after relay. Uncle 
 Mac sleeps. I think I have said he snored. Aunt Mac is 
 quite silent, and Char sits plaintively with her lonely thoughts 
 and her bonbons, as miles, hours, relays pass. 
 
 "These ladies will they descend and take a cup of coffee, a
 
 460 THE ADVENTURES OF PIIILIF 
 
 cup of bouillon ? " at last cries a waiter at the coupe door, as 
 the carriage stops in Orleans. " By all means a cup of coffee," 
 sa3's aunt Mac. "The little Orleans wine is good," cries uncle 
 Mac. " Descendons ! " " This way, madame," says the 
 waiter. " Charlotte my love, some coffee } " 
 
 " I will — I will stay in the carriage. I don't want anything, 
 thank you," says Miss Charlotte. And the instant her rela- 
 tions are gone, entering the gate of the " Lion Noir," where, 
 you know, are the Bureaux des Messageries Lafitte, Caillard et 
 C"" — I say, on the very instant when her relations have disap- 
 peared, what do you think Miss Charlotte does ? 
 
 She opens that packet of bonbons with fingers that tremble 
 — tremble so, I wonder how she could undo the knot of the 
 string (or do you think she had untied that knot under her 
 shawl in the dark ? I can't say. We never shall know). Well ; 
 she opens the packet. She does not care one fig for the lolli- 
 pops, almonds, and so forth. She pounces on a little scrap of 
 prprr, and is going to read it by the light of the steaming 
 stable lanterns, when oh, what made her start so ? 
 
 In those old days there used to be two diligences which 
 travelled nightly to Tours, setting out at the same hour, and 
 stopping at almost the same relays. The diligence of Lafitte 
 and Caillard supped at the " Lion Noir " at Orleans — the dili- 
 gence of the Messageries Royales stopped at the " Ecu de 
 France," hard by. 
 
 Well, as the Messageries Royales are supping at the " Ecu 
 de France," a passenger strolls over from that coach, and strolls 
 and strolls until he comes to the coach of Lafitte, Caillard, and 
 Company, and to the coupe' window where Miss Baynes is try- 
 ing to decipher her bonbon. 
 
 He comes up — and as the night-lamps fall on his face and 
 
 beard — his rosy face, his yellow beard — oh ! What means 
 
 that scream of the young lady in the coupe' of Lafitte, Caillard 
 et Compagnie ! I declare she has dropped the letter which 
 she was about to read. It has dropped into a pool of mud 
 under the diligence off fore-wheel. And he with the yellow 
 beard, and a sweet happy laugh, and a tremble in his deep 
 voice, says, " You need not read it. It was only to tell you 
 what you know." 
 
 Then the coup^ window says, "Oh, Philip ! Oh, my " 
 
 My what ? You cannot hear the words, because the gray 
 Norman horses come squealing and clattering up to their 
 coach-pole with such accompanying cries and imprecations 
 from the horsekeepers and postilions, that no wonder the little
 
 ON HIS WAY Til ROUGH THE WORLD. 4C1 
 
 warble is lost. It was not intended for you and me to hear ; 
 but perhaps you can guess the jDurport of the words. Perhaps 
 in quite old, old days, you may rememl)cr having heard such 
 little whispers, in a time when the song-birds in your grove 
 carolled that kind of song very pleasantly and freely. But 
 this, my good madam, is written in February. The birds are 
 gone : the branches are bare : the gardener has actually swept 
 the leaves off the walks : and the whole affair is an affair of a 
 past )'ear, you understand. Well 1 carpc diem, fugit hora, &c., 
 ii:c. There, for one minute, for two minutes, stands Philip 
 over the diligence off fore-wheel, talking to Charlotte at the 
 window, and their heads are quite close — quite close. What 
 are those pairs of lips warbling, whispering .-' " Hi ! Gare ! 
 Ohe ! " The horsekeepers, I say, quite prevent you from 
 hearing ; and here come the passengers out of the " Lion 
 Noir,'" aunt Mac still munching a great slice of bread-and- 
 butter. Charlotte is quite comfortable, and does not want 
 anything, dear aunt, thank you. I hope she nestles in her 
 corner, and has a sweet slumber. On the journey the twin 
 diligences pass and repass each other. Perhaps Charlotte 
 looks out of her window sometimes and towards the other car- 
 riage. I don't know. It is a long time ago. What used you 
 to do in old days, ere railroads were, and when diligences ran ? 
 They were slow enough : but they have got to their journey's 
 end somehow. They were tight, hot, dusty, dear, stuffy, and 
 uncomfortable ; but, for all that, travelling was good sport 
 sometimes. And if the world would have the kindness to go 
 back for five-and-twenty or thirty years, some of us who have 
 travelled on the Tours and Orleans Railway very comfortably 
 would like to take the diligence journey now. 
 
 Having myself seen the city of Tours only last year, of 
 course I don't remember much about it. A man remembers 
 boyhood, and the first sight of Calais, and so forth. But after 
 much travel or converse with the world, to see a new town is 
 to be introduced to Jones. He is like Brown ; he is not unlike 
 Smith. In a little while you hash him up with Thompson. I 
 dare not be particular, then, regarding Mr. Firmin's life at 
 Tours, lest I should make topographical errors, for which the 
 critical schoolmaster would justly inflict chastisement. In the 
 last novel I read about Tours, there were blunders from the 
 effect of which you know the wretched author never recovered. 
 It was by one Scott, and had young Quentin Durward for a 
 hero, and Isabel de Croye for a heroine ; and she sat in her 
 hostel, and sang, "Ah, County Guy, the hour is nigh." A
 
 4^2 THE ADVENTURES OF PlIILfP 
 
 pretty ballad enough : but what ignorance* my clear sir ! What 
 descriptions of Tours, of Liege, are in that fallacious story ! 
 Yes, so fallacious and misleading, that I remember I was sorry, 
 not because the description was unlike Tours, but because 
 Tours was unlike the description. 
 
 So Quentin Firniin went and put up at the snug little hostel 
 of the " Faisan ; " and Isabel de Laynes took up her abode 
 with her uncle the Sire de MacWhirter ; and 1 believe Master 
 Firmin had no more money in his pocket than the Master 
 Durward whose story the Scottish novelist told some forty 
 years since. And I cannot promise you that our young English 
 adventurer shall marry a noble heiress of vast property, and 
 engage the Boar of Ardennes in a hand-to-hand combat ; that 
 sort of Boar, madam, does not appear in our modern drawing- 
 room histories. Of others, not wild, there be plenty. They 
 gore you in clubs. They seize you by the doublet, and pin you 
 against posts in public streets. They run at you in parks. I 
 have seen them sit at bay after dinner, ripping, gashing, tossing, 
 a whole company. These our young adventurer had in good 
 sooth to encounter, as is the case with most knights. Who 
 escapes them ? I remember an eminent person talking to me 
 about bores for two hours once. Oh, you stupid eminent 
 person ! You never knew that you yourself had tusks, little eyes 
 in your Jiiire ; a bristly mane to cut into tooth-brushes ; and a 
 curly tail ! I have a notion that the multitude- of bores is 
 enormous in the world. If a man is a bore himself, when he is 
 bored — and you can't deny this statement — then what am I, 
 what are you, what your father, grandfather, son — all your 
 amiable acquaintance, in a word ? Of this I am sure. Major 
 and Mrs. MacWhirter were not brilliant in conversation. What 
 would you and I do, or say, if we listen to the tittle-tattle of 
 Tours. How the clergyman was certainly too fond of cards, 
 and going to the cafd ; how the dinners those Popjoys gave 
 were too absurdly ostentalious ; and Popjoy, we know, in the 
 Bench last year. How Mrs. Flights, going on with that Major 
 of French Carabiniers, was really too &c., &c. " How could I 
 endure those people ? " Philip would ask himself, when talking 
 of that personage in after days, as he loved, and loves to do. 
 "How could I endure them, I say? Mac was a good man ; 
 but I knew secretly in my heart, sir, that he was a bore. Well : 
 I loved him. T liked his old stories. I liked his bad old 
 dinners : there is a very comfortable Touraine wine, by the way 
 — a very warming little wine, sir. Mrs. Mac you never saw, 
 my good Mrs. Pendennis. Be sure of this, you never would
 
 OiY HTS WA Y THROUGH THE WORLD. 463 
 
 have liked her. Well, I did. I liked her house, though it was 
 damp, in a damp garden, frequented by dull people. I should 
 like to go and see that old house now. I am perfectly happy 
 with my wife, but I sometimes go away from her to enjoy the 
 luxury of living over our old days again. With nothing in the 
 world but an allowance which was precarious, and had been 
 spent in advance ; with no particular plans for the future, and 
 a few five-franc pieces for the present, — by Jove, sir, how did 
 I dare to be so happy ? What idiots we were, my love, to be 
 happy at all ! We were mad to marry. Don't tell me : with a 
 purse which didn't contain three months' consumption, would 
 we dare to marry now ? We should be put into the mad ward 
 of the workhouse : that would be the only place for us. Talk 
 about trusting in heaven. Stuff and nonsense, ma'am ! I 
 have as good a right to go and buy a house in Belgrave Square, 
 and trust to heaven for the payment, as I had to marry when 
 I did. We were paupers, Mrs. Char, and you know that very 
 well ! " 
 
 " Oh, yes. We were very wrong : very ! " says Mrs. Char- 
 1 .tte, looking up to her chandelier (which, by the way, is of 
 very handsome Venetian old glass). " We were very wrong, 
 were not we, my dearest ? " And herewith she will begin to 
 kiss and fondle two or more babies that disport in her room — 
 as if two or more babies had anything to do with Philip's 
 argument, that a man has no right to marry who has no pretty 
 well-assured means of keeping a wife. 
 
 Here, then, by the banks of Loire, although Philip had but 
 a very few francs in his pocket, and was obliged to keep a 
 sharp look-out on his expenses at the Hotel of the " Golden 
 Pheasant," he passed a fortnight of such happiness as I, for my 
 part, wish to all young folks who read his veracious history. 
 Though he was so poor, and ate and drank so modestly in the 
 house, the maids, waiters, the landlady of the " Pheasant," were 
 as civil to him — 3'es, as civil as they were to the gouty old 
 Marchioness of Carabas herself, who stayed here on her 
 way to the south, occupied the grand apartments, quarrelled 
 with her lodging, dinner, breakfast, bread-and-butter in 
 general, insulted the landlady in bad French, and only paid 
 her bill under compulsion. Philip's was a little bill, but he 
 paid it cheerfull}'. He gave only a small gratuity to the 
 servants, but he was kind and hearty, and they knew he was 
 poor. He was kind and hearty, I suppose because he was so 
 happy. I have known the gentleman to be by no means civil j 
 and have heard him storm, and hector, and browbeat landlord
 
 464 THE ADVENTURES OF rillLIP 
 
 and waiters, as fiercely as the Marquis of Carabas himself. 
 But now Philip the Bear was the most gentle of bears, because 
 his little Charlotte was leading him. 
 
 Away with trouble and doubt, with squeamish pride and 
 gloomy care ! Philip had enough money for a fortnight, during 
 which Tom Glazier, of the Monitor, promised to supply Philip's 
 letters for the Pall Mall Gazette. All the designs of France, 
 Spain, Russia, gave that idle " our correspondent " not the 
 slightest anxiety. In the morning it was Miss Baynes ; in the 
 afternoon it was Miss Baynes. At six it was dinner and Char- 
 lotte ; at nine it was Charlotte and tea. " Anyhow, love-making 
 does not spoil his appetite," Major MacWhirter remarked. 
 Indeed, Philip had a glorious appetite ; and health bloomed in 
 Miss Charlotte's cheek, and beamed in her happy little heart. 
 Dr. Firmin, in the height of his practice, never completed a 
 cure more skilfully than that which was performed by Dr. 
 Firmin, junior. 
 
 " I ran the thing so close, sir," I remember Philip bawling 
 out, in his usual energetic way, whilst describing this period of 
 his life's greatest happiness to his biographer, " that I came 
 back to Paris outside the diligence, and had not money enough 
 to dine on the road. But I bought a sausage, sir, and a bit of 
 bread — and a brutal sausage it was, sir — and I reached my 
 lodgings with exactly two sous in my pocket." Roger Bontemps 
 himself was not more content than our easy philosopher. 
 
 So Philip and Charlotte ratified and sealed the treaty of 
 Tours, which they determined should never be broken by either 
 party. Marry without papa's consent? Oh, never! Marry 
 anybody but Philip 1 Oh, never — never ! Not if she lived to 
 be a hundred, when Philip would in consequence be in his 
 hundred and ninth or tenth year, would this young Joan have 
 any but her present Darby. Aunt Mac, though she may not 
 have been the most accomplished or highly-bred of ladies, was 
 a warm-hearted and affectionate aunt Mac. She caught in a 
 mild form the fever from these young people. She had not 
 much to leave, and Mac's relations would want all he could 
 spare when he was gone. But Charlotte sliould have her gar- 
 nets, and her teapot, and her India shawl — that she should.* 
 And with many blessings this enthusiastic old lady took leave 
 of her future nephew-in-law when he returned to Paris and 
 duty. Crack your whip, and scream your hi ! and be off quick, 
 
 * I am sorry to say tli.it in later days, afte;r Mrs. Major MacWhirter's decease, it was 
 found that she had iironiised these treasures /« «'r/i/«^ to several members of her husband's 
 family, and that inuch heart-burning arose in consequence. But our story has nothing to 
 do with these painful disputes.
 
 ON HIS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. 465 
 
 postilion and diligence ! I am glad we have taken Mr. Firmin 
 out of that dangerous, lazy love-making place. Nothing is to 
 me so sweet as sentimental writing. I could have written hun- 
 dreds of pages describing Philip and Charl.otte, Charlotte and 
 Philip. But a stern sense of duty inter\'enes. My modest 
 Muse puts a finger on her lip, and says, " Hush about that 
 business ! " Ah, my worthy friend, you little know what 
 soft-hearted people those cynics are ! If you could have come 
 on Diogenes by surprise, I dare say you might have found him 
 reading sentimental novels and whimpering in his tub. Philip 
 shall leave his sweetheart and go back to his business, and we 
 will not have one word about tears, promises, raptures, parting. 
 Never mind about these sentimentalities, but please, rather, to 
 depict to yourself our young fellow so poor that when the coach 
 stops for dinner at Orleans he can only afford to purchase a 
 penny-loaf and a sausage for his own hungr)' cheek. When he 
 reached the " Hotel Poussin," with his meagre carpet-bag, they 
 served him a supper which he ate to the admiration of all be- 
 holders in the little coffee-room. He was in gay spirits and 
 gayety. He did not care to make any secret of his poverty, 
 and how he had been unable to afford to pay for dinner. Most 
 of the guests at " Hotel Poisson " knew what it was to be poor. 
 Often and often they had dined on credit when they put back 
 their napkins into their respective pigeon-holes. But my 
 landlord knew his guests. They were poor men — honest men. 
 They paid him in the end, and each could help his neighbor 
 in a strait. 
 
 After Mr. Firmin's return to Paris, he did not care for a 
 while to go to the Elysian Fields. They were not Elysian for 
 him, except in Miss Charlotte's company. He resumed his 
 newspaper correspondence, which occupied a day in each 
 week, and he had the other six — nay, he scribbled on the 
 seventh day likewise, and covered immense sheets of letter- 
 paper with remarks upon all manner of subjects, addressed to a 
 certain Mademoiselle, Mademoiselle Baynes, chez M. le Major 
 Mac, &c. On these sheets of paper Mr. Firmin could talk so 
 long, so loudly, so fervently, so eloquently to Miss Baynes, that 
 she was never tired of hearing, or he of holding forth. He 
 began imparting his dreams and his earliest sensations to his 
 beloved before breakfast. At noon-day he gave her his opin- 
 ion of the contents of the morning papers. His packet was 
 ordinarily full and brimming over jjy post-time, so that his 
 expressions of love and fidelity leaked from under the cover, or 
 were squeezed into the queerest corners, where, no doubt, it was a 
 
 30
 
 466 
 
 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 delightful task for Miss Baynes to trace out and detect thost 
 little Cupids which a faithful lover despatched to her. It 
 would be, " I have found this little corner unoccupied. Do 
 you know what 1 have to say in it ? Oh, Charlotte, I," &:c,,&c. 
 My sweet young lady, you can guess, or will one day guess, the 
 rest ; and will receive such dear, delightful, nonsensical double 
 letters, and will answer them with that elegant propriety which 
 I have no doubt Miss Baynes showed in her replies. Ah ! if 
 all who are writing and receiving such letters, or who have 
 written and received such, or who remember writing and re- 
 ceiving such letters, would order a copy of this novel from the 
 publishers, what reams, and piles, and pyramids of paper our 
 ink would have to blacken ! Since Charlotte and Philip had 
 been engaged to each other, he had scarcely, except in those 
 dreadful, ghastly days of quarrel, enjoyed the luxury of absence 
 from his soul's blessing — the exquisite delights of writing to 
 her. He could do few things in moderation, this man — and of 
 this delightful privilege of writing to Charlotte he now enjoyed 
 his heart's fill. 
 
 After brief enjoyment of the weeks of this rapture, when 
 winter was come on Paris, and icicles hung on the bough, how 
 did it happen that one day, two days, three days passed, and 
 the postman brought no little letter in the well-known little 
 handwriting for Monsieur Philip Firmin, a Paris ? Three days, 
 four days, and no letter. O torture, could she be ill ? Could 
 her aunt and uncle have turned against her, and forbidden her 
 to write, as her father and mother had done before ? O grief, 
 and sorrow, and rage ! As for jealousy, our leonine friend 
 never knew such a passion. It never entered into his lordly 
 heart to doubt of his little maiden's love. But still four, five 
 days have passed, and not one word has come from Tours. 
 The little " Hotel Poussin " was in a commotion. I have said 
 that when our friend felt any passion very strongly he was sure 
 to speak of it. Did Don Quixote lose any opportunity of 
 declaring to the world that Dulcinea del Toboso was peerless 
 among women ? Did not Antar bawl out in battle, " I am the 
 lover of Ibla ? " Our knight had taken all the people of the 
 hotel into his confidence somehow. They all knew of his con- 
 dition — all, the painter, the poet, the half-pay Polish offtcer, 
 the landlord, the hostess, down to the little knife-boy who used 
 to come in with, " The factor comes of to pass — no letter this 
 
 niornmg. 
 
 No doubt Philip's political letters became, under this out- 
 ward pressure, very desponding and gloomy. One day, as he
 
 ON HIS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. 467 
 
 sat gnawing his mustaches at his desk, the little Anatole en 
 ters his apartment and cries, " Tenez, M. Piiilippe. That lady 
 again ! " And the faithful, the watchful, the active Madame 
 Smolensk once more made her appearance in his chamber. 
 
 Philip blushed and hung his head for shame. " Ungrateful 
 brute that I am," he thought ; " I have been back more than a 
 week, and never thought a bit about that good, kind soul who 
 came to my succor. I am an awful egotist. Love is always so." 
 
 As he rose up to greet his friend, she looked so grave, and 
 pale, and sad, that he could not but note her demeanor. " Bon 
 Dieu ! had anything happened ? " 
 
 " Ce pauvre Ge'ne'ral is ill, very ill, Philip," Smolensk said, 
 in her grave voice. 
 
 He was so gravely ill, Madame said, that his daughter had 
 been sent for. 
 
 " Had she come ? " asked Philip, with a start. 
 
 " You think but of her — ^you care not for the poor old man. 
 You are all the same, you men. All egotists — all. Go ! I 
 know you ! I never knew one that was not," said madame. 
 
 Philip has his little faults : perhaps egotism is one of his 
 defects. Perhaps it is yours, or even mine. 
 
 " You have been here a week since Thursday last, and you 
 have never written or sent to a woman who loves you well. 
 Go ! It was not well, Monsieur Philippe." 
 
 As soon as he saw her, Philip felt that he had been ne- 
 glectful and ungrateful. We have owned so much alread}-. 
 But how should madame know that he had returned on Thurs- 
 day week ? When they looked up after her reproof, his eager 
 eyes seemed to ask this question. 
 
 " Could she not write to me and tell me that you were come 
 back } Perhaps she knew that you would not do so yourself. 
 A woman's heart teaches her these experiences early," con- 
 tinued the lady, sadly ; then she added : " I tell you, you are 
 good-for-nothings, all of you ! And I repent me, see you, of 
 having had the betise to pity you ! " 
 
 " I shall have my quarter's pay on Saturday. I was coming 
 to you then," said Philip. 
 
 " Was it that I was speaking of t What ! you are all cow- 
 ards, men all ! Oh, that I have been beast, beast, to think at 
 last I had found a man of heart ! " 
 
 How much or how often this poor Ariadne had trusted and 
 been forsaken, 1 have no means of knowing, or desire of in- 
 quiring. Perhaps it is as well for the polite reader, who is 
 taken into my entire confidence, that we should not know
 
 468 
 
 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 Madame de Smolensk's liistor)' from the first page to the last, 
 (iranted that Ariadne was deceived by Theseus : but then she 
 consoled herself, as we may all read in " Smith's Dictionary ; " 
 and then she must have deceived her father in order to run 
 away with Theseus. I suspect — I suspect, I say, that these 
 
 women who are so very much betrayed, are but we are 
 
 speculating on this French lady's antecedents, when Charlotte, 
 her lover, and her family are the persons with whom we have 
 mainly to do. 
 
 These two, I suppose, forgot self, about which each for a 
 moment had been busy, and Madame resumed : — " Yes, you 
 have reason ; Miss is here. Tt was time. Hold ! Here is a 
 note from her." And Philip's kind messenger once more put a 
 paper into his hands. 
 
 " My dearest father is very, very ill. Oh, Philip ! I am so 
 unhappy ; and he is so good, and gentle, and kind, and loves 
 me so ! " 
 
 " It is true," madame resumed. " Before Charlotte came, he 
 thought only of her. When his wife comes up to him, he turns 
 from her. I have not loved her much, that lady, that is true. 
 But to see her now, it is navrant. He will take no medicine from 
 her. He pushes her away. Before Charlotte came, he sent 
 for me, and spoke as well as his poor throat would let him, this 
 poor General ! His daughter's arrival seemed to comfort him. 
 But he says, ' Not my wife ! not my wife ! ' And the poor 
 thing has to go away and cry in the chamber at the side. He 
 says — in his French, you know — he has never been well since 
 Charlotte went away. He has often been out. He has dined 
 but rarely at our table, and there has always been a silence be- 
 tween him and Madame la Ge'nerale. Last week he had a 
 great inflammation of the chest. Then he took to bed, and 
 Monsieur the Docteur came — the little doctor whom 3'ou know. 
 Then a quinsy has declared itself, and he now is scarce able to 
 speak. His condition is most grave. He lies suffering, dying, 
 perhaps — yes, dying, do you hear? And you are thinking of 
 your little school-girl ! Men are all the same. Monsters ! 
 Go ! " 
 
 Philip, who, I Jiave said, is very fond of talking about 
 Philip, surveys his own faults with great magnanimity and good- 
 humor, and acknowledges them without the least intention to 
 correct them. " How selfish we are ! " I can hear him say, 
 looking at himself in the glass. " By George ! sir, when I 
 heard simultaneously the news of that poor old man's illness, 
 and of Charlotte's return, I felt that I wanted to see her that
 
 ON ins WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. 469 
 
 instant. I must go to her, and speak to her. The old man 
 and his suffering did not seem to affect me. It is humiHating 
 to have to own that we are selfish beasts. But we are, sir — 
 
 we are brutes, by George ! and nothing else." And he gives 
 
 a finishing twist to the ends of his flaming mustaches as he 
 surveys them in the glass. 
 
 Poor little Charlotte was in such afifiiction that of course she 
 must have Philip to console her at once. No time was to be lost. 
 Quick ! a cab this moment : and, coachman, you shall have an ex- 
 tra for drink if you go quick to the Avenue de Valmy ! Madame 
 puts herself into the carriage, and as they go along, tells Philip 
 more at length of the gloomy occurrences of the last few days. 
 Four days since the poor General was so bad with his quinsy 
 that he thought he should not recover, and Charlotte was sent 
 for. He was a little better on the day of her arrival ; but 
 yesterday the inflammation had increased ; he could not swal- 
 low ; he could not speak audibly ; he was in very great suffer- 
 ing and danger. He turned away from his wife. The un- 
 happy Generaless had been to Madame Bunch in her tears and 
 grief,complaining that after twenty years' fidelity and attachment 
 her husband had withdrawn his regard from her. Baynes at- 
 tributed even his illness to his wife ; and at other times said it 
 was a just punishment for his wicked conduct in breaking his 
 word to Philip and Charlotte. If he did not see his dear child 
 again he must beg her forgiveness for having made her suffer 
 so. He had acted wickedly and ungratefully, and his wife had 
 forced him to do what he did. He prayed that heaven might 
 pardon him. And he had behaved with wicked injustice to- 
 wards Philip, who had acted most generously towards his 
 family. And he had been a scoundrel — he knew he had — and 
 Bunch, and MacWhirter, and the Doctor all said so — and it 
 was that woman's doing. And he pointed to the scared wife 
 as he painfully hissed out these words of anger and contrition : 
 — " When I saw that child ill, and almost made mad, because 
 I broke my word, I felt I was a scoundrel, Martin \ and I was ; 
 and that woman made me so ; and I deserve to be shot ; and I 
 sha'n't recover ; I tell you I sha'n't." Dr. Martin, who attended 
 the General, thus described his patient's last talk and behavior 
 to Philip. 
 
 It v/as the doctor who sent madame in quest of the young 
 man. He found poor Mrs. Baynes with hot, tearless eyes and 
 livid face, a wretched sentinel outside the sick-chamber. " You 
 will find General Baynes very ill, sir, " she said to Philip with 
 a ghastly calmness, and a gaze he could scarely face. " My
 
 47 o THE ADVENTURES OF rillLTP 
 
 daughter is in the room with Iiini. It appears I have offended 
 him, and he refuses to see me. " And she squeezed a dry 
 handkerchief which she held, and put on her spectacles again, 
 and tried again to read the Bible in her lap. 
 
 Philip hardly knew the meaning of Mrs. Baynes' words as 
 yet. He was agitated by the thought of the General's illness, 
 perhaps by the notion that the beloved was so near. Her hand 
 was in his a moment afterwards ; and, even in that sad cham- 
 ber, each could give the other a soft pressure, a fond, silent 
 signal of mutual love and faith. 
 
 The poor man laid the hands of the young people together, 
 and his own upon them. The suffering to which he had put 
 his daughter seemed to be the crime which specially affected 
 him. He thanked heaven he was able to see he was wrong. 
 He whispered to his little maid a prayer for pardon in one or 
 two words, which caused poor Charlotte to sink on her knees 
 and cover his fevered hand with tears and kisses. Out of all 
 her heart she forgave him. She had felt that the parent she 
 loved and was accustomed to honor had been mercenary and 
 cruel. It had wounded her pure heart to be obliged to think 
 that her father could be other than generous, and just, and 
 good. That he should humble himself before her, smote her 
 with the keenest pang of tender commiseration. I do not care 
 to pursue this last scene. Let us close the door as the children 
 kneel by the sufferer's bedside, and to the old man's petition for 
 forgiveness, and to the young girl's sobbing vows of love and 
 fondness, say a reverent Amen. 
 
 By the following letter, w^hich he wrote a few days before 
 the fatal termination of his illness, the worthy General, it would 
 appear, had already despaired of his recovery : — " My dear 
 Mac, — I speak and breathe with such difBculty as I write this 
 from my bed, that I doubt whether I shall ever leave it. I do 
 not wish to vex poor Eliza, and in my state cannot enter mto 
 disputes which I know would ensue regarding settlement of prop- 
 erty. When I left England there was a claim hanging over 
 me (young Firmin's) at which I was needlessly frightened, as 
 having to satisfy it w^ould swallow up much more than everything 
 J possessed in the world. Hence made arrangements for leaving 
 everything in Eliza's name and the children after. Will with 
 Smith and Thompson, Raymond Buildings, Gray's Inn. Think 
 Char won^t be happy for a long time tvith her mother. To break 
 from F., who has been most generous to us, will break her 
 heart. Will you and Emily keep her for a little ? I gave F. 
 my promise. As you told me, I have acted ill by him, which I
 
 ON HIS IVA Y THROUGH THE WORLD. 
 
 47 » 
 
 Own and deeply lament. If Char marries, sJie ought to hai'e her 
 share. May God bless her, her father prays, in case he should 
 not see her again. And with best love to Emily, am yours, 
 dear Mac, sincerely, — Charles Baynes." 
 
 On the receipt of this letter, Charlotte disobeyed her 
 father's wish, and set forth from Tours instantly, under her 
 worthy uncle's guardianship. The old soldier was in his com- 
 rade's room when the General put the hands of Charlotte and 
 her lover together. He confessed his fault, though it is hard 
 for those who expect love and reverence to have to own to 
 wrong and to ask pardon. Old knees are stiff to bend : brother 
 reader, young or old, when our last hour comes, may ours have 
 grace to do so. 
 
 CHAPTER XXX. 
 
 RETURNS TO OLD FRIENDS. 
 
 The three old comrades and Philip formed the little mourn- 
 ing procession which followed the General to his place of rest 
 at Montmartre. When the service has been read, and the last 
 volley has been fired over the buried soldier, the troops march 
 to quarters with a quick step, and to a lively tune. Our veteran 
 has been laid in the grave with brief ceremonies. We do not 
 even prolong his obsequies with a sermon. His place knows 
 him no longer. There are a few who remember him : a very, 
 very few who grieve for him — so few that to think of them is a 
 humiliation almost. The sun sets on the earth, and our dear 
 brother has departed off its face. Stars twinkle ; dews fall ; 
 children go to sleep in awe and maybe tears ; the sun rises on 
 a new day, which he has never seen, and children wake hungr3\ 
 They are interested about their new black clothes, perhaps. 
 They are presently at their work, plays, quarrels. They are 
 looking forward to the day when the holidays will be over, and 
 the eyes which shone here yesterday so kindly are gone, gone 
 gone. A drive to the cemetery, followed by a coach with four 
 acquaintances dressed in decorous black, who separate and go 
 to their homes or clubs, and wear your crape for a few days 
 after — can most of us expect much more ? The thought is not 
 ennobling or exhilarating, worthy sir. And, pray, why should
 
 472 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 we be proud of ourselves ? Is it because we have been so 
 good, or are so wise and great, that we expect to be beloved, 
 lamented, remembered? Why, great Xerxes or blustering 
 Bobadil must know in that last hour and resting-place how 
 abject, how small, how low, how lonely they are, and what 
 a little dust will cover them. Quick, drums and fifes, a lively 
 tune ! Whip the black team, coachman, and trot back to town 
 again — to the world, and to business, and duty ! 
 
 I am for saying no single unkindness of General Baynes 
 which is not forced upon me by my story-teller's office. We 
 know from Marlborough's story that the bravest man and 
 greatest military genius is not always brave or successful in his 
 battles with his wife ; that some of the greatest warriors have 
 committed errors in accounts and the distribution of nicum 
 and tuHin. ^^'e can't disguise from ourselves the fact that 
 Baynes permitted himself to be misled, and had weaknesses not 
 quite consistent with the highest virtue. 
 
 When he became aware that his carelessness in the matter 
 of Mrs. Firmin's trust-money had placed him in her son's 
 power, we have seen how the old General, in order to avoid 
 being called to account, fled across the water with his family 
 and all his little fortune, and how terrified he was on landing 
 on a foreign shore to find himself face to face with this dread- 
 ful creditor. Philip's renunciation of all claims agamst Baynes 
 soothed and pleased the old man wonderfully. But Philip 
 might change his mind, an adviser at Baynes' side repeatedly 
 urged. To live abroad was cheaper and safer than to live at 
 home. Accordingly Baynes, his wife, family, and money, all 
 went into exile, and remained there. 
 
 What savings the old man had I don't accurately know. 
 He and his wife were very dark upon this subject with Philip : 
 and when the General died, his widow declared herself to be 
 almost a pauper ! It was impossible that Baynes should have 
 left much money ; but that Charlotte's share should have 
 amounted to — that sum which may or may not presently be 
 stated — was a little too absurd ! You see Mr. and Mrs. Firmin 
 are travelling abroad just now. When I wrote to Firmin, to 
 ask if I might mention the amount of his wife's fortune, he gave 
 me no answer; nor do I like to enter upon these matters of 
 calculation without his explicit permission. He is of a 
 hot temper ; he might, on his return, grow angry with the friend 
 of his youth, and say, " Sir, how dare you talk about my private 
 affairs ? and what has the public to do with ]\Irs. Firmin's pri- 
 vate fortune ? "
 
 ON HIS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. 473 
 
 When, the last rites over, good-natured uncle Mac proposed 
 to take Charlotte back to Tours her mother made no objection. 
 The widow had tried to do the girl such an injury, that perhaps 
 the latter felt that forgiveness was impossible. Little Char 
 loved Philip with all her heart and strength ; had been author- 
 ized and encouraged to do so, as we have seen. To give him 
 up now, because a richer suitor presented himself, was an act 
 of treason from which her faithful heart revolted, and she never 
 could pardon the instigator. You see, in this simple story, I 
 scarcely care even to have reticence or secrets. I don't want 
 you to understand for a moment that Walsingham Hely was 
 still crying his eyes out about Charlotte. Goodness bless you ! 
 It was two or three weeks ago — four or five weeks ago, that he 
 was in love with her I He had not seen the Duchesse dTvry 
 then, about whom you may remember he had the quarrel with 
 Podichon, at the club in the Rue de Grammont. (He and the 
 Duchesse wrote poems to each other, each in the other's native 
 language.) The Charlotte had long passed out of the young 
 fellow's mind. That butterfly had fluttered off from our English 
 rosebud, and had settled on the other elderly flower ! I don't 
 know that Mrs. Baynes was aware of young Hely's fickleness 
 at this present time of which we are writing ; but his visits had 
 ceased, and she w-as angry and disappointed ; and not the less 
 angry because her labor had been in vain. On her part, 
 Charlotte could also be resolutely unforgiving. Take her Philip 
 from her ! Never, never ! Her mother force her to give up 
 the man whom she had been encouraged to love ? Mamma 
 should have defended Philip, not betrayed him ! If I command 
 my son to steal a spoon, shall he obey me ? And if he do obey 
 and steal, and be transported, will he love me afterwards ? I 
 think I can hardly ask for so much filial affection. 
 
 So there was strife between mother and daughter ; and 
 anger not the less bitter, on Mrs. Baynes's part, because her 
 husband, whose cupidity or fear had, at first, induced him to 
 take her side, had deserted her and gone over to her daugh- 
 ter. In the anger of that controversy Baynes died, leaving the 
 victory and right with Charlotte. He shrank from his wife : 
 would not speak to her in his last moments. The widow had 
 these injuries against her daughter and Philip: and thus neither 
 side forgave the other. She was not averse to the child's going 
 away to her uncle : put a lean, hungry face against Charlotte's 
 lip, and received a kiss which I fear had but little love in it. I 
 don't envy those children who remain under the widow's lonely 
 command ; or poor Madam Smolensk, who has to endure the
 
 474 
 
 THE ADVENTljRES OF PHILIP 
 
 arrogance, the grief, the avarice of that grim woman. Nor did 
 madame suffer under this tyranny long. Galignani's Messenger 
 very soon announced that she had lodgings to let, and 1 re- 
 member being edified by reading one day in the Pall Mall 
 Gazette that elegant apartments, select societ}', and an excellent 
 table were to be found in one of the most airy and fashionable 
 
 quarters of Paris. Inquire of Madame la Baronne de S sk, 
 
 Avenue de Valmy, Champs Elyse'es. 
 
 We guessed without difficulty how this advertisement found 
 its way to the Pall Mall Gazette ; and very soon after its 
 appearance Madame de Smolensk's friend, Mr. Philip, made 
 his appearance at our tea-table in London. He was always 
 welcome amongst us elders and children. He wore a crape on 
 his hat. As soon as the young ones were gone, you may be 
 sure he poured his story out ; and enlarged upon the death, the 
 burial, the quarrels, the loves, the partings we have narrated. 
 How could he be put in a way to earn three or four hundred a 
 year ? That was the present question. Ere he came to see us, 
 he had already been totting up ways and means. He had been 
 with our friend Mrs. Brandon : was staying with her. The Little 
 Sister thought three hundred would be sufficient. They could 
 have her second floor — not for nothing ; no, no, but at a moderate 
 price, which would pay her. They could have attics, if more 
 rooms were needed. They could ha\'e her kitchen fire, and one 
 maid, for the present, would do all their work. Poor little 
 thing ! She was very young. She would be past eighteen by 
 the time she could marry ; the Little Sister was for early 
 marriages, against long courtships. " Heaven helps those as 
 helps themselves," she said. And Mr. Philip thought this 
 excellent advice, and Mr. Philip's friend, when asked for his 
 opinion — " Candidly now, what's your opinion .'' " — said, " Is 
 she in the next room ? Of course you mean you are married 
 already." 
 
 Philip roared one of his great laughs. No, he was not 
 married already. Had he not said that Miss Baynes was gone 
 away to Tours to her aunt and uncle 1 But that he wanted to 
 be married ; but that he could never settle down to work till 
 he married ; but that he could have no rest, peace, health till he 
 married that angel, he was ready to confess. Ready ? All the 
 street might hear him calling out the name and expatiating on 
 the angelic charms and goodness of his Charlotte. He spoke 
 so loud and long on this subject that my wife grew a little 
 tired ; and my wife always likes to hear other women praised, 
 that (she says) I know she does. But when a man goes on
 
 ON HIS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. j^yt^ 
 
 roaring for an hour about Dulcinea ? You know such talk be- 
 comes fulsome at last ; and, in fine, when he was gone, my wife 
 said, " Well, he is very much in love ; so were you — I mean 
 long before my time, sir ; but does love pay the housekeeping 
 bills, pray ? " 
 
 " No, my dear. And love is always controlled by other 
 people's advice : — always," says Philip's friend ; who, I hope, 
 you will perceive was speaking ironically. 
 
 Philip's friends had listened not impatiently to Philip's talk 
 about Philip. Almost all women will give a sympathizing 
 hearing to men who are in love. Be they ever so old, they 
 grow young again with that conversation, and renew their own 
 early times. Men are not quite so generous : Tityrus tires of 
 hearing Corydon discourse endlessly on the charms of his shep- 
 herdess. And vet egotism is good talk. Even dull autobio- 
 
 ^ <J CD 
 
 graphics are pleasant to read ; and if to read, why not to hear? 
 Had Master Philip not been such an egotist, he would not have 
 been so pleasant a companion. Can't you like a man at whom 
 you laugh a little ? I had rather such an open-mouthed con- 
 versationist than your cautious jaws that never unlock without 
 a careful application of the key. As for the entrance to Mr. 
 Philip's mind, that door was always open when he was awake, 
 or not hungry, or in a friend's company. Besides his love, and 
 his prospects in life, his poverty, &c., Philip had other favorite 
 topics of conversation. His friend the Little Sister was a great 
 theme with him ; his father was another favorite subject of his 
 talk. By the way, his father had written to the Little Sister. 
 The doctor said he was sure to prosper in his newly adopted 
 country. He and another physician had invented a new medi- 
 cine, which was to effect wonders, and in a few years would 
 assuredly make the fortune of both of them. He was never 
 without one scheme or another for making that fortune which 
 never came. Whenever he drew upon poor Philip for little 
 sums, his letters were sure to be especially magniloquent and 
 hopeful. "Whenever the doctor says he has invented the 
 philosopher's stone," said poor Philip, " I am sure there will 
 be a postscript to say that a little bill will be presented for so 
 much, at so many days' date." 
 
 Had he drawn on Philip lately? Philip told us when, and 
 how often. We gave him all the benefit of our virtuous indig- 
 nation. As for my wife's eyes, they gleamed with anger. What 
 a man : what a father ! Oh, he was incorrigible ! " Yes, I am 
 afraid he is," says poor Phil, comically, with his hands roaming 
 at ease in his pockets. They contained little else than those
 
 476 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 big hands. " My father is of a hopeful turn. His views re- 
 garding property are peculiar. It is a comfort to have such a 
 distinguished parent, isn't it ? I am always surprised to hear 
 that he is not married again. I sigh for a mother-in-law," 
 Philip continued. 
 
 " Oh, {/on'^, Philip ! " cried Mrs. Laura, in a pet. " Be gen- 
 erous : be forgiving : be noble : be Christian ! Don't be cyni- 
 cal, and imitating — you know whom ! " 
 
 Whom could she possibly mean, I wonder ? After flashes, 
 there came showers in this lady's eyes. From long habit I can 
 understand her thoughts, although she does not utter them. 
 She was thinking of those poor, noble, simple, friendless young 
 people ; and asking heaven's protection for them. I am not in 
 the habit of over-praising my friends, goodness knows. The 
 foibles of this one I have described honestly enough. But if I 
 W'rite down here that he was courageous, cheerful in adversity, 
 generous, simple, truth-lo\'ing, above a scheme — after having 
 said that he was a noble young fellow — dixi ; and I won't can- 
 cel the words. 
 
 Ardent lover as he was, our friend was glad to be back in 
 the midst of the London smoke, and wealth, and bustle. The 
 fog agreed with his lungs, he said. He breathed more freely 
 in our great City than in that little English village in the centre 
 of Paris which he had been inhabiting. In his hotel, and at 
 his cafe (where he composed his eloquent *' own correspond- 
 ence "), he had occasion to speak a little French, but it never 
 came very trippingly from his stout English tongue. " You 
 don't suppose I would like to be taken for a Frenchman," he 
 would say, with much gravity. I wonder who ever thought of 
 mistaking friend Philip for a Frenchman ? 
 
 As for that faithful Little Sister, her house and heart were 
 still at the young man's service. We have not visited 71iorn- 
 haugh Street for some time. Mr. Philip, whom we have been 
 bound to attend, has been too much occupied with his love-makr 
 ing to bestow much thought on his affectionate little friend. 
 She has been trudging meanwhile on her humble course of life, 
 cheerful, modest, laborious, doing her duty, with a helping little 
 hand ready to relieve many a fallen wayfarer on her road. She 
 had a room vacant in her house when Philip came : — a room, 
 indeed ! Would she not have had a house vacant, if Philip 
 wanted it ? But in the interval since we saw her last, the Lit- 
 tle Sister, too, has had to assume black robes. Her father, the 
 old Captain, has gone to his rest. His place is vacant in the 
 little parlor : his bedroom is ready for Philip, as long as Philip
 
 O.V ins WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. 477 
 
 will stay. She did not profess to feel much affliction for the 
 loss of the captain. She talked of him constantly as though he 
 were present ; and made a supper for Philip, and seated him 
 in her Pa's chair. How she bustled about on the night when 
 Philip arrived ! What a beaming welcome there was in her 
 kind eyes ! Her modest hair was touched with silver now ; 
 but her cheeks were like apples ; her little figure was neat, and 
 light, and active : and her voice, with its gentle laugh, and little 
 sweet bad grammar, has always seemed one of the sweetest of 
 voices to me. 
 
 Very soon after Philip's arrival in London, Mrs. Brandon 
 paid a visit to the wife of Mr. Firmin's humble servant and 
 biographer, and the two women had a fine sentimentaf consul- 
 tation. All good women, you know, are sentimental. The 
 idea of young lovers, of match-making, of amiable poverty, 
 tenderlv excites and interests them. Mv wife, at this time, 
 began to pour off fine long letters to Miss Paynes, to which the 
 latter modestly and dutifully replied, with many expressions of 
 fervor and gratitude for the interest which her friend in London 
 was pleased to take in the little maid. I saw by these answers 
 that Charlotte's union with Philip was taken as a received point 
 by these two ladies. They discussed the ways and means. 
 They did not talk about broughams, settlements, town and 
 country houses, pin-moneys, trousseaux : and my wife, in com- 
 puting their sources of income, always pointed out that Miss 
 Charlotte's fortune, though certainly small, would give a very 
 useful addition to the young couple's income. " Fifty pounds 
 a year not much ! Let me tell you, sir, that fifty pounds a year 
 is a very pretty little sum : if Philip can but make three hundred 
 a year himself, Mrs. Brandon says they ought to be able to live 
 quite nicely." You ask, my genteel friend, is it possible that 
 people can live for four hundred a year ? How do they manage, 
 ces pauvres gens'? They eat, they drink, they are clothed, they 
 are warmed, they have roofs over their heads, and glass in their 
 windows ; and some of them are as good, happy, and well-bred 
 as their neighbors who are ten times as rich. Then, besides 
 this calculation of money, there is the fond woman's firm belief 
 that the day will bring its daily bread for those who work for it 
 and ask for it in the proper quarter ; against which reasoning 
 many a man knows it is in vain to argue. As to my own little 
 objections and doubts, my wife met them by reference to Philip's 
 former love-affair with his cousin. Miss Twysden. " You had 
 no objection in that case, sir," this logician would say. " You 
 would have had him take a creature without a heart. You
 
 478 
 
 THE ADVENTURES OF PHI LIP 
 
 would cheerfully liavc seen him made miserable for life, because 
 you thought there was money enough and a genteel connection. 
 Money indeed ! Very happy Mrs. Woolcomb is with hermoney. 
 Very creditably to all sides has that marriage turned out !" I 
 need scarcely remind my readers of the unfortunate result of 
 that marriage. Woolcomb's behavior to his wife was the 
 agreeable talk of London society and of the London clubs very 
 soon after the pair were joined together in holy matrimony. 
 Do we not all remember how Woolcomb was accused of striking 
 his wife, of starving his wife, and how she took refuge at home 
 and came to her father's house with a black eye .'' The two 
 Twysdens were so ashamed of this transaction, that father and 
 son left* off coming to " Rays's," where I never heard their 
 absence regretted but by one man, who said that Talbot owed 
 him money for losses at whist for which he could get no 
 settlement. 
 
 Should Mr. Firmin go and see his aunt in her misfortune ? 
 By-gones might be by-gones, some of Philip's advisers thought. 
 Now, Mrs. Twysden was unhappy, her heart might relent to 
 PhilijD, whom she certainly had loved as a boy. PhilijD had the 
 magnanimity to call upon her ; and found her carriage waiting 
 at the door. But a servant, after keeping the gentleman wait- 
 ing in the dreary, well-remembered hall, brought him word that 
 his mistress was out, smiled in his face with an engaging 
 insolence, and proceeded to put cloaks, court-guides, and other 
 female gear into the carriage in the presence of this poor 
 deserted nephew. This visit it must be owned was one of Mrs. 
 Laura's romantic efforts at reconciling enemies : as if, my good 
 creature, the Twysdens ever let a man into their house who was 
 poor or out of fashion ! They lived in a constant dread lest 
 Philip should call to borrow money of thein. As if they ever 
 lent money to a man who was in need ! If they ask the respected 
 reader to their house, depend upon it they think he is well to 
 do. On the other hand, the 'J^vysdens made a very handsome 
 entertainment for the new Lord of Whipham and Ringwood 
 who now reigned after his kinsman's death. They affably went 
 and passed Christmas with him in the country ; and they 
 cringed and bowed before Sir John Ringwood as they had 
 bowed and cringed before the earl in his time. The old earl 
 had been a Tory in his latter days, when I'albot Twysden's 
 views were also very conservative. The present Lord of Ring- 
 wood was a Whig. It is surprising how liberal the Twysdens 
 grew in the course of a fortnight's after-dinner conversation 
 and pheasant-shooting talk at Ringwood. " Hang it ! you
 
 ON HIS WAY TH ROUGH THE WORLD. 479 
 
 know, young Twysden said, in his office afterwards, " a fellow 
 must go with the politics of his family, you know ! " and he 
 bragged about the dinners, wines, splendors, cooks, and pre- 
 serves of Ringwood as freely as in the time of his noble grand- 
 uncle. Anyone who has kept a house-dog in London, which 
 licks your boots and your platter, and fawns for the bones in 
 your dish, knows how the animal barks and flies at the poor 
 who come to the door. The Twysdens, father and son, were 
 of this canine species : and there are vast packs of such dogs 
 here and elsewhere. 
 
 If Philip opened his heart to us, and talked unreservedly 
 regarding his hopes and his plans, you may be sure he had his 
 little friend, Mrs. Brandon, also in his confidence, and that no 
 person in the world was more eager to serve him. Whilst we 
 were talking about what was to be done, this little lady was also 
 at work in lier favorite's behalf. She had a firm ally in Mrs. 
 Mugford, the proprietor's lady of the Pall Mall Gazette. Mrs. 
 Mugford had long been interested in Philip, his misfortunes 
 and his love afi^airs. These two good women had made a senti- 
 mental hero of him. Ah ! that they could devise some feasible 
 scheme to help him ! And such a chance actually did very soon 
 present itself to these delighted women. 
 
 In almost all the papers of the new year appeared a brilliant 
 advertisement, announcing the speedy appearance in Dublin of 
 a new paper. It was to be called The Shamrock, and its first 
 number was to be issued on the ensuing St. Patrick's day. I 
 need not quote at length the advertisement which heralded the 
 advent of this new periodical. The most famous pens of the 
 national party in Ireland were, of course, engaged to contribute 
 to its columns. Those pens would be hammered into steel of 
 a difi^erent shape when the opportunity should offer. Beloved 
 prelates, authors of world-wide fame, bards, the bold strings of 
 whose lyres had nmg through the isle already, and made 
 millions of noble hearts to beat, and, by consequence, double 
 the number of eyes to fill ; philosophers, renowned for science ; 
 and illustrious advocates, whose manly voices had ever spoken 
 the language of hope and freedom to an &c., (S:c., would be 
 found rallying round the journal, and proud to wear the s}-mbol 
 of The Shamrock. Finally, Michael Cassidy, Esq., was chosen 
 to be the editor of this new journal. 
 
 This was the M. Cassidy, Esq., who appeared, I think, at 
 Mr. Firmin's call-supper ; and who had long been the sub-editor 
 of the Pall Mall Gazette. If Michael went to Dame Street, why 
 should not Philip be sub-editor at Pall Mall? Mrs. Brandon
 
 480 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 argued. Of course there would be a score of candidates fof 
 Michael s office. The editor would like the patronage. Rarnet, 
 Mugford's partner in the Gazette, would wish to appoint his 
 man. Cassidy, before retiring, would assuredly intimate his 
 approaching resignation to scores of gentlemen of his nation, 
 who would not object to take the Saxon's pay until they finally 
 shook his yoke off, and w^ould eat his bread until the happy 
 moment arrived when they could knock out his brains in fair 
 battle. As soon as Mrs. ]>randon heard of the vacant place, 
 that moment she determined that Philip should have it. It was 
 surprising what a quantity of information our little friend pos- 
 sessed about artists, and pressmen, and their lives, families, 
 ways and means. Many gentlemen of both professions came 
 to Mr. Ridley's chambers, and called on the Little Sister on 
 their way to and fro. How Tom Smith had left the Herald^ 
 and gone to the Post ; what price Jack Jones had for his 
 picture, and who sat for the principal figures. — I promise you 
 Madam Brandon had all these interesting details by heart ; and 
 I think I have described this little person very inadequately if 
 I have not made you understand that she was as intrepid a little 
 jobber as ever lived, and never scrupled to go any length to 
 serve a friend. To be Archbishop of Canterbury, to be pro- 
 fessor of Hebrew, to be teacher of a dancing-school, to be 
 organist for a church : for any conceivable place of function 
 this little person would have asserted Philip's capability. 
 " Don't tell me ! He can dance or preach (as the case may 
 be), or write beautiful ! And as for being unfit to be a sub- 
 editor, I want to know, has he not as good a head and as good 
 an education as that Cassidy, indeed 1 And is not Cambridge 
 College the best college in the world ? It is, I say. And he 
 went there ever so long. And he might have taken the very 
 best prize, only money was no object to him then, dear fellow, 
 and he did not like to keep the poor out of what he didn't 
 want ! " 
 
 Mrs. Mugford had always considered the young man as very 
 haughty, but quite the gentleman, and speedily was infected by 
 her gossip's enthusiasm about him. My wife hired a fly, packed 
 several of the children into it, called upon Mrs. Mugford, and 
 chose to be delighted with that lady's garden, with that lady's 
 nursery — with everything that bore the name of Mugford. It 
 was a curiosity to remark in what a flurry of excitement these 
 women plunged, and how they schemed, and coaxed, and 
 caballed, in order to get this place for their protege'. My wife 
 tijpught,— she merely happened to surmise : nothing more, of
 
 ON HIS WAY THROUGH THE IVORLD. 481 
 
 course — that Mrs. Mugford's fond desire was to shine in the 
 world. " Could we not ask some people — with — with what you 
 call handles to their names, — I think I before heard you use 
 some such term, sir, — to meet the Mugfords ? Some of Philip's 
 old friends, who I am sure would be very happy to serve him." 
 Some such artifice was, I own, practised. We coaxed, cajoled, 
 fondled the Mugfords for Philip's sake, and heaven forgive 
 Mrs. Laura her hypocrisy. We had an entertainment then, I 
 own. We asked our finest company, and Mr. and Mrs. Mug- 
 ford to meet them : and we prayed that unlucky Philip to be on 
 his best behavior to all persons who were invited to the feast. 
 
 Before my wife this lion of a Firmin was as a lamb. Rough, 
 captious, and overbearing in general society, with those whom 
 he loved and esteemed Philip was of all men the most modest 
 and humble. He would never tire of playing with our children, 
 joining in their games, laughing and roaring at their little sports. 
 I have never had such a laugher at my jokes as Philip Firmin. 
 I think my wife liked him for that noble guffaw with which he 
 used to salute those pieces of wit. He arrived a little late 
 sometimes with his laughing chorus, but ten people at table 
 were not so loud as this faithful friend. On the contrary, when 
 those pe^ pie for whom he has no liking venture on a pun or 
 other pleasantry, I am l^ound to own that Philip's acknowledg- 
 ment of their waggery must be anything but pleasant or flat- 
 tering to them. Now, on occasion of this important din er, I 
 enjoined him to be very kind, and very civil, and very much 
 pleased with everybody, and to stamp upon nobody's corns, as, 
 indeed, why should he, in life ? Who was he to be censor morum ? 
 And it has been said that no man could admit his own faults 
 with a more engaging candor than our friend. 
 
 We invited, then, Mugford, the proprietor of the Pall Mall 
 Gazette, and his wife ; and Bickerton, the editor of that period- 
 ical ; Lord Egham, IMiilip's old college friend ; and one or two 
 more gentlemen. Our invitations to the ladies were not so 
 fortunate. Some were engaged, others away in the country 
 keeping Christmas. In fine, we considered ourselves rather 
 lucky in securing old Lady Hixie, who lives hard by in West- 
 minster, and who will pass for a lady of fashion when no person 
 of greater note is present. My wife told her that the object of 
 the dinner was to make our friend Firmin acquainted with the 
 editor and proprietor of the Pall Mall Gazette, with whom it 
 was important that he should be on the most amicable footing. 
 Oh ! very well. Lady Hixie promised to be quite gracious to 
 the newspaper gentleman and his v.-ife ; and kept her promise
 
 482 THE ADl'ENTURES OE PHILfP 
 
 most graciously during the evening. Our good friend Mrs. 
 Mugford was the first of our guests to arrive. She drove "• in 
 her trap" from her villa in the suburbs ; and after putting up 
 his carriage at a neighboring livery-stable, her groom volun- 
 teered to help our servants in waiting at dinner. His zeal and 
 activity were remarkable. China smashed, and dish-covers 
 clanged in the passage. Mrs. Mugford said that " Sam was at 
 his old tricks;" and I hope the hostess showed she was mis- 
 tress of herself amidst that fall of china. Mrs. Mugford came 
 before the appointed hour, she said, in order to see our chil- 
 dren. "• With our late London dinner hours," she remarked, 
 " children was never seen now." At Hampstead, hers always 
 appeared at the dessert, and enlivened the table with their 
 innocent outcries for oranges and struggles for sweetmeats. In 
 the nursery, where one little maid, in her crisp long night-gown, 
 was saying her prayers ; where another little person, in the most 
 air)' costume, was standing before the great barred fire ; where 
 a tliird Lilliputian was sitting up in its nightcap and surplice, 
 surveying the scene below from its crib ; the ladies found our 
 dear Little Sister installed. She had come to see her little pets 
 (she had known tw^o or three of them from the \-ery earliest 
 times). She was a great favorite amongst them all ; and, I 
 believe, conspired with the cook down below in preparing cer- 
 tain delicacies for the table. A fine conversation then ensued 
 about our children, about the Mugford children, about babies 
 in general. And then the artful women (the house mistress and 
 the Little Sister) brought Philip on the tapis, and discoursed, 
 a qui miei/x, about his virtues, his misfortunes, his engagement, 
 and that dear little creature to whom he was betrothed. This 
 conversation went on until carriage-wheels were heard in the 
 square, and the knocker (there were actually knockers in that 
 old-fashioned place and time) began to peal. " Oh, bother ! 
 There's the company a-comin','' Mrs. Mugford said ; and 
 arranging her cap and flounces, with neat-handed Mrs. Bran- 
 don's aid, came down stairs, after taking a tender leave of the 
 little people, to wliom she sent a present next day of a pile of 
 fine Christmas books, wliich had come to the Fall Mall Gazette 
 for review. The kind woman had been coaxed, wheedled, and 
 won over to our side, to Pliilip's side. He had her vote for the 
 sub-editorship, whatever miglit ensue. 
 
 Most of our guests had already arrived, when at length Mrs. 
 Mugford was announced. I am bound to say that she presented 
 a remarkable appearance, and that the splendor of her attire 
 was such as is seldom beheld.
 
 OAT /f/S WAY THROUGFf THE IVORT.D. 483 
 
 Bickerton and Philip were presented to one anothei, and 
 had a talk about French politics before dinner, during which 
 conversation Philip behaved with perfect discretion and polite- 
 ness. Bickerton had happened to hear Philip's letters well 
 spoken of — in a good quarter, mind ; and his cordiality in- 
 creased when Lord Eghani entered, called Philip by his sur- 
 name, and entered into a perfectly free conversation with him. 
 Old Lady Hixie went into perfectly good society, Bickerton 
 condescended to acknowledge. " As for Mrs. Mugford," says 
 he, with a glance of wondering compassion at that lady, " of 
 course, 1 need not tell you that she is seen nowhere — nowhere." 
 This said, Mr. Bickerton stepped forward, and calmly patron- 
 ized my wife, gave me a good-natured nod for my own part, 
 reminded Lord Egham that he had had the pleasure of meeting 
 him at Egham ; and then fixed on Tom Page, of the Bread-and- 
 Butter OfBce (who, I own, is one of our most genteel guests), 
 with whom he entered into a discussion of some political matter 
 of that day — [ forget what : but the main point was that he 
 named two or three leading public men with whom he had dis- 
 cussed the question, whatever it might be. He named very 
 great names, and led us to understand that with the proprietors 
 of those very great names he was on the most intimate and 
 confidential footing. With his owners — with the proprietor of 
 the Pall Mall Gazette, he was on the most distant terms, and 
 indeed I am afraid that his behavior to myself and my wife was 
 scarcely respectful. I fancied I saw Philip's brow gathering 
 wrinkles as his eye followed this man strutting from one person 
 to another, and patronizing each. The dinner was a little 
 late, from some reason best known in the lower regions. " I 
 take it," says Bickerton, winking at Philip, in a pause of the 
 conversation, " that our good friend and host is not much used 
 to giving dinners. The mistress of the house is evidently in a 
 state of perturbation." Philip gave such a horrible grimace 
 that the other at first thought he was in pain. 
 
 " You, who have lived a great deal with old Ringwood, 
 know what a good dinner is," Bickerton continued, giving 
 Firmin a knowing look. 
 
 " Any dinner is good which is accompanied with such a 
 welcome as I get here," said Pliilip. 
 
 " Oh ! \ery good people, very good people, of course ! " 
 cries Bickerton, 
 
 I need not say he thinks he has perfectly succeeded in 
 adopting the air of a man of the world. He went off to Lady 
 Hixie and talked with her about the last great party at which he
 
 484 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 had met her ; and then he turned to the host, and remarked 
 that my friend, the doctor's son, was a fierce looking fellow. In 
 five minutes he had the good fortune to make himself hated by 
 Mr. Firmin. He walks through the world patronizing his 
 betters. '' Our good friend is not much used to giving din- 
 ners," — isn't he ? I say, what do you mean by continuing to 
 endure this man ? Tom Page, of the Bread-and-Butter office, 
 is a well-known diner-out ; Lord Egham is a peer ; Bickerton, 
 in a pretty loud voice, talked to one or other of these during 
 dinner and across the table. He sat next to Mrs. Mugford, but 
 he turned his back on that bewildered woman, and never con- 
 descended to address a word to her personally. " Of course, I 
 understand you, my dear fellow," he said to me when, on the 
 retreat of the ladies, we approached within whispering dis- 
 tance. " You have these people at dinner for reasons of state. 
 You have a book coming out, and want to have it noticed in 
 the paper. I make a point of keeping these people at a dis- 
 tance — the only way of dealing with them, I give you my word." 
 
 Not one offensive word had Philip said to the chief writer 
 of the Pall Mall Gazette ; and I began, to congratulate myself 
 that our dinner would pass without any mishap, when some one 
 unluckily happening to praise the wine, a fresh supply was 
 ordered. " Very good claret. Who is your wine merchant ? 
 Upon my word, I get better claret here than I do in Paris — ■ 
 don't you think so, Mr. Fermor ? Where do you generally dine 
 at Paris t " 
 
 " I generally dine for thirty sous, and three francs on grand 
 days, Mr. Beckerton," growls Philip. 
 
 "My name is Bickerton." ("What a vulgar thing for a 
 fellow to talk about his thirty-sous dinners ! " murmured my 
 neighbor to me.) " Well, there is no accounting for tastes ! 
 When I go to Paris, I dine at the 'Trois Freres.' Give me the 
 Burgundy at the ' Trois Frbres.' " 
 
 " That is because you great leader-writers are paid better 
 than poor correspondents. 1 shall be delighted to be able to 
 dine better." And with this Mr. Firmin smiles at Mr. Mugford, 
 his master and owner. 
 
 " Nothing so vulgar as talking shop," says Bickerton, rather 
 loud. 
 
 " I am not ashameJ t)f the shop I keep. Are you of yours 
 Mr. Bickerton .? " growls IM;iHp. 
 
 " F. had him there," says Mr. Mugford. 
 
 Mr. Bickerton got up from table, turning quite pale. " Do 
 you mean to be offensive, sir ,'' ' he asked.
 
 ON HIS WA V THROUGH THE WORLD. 485 
 
 •* Offensive, sir? No, sir. Some men are offensive without 
 meaning it. You have been several times to-night ! " says Lord 
 Philip. 
 
 " I don't see that I am called upon to bear this kind of 
 thing at any man's table ! " cried Mr. Bickerton. " Lord 
 Egham, I wish you good-night ! " 
 
 " I say, old boy, what's the row about ? " asked his lordship. 
 And we were all astonished as my guest rose and left the table 
 in great wrath. 
 
 " Ser\e him right, Firmin, I say ! " said Mr. Mugford, again 
 drinking off a glass. 
 
 "Why, don't you know?" says Tom Page. "His father 
 keeps a haberdasher's shop at Cambridge, and sent him to 
 O.xford, where he took a good degree.'' 
 
 And this had come of a dinner of conciliation — a dinner 
 which was to advance Philip's interest in life ! 
 
 " Hit him again, I say," cried Mugford, whom wine had 
 rendered eloquent. " He's a supercilious beast, that Bickerton 
 is, and I hate him, and so does Mrs. M." 
 
 CHAPTER XXXL 
 
 NARRATES THAT FAMOUS JOKE ABOUT MISS GRIGSBY. 
 
 For once Philip found that he had offended without giving 
 general offence. In the confidence of female intercourse, Mrs. 
 Mugford had already, in her own artless but powerful language, 
 confirmed her husband's statement regarding Mr. Bickerton, 
 and declared that B. was a beast, and she was only sorry that 
 Mr. F. had not hit him a little harder. So different are the 
 opinions which different individuals entertain of the same 
 event ! I happen to know that Bickerton, on his side, went 
 away, averring that we were quarrelsome, under-bred people ; 
 and that a man of any refinement had best avoid that kind of 
 society. He does really and seriously believe himself our 
 superior, and will lecture almost any gentleman on the art of 
 being one. This assurance is not at all uncommon with your 
 parvenu. Proud of his newly acquired knowledge of the art of 
 exhausting the contents of an Q.gg, the well-known little boy of 
 the apologue rushed to impart his knowledge to his grand-
 
 ^86 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 mother, who had been for many years familiar with the process 
 which the child had just discovered. Which of us has not met 
 with some such instructors ? 1 know men who would be ready 
 to step forward and teach Taglioni how to dance, Tom Sayers 
 how to box, or the Chevalier Bayard how to be a gentleman. 
 We most of us know such men, and undergo, from time to 
 time, the ineffable benefit of their patronage. 
 
 Mugford went away from our little entertainment vowing, 
 by George, that Philip shouldn't want for a friend at the proper 
 season ; and this proper season very speedily arrived. I 
 laughed one day, on going to the Pall Mall Gazette office, to 
 find Philip installed in the sub-editor's room, with a provision 
 of scissors, wafers, and paste-pots, snipping paragraphs from 
 this paper and that, altering, condensing, giving titles, and so 
 forth ; and, in a word, in regular harness. The three-headed 
 calves, the great prize gooseberries, the old maiden ladies of 
 wonderful ages who at length died in country places — it was 
 wonderful (considering his little exiDcrience) how Firmin hunted 
 out these. He entered into all the spirit of his business. He 
 prided himself on the clever titles which he found for his para- 
 graphs. When his paper was completed at the week's end, 
 he surveyed it fondly — not the leading articles, or those pro- 
 found and yet brilliant literary essays which appeared in the 
 Gazette — but the births, deaths, marriages, markets, trials and 
 what not. As a shop-boy, having decorated his master's win- 
 dow, goes into the street, and pleased surveys his work ; so 
 the fair face of the Pall Mall Gazette rejoiced Mr Firmin, and 
 Mr. Bince, the printer of the paper. They looked with an 
 honest pride upon the result of their joint labors. Nor did 
 Firmin relish pleasantry on the subject. Did his friends allude 
 to it, and ask if he had shot any especially fine caiia>-cl that 
 week ? Mr. Philip's brow would corrugate and his cheeks red- 
 den. He did not like jokes to be made at his expense : was 
 not his a singular antipathy ? 
 
 In his capacity of sub-editor, the good fellow had the privi- 
 lege of taking and giving away countless theatre orders, and 
 panorama and diorama tickets . the Pall Mall Gazette was not 
 above accepting such little bribes in those days, and Mrs. Mug- 
 ford's familiarity with the names of opera singers, and splendid 
 appearance in an opera-box, was quite remarkable. I'>ieud 
 Philip would bear away a heap of these cards of admission, 
 delighted to carry off our young folks to one exhibition or an- 
 other. But once at the diorama, where our young people sat 
 in tlie darkness, very much frightened as usual, a voice from
 
 ON HIS WA Y THROUGH THE WORLD. 487 
 
 out the niidnight gloom cried out : " Who has come in 7vith orders 
 from the Pall Mall Gazette'^ " A lady, two scared children, and 
 Mr. Sub-editor Philip, all trembled at this dreadful summons. 
 I think I should not dare to print the story even now, did I 
 not know that Mr. Firmin was travelling abroad. It was a 
 blessing the place was dark, so that none could see the poor 
 sub-editor's blushes. Rather than cause any mortification to 
 this lady, I am sure Philip would have submitted to rack and 
 torture. But, indeed, her annoyance was very slight, except in 
 seeing her friend annoyed. The humor of the scene surpassed 
 the anno\ance in the lady's mind, and caused her to laugh at 
 the mishap ; but I own our little boy (who is of an aristocratic 
 turn, and rather too sensitive to ridicule from his schoolfellows) 
 was not at all anxious to talk upon the subject, or to let the 
 world know that he went to a place of public amusement " with 
 an order," 
 
 As for Philip's landlady, the Little Sister, she, you know, 
 had been familiar with the press, and pressmen, and orders for 
 the play for years past. She looked quite young and pretty, 
 with her kind smiling face and neat tight black dress, as she 
 came to the theatre — it was to an Easter piece — on Philip's 
 arm, one evening. Our children saw her from their cab, as 
 they, too, were dri\dng to the same performance. It was, 
 " Look, mamma ! There's Philip and the Little Sister ! "_ And 
 then came such smiles, and nods, and delighted recognitions 
 from the cab to the two friends on foot ! Of course I have 
 forgotten what was the piece which we all saw on that Easter 
 evening. But those children will never forget ; no, though 
 they live to be a hundred years old, and though their attention 
 was distracted from the piece by constant observation of Philip 
 and his companion in the public boxes opposite. 
 
 Mr. Firmin's work and pay were both light, and he accepted 
 both very cheerfully. He saved money out of his little stipend. 
 It was surprising how economically he could live with his little 
 landlady's aid and counsel. He would come to us, recounting 
 his feats of parsimony with a childish delight : he loved to con- 
 template his sovereigns, as week by week the little pile accu- 
 mulated. He kept a sharp eye upon sales, and purchased now 
 and again articles of furniture. In this way he brought home a 
 piano to his lodgings, on which he could no more play than he 
 could on the tight-rope ; but he was given to understand that 
 it was a very fine instrument ; and my wife played on it one 
 day when we went to visit him, and he sat listening, with his 
 great hands on his knees, in ecstasies. He was thinking how
 
 488' TJfE ADVENTURES OF P///L7P 
 
 one day, please heaven, he should see other hands touching 
 the keys — and player and instrument disappeared in a mist 
 before his happy eyes. His purchases were not all always 
 lucky. For example, he was sadly taken in at an auction about 
 a little pearl ornament. Some artful Hebrews at the sale con- 
 spired and " ran him up," as the phrase is, to a price more 
 than equal to the value of the trinket. " But you know who 
 it was for, ma'am," one of Philip's apologists said. " If she 
 would like to wear his ten fingers he would cut 'em off and 
 send 'em to her. But he keeps 'em to write her letters and 
 verses — and most beautiful they are, too." 
 
 " And the dear fellow, who was bred up in splendor and 
 luxury, Mrs. Mugford, as you, ma'am, know too well — he won't 
 drink no wine now. A little whiskey and a glass of beer is all 
 he takes. And his clothes — he who used to be so grand — 
 you see how he is now, ma'am. Always the gentleman, and, 
 indeed, a finer or grander looking gentleman never entered a 
 room ; but he is saving — you know for what, ma'am.'' 
 
 And, indeed, Mrs. Mugford did know ; and so did Mrs. 
 Pendennis and Mrs. Brandon. And these three women worked 
 themselves into a perfect fever, interesting themselves for Mr. 
 Firmin. And Mugford, in his rough, funny way, used to say, 
 " Mr. P., a certain Mr. Heff has come and put our noses out 
 of joint. He has, as sure as my name is Hem. And I am 
 getting quite jealous of our sub-editor, and that is the long 
 and short of it. But it's good to see him haw-haw Bickerton 
 if ever they meet in the office, that it is ! Bickerton w-on't 
 bully /lim any more, I promise you ! " 
 
 The conclaves and conspiracies of these women were endless 
 in Philip's behalf. One day, I let the Little Sister out of my 
 house with a handkerchief to her eyes, and in a great state of 
 flurry and excitement, which })erhaps communicates itself to 
 the gentleman who passes her at his own door. The gentle- 
 man's wdfe is, on her part, not a little moved and excitec'. 
 "What do you think Mrs. Brandon says.'' Philip is learning; 
 shorthand. He says he does not think he is clever enough to 
 be a writer of any mark ; — but he can be a reporter, and with 
 this, and his place at Mr. Mugford's, he thinks he can earn 
 
 enough to Oh, he is a fine fellow ! '' I suppose feminine 
 
 emotion stopped the completion of this speech. But when 
 Mr. Philip slouched into dinner that day, his hostess did hom- 
 age before him ; she loved him : she treated him with a tender 
 respect and sympathy which her like are ever wont to bestow 
 upon brave and honest men in misfortune.
 
 OxV IffS IVA V THROUGH THE WORLD. 489 
 
 Why should not Mr. Philip Firmin, barrister-at-law, bethink 
 him that he belonged to a profession which has helped very many 
 men to competence, and not a few to wealth and honors ? A 
 barrister might surely hope for as good earnings as could be 
 made by a newspaper reporter. We all know instances of men 
 who, having commenced their careers as writers for the j^ress, 
 had carried on the legal profession simultaneously, and attained 
 the greatest honors of the bar and the bench. " Can I sit in 
 a Pump Court garret waiting for attorneys ? " asked poor Phil \ 
 " I shall break my heart before they come. My brains are not 
 worth much : I should addle them altogether in poring over 
 law books. I am not at all a clever fellow you see ; and I 
 haven't the ambition and obstinate will to succeed which carry 
 on many a man with no greater capacity than my own. I may 
 have as good brains as Bickerton, for example : but I am not 
 so bumptious as he is. By claiming the first place wherever he 
 goes, he gets it very often. My dear friends, don't you see 
 how modest I am ? There never was a man less likely to get 
 on than myself — you must own that ; and I tell you that Char- 
 lotte and I must look forward to a life of poverty, of cheese- 
 parings, and second floor lodgings at Pentonville or Islington. 
 That's about my mark. I would let her off, only I know she 
 would not take me at my word — the dear little thing ! She has 
 set her heart upon a hulking pauper : that's the truth. And I 
 tell you what I am going to do. I am going seriously to learn 
 the profession of poverty, and make myself master of it. 
 What's the price of cowheel and tripe .'' You don't know. I 
 do ; and the right place to buy 'em. I am as good a judge of 
 sprats as any man in London. My tap in life is to be small 
 beer henceforth, and I am growing quite to like it, and think 
 it is brisk, and pleasant, and wholesome." There was not a 
 little truth in Philip's account of himself, and his capacities and 
 incapacities. Doubtless, he was not born to make a great name 
 for himself in the world. But do we like those only who are 
 famous ? As well say we will only give our regard to men who 
 have ten thousand a year, or are more than six feet high. 
 
 While of his three female friends and advisers, my wife ad- 
 mired Philip's humility, Mrs. Brandon and Mrs. Mugford were 
 rather disappointed at his want of spirit, and to think that he 
 aimed so low. I shall not say which side Firmin's biographer 
 took in this matter. Was it my business to applaud or rebuke 
 him for being humble-minded, or was I called upon to advise 
 at all ? My amiable reader, acknowledge that you and I in 
 life pretty much go our own way. We eat the dishes we like be--
 
 49© THE AD\-ENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 cause we like them, not because our neighbor rehshes them. We 
 rise early, or sit up late ; we work, idle, smoke, or what not, be- 
 cause we choose so to do, not because the doctor orders. Pliilip, 
 then, was like you and me, who will have our own way when we 
 can. Will we not t If you won't, you do not deserve it. Instead 
 of hungering after a stalled ox, he was accustoming himself to 
 be content with a dinner of herbs. Instead of braving the tem- 
 pest, he chose to take in sail, creep along shore, and wait for 
 calmer weather. 
 
 So, on Tuesday of every week let us say, it was this modest 
 sub-editor's duty to begin snipping and pasting paragraphs for 
 the ensuing Saturday's issue. He cut down the parliamentary 
 speeches, giving due favoritism to the orators of the Pall Mall 
 Gazette party, and meagre outlines of their opponent's discourses. 
 If the leading public men on the side of the Pall Mall Gazette 
 gave entertainments, you may be sure they were duly chroni- 
 cled in the fashionable intelligence ; if one of their party wrote 
 a book it was pretty sure to get praise from the critic. I am 
 .speaking of simple old days, you understand. Of course there 
 is 710 puffing, or jobbing, or false praise, or unfair censure now. 
 Every critic knows what he is writing about, and writes with no 
 aim but to tell truth. 
 
 Thus Philip, the dandy of two years back, was content to 
 wear the shabbiest old coat ; Philip', the Philippus of one-and- 
 twenty, who rode showy horses, and rejoiced to display his 
 horse and person in the park, now humbly took his place in an 
 omnibus, and only on occasions indulged in a cab. From the 
 roof of the larger vehicle he would salute his friends with per- 
 fect affability, and stare down on his aunt as she passed in her 
 barouche. He ne\er could be quite made to acknowledge that 
 she purposely would not see him; or he would attribute her 
 blindness to the quarrel which they had had, not to his poverty 
 and present position. As for his cousin Ringwood, ''That 
 fellow would commit any baseness," Philip acknowledged ; 
 " and it is I who have cut him'' our friend averred. 
 
 A real danger was lest our friend should in his poverty be- 
 come more haughty and insolent than he had been in his days 
 of better fortune, and that he should make companions of men 
 who were not his equals. Whether was it better for him to be 
 slighted in a fashionable club, or to swagger at the head of the 
 company in a tavern parlor .? This was the danger we might 
 fear for Firmin. It was impossible not to confess that he was 
 choosing to take a lower place in the world than that to which 
 he had been born.
 
 ON HIS WAY THROUGir THE WORLD. 
 
 491 
 
 " Do you mean that Philip is lowered, because he is poor?" 
 asked an angry lady, to whom this remark was made by hei 
 husband — man and wife being both very good friends to Mr. 
 Firmin, 
 
 "My dear," replies the worldling of a husband, "suppose 
 Philip were to take a fancy to buy a donkey and sell cabbages ? 
 He would be doing no harm ; but there is no doubt he would 
 lower himself in the world's estimation." 
 
 " Lower himself ! " says the lady, with a toss of her head. 
 "No man lowers himself by pursuing an honest calling. No 
 man!" 
 
 " Very good. There is Grundsell, the greengrocer, out of 
 Tuthill Street, who waits at our dinners. Instead of asking 
 him to wait, we should beg him to sit down at table ; or perhaps 
 we should wait, and stand with a napkin behind Grundsell." 
 
 " Nonsense ! " 
 
 " Grundsell's calling is strictly honest, unless he abuses his 
 
 opportunities, and smuggles away " 
 
 -smuggles away stuff and nonsense ! " 
 
 " Very good ; Grundsell is not a fitting companion, then, for 
 us, or the nine little Grundsells for our children. Then why 
 should Philip give up the friends of his youth, and forsake a 
 club for a tavern parlor? You can't say our little friend, Mrs. 
 Brandon, good as she is, is a fitting companion for him .'' " 
 
 " If he had a good little wife, he would have a companion 
 of his own degree ; and he would be twice as happy ; and he 
 would be out of all danger and temptation — and the best thing 
 he can do is to marry directly!" cries the lady. "And, my 
 dear, I think I shall write to Charlotte and ask her to come and 
 stay with us." 
 
 There was no withstanding this argument. As long as 
 Charlotte was with us we were sure that Philip would be out of 
 harm's way, and seek for no other company. There was a snu» 
 little bedroom close by the quarters inhabited by our own chil- 
 dren. My wife pleased herself by adorning this chamber, and 
 uncle Mac happening to come to London on business about 
 this time, the young lady came over to us under his convoy, and 
 I should like to describe the meeting between her and Mr. 
 Philip in our parlor. No doubt it was very edifying. Bui my 
 wife and 1 were not present, vous confevcz. We only heard one 
 shout of surprise and delight from Philip as he went into the 
 room where the young lady was waiting. We had but said, 
 "Go into the parlor, Philip. You will find your old friend 
 Major Mac there. He has come to London on business, and
 
 492 
 
 THE ADl'KNTLJRKS OF Pill LIP 
 
 has news of " There was no need to speak, for here Philip 
 
 straightway bounced into the room. 
 
 And then came the shout. And then out came Major Mac, 
 with such a droll twinkle in his eyes ! What artifices and hypoc- 
 risies had we not to practice previously, so as to keep our secret 
 from our children, who assuredly would have discovered it ! 
 I must tell you that the paterfamilias had guarded against the 
 innocent prattle and inquiries of the children regarding the 
 preparation of the little bedroom, by informing them that it was 
 intended for Miss Grigsby tlie governess, with whose advent 
 they had long been threatened. And one of our girls, when 
 the unconscious Philip arrived, said, " Philip, if you go into the 
 parlor, you will find Miss Grigsby, the governess, there^ And 
 then Philip entered into that parlor, and then arose that shout, 
 and then out came uncle Mac, and then, &c., &c. And we 
 called Charlotte Miss Grigsby all dinner-time ; and we called 
 her Miss Grigsby next day ; and the more we called her Miss 
 Grigsby the more we all laughed. And the baby, who could 
 not speak plain yet, called her Miss Gibby. and laughed loudest 
 of all ; and it was such fun. But I think Philip and Charlotte 
 had the best of the fun, my dears, though they may not have 
 laughed quite so loud as we did. 
 
 As for Mrs. Brandon, who, you may be sure, speedily came 
 to pay us a visit, Charlotte blushed, and looked quite beautiful 
 when she went up and kissed the Little Sister. " He have told 
 you about me, then ! " she said, in her soft little voice, smooth- 
 ing the young lady's brown hair. " Should I have known him 
 at all but for you, and did you not save his life for me when he was 
 ill } " asked Miss Baynes. " And mayn't I love everybody who 
 loves him ? " she asked. And we left these women alone for a 
 quarter of an hour, during which they became the most intimate 
 friends in the world. And all our household, great and small, 
 including the nurse, (a woman of a most jealous, domineerin ,% 
 and uncomfortable fidelity,) thought well of our gentle youn ; 
 guest, and welcomed Miss Grigsby. 
 
 Charlotte, you see, is not so exceedingly handsome as to 
 cause other women to perjure themselves by protesting that she 
 is no great things after all. At the period with which we are 
 concerned, she certainly had a lovely complexion, which her 
 black dress set off, perhaps. And when Philip used to come 
 into the room, she had always a fine garland of roses ready to 
 offer him, and growing upon her cheeks, the moment he ap- 
 peared. Her manners are so entirely unaffected and simple 
 that they can't be otherwise tiian eood • for is she not grateful
 
 ON HIS WA V THROUGH THE WORLD, 493 
 
 truthful, unconscious of self, easily pleased and interested in 
 others? Is she very witty? I never said so — though that she 
 appreciated some men's wit (whose names need not be men- 
 tioned) 1 cannot doubt. " I say," cries Philip, on that memor- 
 able first night of her arrival, and when she and other ladies 
 had gone to bed, "by George ! isn't she glorious, I say ! What 
 can I have done to win such a pure little heart as that ? Nan 
 sum dignus. It is too much happiness — too much, by George ! " 
 And his voice breaks behind his pipe, and he squeezes two fists 
 into eyes that are brimful of joy and thanks. Where Fortune 
 bestows such a bounty as this, I think we need not pity a man 
 for what she withdraws. As Philip walks away at midnight, 
 (walks away ? is turned out of doors ; or surely he would have 
 gone on talking till dawn,) with the rain beating in his face, and 
 fifty or a hundred pounds for all his fortune in his pocket, I 
 think there goes one of the happiest of men — the happiest and 
 richest. For is he not possessor of a treasure which he could 
 not buy, or would not sell, for all the wealth of the world ? 
 
 My wife may say what she will, but she assuredly is answer- 
 able for the invitation to Miss Baynes, and for all that ensued 
 in consequence. At a hint that she would be a welcome guest 
 in our house, in London, where all her heart and treasure lay, 
 Charlotte 13aynes gave up straightway her dear aunt at Tours, 
 who had been kind to her ; her dear uncle, her dear mamma, 
 and all her dear brothers — following that natural law which 
 ordains that a woman, under certain circumstances, shall resign 
 home, parents, brothers, sisters, for the sake of that one indi- 
 vidual who is henceforth to be dearer to her than all. Mrs. 
 Baynes, the widow, growled a complaint at her daughter's in- 
 gratitude, but did not refuse her consent. She may have known 
 that little Hely, Charlotte's volatile admirer, had fluttered oft 
 to another flower by this time, and that a pursuit of that butter- 
 fly was in vain : or she may have heard that he was going to 
 pass the spring — the butterfly season — in London, and hoped 
 that he perchance might again light on her girl. Howbeit, she 
 was glad enough that her daughter should accept an invitation 
 to our house, and owned that as yet the poor child's share of 
 this life's pleasures had been but small. Charlotte's modest 
 little trunks were again packed, then, and the poor child was 
 sent ofi^, I won't say with how small a provision of pocket- 
 money, by her mother. But the thrifty woman had but lit- 
 tle, and of it was determined to give as little as she could. 
 " Heaven will provide for my child," she would piously say ; 
 and hence interfered very little with those agents whom heaven
 
 494 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 sent to befriend her children. " Her mother told Charlotte 
 that she would send her some money next Tuesday," the Major 
 told us ; " but, between ourselves, I doubt whether she will. 
 Between ourselves, my sister-in-law is always going to give 
 money next Tuesday : but somehow ^^'ednesday comes, and 
 the money has not arrived. I could not let the little maid be 
 without a few guineas, and have provided her out of a half-pay 
 purse ; but mark me, that pay-day Tuesday will never come." 
 Shall I deny or confirm tlie worthy Major's statement ? Thus 
 far I will say, that Tuesday most 'certainly came ; and a letter 
 from her mamma to Charlotte, which said that one of her 
 brothers and a younger sister were going to stay with aunt 
 Mac ; and that as Char was so happy with her most hospitable 
 and kind friends, a fond widowed mother, who had given up all 
 pleasures for herself, would not interfere to prevent a darling 
 child's happiness. 
 
 It has been said that three women, whose names have been 
 given up, were conspiring in the behalf of this young person 
 and the young man her sweetheart. Three days after Char- 
 lotte's arrival at our house, my wife persists in thinking that a 
 drive into the country would do the child good, orders a 
 brougham, dresses Charlotte in her best, and trots away to see 
 Mrs. Mugford at Hampstead. Mrs. Brandon is at Mrs. Mug- 
 ford's, of course quite by chance : and I feel sure that Char- 
 lotte's friend compliments Mrs. Mugford upon her garden, upon 
 her nursery, upon her luncheon, upon everything that is hers. 
 "Why, dear me," says Mrs. Mugford (as the ladies discourse 
 upon a certain subject), " what does it matter t Me and Mug- 
 ford married on two pound a week ; and on two pound a week 
 my dear eldest children were born. It was a hard struggle 
 sometimes, but we were all the happier for it ; and I'm sure if 
 a man won't risk a little he don't deserve much. 1 know / 
 would risk, if I were a man, to marry such a pretty young dear. 
 And I should take a young man to be but a mean-spirited 
 fellow who waited and went shilly-shallying when he had but 
 to say the word and be happy. I thought Mr. F. was a brave, 
 courageous gentleman, I did, Mrs. iJrandon. Do you want me 
 for to have a bad opinion of him ? My dear, a little of that 
 cream. It's very good. We 'ad a dinner yesterday, and a cook 
 down from town, on purpose." This speech, with appropriate 
 imitations of voice and gesture, was repeated to the presciu 
 biographer by the present biographer's wife, and he now began 
 to see in what webs and meshes of cons])iracy these artful 
 women had en\eloped the subject of the present biographw
 
 ON I/IS WAY THROUGH THL WORLD. x^l 
 
 Like Mrs. Brandon, and the other matron, CharIotte''s friend, 
 Mrs. IMugford became interested in the gentle young creature, 
 and kissed her kindly, and made her a present on going away. 
 It was a brooch in the shape of a thistle, if I remember aright, 
 set with amethysts and a lovely Scottish stone called, I believe 
 a cairngorm. " She ain't no style about her , and I confess, 
 from a general's daughter, brought up on the Continent, I 
 should have expected better. But we'll show her a little of the 
 world and the opera, Brandon, and she'll do very well, of that 
 I make no doubt." And Mrs. Mugford took Miss Baynes to 
 the opera, and pointed out the other people of fashion there 
 assembled. And delighted Charlotte was. I make no doubt 
 there w^as a young gentleman of our acquaintance at the back 
 of the box who was very happy too. And this year, Philip's 
 kinsman's wife, Lady Ringwood, had a box, in which Philip 
 saw her and her daughters, and little Ringwood Twysden 
 paying assiduous court to her ladyship. They met in the crush- 
 room by chance again, and Lady Ringwood looked hard at 
 Philip and the blushing young lady on his arm. And it 
 happened that Mrs. Mugford's carriage — the little one-horse 
 trap which opens and shuts so conveniently — and Lady Ring- 
 wood's tall, emblazoned chariot of state, stopped the way 
 together. And from the tall emblazoned chariot the ladies 
 looked not unkindly at the trap which contained the beloved of 
 Philip's heart : and the carriages departed each on its way ; 
 and Ringwood Twysden, seeing his cousin advancing towards 
 him, turned very pale, and dodged at a double quick down an 
 arcade. But he need not have been afraid of Philip. Mr. 
 Firmin's heart was all softness and benevolence at that time. 
 He was thinking of those sweet, sweet eyes that had just 
 glanced to him a tender good-night ; of that little hand which 
 a moment since had hung with fond pressure on his arm. Do 
 you suppose in such a frame of mind he had leisure to think 
 of a nauseous little reptile crawling behind him } He was 
 so happy that night, that Philip was King Philip again. And 
 he went to the " Haunt," and sang his song of Ganyowen na 
 gloria, and greeted the boys assembled, and spent at least three 
 shillingsover his supper and drinks. But the next day being 
 Sunday, Mr. Firmin was at Westminster Abbey, listening to the 
 sweet church chants, by the side of the very same young person 
 whom he had escorted to the opera on the night before. They 
 sat together so close that one must have heard exactly as well 
 as the other. T dare say it is edifying to listen to anthems "k 
 deux. And how complimentary to the clerg}'man to have to
 
 ♦96 
 
 THE ADl'ENrURES OF J'// //J J' 
 
 wish that the sermon was longer ! Through the vast catliedral 
 aisles the organ notes peal gloriously. Ruby and topaz and 
 amethyst blaze from the great church windows. Under the 
 tall arcades the young people went together. Hand in hand 
 they passed, and thought no ill. 
 
 Do gentle readers begin to tire of this spectacle of billing 
 and cooing ? I have tried to describe Mr. Philip's love affairs 
 with as few words and in as modest phrases as may be — omit- 
 ting the raptures, the passionate vows, the reams of correspond- 
 ence, and the usual commonplaces of his situation. And yet, 
 my dear madam, though you and I may be past the age of 
 billing and cooing, tliough your ringlets, which I remember a 
 lovely auburn, are now — well — are now a rich purple and green 
 black, and my brow may be as bald as a cannon-ball ; — 1 
 say, though we are old, we are not too old to forget. We ma\- 
 not care about the pantomime much now, but we like to take 
 the young folks, and see them rejoicing. From the window 
 where I write, I can look down into the garden of a certain 
 square. In that garden I can at this moment see a young 
 gentleman and lady of my acquaintance pacing up and down. 
 They are talking some sucii talk as Milton imagines our first 
 parents engaged in ; and yonder garden is a paradise to my 
 young friends. Did they choose to look outside the railings of 
 the square, or at any other objects than each other's noses, they 
 might see — the tax-gatherer we will say — with his book, knock- 
 ing at one door, the doctor's brougham at a second, a 
 hatchment over the windows of a third mansion, the baker's 
 boy discoursing with the housemaid over the railings of a 
 fourth. But what to them are these phenomena of life ? Ann 
 in arm my young folks go pacing up and down their Eden, 
 and discoursing about that happy time which I suppose is now 
 drawing near, about that charming little snuggery for which the 
 furniture is ordered, and to which, miss, your old friend and 
 very humble servant will take the liberty of forwarding his 
 best regards and a neat silver teapot. I dare say, with these 
 young people, as with Mr. Philip and Miss Charlotte, all 
 occurrences of life seem to iia\e reference to that event which 
 forms the subject of their perpetual longing and contemplation. 
 There is the doctor's brougham driving away, and Imogene 
 says to Alonzo, " What anguish I shall have if you are ill ! " 
 Then there is the carpenter putting up the hatchment. "Ah, 
 my love, if you were to die, I think they might put up a hatch- 
 ment for both of us." says .Monzo, with a killing sigh. Both 
 sympathise with Mary and tliC baker's boy whispering over the
 
 ON HIS WAV THKOL'GIf THE WORLD. 
 
 497 
 
 railings. Go to, gentle baker's boy, we also know what it is to 
 love ! 
 
 The whole soul and strength of Charlotte and Philip being 
 bent upon marriage, I take leave to put in a document which 
 Philip received at this time ; and can imagine that it occasioned 
 no little sensation : — 
 
 " A star House, New York. 
 
 " And so you are returned to the great city — to the _/u>nu>n, the sire/i/fum, and I sincerely 
 hope the a/'es of our Rome ! Your own letters are but brief ; but I have an occasional corre- 
 spondent (there are few, alas ! who remember t/ie exile !) who keeps me an couraitt of my 
 Philip's history, and tells me that you are industrious, that you are cheerful, that you prosper; 
 Cheerfulness is the companion of Industry, Prosperity their oif spring. That that prosperity 
 xndiS' Mta.\n the /iiHest growth, is an absent father's fondest prayer! Perhaps ere long I 
 shall be able to announce to you that I too am prospering. I am engaged in pursuing a 
 scientific discovery here (it is medical, and connected with my own profession), of which tlie 
 results ought to lead to Fortune, unless the jade has for ever deserted George Brand Firmin ! 
 So you have embarked in the drudgery of the press, and have become a member of the 
 fourth estate. It has been despised, and press-man and poverty were for a long time sup- 
 posed to be synonymous. But the power, the wealth of the press are daily developing, and 
 they will increase yet further. I confess I should have liked to hear that my Philip was 
 pursuing his profession of the bar, at which honor, splendid competence, nay, aristocratic 
 rank, are the prizes of the bold, the hidiistrious, and the deserving. Why should you not? — 
 should I not still hope that you may gain legal eminence and position? A father who has 
 had much to suffer, who is descending the vale of years alone and in a distant land, would 
 be soothed in his exile if he thought "his son would one day be able to repair the shattered 
 fortunes of his race. But it is not yet, I fondly think, too late. You may yet qualify for 
 the bar, and one of its |)rizes may fail to you. I confess it was not without a pang of grief I 
 heard from our kind little friend Mrs. B., you were studying shorthand in order to become 
 a newspaper reporter. .4nd has !• ortune, then, been so relentless to me that my son is to 
 be compelled to follow such a calling? I shall try and be resigned. I had hoped higher 
 things for you — for me. 
 
 " My dear boy, with regard to your romantic attachment for Miss Baynes, wliich our 
 good little Brandon narrates to me, in hex peculiar orthography, but with much touching 
 simplicity,—! make it a rule not to say a word of commeiu, of warning, or remonstrance. 
 Assure as you are your father's son, you will take ynur own line in any matter of 
 attachment to a womaii, and all the fathers in the world won't stop you. In Philip of four- 
 and-twenty I recognize his father thirty years ago. My father scolded, entreated, quar- 
 relled with me, never forgave me. I will learn to be more generous towards my son. I 
 may grieve, but I bear you no malice. If ever I achieve wealth again, you shall not be 
 deprived of it. I suffered so myself from a harsh father, that I will never be one to my 
 son ! 
 
 ■• .A.S you have put on the livery of the Muses, and regularly entered yourself of the 
 F'raternity of the Press, what say you to a little addition to your income by letters addressed 
 to my friend, the editor of the new journal, called here the Gazette of the Upfier Ten 
 Thousand. It is ///<? fashionable journal published here ; and your qualifications are pre- 
 cisely those which would make your services valuable as a contributor. Doctor Geraldine, 
 the editor, is not, I believe, a relative of the Leinster family, but a self-made man, who 
 arrived in this cnuntry some years since, jioor, and an exile from his native country. He 
 advocates Repeal politics in Ire and : but with these of course you need have nothing to do. 
 .And he is much too liberal to expect these from liis contributors. Ihavebeen of service 
 prufessionally to Mrs. Geraldine and himself. My friend of the ^/«<?ra/<2^ introduced me to 
 the doctor. Terrible enemies in print, in private they are perfectly good friends, and the 
 little passages of arms between the two journalists serve rather to amuse th.-m to irritate. 
 ' The grocer's boy from Grmond Quay ' (Geraldine imce, it appears, engaged in that useful 
 but humble calling), and the ' miscreant from Cork' — the editor of the Emerald cornea from 
 that city — assail each other in public, but drink whisky-and-water galore in jirivate. If you 
 write for Geraldine, of course V(ui will say nothing disrespectful about grocers'' boys. His 
 dollars are good silver, of that you may be sure. Dr. G. knows a part of your history : 
 he knows that you are lujw fairly engaged in literary pursuits ; that you are a man of educa- 
 tion, a gentleiu'aii, a man of the world, a ma« of courage. I liave answered for your pos- 
 sessing all these qualities. (The doctor, in his droll, humorous way, said that if you were a 
 chip of tlie old bK>ck you would be just what he called ' the grit.')' Political treatises are 
 not so much wanted as personal news regarding the notabilities of London, and these, ) 
 jissured him, you were the verv man to be able to furnish. You, who know everybody , 
 
 32
 
 ^g8 THE ADVENTURES OF PFf/LIP 
 
 who hnve lived with the great world— tlie world of lawyers, the world of artists, the world ol 
 the university— have already had an experience to which few gentlemen of the press can 
 boiist of, aiid'may turn that experience to profit. Suppose you were to trust a little to your 
 imagination in composing these letters ? there can be no harm in being poetical. Suppose an 
 intelligent correspondent writes that he has met the D-ke of W-ll-ni;l-n.had a private interview 
 with the Pr-m-r, and so forth, who is to say him nay ? And this is the kind of talk ow gobe- 
 moiiches of New York delight in. My worthy friend. Doctor Geraldine, for example— be- 
 tween ourselves his name is Kinnigan, but his private history is strictly entre nous — when he 
 first came to New York astonished the people by the copiousness of his anecdotes regarding 
 the English aristocracy, of whom he knows as much as he does of the Court of Pekin. He 
 was smart, ready, sarcastic, amusing ; he found readers : from one success he advanced to 
 another, and the Gazette, of the Upper Ten Thousand is likely to make this ivorthy tnan's 
 fortune. You really may be servicable to him, and may justly earn the liberal reiiiunera- 
 Hon which he offers for a weekly letter. Anecdotes of men and women of fashion— the 
 more gay and lively tlie more welcome— the quicquidagunt homines, in a word,— should be 
 the/arra^o libelli. Who are the reigning beauties of London? and Beauty, you know, has 
 a rank and fasliion of its own Has any one lately won or lost on the turf or at [ilay .' 
 What are the clubs talking about ? Are there any duels ' What is tlie last scandal ? Does 
 the good old Duke keep his health ? Is that affair over between the Duchess of This and 
 Captain That ? 
 
 " Such is the information which our hadauds here like to have, and for which my friend 
 
 the doctor will pay at the rate of dollars per letter. Your name need not appear at all. 
 
 The remuneration is certain. Cest a prendre ou a laisser, as our lively neighbors say. 
 Write in the first place in confidence to me ; and in whom can you confide more safely than 
 in your father ? 
 
 " You will, of course, pay your respects to your relative the new Lord of Ringwood. 
 For a young man whose family is so powerful as yours, there can surely be no derogation 
 in entertaining some feudal respect, and who knows whether and how soon Sir John Ring- 
 wood may be able to help his cousin ? Pv the wav. Sir John is a Whig, and your paper is 
 a Conservative. But you are, above all, 7w;«;«<? '«'« ?«pKrt'f. In such a subordinate place 
 as you occupy with the Pall .Mall Gazette, a man's private politics do not surely count at 
 all. If Sir John Ringwood, your kinsman, sees any way of helping you, so much the better, 
 and of course your politics will be those of your family. 1 have no knowledge of him. He 
 was a very quiet man at college, where, I regret to say, your father's friends were not of 
 the quiet sort at all. I trust I have repented. I have sown my wild oats. And ah! how 
 pleased I shall be to hear that my Philip has bent his proud head a little, and is ready to 
 submit more than he used of old to the customs of the world. Call upon Sir John, then. 
 As a Whig gentleman of large estate, 1 need not tell you that he will expect respect from 
 you. He is your kinsman ; the representative of your grandfather's gallant and noble race. 
 He bears the name your mother bore. To her my Philip was always gentle, and for her 
 sake you will comply with the wishes of 
 
 " Your aflectionate father, 
 "G. B. F." 
 
 " I have not said a word of compliment to mademoiselle. I wish her so well that 1 own 
 I wish she were about to marry a richer suitor than my dear son. Will fortune ever permit 
 me to embrace my daughter-in-law, and lake your children on my knee ? You will sjieak 
 kindly to them of their grandfather, will you not? Poor General Bayiics, I have heard, 
 used violent and u'lseemly language regarding mc, which I most heartily pardon. I am 
 grateful when I think that I never did General B. an injury : grateful and proud to accept 
 benefits from my own son. These I treasure up in my heart ; and still hope F shall be able 
 to repay with something more substantial than my fondest prayers. Give my best wishes- 
 then, to Miss Charlotte, and try and teach her to "think kindly of her Philip's father." 
 
 Miss Charlotte Baynes, who kept the name of Miss Grig.sby, 
 the governess amongst all the roguish children of a facetious 
 father,' was with us one month, and her mamma expressed great 
 cheerfulness at her absence, and at the thought that she had 
 found such good friends. After two months, her uncle, INIajor 
 MacWhirter, returned from visiting his relations in the North, 
 and offered to take his niece back to France again. He made 
 this proposition with the jollyest air in the world, and as if his 
 niece would jump for joy to go back to her mother. But to the
 
 ON HIS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. ^^q 
 
 Major's astonishment, Miss Baynes turned quite pale, ran to 
 her hostess, flung herself into that lady's arms, and then there 
 began an osculatory performance whicli perfectly astonished the 
 good Major. Charlotte's friend, holding Miss Baynes tight in 
 her embrace, looked fiercely at the Major over the girl's 
 shoulder, and defied him to take her away from that sanctuary. 
 
 "Oh, you dear, good friend! " Charlotte gurgled out, and 
 sobbed I know not what more expressions of fondness and 
 gratitude. 
 
 But the truth is, that two sisters, or mother and daughter, 
 could not love each other more heartily than these two person- 
 ages. Mother and daughter forsooth ! You should have seen 
 Charlotte's piteous look when sometimes the conviction would 
 come on her that she ought at length to go home to mamma ; 
 such a look as I can fancy Iphigenia casting on Agamemnon, 
 when, in obedience to a painful sense of duty, he was about to 
 — to use the sacrificial knife. No, we all loved her. The 
 children would howl at the idea of parting with their Miss 
 Grigsby. Charlotte, in return, helped them to very pretty 
 lessons in music and French — served hot, as it were, from her 
 own recent studies at Tours — and a good daily governess 
 operated on the rest of their education to everybody's satis- 
 faction. 
 
 And so months rolled on and our young favorite still 
 remained with us. Mamma fed the little maid's purse with 
 occasional remittances ; and begged her hostess to supply her 
 with all necessary articles from the milliner. Afterwards, it is 
 true, Mrs. General Baynes * * But why enter upon these 
 painful family disputes in a chapter which has been devoted to 
 sentiment ? 
 
 As soon as Mr. Firmin received the letter above faithfully 
 copied, (with the exception of the pecuniary offer, which I do not 
 consider myself at liberty to divulge,) he hurried down from 
 Thornhaugh Street to Westminster. He dashed by Buttons, 
 the page ; he took no notice of my wondering wife at the 
 drawing-room door; he rushed to the second floor, bursting 
 open the schoolroom door, where Charlotte was teaching our 
 dear third daughter to plav " In my Cottage near a Wood." 
 
 " Charlotte ! Charlotte' ! " he cried out. 
 
 '^ La, Philip! don't you see Miss Grigsby is giving us 
 lessons t " said the children. 
 
 But he would not listen to those wags, and still beckoned 
 Charlotte to him. That young woman rose up and followed 
 him out of the door ; indee'd she would have followed liim out of
 
 ^oo THE ADVENTURES OF PI fl LIP 
 
 the window ; and there, on the stairs, they read Doctor Firmin's 
 letter, with their heads quite close together, you understand. 
 
 " Two hundred a year more," said Philip, his heart throb- 
 bing so that he could hardly speak ; " and your fifty — and two 
 hundred the Gazette — and " 
 
 " Oh, Philip ! " was all Charlotte could say, and then- 
 
 There was a pretty group for the children to see, and for an 
 artist to draw ! 
 
 CHAPTER XXXII. 
 
 WAYS AND MEANS. 
 
 Of course any man of the world, who is possessed of decent 
 prudence, will perceive that the idea of marrying on four hun- 
 dred and fifty pounds a year, so secured as was Master Philip's 
 income, was preposterous and absurd. In the first place, you 
 can't live on four hundred and fifty pounds a year, that is a cer- 
 tainty. People do live on less, I believe. But a life without a 
 brougham, without a decent house, without claret for dinner, 
 and a footman to wait, can hardly be called existence. Philip's 
 income might fail any *lay. He might not please the American 
 paper. He might quarrel with the Pall Mall Gazette. And 
 then what would remain to him ? Only poor little Charlotte's 
 fifty pounds a year ! So Philip's most intimate male friend — a 
 man of thvi world, and with a good deal of experience — argued. 
 Of cours« I was not surprised that Philip did not choose to 
 take my advice ; though 1 did not expect he would become so 
 violently angry, call names almost, and use most rude ex- 
 pressioMS, when, at his express desire, this advice was tendered 
 to hiir, If lie did not want it, why did he ask for it.'' Tlie 
 advice might be unwelcome to him, but why did he choose to 
 tell me at my own table, over my own claret, that it was the 
 advice of a sneak and a worldling ? My good fellow, that 
 claret, though it is a second growth, and I can afford no better, 
 costs seventy-two shillings a dozen. How much is six times 
 three hundred and sixty-five ? A bottle a day is the least you 
 can calculate (the fellow would come to my house and drink 
 two bottles to himself, with the utmost nonchalance). A bottle 
 per diem of that light claret — of that second-growth stuff" — costs 
 one hurdred and four guineas a year, do }0u understand } or,
 
 A LETTER FROM NEW YORK. 
 
 \
 
 ON HIS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD 501 
 
 to speak plainly with you, one hundred and nine pounds Jour 
 shillings !'' 
 
 " Well," says Philip, " aprbs ? We'll do without. Mean- 
 time I will take what 1 can get ! " and he tosses off about a 
 pint as he speaks (these mousseline glass are not only enormous, 
 but they break by dozens). He tosses off a pint of my Larose, 
 and gives a great roar of laughter, as if he had said a good thing ! 
 
 Philip Firmin is coarse and offensive at times, and Bickerton 
 in holding this opinion is not altogether wrong. 
 
 " I'll drink claret when I eome to you, old boy," he says, 
 grinning ; " and at home I will have whiskey-and-water." 
 
 " But suppose Charlotte is ordered claret ! " 
 
 " Well, she can have it," says this liberal lover; " a bottle 
 will last her a week." 
 
 " Don't you see," I shriek out, "that even a bottle a week 
 costs something like — six by fifty-two — eighteen pounds a year! " 
 (I own it is really only fifteen twelve ; but, in the hurry of argu- 
 ment, a man may stretch a figure or so.) " Eighteen pounds 
 for Charlotte's claret ; as much, at least, you great boozy toper, 
 for your whiskey and beer. Why, you actually want a tenth part 
 of your income for the liquor you consume ! And then clothes ; 
 and then lodging ; and then coals ; and then doctor's bills ; and 
 then pocket-money ; and then sea-side for the little dears. Just 
 have the kindness to add these things up, and you will find that 
 you have about two-and-ninepence left to pay the grocer and 
 the butcher." 
 
 " What you call prudence," says Philip, thumping the table, 
 and, of course, breaking a glass, " I call cowardice — I call 
 blasphemy ! Do you mean, as a Christian man, to tell me that 
 two young people and a family, if it should please heaven to 
 send them one, cannot subsist upon five hundred pounds a 
 year ? Look round, sir, at the myriads of God's creatures who 
 live, love, are happy and poor, and be ashamed of the wicked 
 doubt which you utter ! " And he starts up, and strides up 
 and down the dining-room, curling his flaming mustache, and 
 rings the bell fiercely, and says, " Johnson, I've broke a glass. 
 Get me another." 
 
 In the drawing-room, my wdfe asks what we two were fight- 
 ing about ? And, as Charlotte is up 5 'airs, telling the children 
 stories as they are put to bed, or writing to her dear mamma, 
 or what not, our friend bursts out with more rude and violent 
 expressions than he had used in the dinner-room over my 
 glasses which he was smashing, tells my own wife that 1 am an 
 atheist, or at best a miserable skeptic and Sadducee : that I
 
 502 
 
 THE ADVENTURES OF P/f/L/P 
 
 doubt of the goodness of lieaven, and am not thankful for my 
 daily bread. And, with one of her kindling looks directed 
 towards the young man, of course my wife sides with him. Miss 
 Char presently came down from the young folks, and went to 
 the piano, and played us Beethoven's " Dream of Saint Jerome," 
 which always soothes me, and charms me, so that I fancy it is 
 a poem of Tennyson in music. And our children, as they sink 
 off to sleep overhead, like to hear soft music, which soothes 
 then'H into slumber, Miss Baynes says. And Miss Charlotte 
 looks very pretty at her piano - and Philip lies gazing at her, 
 with his great feet and hands tumbled over one of our arm- 
 chairs. And the music, with its solemn cheer, makes us all 
 very happy and kind-hearted, and ennobles us somehow as we 
 listen. And my wife wears her benedictory look whenever she 
 turns towards these young people. She has worked herself up 
 to the opinion that yonder couple ought to marry. She can 
 give chapter and verse for her belief. To doubt about the 
 matter at all is wicked according to her notions. And there 
 are certain points upon which, I humbly own, that I don't dare 
 to argue with her. 
 
 When the women of the house have settled a matter, is there 
 much use in man's resistance .'' If my harem orders that I shall 
 wear a yellow coat and pink trousers, I know that, before three 
 months are over, I shall be walking about in rose-iendre and 
 canary-colored garments. It is the perseverance which con- 
 quers, the daily return to the object desired. Take my 
 advice, my dear sir, when you see your womankind resolute 
 about a matter, give up at once, and have a quiet life. Perhaps 
 to one of these evening entertainments, where Miss Baynes 
 played the piano, as she did yery pleasantly, and Mr. Philip's 
 great clumsy fist turned the leaves, little Mrs. Brandon would 
 come tripping in, and as she surveyed the young couple, her 
 remark would be, " Did you ever see a better suited couple "i " 
 When I came home from chambers, and passed the dining-room 
 door, my eldest daughter with a knowing face would bar the 
 way and say, " You mustn't go in there, papa ! Miss Grigsby 
 is there, and Master Philip is ?wt to be disturbed at his lessons /^^ 
 Mrs. Mugford had begun to arrange marriages between her 
 young people and ours from the v^r)' first day she saw us ; and 
 Mrs. M.'s ch. filly Toddles, rising two years, and our three- 
 year old colt Billyboy, were rehearsing in the nursery the endless 
 little comedy which the grown-up young persons were perform- 
 ing in the drawing-room. 
 
 With the greatest frankness Mrs. Mugford gave her opinion
 
 ON ms 1VAY THROUGH THE WOULD. 303 
 
 that Philip, with four or five hundred a year, would be no better 
 than a sneak if he delayed to marry. How much had she and 
 Mugford when ihi-y married, she would like to know ? " Emily 
 Street, Pentonville, was where 7ve had apartments," she re- 
 marked ; " we were pinched sometimes ; but we owed nothing: 
 and our housekeeping books I can show you." I believe Mrs. 
 M. actually brought these dingy relics of her honeymoon for 
 my wife's inspection. I tell you, my house was peopled with 
 these friends of matrimony. Flies were for ever in requisition, 
 and our boys were very sulky at having to sit for an hour at 
 Schoolbred's, while certain ladies lingered there over blankets, 
 tablecloths, and what not. Once I found my wife and Char- 
 lotte flitting about Wardour Street, the former lady much 
 interested in a great Dutch cabinet, with a glass cupboard and 
 corpulent drawers. And that cabinet was, ere long, carted off 
 to Mrs. Brandon's, Thornhaugh Street ; and in that glass cup- 
 board there was presently to be seen a neat set of china for 
 tea and breakfast. The end was approaching. That event, 
 with which the third volume of the old novels used to close, 
 was at hand. I am afraid our young people can't drive off 
 from St. George's in a chaise and four, and that no noble rela- 
 tive will lend them his castle for the honeymoon. Well : some 
 people cannot drive to happiness, even with four horses ; and 
 other folks can reach the goal on foot. My venerable Muse 
 stoops down, unlooses her cothunius with some difficulty, and 
 prepares to fling that old shoe after the pair. 
 
 Tell, venerable Muse ! what were the marriage gifts which 
 friendship provided for Philip and Charlotte ? Philip's cousin, 
 Ringwood Twysden, came simpering up to me at " Bays's 
 Club " one afternon, and said : " I hear my precious cousin is 
 going to marry. I think I shall send him a broom to sweep a 
 crossin'." I was nearly going to say, "This was a piece of 
 generosity to be expected from your father's son;" but the 
 fact is, that I did not think of this withering repartee until I 
 was crossing St. James's Park on my way home, when Twysden 
 of course was out of ear-shot. A great number of my best 
 witticisms have been a little late in making their appearance in 
 the world. If we could but hear the «;/spoken jokes, how we 
 should all laugh ; if we could but speak them, how witty we 
 should be ! When you have left the room, you have no notion 
 what clever things I was going to say when you baulked me by 
 going away. Well, then, the fact is, the Twysden family gave 
 Philip nothing on his marriage, being the exact sum of regard 
 which they professed to have for him.
 
 S04 
 
 THE A D I 'ENTl 'KES OF />////. IJ ' 
 
 Mrs. Major MAcWuiRTRRgave the bride an Indian Ijrooch, 
 representing the Taj Mahal at Agra, which General Jiaynes 
 had given to his sister-in-law in old days. At a later period, it 
 is true, Mrs, Mac asked Charlotte for the brooch l)ack again ; 
 but this was when many family quarrels had raged between the 
 relatives — quarrels which to describe at Icngtii would be to tax 
 too much the writer and the readers of this history. 
 
 Mrs. Mugford presented an elegant plated coffee-pot, six 
 drawing-room almanacs (spoils of the T'a// Afall Gazette), and 
 fourteen richly cut jelly-glasses, most useful for negus if the 
 young couple gave evening-parties ; for dinners they would not 
 be able to afford. 
 
 Mrs. Brandon made an offering of two tablecloths and 
 twelve dinner napkins, most beautifully worked, and I don't 
 know how much house linen. 
 
 The Lady of the Present Writer — Twelve tea-spoons 
 in bullion, and a pair of sugar-tongs. Mrs. Baynes, Philip's 
 mother-in-law, sent him also a pair of sugar-tongs, of a light 
 manufacture, easily broken. He keeps a tong to the present 
 day, and speaks very satirically regarding that relic. 
 
 Philip's Inn of Court — A bill for commons and Inn 
 taxes, with the Treasurer's compliments. 
 
 And these, 1 think, formed the items of poor little Char- 
 lotte's meagre trousseau. Before Cinderella went to the ball 
 she was almost as rich as our little maid. ( 'harlotte's mother 
 sent a grim consent to the child's marriage, but declined her- 
 self to attend it. She was ailing and poor. Her year's widow- 
 hood was just over. She had her other children to look after. 
 My impression is that Mrs. Baynes thought that she would be 
 out of Philip's power so long as she remained abroad, and that 
 the Ceneral's savings would be secure from him. So she dele- 
 gated her authority to Philip's friends in London, and sent her 
 daughter a moderate wish for her happiness, which may or may 
 not have profited the young people. 
 
 "Well, my dear, you are rich, compared to what I was, 
 when I married," little Mrs. Brandon said to her young friend. 
 " You will have a good husband. That is more than I had. 
 You will have good friends ; and I was almost alone for a 
 time, until it pleased God to befriend me." It was not without 
 a feeling of awe that we saw these young people commence 
 that voyage of life on which henceforth they were to journey 
 together ; and I am sure that of the small company who accom- 
 panied them to the silent little chapel where they were joined 
 in marriage there was not one who did not follow them with
 
 OiV HIS U'A y Til ROUGH THE WORLD. 505 
 
 tender l;oo(1 wishes and heartfelt pra\ers. 'I'liey had a liule 
 purse provided for a month's lioliday. They had health, hope, 
 good spirits, good friends. I have never learned that life's 
 trials were over after marriage ; only lucky is he who has a 
 loving companion to share them. As for the lady with whom 
 Charlotte had stayed before her marriage, she was in a state 
 of the most lachrymose sentimentality. She sat on the bed in 
 the chamber which the little maid had vacated. Her tears 
 flowed copiously. She knew not why, she could not tell how 
 the girl had wound herself round her maternal heart. And I 
 think if heaven had decreed this young creature should be 
 poor, it had sent her many blessings and treasures in compen- 
 sation. 
 
 Every respectable man and woman in London will, of 
 course, pity these young people, and reprobate the mad risk 
 which they w^ere running, and yet, by the influence and example 
 of a sentimental wife probably, so madly sentimental have I 
 become, that I own sometimes I almost fancy these misguided 
 wretches were to be envied. 
 
 A melancholy little chapel it is where they were married, 
 and stands hard by our house, \^'e did not decorate the 
 church with flowers, or adorn the beadles with white ribbons. 
 We had, I must confess, a dreary lif.Ie breakfast, not in the 
 least enlivened by Mugford's jokes, who would make a speech 
 dc circoiisfance, which was not, 1 am thankful to sa}-, reported in 
 the Fall Mall Gazette. " We sha'n't charge you for advertising 
 the marriage t/ierr, my dear," Mrs. Mugford said. " And I've 
 already took it myself to Mr. Burjoyce." Mrs. Mugford had in- 
 sisted upon pinning a large white favor upon John, who dro\e 
 her from Hampstead : but that was the only ornament jDresent 
 at the nuptial ceremony, much to the disappointment of the 
 good lady. There was a very pretty cake, with two doves in 
 sugar, on ''he top, which the Little Sister made and sent, and 
 no other hymeneal emblem. Our little girls as bridesmaids ap- 
 peared, to be sure, in new bonnets and dresses, but everybody 
 else looked so quiet and demure, that when we went into the 
 church, three or four street urchins knocking about the gate, 
 said, " Look at 'em. They're going to be 'ung." And so the 
 words are spoken, and the indissoluble knot is tied. Amen. 
 For better, for worse, for good days or evil, love each other, 
 cling to each other, dear friends. Fulfil your- course, and ac- 
 complish your life's toil. In sorrow, soothe each other ; in 
 illness, watch and tend. Cheer, fond wife, the husband's 
 struggle ; lighten his gloomy hours with your tender smiles, and
 
 5 o6 TITF. Am 'ENTURES OF 1 'J//L IP 
 
 gladden his home with your love. Husband, father, whatso- 
 ever your lot, be your heart pure, your life honest. For the 
 sake of those who bear your name, let no bad action sully it. As 
 you look at those innocent faces, which ever tenderly greet you, 
 be yours, too, innocent, and your conscience without reproach. 
 As the young people kneel before the altar railing, some such 
 thoughts as these pass through a friend's mind who witnesses 
 the ceremony of their marriage. Is not all we hear in that 
 place meant to apply to ourselves, and to be carried away for 
 everyday cogitation t 
 
 After the ceremony we sign the book, and walk back de- 
 murely to breakfast. And Mrs. Mugford does not conceal her 
 disappointment at the small preparations made for the recep- 
 tion of the marriage party. " I call it shabby, Brandon ; and 
 I speak my mind. No favors. Only your cake. No speeches 
 to speak of. No lobster-salad : and wine on the sideboard. 
 I thought your Queen Square friends knew how to do the thing 
 better ! When one of my gurls is married, I promise you we 
 sha'n't let her go out of the back door ; and at least we shall 
 have the best four grays that Newman's can furnish. It's my 
 belief your young friend is getting too fond of money, Brandon, 
 and so I have told Mugford." But these, you see, were only 
 questions of taste. Good Mrs. Mugford's led her to a green 
 satin dress and pink turban, W'hen other ladies were in gray or 
 quiet colors. The intimacy between our two families dwindled 
 immediately after Philip's marriage ; Mrs. M., I am sorry to 
 say, setting us down as shabby-genteel people, and she couldn't 
 bear screwing — never could ! 
 
 Well : the speeches were spoken. The bride was kissed, 
 and departed with her bridegroom : they had not even a valet 
 and lady's-maid to bear them company. The route of the happy 
 pair was to be Canterbury, Folkestone, Boulogne, Amiens, 
 Paris, and Italy perhaps, if their little stock of pocket-money 
 would ser\'e them so far. But the very instant when half was 
 spent, it was agreed that these young people should turn their 
 faces homeward again ; and meanwhile the printer and Mugford 
 himself agreed that they would do Mr. Sub-editor's duty. How 
 much had they in the little purse for their pleasure-journey ? 
 That is no business of ours, surely ; but with youth, health, hap- 
 piness, love, amongst their possessions, I don't think our young 
 friends had need to be discontented. Away then they drive to 
 their cab to the railway station. Farewell, and heaven bless 
 you, Charlotte and Philip ! I have said how I found my wife 
 crying in her favorite's vacant bedroom. The marriage table
 
 ON HTS WA Y THROUGH THE WORLD. 50) 
 
 did coldly furnish forth a funeral kind of dinner. 'I'he cohl 
 chicken clioked us all, and the jelly was but a sickly compound 
 to my taste, though it was the Little Sister's most artful manu- 
 facture. I own for one I was quite miserable. I found no 
 comfort at clubs, nor could the last new novel fix my atten 
 tention. I saw Philip's eyes and heard the warble of Charlotte's 
 sweet voice. I walked off from " Bays's," and through Old 
 Parr Street, where Philip had lived, and his parents entertained 
 me as a boy ; and then tramped to Thornhaugh Street, rather 
 ashamed of myself. The maid said mistress was in Mr. 
 Philip's rooms, the two pair, — and what was that I heard on 
 the piano as I entered the apartment ? Mrs. Brandon sat there 
 hemming some chintz window-curtains, or bed-curtains, or what 
 not : by her side sat my own eldest girl stitching away verj' 
 resolutely ; and at the piano — the piano which Philip had 
 bought — there sat my own wife picking out that " Dream of 
 Saint Jerome," of Beethoven, which Charlotte used to play so 
 delicately. We had tea out of Philip's tea-things, and a nice 
 hot cake, which consoled some of us. But I have known few 
 evenings more melancholy than that. It felt like the first night 
 at school after the holidays, when we all used to try and appear 
 cheerful, you know. But ah ! how dismal the gayety was : and 
 how dreary that lying awake in the night, and thinking of the 
 happy days just over. 
 
 The way in which we looked forward for letters from our 
 bride and bridegroom was quite a curiosity. At length a letter 
 arrived from these personages : and as it contains no secret, I 
 take the liberty to print it in extenso. 
 
 " A miens, Friday. Paris, Saturday. 
 
 " Dearest Friends, — (For the dearest friends you are to us, and will continue to be 
 as long as we /rat')— We perform our promise of writing to you to say that we are ivell, and 
 safe, and happy I Philip says I mustn't use dashes, hwK 1 can't help it. He says, he 
 supposes I am dashing off a letter. You know his joking way. Oh, what a blessing 
 it is to see him so happy. And if he is happy I am. I tremble to think how happy. He 
 sits opposite me, smoking his cigar, looking so noble ! / like it, and I went to our 
 room and brought him this one. He says, ' Char, if I were to say bring me your head, 
 you would order a waiter to cut it off.' Pray, did I not promise three days ago to love, 
 honor, and obey him, and am I going to break my promise already? I hope not. I pray 
 not. All my life 1 hope I shall be trying to keep that promise of mine. We liked 
 Canterbury almost as much as dear Westminster. We had an open carriage and took a 
 glorious drive to Folkestone, and in the crossing Philip was ill, and I wasn't. And he 
 looked very droll ; and he was in a dreadful bad humor ; and that was my first appearance 
 as nurse. I think I should like him to be a little ill sometimes, so that I may sit up and 
 take care of him. We went through the cords at the custom-house at Boulogne ; and I 
 remembered how, two years ago, I passed through those very cords with my poor papa, and 
 he stood outside, and saw us ! We went to the ' Hotel des i?ains.' We walked about the 
 town. We went to the Tintelleries, where we used to live, and to your house in the 
 Haute Ville, where I remember everything as if tt was yesterday. Don't you remember, 
 as we were walking one day, you said, 'Charlotte, there is the steamer coming ;_ there is 
 the smoke of his funnel ; ' and I said, ' What steamer? ' and you said, ' The Philip, to be 
 aure.* And he came up, smoking his pipe ! We passed over and over the old ground where
 
 5o8 
 
 THE ADVENTURES OF riTILTP 
 
 wc Used t" walk. \Vc went to the pier, and gave money to the poor little hunrhl).\( k who 
 plays tlie guitar, and he i3\d,' Merci, madame.' How droll it sounded? And that j;ood 
 kind Marie at the ' Hotel des Bains' remembered u-^, and called us ' mcs enfans.'' And if 
 you were not the most good-natured woman in /lie ivorld, I think I should be ashamed to 
 write such nonsense. 
 
 " Think of Mrs. Brandon having knitted me a purse, which she gave me as we went away 
 from dear, dear Queen Square; and when I opened it, there were five sovereigns 
 in it! When we found what the purse contained, Philip used one of liis great _;«ro«j (as 
 he always does when lie is most tender-hearted), and he said that woman was an angel, and 
 that we would keep those five sovereigns, and never change them. Ah! I am thankful my 
 husband lias such friends! I will Ifive all who love hin: — you most of all. For were not 
 you the means of bringing this noble heart to me? I fancy I have known bigger people, since 
 1 have known you, and some of your friends. Their talk is simpler, their thoughts are 
 greater than — those with whom I used to live. P. says, heaven has given Mrs. Brandon 
 such a great heart, that she must have a good intellect. If loving my Philip be wisdom, I 
 know some one who will be very wise ! 
 
 " If I was not in a very great hurry to see mamma, Philip said we rnight stop a day at 
 Amiens. And we went to the Cathedral, and to whom do you think it is dedicated? to itty 
 saint: to Saint Firmin! and oh! 1 prayed to heaven to give me strength to devote my 
 life to vty saint^s service, to love him always, as a pure, true wife ; in sickness to guard 
 him, in sorrow to soothe him. I will try and learn and study, not to make my intellect 
 equal to his — very few women can hope for that — but that I may better comprehend him, 
 and give him a companion more worthy of him. I wonder whether there are many men in 
 the world as clever as our husbands ? Though Philip is so modest. He says he is not 
 clever rt^ rt//. Yet I know he is, and grander somehow than other men. I said nothing, 
 but 1 used to listen at Queen Scjuare ; and some who came who thought best of themselves, 
 seemed to me pert, and worldly, and small ; and some were like princes somehow. My 
 Philip is one of the prince -. Ah, dear friend ! may I not give thanks where thanks are due, 
 that I am chosen to be the wife of a true gentleman ? Kind, and brave, and loyal Phihp I 
 Honest and generous, — above deceit or selfish scheme. Oh ! I hope it is not wrong to be 
 so happy! 
 
 " \Ve wrote to mamma and dear Madame Smolensk to say we were coming. Mamma 
 finds Madame de Valentinois' boarding-house even dearer than dear Madame Smolensk's. 
 I don't mean a pun ! She says she has found out that Madame de Valentinois' real name 
 is Cornichon ; that she was a person of the worst character, and that cheating at ^carif was 
 practised at her house. She took up her own two francs and another two-franc piece from 
 the card-table, saying that Colonel Boulotte was cheating, and by rights the money was 
 h-'rs. She is going to leave Madame de Valentinois at the end of her month, or as soon as 
 her children, who have the measles, can move. She desired that on no account I would 
 come to see her at Madame V.'s;and she brought Philip '.2/. loj. in five-fianc pieces, 
 which she laid down on the table before him, and said it was my first quarter's payment. It 
 is not due yet, I know. ' But do you think 1 will be beholden,' says she, ' to a man like 
 you! ' And P. shrugged his shoulders, and put the rouleau ai silver pieces into a drawer. 
 He did not say a word, but of course, I saw he was ill jileased. ' What shall we do with 
 your fortune, Char ? ' he said, when mamma went away. And a part we spent at the opera 
 and at Very's restaurant, where we took our dear kind Madame Smolensk. .Ah, how good 
 that woman was to me ! Ah, how I suffered in that house when mamma wanted to part 
 me from Philip ! We walked by and saw the windows of the room where that horrible, 
 horrible tragedy was performed, and Philip shook his fist at the green Jalousies. ' Good 
 heavens ! ' he said : ' how, my darling, how I was made to suffer there ! ' I bear no malice. 
 I will do no injury. But ] can never forgive : never! I can forgive mamma, who made my 
 husband so unhappy ; but can I love her again ? Indeed and indeed I have tried. Often 
 and often in my dreams that horrid tragedy is acted over again ; and they are taking him 
 from me, and I feel as if I should die. When I was with you I used often to be afraid to go 
 to sleep for fear of that dreadful dream, and I kept one of his letters under my pillow so 
 that I might liold it in the night. And now I No one can part usl— oh, no one! — until 
 the end comes ! 
 
 " He took me about to all his old hacJi^or haunts ; to the ' Hotel Poussin,* where he 
 used to live, which is very dingy but comfortable. And he introduced me to the landlady, 
 in a Madras handkerchief, and to the landlord (in earrings and with no coat on), and to the 
 little boy -who /rottes the floors. And he said, ' Tiens ' and ' vierci, madame / ' as we gave 
 him a five-franc jiiece out 0/ my fortune- And then we went to the cafe opposite the Bourse, 
 where Philip used to write his letters ; and then we went to the Palais Royal, where 
 Madame de Smolensk was in waiting for us. And then we went to the play. And then we 
 went to Tortoni's to take ices. And then we walked a part of the way home with Madame 
 Smolensk under a hundred million blazing stars ; and then we walked down the Champs 
 Elysdes avenues, by which Philip used to come to me, and beside the plashing fountains 
 shining under the silver moon. And, oh, Laura! I wonder under the silver moon waf 
 anybody so happy as your loving and grate/nl
 
 ON HIS WAY THROUGH THK WORLD. 509 
 
 •' P.S." [In the handwriting of Philip Firniin Esq.]— " Mv hear KKiENUS.--!'m so 
 jolly that it seems like a dream. I have been watching Charlotte scribble, scribble for an 
 hour past ; and wondered and thought is it actually true ? and gone and convinced myself 
 of the truth by looking at the paper and the dashes which she will put mider the words. 
 My dear friends, what have I done in life that I am to be made a present of a little angel ? 
 Once tlu-re was so much wrong in me, and my heart was so black and revengeful, that I 
 knew not what might happen to me. -She came and rescued me. The love of this creature 
 lierities me— and— and I tliink that is all. I think I only want to say that I am the hap- 
 piest man in Europe. That Saint Firmin at Amiens ! Didn't it seem like a giii>d omen? 
 P.V St. George ! 1 never heard of St. V. until I lighled on him in the cathedr.il. When 
 shall we write next ? Where shall we tell you to direct? We don't know where we are 
 going. We don't want letters. But we are not the less grateful to dear kind friends ; and 
 
 our names are ,, „ „ „ . 
 
 " P. AND C. F. ' 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIII. 
 
 DESCRIBES A SITUATION INTERESTING BUT NOT UNEXPECTED, 
 
 Only very wilful and silly children cry after the moon. 
 Sensible people who have shed their sweet tooth can't be 
 expected to be very much interested about honey. We may 
 hope Mr. and Mrs. Philip Firmin enjoyed a pleasant wedding 
 tour and that sort of thing : but as for chronicling its delights 
 or adventures, Miss Sowerby and I vote that the task i ; alto- 
 gether needless and immoral. Young people are already much 
 too sentimental, and inclined to idle, maudlin reading. Life is 
 earnest, Miss Sowerby remarks (with a strong inclination to 
 spell "earnest " with a large E). Life is labor. Life is duty. 
 Life is rent. Life is taxes. Life brings its ills, bills, doctor's 
 pills. Life is not a mere calendar of honey and moonshine. 
 Very good. But without love, Miss Sowerby, life is just death, 
 and I know, my dear, you would no more care to go on with it, 
 than with a new chapter of — of our dear friend Boreham's new 
 story. 
 
 Between ourselves, Philip's humor is not much more light- 
 some than that of the ingenious contemporary above named ; 
 but if it served to amuse Philip himself, why baulk him of a 
 little sport ? Well, then : he wrote us a great ream of lumber- 
 ing pleasantries, dated Paris, Thursday ; Geneva, Saturday. 
 Summit of Mont Blanc. Monday ; Timbuctoo, Wednesday. 
 Pekin, Friday — with facetious descriptions of those spots and 
 cities. He said that in the last-naftied place, Charlotte's shoes 
 being worn out, those which she purchased were rather tight 
 for her, and the high heels annoyed her. He stated that the
 
 ^lo THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 beef at Timbuctoo was not cooked enough for Charlotte's taste, 
 and that the Emperor's attentions were becoming rather marked, 
 and so forth ; whereas poor little Char's simple postscripts men- 
 tioned no travelling at all ; but averred that they were staying- 
 at Saint Germain, and as happy as the day was long. As 
 happy as the day was long ? As it was short, alas ! Their 
 little purse was very slenderly furnished ; and in a very, very 
 brief holiday, poor Philip's few napoleons had almost all rolled 
 awav. Luckily, it was pay-day when the young people came 
 back to London. They were almost reduced to the Little Sis- 
 ter's wedding present : and surely they would rather work than 
 purchase a few hours' more ease with that poor widow's mite. 
 
 Wlio talked and was afraid of poverty .-' J^hilip, with his 
 two newspapers, averred that he had enough ; more than 
 enough ; could save ; could put by. It was at this time that 
 Ridley, the Academician, painted that sweet picture, No. 1,976 
 — of course you remember it — ' Portrait of a Lady.' He became 
 romantically attached to the second-fioor lodger ; would have 
 no noisy parties in his rooms, or smoking, lest it should annoy 
 her. Would Mrs. Firmin desire to give entertainments of her 
 own .-' His studio and sitting-room were at her orders. He 
 fetched and carried. He brought presents, and theatre-boxes. 
 He was her slave of slaves. And she gave him back in return 
 for all this romantic adoration a condescending shake of a soft 
 little hand, and a kind look from a pair of soft eyes, with which 
 the painter was fain to be content. Low of stature, and of 
 misshapen form, J.J. thought himself naturally outcast from 
 marriage and love, and looked in with longing eyes at the 
 paradise which he was forbidden to enter. And Mr. Philip 
 sat within this Palace of Delight ; and lolled at his ease, and 
 took his pleasure, and Charlotte ministered to him. And once 
 in a way, my lord sent out a crumb of kindness, or a little cup 
 of comfort, to the outcast at the gate, who blessed his benefac- 
 tress, and my lord his benefactor, and was thankful. Charlotte 
 had not two-pence : but she had a little court. It was the 
 fashion for Philip's friends to come and bow before her. Very 
 fine gentlemen who had known him at college, and forgot him, 
 or sooth to say, thought him rough and overbearing, now sud- 
 denly remembered him, and his young wife had quite fashion- 
 able assemblies at her five o'clock tea-table. All men liked her, 
 and Miss Sowerby of course says Mrs. Firmin was a good- 
 natured, quite harmless litfle woman, rather pretty, and — you 
 know, my dear — such as men like. Look you, if I like cold 
 veal, dear Sowerby, it is that my tastes are simple. A fine
 
 ON II IS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. 
 
 5n 
 
 tough old dry camel, no doubt, is a much nobler and more 
 sagacious animal — and perhaps you think a double hump is 
 quite a delicacy. 
 
 Yes : Mrs. Philip was a success. She had scarce any 
 female friends as yet, being too poor to go into the world : but 
 she had Mrs. Pendennis, and dear little Mrs. lirandon, and 
 Mrs. Mugford, whose celebrated trap repeatedly brought del- 
 icacies for the bride from Hampstead, whose chaise was once 
 or twice a week at Philip's door, and who was very much exer- 
 cised and impressed by the fine company whom she met in 
 Mrs,. Firmin's apartments. "Lord Thingambury's card ! what 
 next, Brandon, upon my word ? Lady Slowby at home ? well, 
 I never, Mrs. B. ! " In such artless phrases Mrs. Mugford 
 would express her admiration and astonishment during the early 
 time, and when Charlotte still retained the good lady's favor. 
 That a state of things far less agreeable ensued, I must own. 
 But though there is ever so small a cloud in the sky e\'en now, 
 let us not heed it for a while, and bask and be content and 
 happy in the sunshine. " Oh, Laura, I tremble when I think 
 how happy I am ! '" was our little bird's perpetual warble. 
 " How did I live when I was at home with mamma? " she would 
 say. " Do you know that Philip never scolds me ? If he were 
 to say a rough word I think I should die ; whereas mamma was 
 barking, barking from morning till night, and I didn't care a 
 pin." This is what comes of injudicious scolding, as of any other 
 drug. The wholesome medicine loses its efifects. The inured 
 patient calmly takes a dose that would frighten or kill a stran- 
 ger. Poor Mrs. Baynes' crossed letters came still, and I am not 
 prepared to pledge my word that Charlotte read them all. Mrs. 
 B. offered to come and superintend and take care of dear Philip 
 when an enteresting event should take place. But Mrs. Brandon 
 was already engaged for this important occasion, and Charlotte 
 became so alarmed lest her mother should invade her, that 
 Philip wrote curtly, and positively forbade Mrs. Baynes. You 
 remember the picture " A Cradle " by J. J. ? the two little rosy 
 feet brought I don't know how many hundred guineas apiece to 
 Mr. Ridley. The mother herself did not study babydom more 
 fondly and devotedly than Ridley did in the ways, looks, 
 features, anatomies, attitudes, baby-clothes, &c., of this first- 
 born infant of Charlotte and Philip Firmin. My wife is very 
 angry because I have forgotten whether the first of the young 
 Firmin brood was a boy or a girl, and says I shall forget the 
 names of my own children next. Well ? " At this distance of 
 time, 1 think it was a boy, — for their boy is very tall, you know
 
 5 1 2 Tin-: A D [ -EXTUK/CS OF PHIL IP 
 
 — a great deal taller Not a boy ? Then, between our- 
 selves, I have no doubt it was a " " A goose," says the 
 
 lady, which is not even reasonable. 
 
 This is certain, we all thought the young mother looked 
 very pretty, with her pink cheeks and beaming eyes, as she 
 bent over the little infant. J. J. says he thinks there is some- 
 thing heavenly in the looks of young mothers at that time. 
 Nay, he goes so far as to declare that a tigress at the Zoological 
 Gardens looks beautiful and gentle as she bends her black 
 nozzle over her cubs. And if a tigress, why not Mrs. P^'ilip? 
 O ye powers of sentiment, in what a state J. J. was about this 
 young woman ! There is a brightness in a young mother's eye : 
 there are pearl and rose tints on her cheek, which are sure to 
 fascinate a painter. This artist used to hang about Mrs. Bran- 
 don's rooms, till it was droll to see him. I believe he took off 
 his shoes in his own studio, so as not to disturb by his creaking 
 the lady overhead. He purchased the most preposterous mug, 
 and other presents for the infant. Philip went out to his club 
 or his newspaper as he was ordered to do. But Mr. J. J. could 
 not be got away from Thornhaugh Street, so that little Mrs. 
 Brandon laughed at him : — absolutely laughed at him. 
 
 During all this while Philip and his wife continued in the 
 very greatest favor with Mr. and Mrs. Mugford, and were invited 
 by that worthy couple to go with their infant to Alugford's villa 
 at Hampstead, where a change of air might do good to dear 
 baby and dear mamma. Philip went to this village retreat. 
 Streets and terraces now cover over the house and grounds 
 which worthy Mugford inhabited, and which people say he used 
 to call his Russian Irby. He had amassed in a small space a 
 heap of country pleasures. He had a little garden ; a little 
 paddock ; a little green-house ; a little cucumber-frame ; a little 
 stable for his little trap ; a little Guernsey cow ; a little dairy ; 
 a little pigsty ; and with this little treasure the good man was 
 not a little content. He loved and praised everything that was 
 Ills. No man admired his own port more than Mugford, oi 
 paid more compliments to his own butter and home-baked 
 bread. He enjoyed his own happiness. He appreciated his 
 own worth. He loved to talk of the days when he was a poor 
 boy in London streets, and now — " now try that glass of port, 
 my boy, and say whether (lie Lord Mayor has got any better," 
 he would say, winking at his glass and his company. To be 
 virtuous, to be lucky, and constantly to think and own that you 
 are so — is not this true happiness? To sing, hymns in praise of 
 himself is a charming amusement — at least to the performer;
 
 OiV HIS IV A Y THROUGH THE WORLD 
 
 513 
 
 and anybody who dined at Mugford's table was pretty sure to 
 hear some of this music after dinner. I am sorry to say Philip 
 did not care for this trumpet-blowing. He was frightfully bored 
 at Haverstock Hill ; and when bored, Mr. Philip is not alto- 
 gether an agreeable companion. He will yawn in a man's face, 
 He will contradict you freely. He will say the mutton is tough, 
 or the wine not fit to drink ; that such and such an orator is 
 overrated, and such and such a politician is a fool. Mugford 
 and his guest had battles after dinner, had actually high words. 
 " W'hat-hever is it, Mugford ? and what were you quarrelling 
 about in the dining-room .'' " asks Mrs. Mugford. " Quarrelling.^ 
 It's only the sub-editor snoring," said the gentleman, with a 
 flushed face. " My wine ain't good enough for him ; and now 
 my gentleman must put his boots upon a chair and go to sleep 
 under my nose. He is a cool hand, and no mistake, Mrs. M." 
 At this juncture poor little Char would gently glide down from 
 a visit to her baby : and would play something on the piano, 
 and soothe the rising anger ; and thus Philip would come in 
 from a little walk in the shrubberies, where he had been blowing 
 a little cloud. Ah ! there was a little cloud rising indeed : — 
 quite a little one — nay, not so little. When you consider that 
 Philip's bread depended on the good-will of these people, you 
 will allow that his friends might be anxious regarding the future. 
 A word from Mugford, and Philip and Charlotte and the child 
 were adrift on the world. And these points Mr. Firmin w'ould 
 freely admit, while he stood discoursing of his own affairs (as. 
 he loved to do), his hands in his pockets, and his back warming 
 at our fire. 
 
 " My dear fellow," says the candid bridegroom, " these 
 things are constantly in my head. I used to talk about 'em 
 to Char, but I don't now. They disturb her, the poor thing , 
 and she clutches hold of the baby ; and — and it tears my heart 
 out to think that any grief should come to her. 1 try and do 
 my best, my good people — but when I'm bored I can't help 
 showing I'm bored, don't you see .'' I can't be a hypocrite. 
 No, not for two hundred a year, or for twenty thousand. You 
 can't make a silk purse out of that sow's-ear of a Mugford. A 
 very good man. I don't say no. A good father, a good hus- 
 band, a generous host, and a most tremendous bore, and cad. 
 Be agreeable to him ? How can I be agreeable when I am 
 being killed ? He has a story about Leigh Hunt being put 
 into Newgate, where Mugford, bringing him proofs, saw Lord 
 Byron. I cannot keep awake during that story any longer ; or, 
 if awake, I grind my teeth, and swear inwardly, so that I know 
 
 33
 
 5M 
 
 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 I'm dreadful to hear and see. Well, Mugford has yellow satin 
 sofas in the 'droaring-room ' — " 
 
 " Oh, Philip ! " says a lady ; and two or three circumjacent 
 children set up an insane giggle, which is speedily and sternly 
 silenced. 
 
 " I tell you she calls it ' droaring-room.' You know she 
 does, as well as I do. She is a good woman : a kind woman : 
 a hot-tempered woman. 1 hear her scolding the servants in 
 the kitchen with immense vehemence, and at prodigious length. 
 But how can Char frankly be the friend of a woman who calls 
 a drawing-room a droaring-room .'' With our dear little friend 
 in Thornhaugh Street, it is different. She makes no pretence 
 even at equality. Here is a patron and patroness, don't you 
 see ? When Mugford walks me round his paddock and gar- 
 dens, and says, ' Look year, Firuiin ; ' or scratches one of his 
 pigs on the back, and says, ' We'll 'ave a cut of this fellow on 
 Saturday ' " — (explosive attempts at insubordination and de- 
 rision on the part of the children again are severely checked by 
 the parental authorities) — " ' we'll 'ave a cut of this fellow on 
 Saturday,' 1 felt inclined to throw him or myself into the trough 
 over the palings. Do you know that that man put that hand 
 into his pocket and offered me some filberts t " 
 
 Here I own the lady to whom Philip was addressing him- 
 self turned pale and shuddered. 
 
 " 1 can no more be that man's friend que celui du domes- 
 tique qui vient d'apporter le what-d'you-call'em .'' le coal-scuttle " 
 — (John entered the room ^'ith that useful article during Philip's 
 oration — and we allowed the elder children to laugh this time, 
 for the fact is, none of us knew the French for coal scuttle, and 
 I will wager there is no such word in Chambaud). "This 
 holding back is not arrogance," Philip went on. " This reti- 
 cence is not want of humility. To serve that man honestly is 
 one thing ; to make friends with him, to laugh at his dull 
 jokes, is to make friends with the mammon of unrighteousness, 
 is subserviency and hypocrisy on my part. I ought to say to 
 him, Mr. Mugford, I will give you my work for your wage ; I 
 will compile your paper, I will produce an agreeable miscel- 
 lany containing proper proportions of news, politics, and scan- 
 dal, put titles to your paragraphs, see the I'd// Mall Gazette 
 ship-shape through the press, and go home to my wife and 
 dinner. You are my employer, but you are not my friend, and 
 bless my soul ! there is five o'clock striking ! " (The time- 
 piece in our drawing-room gave that announcement as he was 
 speaking.^ " We have what Mugford calls o, widite-choker
 
 
 ;|,i3ila^f^^ : :^^^-^^' 
 
 MUGFORD S FAVORITE.
 
 ON- HIS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. 
 
 515 
 
 dinner to-day, in honor of the pig ! " And with this Philip 
 pkuiges out of tlie house, and I hoped reached Hampstead in 
 time for the entertainment.' 
 
 Philip's friends in Westminster felt no little doubt about 
 his prospects, and the Little Sister shared their alarm. " They 
 are not fit to be with those folks," Mrs. Brandon said, " though 
 as for Mrs. Philip, dear thing, I am sure nobody can ever 
 quarrel with hc7'. With me it's different. I never had no edu- 
 cation, you know — no more than the Mugfords, but I don't like 
 to see my Philip sittin' down as if he was the guest and equal 
 of that fellar." Nor indeed did it ever enter " that fellar's " head 
 that Mr. Frederick Mugford could be Mr. Philip Firmin's equal. 
 With our knowledge of the two men, then we all dismally looked 
 forward to a rupture between Firmin and his patron. 
 
 As for the New York journal, we were more easy in respect 
 to Philip's success in that quarter. Several of his friends made 
 a vow to help him. We clubbed club-stories ; we begged from 
 our polite friends anecdotes (that would bear sea-transport) of 
 the fashionable world. We,happened to overhear the most re- 
 markable conversations between the most influential public 
 characters who had no secrets from us. We had astonishing 
 intelligence at most European courts ; exclusive reports of the 
 Emperor of Russia's last joke — his last ? his next, very likely. 
 We knew the most secret designs of the Austrian Privy Coun- 
 cill ; the views which the Pope had in his eye ; who was the 
 latest favorite of the Grand Turk, and so on. The upper Ten 
 Thousand at New York were supplied with a quantity of infor- 
 mation which I trust profited them. It was " Palmerston re- 
 marked yesterday at dinner," or, " The good old Duke said 
 last night at Aspley House to the French Ambassador," and 
 the rest. The letters were signed " Philalethes ;" and, as no- 
 body was wounded by the shafts of our long bow, I trust Mr. 
 Philip and his friends may be pardoned for twanging it. By 
 information procured from learned female personages, we even 
 managed to give accounts, more or less correct, of the latest 
 ladies' fashions. We were members of all the clubs ; we were 
 present at the routs and assemblies of the political leaders of 
 both sides. We had little doubt that Philalethes would be 
 successful, at New York, and looked forward to an increased 
 payment for his labors. At the end of the first year of Philip 
 Firmin's married life, we made a calculation by which it was 
 clear that he had actually saved money. His expenses, to be 
 sure, were increased. There was a bal)y in the nursery : but 
 there was a little bag of soxereigns in tlie cupboard, and the 
 thrifty young fellow hoped to add still more to his store.
 
 5 1 6 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 We were relieved at finding that Firniin and his wife were 
 not invited to repeat their visit to their employer's house at 
 Hampstead. An occasional invitation to dinner was still sent 
 to the young people ; but Mugford, a haughty man in his way, 
 with a proper spirit of his own, had the good sense to see that 
 much intimacy could not arise between him and his sub-editor, 
 and magnanimously declined to be angry at the young fellow's 
 easy superciliousness. I think that indefatigable Little Sister 
 was the peacemaker between the houses of Mugford and Fir- 
 min junior, and that she kept both Philip and his master on 
 their good behavior. At all events, and when a quarrel did 
 arise between them, 1 grieve to have to own it was poor Philip 
 who was in the wrong. 
 
 You know in the old, old days the young king and queen 
 never gave any christening entertainment without neglecting to 
 invite some old fairy, who was furious at the omission. I am 
 sorry to say Charlotte's mother was so angry at not being ap- 
 pointed godmother to the new bab}', that she omitted to make 
 her little quarterly payment of is/. lox. ; and has altogether 
 discontinued that payment from that remote period up to the 
 present time ; so that Philip says his wife has brought him a 
 fortune of 35/., paid in three instalments. There was the first 
 quarter paid when the old lady " would not be beholden to a 
 man like him." Then there came a second quarter — and then 
 
 but I dare say I shall be able to tell when and how 
 
 Philip's mamma-in-law paid the rest of her poor little daugh- 
 ter's fortune. 
 
 Well, Regent's Park is a fine healthy place for infantine 
 diversion, and I don't think Philip at all demeaned himself in 
 walking there with his wife, her little maid, and his baby on 
 his arm. " He is as rude as a bear, and his manners are 
 dreadful ; but he has a good heart, that I will say for him," 
 Mugford said to me. In his drive from London to Hampstead 
 Mugford once or twice met the little family group, of which his 
 sub-editor formed the principal figure ; and for the sake of 
 Philip's young wife and child Air. M. pardoned the young man's 
 vulgarity, and treated him with long-suffering. 
 
 Poor as he was, this was his happiest time, my friend is 
 disposed to think. A young child, a young wife, whose whole 
 life was a tender caress of love for child and husband, a young 
 husband watching both : — I recall the group, as we used often 
 to see it in those days, and see a something sacred in the 
 homely figures. On the wife's bright face what a radiant hap- 
 piness there is, and what a rapturous smile! Over the sleep
 
 ON HIS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. 517 
 
 ing infant and the happy mother the father looks with pride 
 and thanks in his eyes. Happiness and gratitude fill his sim- 
 ple heart, and prayer involuntary to the (iiver of good, that he 
 may have strength to do his duty as father, husband ; that he 
 may be enabled to keep want and care from those dear inno- 
 cent beings ; that he may defend them, befriend them, leave 
 them a good name. I am bound to say that Philip became 
 thrifty and saving for the sake of Char and the child ; that he 
 came home early of nights ; that he thought his child a wonder ; 
 that he never tired of speaking about that infant in our liouse, 
 about its fatness, its strength, its weight, its wonderful early 
 talents and humor. He felt himself a man now for the first 
 time, he said. Life had been play and folly until now. And 
 now especially he regretted that he had been idle, and had 
 neglected his opportunities as a lad. Had he studied for the 
 bar, he might have made that profession now profitable, and a 
 source of honor and competence to his family. Our friend 
 estimated his own powers very humbly : I am sure he was not 
 the less aniable on account of that humility. O fortunate he, 
 of whom Love is the teacher, the guide and master, the reform- 
 er and chastener ! Where was our friend's former arrogance, 
 self-confidence, and boisterous profusion ? He was at the feet of 
 his wife and child. He was quite humbled about himself ; or 
 gratified himself in fondling and caressing these. They taught 
 him, he said ; and as he thought of them, his heart turned in awful 
 thanks to the gracious heaven which had given them to him. 
 As the tiny infant hand closes round his fingers, I can see the 
 father bending over mother and child, and interpret those maybe 
 unspoken blessings which he asks and bestows. Happy wife, 
 happy husband ! However poor his little home may be, it holds 
 treasures and wealth inestimable ; w'hatever storms may threaten 
 without, the home fireside is brightened with the welcome of the 
 dearest eyes.
 
 5i8 
 
 TJIE ADVENTURES OE PJIILir 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIV. 
 
 IN WHICH I OWN THAT PHILLIP TELLS AN UNTRUTH. 
 
 Charlotte (and the usual little procession of nurse, baby, 
 &c.) once made their appearance at our house in Queen Square, 
 where they were ever welcomed by the lady of the mansion. 
 The young woman was in a great state of elation, and when we 
 came to hear the cause of her delight, her friends too opened 
 the eyes of wonder. She actually announced that Dr. Firmin 
 had sent over a bill of forty pounds (T may be incorrect as to 
 the sum) from New York. It had arrived that morning, and 
 she had seen the bill, and Philip had told her that his father 
 had sent it ; and was it not a comfort to think that poor Doctor 
 Firmin was endeavoring to repair some of the evil which he 
 had done ; and that he was repenting, and, perhaps, was going 
 to become quite honest and good ? This was indeed an astound- 
 ing piece of intelligence : and the two women felt joy at the 
 thought of that sinner repenting, and some one else was accused 
 of cynicism, skepticism, and so forth, for doubting the correct- 
 ness of the information. " You believe in no one, sir. You 
 are always incredulous about good," &c., &:c., &c., was the accu- 
 sation brought against the reader's very humble servant. Well, 
 about the contrition of this sinner, I confess I still continued 
 to have doubts ; and thought a present of forty pounds to a 
 son, to whom he owed thousands, was no great proof of the 
 doctor's amendment. 
 
 And oh ! how vexed some people were when the real story 
 came out at last ! Not for the money's sake — not because they 
 were wrong in argument, and I turned out to be right. Oh, no ! 
 But because it was proved that this unhappy doctor had no 
 present intention of repenting at all. This brand would not 
 come out of the burning, whatever we might hope ; and the 
 doctor's supporters were obliged to admit as much when they 
 came to know the real story. " Oh, Philip," cries Mrs, Laura, 
 when ne.xt she saw Mr. Firmin. " How pleased I was to hear 
 of that letter ! " 
 
 " What letter ? " asks the gentleman. 
 
 " That letter from your father at New York," says the lady.^ 
 
 "Oh," says the gentleman addressed, with a red face
 
 ON HIS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. 51^ 
 
 " What then ? Is it not — is it not all true ? " we ask. 
 
 " Poor Charlotte does not understand about business," 
 says Philip ; " I did not read the letter to her. Here it is." 
 And he hands over the document to me, and I have the liberty 
 to publish it. 
 
 New York ■ 
 
 " And so, my dear Philip, I may congratulate myself on having achieved ancestral 
 honor, and may add grandfather to my titles ? How quickly this one has come ! I feel 
 myself a young man still, in spite of the blows of misfortune — at least I know I was a young 
 man but yesterday, when 1 may say with our dear old poet, Xo?i sine gloria militavi. 
 Suppose I too were to tire of solitary widowhood and rc-eiitcr the married state ? There are 
 one or two ladies here who would still condescend to look not unfavorably on the retired 
 English gentleman. WitlKuit vanity I may say it, a man of birth and position in England 
 acquires a polish and refinement of manner which dollars cannot purchase, and many a Wall 
 Street millionary might envy ! 
 
 " Your wife has been pronounced to be an angel by a little correspondent of mine, who 
 gives me much fuller intelligence of my family than my son condescends to furnish. Mrs. 
 Philip I hear is gentle ; Mrs. Brandon says she is beautiful,— she is all good-humored. I 
 hope you have taught her to think not very badly of her husband's father? I was the dupe 
 of villains who lured me into their schemes ; who robbed me of a life's earnings ; who 
 induced me by \\vi\x false representations to have such confidence in them, that I embarked 
 all mv property, and yours, my poor boy, alas ! in their undertakings. Your Charlotte will 
 take the liberal, the wise, the just view of the case, and pity rather than blame my misfor- 
 tune. Such is the view, I am happy to say, generally adopted in this city : where there are 
 men of the world who know the vicissitudes of a mercantile career, and can make allowances 
 for misfortune. What made Rome at first great and prosperous? Were its first colonists 
 all wealthy patricians ? Nothing can be more satisfactory than the disregard shown here to 
 mere pecuniary difficulty. At the same time to be a gentleman is to possess no trifling 
 privilege in this society, where the advantages of birth, respected name, and early education 
 rt/7('rtr.f tell in the possessor's favor. Many persons whom I visit here have certainly not 
 these' advantages -and in the highest society of the city I could point out individuals who 
 have had pecuniary misfoitunes like myself, who have gallantly renewed the combat after 
 their fall, and are now fullv restored to competence, to wealth, and the respect of the world ! 
 I was in a house in f^ifth Avenue last night. Is Washington White shunned by his fellow- 
 men because he has been a bankrupt three times ? Anything more elegant or profuse than 
 his entertainment I have not witnessed oh this continent. His lady had diamonds w-hich a 
 duchess might envy. The most costly wines, the most magnificent supper, and myriads of 
 canvas-backed ducks covered his board. Dear Charlotte, my friend Captain Clopoys 
 brings you over three brace of these from your father-in-law, who hopes they will furnish 
 your little dinner-table. We eat currant jelly with them here, but I like an old English 
 lemon and cayenne sauce better. 
 
 " By the way, dear Philip, I trust you will not be inconvenienced by a little financial 
 operation, which necessitv (alas!") has compelled me to perform- Knowing that your quar- 
 ter with the Uf'per Ten Thousand Gazette was now due, I have made so bold as to request 
 Colonel to pay it over to me. Promises to pay must be met here as with us — an ob- 
 durate holder of an unlucky acceptance of mine (I am happy tosay there are very few such) 
 would admit of no delay, and T have been compelled to appropriate my poor Philip's earn- 
 ings. I have only put you off for ninety days : with your credit and wealtliy friends you can 
 easily negotiate the bill endosed. and \ promise you that when presented it shall be honored 
 by my Philip's ever affectionate father, G. B. F. 
 
 "By the way, your Philalethes' letters are not quite spicy enough, my worthy friend the 
 colonel savs. Thev are elegant and gay, but the public here desires to have more personal 
 news: c^ little scandal aboid Queen Elizabeth, ymi understand? Can't you attack some- 
 body? Look at the letters and articles published by my respected friend of the Xcw York 
 Emerald! The readers here like :\ high-spiced, irticle : and 1 r commend P. F. to put a 
 little more pepper in his dishes. What a comfort to me it is to think that I have procured 
 this place for you, and have been enabled to help my son and his young familv! 
 
 "G. B. F." 
 
 Enclosed in this letter was a slip of paper which poor Philip 
 supposed to be a cheque when he first beheld it, but which
 
 ^20 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 turned out to be his papa's promissory note, payable at Nn(« 
 York four months after date. And this document was to repre- 
 sent the money which the elder Firmin had received in his sonS 
 name ! Philip's eyes met his friend's when they talked about 
 this matter. Firmin looked almost as much ashamed as if he 
 himself had done the wrong. 
 
 " Does the loss of this money annoy you ? " asked Philip's 
 friend. 
 
 " The manner of the loss does," said poor Philip. " I don't 
 care about the money. But he should not have taken this. He 
 should not have taken this. Think of poor Charlotte and the 
 child being in want possibly ! Oh, friend, it s hard to bear, 
 isn't it ? I'm an honest fellow, ain't T ? I think T am. I pray 
 heaven I am. In any extremity of poverty could I have done 
 this ? It was my father who introduced me to these people. I 
 suppose he thinks he has a right to my earnings : and if he is 
 in want, you know, so he has." 
 
 " Had you not better write to the New York publishers and 
 beg them henceforth to remit to you directly ? " asks Philip's 
 friend. 
 
 " That would be to tell them that he has disposed of the 
 money," groans Philip. "I can't tell them that mv father is 
 a " 
 
 "No ; but you can thank them for having handed over such 
 a sum on your account to the doctor : and warn them that you 
 will draw on them from this country henceforth. They won't 
 in this case pay the next quarter to the doctor." 
 
 "Suppose he is in want, ought I not to supply him?" 
 Firmin said. " As long as there are four crusts in the house, 
 the doctor ought to have one. Ought I to be angrv with him 
 for helping himself, old boy?'' and he drinks a glass of wine, 
 poor fellow, with a rueful smile. By the way, it is my duty to 
 mention here, that the elder Firmin was in the habit of gi\ing 
 very elegant little dinner-parties at New York, where little 
 dinner-parties are much more costly than in Furope — '' in order," 
 he said, " to establish and keep up his connection as a physi- 
 cian." As a hon-Tivant, I am informed, the doctor began to be 
 celebrated in his new dwelling-place, where his anecdotes of the 
 British aristocracy were received with pleasure in certain 
 circles. 
 
 l!ut it would be as well henceforth that Philip should deal 
 directly with his American correspondents, and not employ the 
 services of so very expensive a broker. To this suggestion he 
 could not but agree. Meanwhile, — and let this be a warning
 
 OK If IS irAY TJfKiXi.ff TIIK WORLD. ^at 
 
 to men never to deceive their wives in any the sUghtest circum- 
 stances ; to tell them everything; they wish to know, to keep 
 nothing hidden from those dear and excellent beings — you 
 must know, ladies, that when Philip's famous ship of dollars 
 arrived from America, Firmin had promised his wife that baby 
 should have a dear delightful white cloak trimmed with the 
 most lovely tape, on which poor Charlotte had often cast a 
 longing eye as she passed by the milliner and curiosity shops in 
 Hanway Yard, which, I own, she loved to frequent. Well : 
 when Philip told her that his father had sent home forty pounds, 
 or what not, thereby deceiving his fond wife, the little lady went 
 away straight to her darling shop in the Yard — (Hanway Yard 
 has become a street now, but ah ! it is always delightful ) — Char- 
 lotte, I say, went off, ran off to Hanway Yard, pavid with fear 
 lest the darling cloak should be gone, found it — oh, joy ! — still 
 in Miss Isaacson's window ; put it on baby straightway then 
 and there ; kissed the dear infant, and was delighted with the 
 effect of the garment, which all the young ladies at Miss Isaac- 
 son's pronounced to be perfect ; and took the cloak away on 
 baby's shoulders, promising to send the money, five pounds, if 
 you please, next day. And in this cloak baby and Charlotte 
 went to meet papa when he came home ; and I don't know which 
 of them, mamma or baby, was the most pleased and absurd and 
 happy baby of the two. ( )n his way home from his newspaper, 
 Mr. Philip had orders to pursue a certain line of streets, and 
 when his accustomed hour for returning from his business drew 
 nigh, Mrs. Char went down Thornhaugh Street, down Rathbone 
 Place, with Betsy the nursekin and baby in the new cloak. 
 Behold, he comes at last — papa — striding down the street. He 
 sees the figures : he sees the child, which laughs, and holds out 
 its little pink hands, and crows a recognition. And "Look — 
 look, papa," cries the happy mother. (Away ! I cannot keep 
 up the mystery about the baby any longer, and though I had 
 forgotten for a moment the child's sex, remembered it the in- 
 stant after, and that it was a girl to be sure, and that its name 
 was Laura Caroline.) " Look, look, papa ! " cries the happy 
 mother. " She has got another little tooth since the morning, 
 such a beautiful little tooth — and look here, sir, don't you 
 observe anything ? " 
 
 " Any what ? " asks Philip. 
 
 "La! sir," says Betsy, giving Laura Caroline a great toss, 
 so that her white cloak floats in the air. 
 
 " Isn't it a dear cloak ? " cries mamma ; " and doesn't baby 
 look like an angel in it ? I bought it at Miss Isaacson's to-day
 
 522 
 
 THE AD\-tNrURES OE PIULIP 
 
 as you got your money from New York ; and oh, my dear, k 
 
 only cost five guineas." 
 
 "Well, it's a week's work," sighs poor Philip ; "and 1 think 
 I need not grudge that to give Charlotte pleasure." And he 
 feels his empty pockets rather ruefully. 
 
 "God bless you, Philip," says my wife, with her eyes full. 
 ''■ They came here this morning, Charlotte and the nurse and 
 the baby in the new — the new — " Here the lady seized hold 
 of Philip's hand, and fairly broke out into tears. Had she 
 embraced Mr. Plrmin before her husband's own eyes, I should 
 not have been surprised. Indeed she confessed that she was 
 on the point of giving way to this most sentimental outbreak. 
 
 And now, my brethren, see how one crime is the parent of 
 many, and one act of duplicity leads to a whole career of 
 deceit. In the first place, you see, Philip had deceived his 
 wife — with the pious desire, it is true, of screening his father's 
 little peculiarities — but, mat ccelntn, we must tell no lies. No : 
 and from this day forth I order John never to say Not at home 
 to the greatest bore, dun, dawdle of my acquaintance. If 
 Philip's father had not deceived him, Philip would not have 
 deceived his wife ; if he had not deceived his wife, she would 
 not have given five guineas for that cloak for the baby. If she 
 had not given fi\-e guineas for the cloak, my wife would never 
 have entered into a secret correspondence with Mr. Firmin, 
 which might, but for my own sweetness of temper, ha\e bred 
 jealousy, mistrust, and the most awful quarrels — nay, duels— 
 between the heads of the two families. Fancy Philip's body 
 lying stark upon Hampstead Heath with a bullet through it, 
 despatched by the hand of his friend ! Fancy a cab driving up 
 to my own house, and from it — under the eyes of the children 
 at the parlor windows — their father's bleeding corpse ejected ! 
 
 P.nough of this dreadful pleasantry ! Two days after the 
 
 affair of the cloak, I found a letter in Philip's handwriting 
 addressed to my wife, and thinking that the note had reference 
 to a matter of dinner then pending between our families, I 
 broke the envelope and read as follows ! — 
 
 " Thornhaugh Street, Thursday. 
 " My DEAK, KIND GoDMAMMA, — As soon as cvcr I can write and speak, I will thank you 
 for being so kind tu me. My niarania says she is very jealous, and as she bought my cloak 
 «he can't think of allowinc; you to jwy for it. Rut she desires me never to forget your kind* 
 ness to us, and though I don't know anything about it now, she promises to tell nie when I 
 am old enough. Meanwhile I am your grateful and affectionate little goddaughter. 
 
 " L. C. F." 
 
 Philip was persuaded by his friends at home to send out the 
 request to his New York employers to pay his salary henceforth
 
 ON J//S IVAV TJ/AOrCI/ THE WORLD, 523 
 
 to himself ; and I remember a dignified letter came from his 
 parent, in which the matter was spoken of in sorrow rather 
 than in anger ; in which the doctor pointed out that this pre- 
 cautionary measure seemed to imply a doubt on Philip's side of 
 his father's honor ; and surely, surely, he was unhappy enough 
 and unfortunate enough already without meriting this mistrust 
 from his son. The duty of a son to honor his father and 
 mother was feelingly pointed out, and the doctor meekly trusted 
 that Philip's children would give hhn more confidence than he 
 seemed to be inclined to award to his unfortunate father. 
 Never mind. He should bear no malice. If Fortune ever 
 smiled on him again, and something told him she would, he 
 would show Philip that he could forgive ; although he might 
 not be able to forget that in his exile, his solitude, his declining 
 years, his misfortune, his own child had mistrusted him. This 
 he said was the most cruel blow of all for his susceptible heart 
 to bear. 
 
 This letter of paternal remonstrance was enclosed in one 
 from the doctor to his old friend the Little Sister, in which he 
 vaunted a discovery which he and some other scientific gentle- 
 men were engaged in perfecting — of a medicine which was to 
 be extraordinarily efficacious in cases in which Mrs. Brandon 
 herself was often specially and professionally engaged, and he 
 felt sure that the sale of this medicine would go far to retrieve 
 his shattered fortune. He pointed out the complaints in which 
 this medicine was most efficacious. He would send some of it, 
 and details regarding its use, to Mrs. Brandon, who might try 
 its efficacy upon her patients. He was advancing slowly, but 
 steadily, in his medical profession, he said ; though of course, 
 he had to sufifer from the jealousy of his professional brethren. 
 Never mind. Better times, he was sure, were in store for all ; 
 w^hen his son should see that a wretched matter of forty pounds 
 more should not deter him from paying all just claims upon 
 him. Amen ! We all heartily wished for the day when Philip's 
 father should be able to settle his little accounts. Meanwhile, 
 the proprietors of the Gazette of the Upper Ten Thousand were 
 instructed to write directly to their London correspondent. 
 
 Although Mr. Firmin prided himself, as we have seen, upon 
 his taste and dexterity as sub-editor of the Pall Mall Gazette, 
 I must own that he was a very insubordinate officer, with whom 
 his superiors often had cause to be angry. Certain people 
 were praised in the Gazette — certain others were attacked. 
 Very dull books were admired, and very lively works attacked. 
 Some men were praised for everything they did ; some others
 
 5 24 THE AjyVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 were satirized, no matter what their works were. " T find," pool 
 PhiUp used to say with a groan, " that in matters of criticism 
 especially there are so often private reasons for the praise and 
 the blame administered, that I am glad, for my part, my only 
 duty is to see the paper through the press. For instance, there 
 is Harrocks, the tragedian, of Drury Lane : every piece in which 
 he appears is a masterpiece, and his performance the greatest 
 triumph ever witnessed. Very good. Harrocks and my ex- 
 cellent employer are good friends, and dine with each other ; 
 and it is natural that Mugford should like to have his friend 
 praised, and to help him in every way. But }5alderson, of 
 Covent Garden, is also a very fine actor. Why can't our critic 
 see his merit as well as Harrocks' ? Poor Balderson is never 
 allowed any merit at all. He is passed over with a sneer, or a 
 curt word of cold commendation, while columns of flattery are 
 not enough for his rival." 
 
 " Why, Mr. R, what a flat you must be, askin' your pardon," 
 remarked Mugford, in reply to his sub-editor's simple remon- 
 strance. " How can we praise Balderson, when Harrocks is 
 our friend ? Me and Harrocks are thick. Our wives are close 
 friends. If I was to let Balderson be praised, I should drive 
 Harrocks mad. I can't praise Balderson, don't you see, out of 
 justice to Harrocks ! " 
 
 Then there was a certain author whom Bickerton was for 
 ever attacking. They had had a private quarrel, and Bickerton 
 revenged himself in this way. In reply to Philip's outcries and 
 remonstrances, Mr. Mugford only laughed : ''The two men are 
 enemies, and Bickerton hits him whenever he can. Why, that's 
 only human nature, Mr. F.," says Philip's employer. 
 
 " Great heavens ! " bawls out Firmin, " do you mean to say 
 that the man is base enough to strike at his private enemies 
 through the press ? " 
 
 " Private enemies ! private gammon, Mr. Firmin ! " cries 
 Philip's employer. "If I have enemies — and I have, there's 
 no doubt about that — I serve them out whenever and wherevci 
 I can. And let me tell you I don't half relish having my con- 
 duct called base. It's only natural ; and it's right. Perhaps 
 you would like to praise your enemies, and abuse your friend .? 
 If that's your line, let me tell you you won't do in the noos- 
 paper business, and had better take to some other trade." And 
 the employer parted from his subordinate in some heat. 
 
 Mugford, indeed, feelingly spoke to me about this insubor- 
 dination of Philip. '' What does the fellow mean by quarrelling 
 with his bread and butter?'' Mr. Mugford asked. ''Speak to
 
 ON HIS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. 525 
 
 him, and show him what's what, Mr. P., or we shall come to a 
 quarrel, mind you — and I don't want that, for the sake of his 
 little wife, poor little delicate thing. Whatever is to happen to 
 them, if we don't stand by them ? " 
 
 W^hat was to happen to them, indeed ? Any one who knew 
 Philip's temper as we did, was aware how little advice or remon 
 strance were likely to affect that gentleman. " Good heavens ! " 
 he said to me, when I endeavored to make him adopt a con- 
 ciliatory tone towards his employer, " do you want to make me 
 Mugford's galley-slave? I shall have him standing over me 
 and swearing at me as he does at the printers. He looks into 
 my room at times when he is in a passion, and glares at me as 
 if he would like to seize me by the throat ; and after a word or 
 two he goes off, and I hear him curse the boys in the passage. 
 One day it will be on me that he will turn, I feel sure of that. 
 I tell you the slavery is beginning to be awful. I wake of a 
 night and groan and chafe, and poor Char, too, wakes and asks, 
 'What is it, Philip .' ' I say it is rheumatism. Rheumatism ! " 
 Of course to Philip's malady his friends tried to apply the com- 
 monplace anodynes and consolations. He must be gentle in 
 his bearing. He must remember that his employer had not 
 been bred a gentleman, and that, though rough and coarse in 
 language, Mugford had a kind heart. " There is no need to 
 tell me he is not a gentleman, I know that," says poor Phil. 
 " He is kind to Char and the child, that is the truth, and so is 
 his wife. I am a slave for all that. He is my driver. He feeds 
 me. He hasn't beat me yet. When I was away at Paris I did 
 not feel the chain so much. Pint it is scarcely tolerable now, 
 when I have to see my jailer four or five times a week. My 
 poor little Char, why did I drag you into this slavery.^ " 
 
 " Because you wanted a consoler, I suppose," remarks one 
 of Philip's comforters. " And do you suppose Charlotte would 
 be happier if she were away from you ? Though you live up two 
 pair of stairs, is any home happier than yours, Philip ? You 
 often own as much, when you are in happier moods. Who has 
 not his work to do, and his burden to bear ? You say some- 
 times that you are imperious and hot-tempered. Perhaps your 
 slavery as you call it, may be good for you." 
 
 " I have doomed myself and her to it," says Philip, hanging 
 down his head. 
 
 " Does she ever repine ? " asks his adviser. " Does she not 
 think herself the happiest little wife in the world ? See here, 
 Philip, here is a note from her yesterday in which she says as 
 much. Do you want to know what the rote is about, sir .' '" says
 
 526 TlfE ADVENTURES OF PHILTP 
 
 the lady with a smile. '' ^^'^ell, then, she wanted a receipt for 
 that dish which you liked so much on Friday, and she and Mrs. 
 Brandon will make it for you.'' 
 
 " And if it consisted of minced Charlotte," says Philip's 
 other friend, "you know she would cheerfully chop herself up, 
 and have herself served with a little cream-sauce and sippets of 
 toast for your honor's dinner." 
 
 This was undoubtedly true. Uid not Job's friends make 
 many true remarks when they visited him in his affliction ? 
 Patient as he was, the patriarch groaned and lamented, and 
 why should not poor Philip be allowed to grumble, who was not 
 a model of patience at all ? He was not broke in as yet. The 
 mill horse was restive and kicked at his work. He would chafe 
 not seldom at the daily drudger}', and have his fits of revolt and 
 despondency. Well 1 Have others not had to toil, to bow the 
 proud head, and carry the daily burden ? Don't you see Peg- 
 asus, who was going to win the plate, a weary, broken-knee'd, 
 broken-down old cab-hack shivering in the rank ; or a sleek 
 gelding, mayhap, pacing under a corpulent master in Rotten 
 Row ? Philip's crust began to be scanty, and was dipped in 
 bitter waters. I am not going to make a long story of this part 
 of his career, or parade my friend as too hungry and poor. He 
 is safe now, and out of all peril, heaven be thanked ! but he had 
 to pass through hard times, and to look out very wistfully lest 
 the wolf should enter at the door. He never laid claim to be a 
 man of genius, nor was he a successful quack who could pass 
 as a man of genius. When there were French prisoners in 
 England, we know how stout old officers who had plied their 
 sabres against Mamelouks, or Russians, or Germans, were fain 
 to carve little gimcracks in bone with their penknives, or make 
 baskets and boxes of chipped straw, and piteously sell them to 
 casual visitors to their prison. Philip was poverty's prisoner. 
 He had to make such shifts, and do such work, as he could 
 find in his captivity. I do not think men who have undergone 
 the struggle and served the dire task-master, like to look back 
 and recall the grim apprenticeship. When Philip says now, 
 " What fools we were to marry, Char," she looks up radiantly, 
 with love and happiness in her eyes — looks up to heaven, and is 
 thankful ; but grief and sadness come over her husband's face 
 at the thought of those days of pain and gloom. She may 
 soothe him, and he mav be thankful too ; but the wounds are 
 still there which were dealt to him in the cruel battle with for- 
 tune. Men are ridden down in it. Men are poltroons and run. 
 Men maraud, break ranks, are guilty of meanness, cowardice,
 
 ON HIS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. 527 
 
 shabby plunder. Men are raised to rank and honor, 01 drop 
 and perish unnoticed on the field. Happy he who comes from 
 it with his honor pure ! PhiUp did not win crosses and epaulets. 
 He is like us, my dear sir, not a heroic genius at all. And it is 
 to be hoped that all three have behaved with an average pluck, 
 and have been guilty of no meanness, or treacherv, or desertion, 
 ])id you behave otherwise, what would wife and children 
 say } As for Mrs. Philip, I tell you she thinks to this day that 
 there is no man like her husband, and is ready to fall down and 
 worship the boots in which he walks. 
 
 How do men live .-' How is rent paid ? How does the 
 dinner come day after day } As a rule there is dinner. You 
 might live longer with less of it, but you can't go without it and 
 live long. How did my neighbor 23 earn his carriage, and how 
 did 24 pay for his house ? As I am writing this sentence Mr. 
 Cox, who collects the taxes in this quarter, walks in. How do 
 you do, Mr. Cox ? We are not in the least afraid of meeting 
 one another. Time was — two, three years of time — when poor 
 Philip was troubled at the sight of Cox ; and this troublous 
 time his biographer intends to pass over in a very few pages. 
 
 At the end of six months the Upper Ten Thousand of New 
 York heard with modified wonder that the editor of that fash- 
 ionable journal had made a retreat from the city, carrying with 
 him the scanty contents of the till ; so the contributions of 
 Philalthetes never brought our poor friend any dollars at all. 
 But though one fish is caught and eaten, are there not plenty 
 more left in the sea? At this very time, when I was in a nat- 
 ural state of despondency about poor Philip's affairs, it struck 
 Tregarvan, the wealthy Cornish Member of Parliament, that 
 the Government and the House of Commons slighted his 
 speeches and his views on foreign politics ; that the wife of the 
 Foreign Secretary had been very inattentive to Lady Tregar- 
 van ; that the designs of a Great Power were most menacing 
 and dangerous, and ought to be exposed and counteracted; and 
 that the peerage which he had long desired ought to be bestowed 
 on him. Sir John Tregarvan applied to certain literary and 
 political gentlemen with whom he was acqn.ainted. He would 
 bring out the European RevieMK He would expose the designs 
 of that Great Power which was menacing Europe. He would 
 show up in his proper colors a Minister who was careless of the 
 country's honor, and forgetful of his own : a Minister whose arro- 
 gance ought no longer to be tolerated by the country gentlemen 
 of England, Sir John, a little man in brass buttons, and a tall 
 head, who loves to hear his own \oice, came and made a speech
 
 528 THE ADVENTURES OF PI/JLIP 
 
 on llie above topics to the writer of the present biography ; that 
 writer's lady was in his study as Sir John expounded his views 
 at some length. She listened to him with the greatest atten- 
 tion and respect. She was shocked to hear of the ingratitude 
 of Government ; astounded and terrified by his exposition of 
 the designs of — of that Great Power whose intrigues were so 
 menacing to European tranquillity. She was most deeply in- 
 terested in the idea of establishing the Review. He would, of 
 of course, be himself the editor ■ and — and — (here the woman 
 looked across the table at her husband with a strange triumph 
 in her eyes) — she knew, they both knew, the very man of all the 
 7vorlii who was most suited to act as sub-editor under Sir John 
 — a gentleman, one of the truest that ever lived — a university 
 man ; a man remarkably versed in the European languages — 
 that is, in French most certainly. And now the reader, 1 dare 
 say, can guess who this individual was. " I knew it at once," 
 says the lady, after Sir John had taken his leave. " I told you 
 that those dear children would not be forsaken." And I would 
 no more try and persuade her that the European KevieT.v was 
 not ordained of all time to atford maintainance to Philip, than 
 i would induce her to turn Mormon, and accept all the conse- 
 quences to which ladies must submit when they make profes- 
 sion of that creed. 
 
 "You see, my love," I say to the partner of my existence, 
 " what other things must have been ordained of all time as 
 well as Philip's appointment to be sub-editor of the European 
 Rc7ne7v. It must have been decreed ah initio that Lady l^lin- 
 limmon should give evening-parties, in order that she might of- 
 fend Lady Tregarvan by not asking her to those parties. It 
 must have been ordained by fate that Lady Tregarvan should 
 be of a jealous disposition, so that she might hate Lady Plin- 
 linimon, and was to work upon her husband, and inspire him 
 with anger and revolt against his chief. It must have been 
 ruled by destiny that Tregarvan should be rather a weak and 
 wordy personage, fancying that he had a talent for literary com- 
 position. Else he would not have thought of setting up the 
 Review. Else lie would never have been angry with Lord Plin- 
 liinmon for not inviting him to tea. Else he would not have 
 engaged IMiilip as sub-editor. So, you see, in order to bring 
 about this event, and put a couple of hundred a year into 
 Philip Firmin's pocket, the Tregarvans have to be born from 
 the earliest times : the Plinlimmons have to spring up in the 
 remotest ages, and come down to the present day : Doctor 
 J'lrmin lias to be a ro^nie, and undergo his destiny of cheating
 
 ON HIS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD- 529 
 
 his son of money : all mankind np to the origin of our race are 
 involved in your proposition, and we actually arrive at Adam 
 and Eve, who are but fulfilling their destiny, which was to be 
 the ancestors of Philip Firmin." 
 
 " Even in our first parents there was doubt and skepticism 
 and misgiving," says the lady, with strong emphasis on the 
 words. " If you mean to say that there is no such thing as a 
 Superior Power watching over us, and ordaining things for our 
 good, you are an atheist — and such a thing as an atheist does 
 not exist in the world, and 1 would not belie\e you if you said 
 you were one twenty times over." 
 
 I mention these points by the way, and as samples of lady- 
 like logic. 1 acknowledge that Philip himself, as he looks back 
 at his past career, is very much moved. *' I do not deny," he 
 says, gravely, " that these things happened in the natural order, 
 I say 1 am grateful for what happened ; and look back at the 
 past not without awe. In great grief and danger maybe, 1 have 
 had timely rescue. Under great suffering 1 have met with su- 
 preme consolation. When the trial has seemed almost too hard 
 for me it has ended, and our darkness has been lightened. Ut 
 vivo et valtw — si va/tv, 1 know b}' Whose permission this is, — ■ 
 and would you forbid me to be thankful .? to be thankful for 
 my life ; to be thankful for my children ; to be thankfyl for the 
 daily bread which has been granted to me, and the temptation 
 from which 1 have been rescued 'i As I think of the past and 
 its bitter trials, 1 bow my head in thanks and awe. 1 wanted 
 succor, and 1 found it. I fell on evil times, and good friends 
 pitied and helped me — good friends like yourself, your dear 
 wife, many another I could name. In what moments of de- 
 pression, old friend, have you not seen me, and cheered me .-' 
 Do you know in the moments of our grief the inexpressible 
 value of your sympathy ? Your good Samaritan takes out only 
 twopence maybe for the wayfarer whom he has rescued, but 
 the little timely supply saves a life. Yofi remember dear old 
 Ned St. George — dead in the West Indies years ago ? Before 
 he got his place Ned was hanging on in London, so utterly poor 
 and ruined, that he had not often a shilling to buy a dinner. 
 He used often to come to us, and my wife and our children 
 loved him ; and I used to leave a heap of shillings on my study- 
 table, so that he might take two or three as he wanted them. Of 
 course you remember him. You were at the dinner which we 
 ga\e him on his getting his place. I forget the cost of that dinner ; 
 but I remember my sliare amounted to the exact number of 
 shillings which poor Ned had taken off my table. He gave me
 
 53° 
 
 THE ADl'ENrUKES OF Fill LIP 
 
 the money then and there at the tavern at Blackwall. He said 
 it seemed providential. Ikit for those shillings, and the con- 
 stant welcome at our poor little table, he said he thought he 
 should have made away with his life. I am not bragging of the 
 twopence which I gave, but thanking God for sending me there 
 to give it. Betiedico Bcnedictus. I wonder sometimes am 1 the 
 I of twenty years ago ? before our heads were bald, friend, and 
 when the little ones reached up to our knees? Before dinner 
 you saw me in the library reading in that old European Review 
 which your friend Tregarvan established. 1 came upon an 
 article of my own, and a very dull one, on a subject which I 
 knew nothing about. 'Persian politics, and the intrigues at the 
 Court of Teheran.' It was done to order. Tregarvan had 
 some special interest about Persia, or wanted to vex Sir Thomas 
 Nobbles, who was Minister there. I breakfasted with Tregar- 
 van in the ' Albany,' the facts (we will call them facts) and 
 papers were supplied to me, and 1 went home to point out the 
 delinquencies of Sir Thomas, and the atrocious intrigues of the 
 Russian Court. Well, sir. Nobbles, Tregarvan, Teheran, all 
 disappeared as I looked at the text in the old volume of the 
 Review. I saw a deal table in a little room, and a reading-lamp, 
 and a young fellow writing at it, with a sad heart, and a dread- 
 ful apprehension torturing him. One of our children was ill in 
 the adjoining room, and I have before me the figure of my wife 
 coming in from time to time to my room and saying, ' She is 
 asleep now, and the fever is much lower.' " 
 
 Here our conversation was interrupted by the entrance of 
 a tall young lady, who says, " Papa, the coffee is quite cold : 
 and the carriage will be here very soon, and both mamma and 
 my godmother say they are growing very angry. Do you know 
 you have been talking here for two hours .-* " 
 
 Had two hours actually slipped away as we sat prattling 
 about old times ? As I narrate them, I prefer to give Mr. 
 Firmin's account of iffs adventures in his own words, where 1 
 can recall or imitate them. Both of us are graver and more 
 reverend seigniors than we were at the time of which I am 
 writing. Has not Firmin's girl grown up to be taller than her 
 godmother ? Veterans both, we love to prattle about the merry 
 days when we were young — (the merry days ? no, the past is 
 never merry) — about the days when we were young ; and do we 
 grow young in talking of them, or only indulge in a senile cheer- 
 fulness and prolixity .-• 
 
 I'regarvan sleeps with his Cornish fathers : Europe for 
 manv vears has gone on without her Rcviejv : but it is a cer-
 
 O.V IIIS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. 531 
 
 tainty that the establishment of that occult organ ol" opinion 
 tended very much to benefit Philip Firmin, and helped for a 
 while to supply him and several innocent people dependent on 
 him with their daily bread. Of course, as they were so poor, 
 this worthy family increased and multiplied ; and as they in- 
 creased, and as they multiplied, my wife insists that I should 
 point out how support was found for them. When there was a 
 second child in Philip's nursery, he would have removed from 
 his lodgings in Thornhaugh Street, but for the prayers and 
 commands of the alTectionate Little Sister, who insisted that 
 there was plenty of room in the house for everybody, and who 
 said that if Philip went away she would cut off her little god- 
 child with a shilling. And then indeed it was discovered for 
 the first time, that this faithful and affectionate creature had 
 endowed Philip with all her property. These are the rays of 
 sunshine in the dungeon. These are the drops of water in the 
 desert. And with a full heart our friend acknowledges how 
 comfort came to him in his hour of need. 
 
 Though Mr. Firmin has a very grateful heart, it has been 
 admitted that he was a loud, disagreeable Firmin at times, im- 
 petuous in his talk, and violent in his behavior : and we are 
 now come to that period of his history, when he had a quarrel 
 in which I am sorry to say Mr. Philip was in the wrong. Why 
 do we consort with those whom we dislike ? Why is it that 
 men will try and associate between whom no love is? I think 
 it was the ladies who tried to reconcile Philip and his master ; 
 who brought them together, and strove to make them friends ; 
 but the more they met the more they disliked each other ; and 
 now the Muse has to relate their final and irreconcilable rup- 
 ture. 
 
 Of Mugford's wrath the direful tale relate, O Muse ! and 
 Philip's pitiable fate. I have shown how the men had long 
 been inwardly envenomed one against the other. " Because 
 Firmin is as poor as a rat, that's no reason why he should adopt 
 that hawhaw manner, and them high and mighty airs towards 
 a man who gives him the bread he eats," Mugford argued not 
 unjustly. " What do /care for his being a university man ? I 
 am as good as he is. I am better than his old scamp of a 
 father, who was a college man too, and lived in fine company. 
 I made my own way in the world, independent, and supported 
 myself since I was fourteen years of age, and helped my mother 
 and brothers too, and that's more than my sub-editor can say, 
 who can't support himself yet. I could get fifty sub-editors as 
 good as he is, by calling out of window into the' street, I could.
 
 532 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 I say, hang Firmin ! I'm a-losing all patience with him." On 
 the other hand, Mr. Philip was in the habit of speaking his 
 mind with equal candor. " What right has that person to call 
 me Firmin?" he asked. "I am Firmin to my equals and 
 friends. I am this man's laborer at four guineas a week. I 
 give him his money's worth, and on every Saturday evening we 
 are quits. Call me JMiilip, indeed, and strike me in the side ! 
 I choke, sir, as I think of the confounded familiarity ! " " Con- 
 found his impudence ! " was the cry, and the not unjust cry of 
 the laborer and his employer. The men should have been 
 kept apart : and it was a most mistaken Christian charity and 
 female conspiracy which brought them together. " Another 
 invitation from Mugford. It was agreed that I was never to go 
 again, and I won't go," says Philip to his meek wife. " Write 
 and say we are engaged, Charlotte." 
 
 " It is for the i8th of next month, and this is the 23d," 
 said poor Charlotte. " We can't well say that we are engaged 
 so far off." 
 
 " It is for one of his grand ceremony parties,'' urged the 
 Little Sister. " You can't come to no quarrelling there. He 
 has a good heart. So have you. There's no good quarrelling 
 with him. Oh, Philip, do forgive, and be friends ! " Philip 
 yielded to the remonstrances of the women, as we all do; and 
 a letter was sent to Hampstead, announcing that Mr. and Mrs. 
 P. F. would have the honor of, &c. 
 
 In his quality of newspaper proprietor, musical professors 
 and opera singers paid much court to Mr. Mugford ; and he 
 liked to entertain them at his hospitable table ; to brag about 
 his wines, cookery, plate, garden, prosperity, and private vir- 
 tue, during dinner, whilst the artists sat respectively listening 
 to him ; and to go to sleep and snore, or wake up and join 
 cheerfully in a chorus, when the professional people performed 
 in the drawing-room. Now, there was a lady who was once 
 known at the theatre by the name of Mrs. Ravenswing, and 
 who had been forced on to the stage by the misconduct of her 
 husband, a certain Walker, one of the greatest scamps who ever 
 entered a jail. On Walker's death, this lady manied a Mr. 
 Woolsey, a wealthy tailor, who retired from his business, as he 
 caused his wife to withdraw from hers. 
 
 Now, more worthy and honorable people do not live than 
 Woolsey and his wife, as those know who were acquainted 
 with their history. Mrs. Woolsey is loud. Her //'s are by no 
 means where they should l)e ; Iier knife at dinner is often where 
 it should not be. She calls men aloud by their names, and
 
 ox I//S WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. 
 
 %il 
 
 without any prefix of courtesy. She is very fond of porter, and 
 has no scruple in asking for it. She sits down to play the 
 piano and to sing with perfect good nature, and if you look at 
 her hands as they wander over the keys — well, 1 don't wish to 
 say anything unkind, but I am forced to own that those hands 
 are not so white as the ivory which they thump. Woolsey sits 
 in perfect rapture listening to his wife. Mugford presses her 
 to take a glass of " somethink " afterwards ; and the good- 
 natured soul says she will take "something 'ot." She sits and 
 listens with infinite patience and good-humor whilst the little 
 Mugfords go through their horrible little musical exercises ; 
 and these over, she is ready to go back to the piano again, and 
 sing more songs, and drink more " 'ot." 
 
 I do not say that this was an elegant woman, or a fitting 
 companion for Mrs. Philip ; but I know that Mrs. Woolsey was 
 a good, clever, and kindly woman, and that Philip behaved 
 rudely to her. He never meant to be rude to her, he said ; but 
 the truth is, he treated her, her husband, Mugford, and Mrs. 
 Mugford, with a haughty ill-humor which utterly exasperated 
 and perplexed them. 
 
 About this poor lady, who was modest and innocent as 
 Susannah, Philip had heard some wicked elders at wicked clubs 
 tell wicked stories in old times. There was that old Trail, for 
 instance, what woman escaped from his sneers and slanders ? 
 There were others who could be named, and whose testimony 
 was equally untruthful. On an ordinary occasion Philip would 
 never have cared or squabbled about a question of precedence, 
 and would have taken any place assigned to him at any table. 
 But when Mrs. Woolsey in crumpled satins and blowsy lace 
 made her appearance, and was eagerly and respectfully saluted 
 by the host and hostess, Philip remembered those early stories 
 about the poor lady : his eyes flashed wrath, and his breast 
 beat with an indignation which almost choked him. Ask that 
 woman to meet my wife t he thought to himself, and looked so 
 ferocious and desperate that the timid little wife gazed with 
 alarm at her Philip, and crept up to him and whispered, " What 
 is it, dear? " 
 
 Meanwhile, Mrs. Mugford and Mrs. Woolsey were in full 
 colloquy about the weather, the nursery, and so forth — and 
 Woolsey and Mugford giving each other the hearty grasp of 
 friendship. Philip, then, scowling at the newly-arrived guests, 
 turning his great hulking back upon the company, and talking 
 to his wife, presented a not agreeable figure to his enter- 
 tainer.
 
 ^34 "^^f''- ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 " Hang the fellow's pride ! " thought Mugford. " He chooses 
 to turn his back upon my company because Woolsey was a 
 tradesman. An honest tailor is better than a bankrupt, swind- 
 ling doctor, I should think. Woolsey need not be ashamed to 
 show his face, I suppose. Why did you make me ask that 
 fellar again, Mrs. M. } Don't you see, our society ain't good 
 enough for him } " 
 
 Philip's conduct, then, so irritated Mugford, that when dinner 
 was announced, he stepped forward and offered his arm to 
 Mrs. Woolsey ; having intended in the first instance to confer 
 that honor upon Charlotte. I'll show him," thought Mugford, 
 "that an honest tradesman's lady who pays his way, and is not 
 afraid of anybody, is better than my sub-editor's wife, the 
 daughter of a bankrupt swell." Though the dinner was illu- 
 minated by Mugford's grandest plate, and accompanied by his 
 very best wine, it was a gloomy and weary repast to several 
 people present, and Philip and Charlotte, and I dare say Mug- 
 ford, thought it never would be done. Mrs. Woolsey, to be 
 sure, placidly ate her dinner, and drank her wine ; whilst re- 
 membering these wicked legends against her, Philip sat before 
 the poor unconscious lady, silent, with glaring eyes, insolent 
 and odious ; so much so, that Mrs. Woolsey imparted to Mrs. 
 Mugford her surprise tliat the tall gentleman must have got 
 out of bed the wrong leg foremost. 
 
 Well, Mrs. Woolsey's carriage and Mr. Firmin's cab were 
 announced at the same moment ; and immediately Philip started 
 up and beckoned his wife away. But Mrs. Woolsey's carriage 
 and lamps of course had the precedence ; and this lady Mr. 
 Mugford accompanied to her carriage step. 
 
 He did not pay the same attention to Mrs. Firmin. Most 
 likely he forgot. Possibly he did not think etiquette required 
 he should show that sort of politeness to a sub-editor's wife : 
 at any rate, he was not so rude as Philip himself had been dur- 
 ing the evening, but he stood in the hall looking at his guests 
 departing in their cab, when, in a sudden gust of passion, 
 Philip stepped out of the carriage, and stalked up to his host, 
 who stood there in his own hall confronting him, Philip de- 
 clared, with a most impudent smile on his face. 
 
 " Come back to light a pipe I suppose ? Nice thing for 
 your wife, ain't it?" said Mugford, relishing his own joke. 
 
 " I am come back, sir," said Philip, glaring at Mugford, 
 " to ask how you dared invite Mrs. Philip Firmin to meet that 
 woman ? " 
 
 Here, on his side, Mr. Mugford lost his temper, and from
 
 ox HIS VVA Y THROUGH THE WORLD. 
 
 535 
 
 this moment his wrong begins. When he was in a passion, the 
 language used by Mr. Mugford was not, it appears, choice. 
 \\'e have heard that when angry, he was in the habit of swear- 
 ing freely at his subordinates. He broke out on this occasion 
 also with many oaths. He told Philip that he would stand his 
 impudence no longer ; that he was as good as a swindling doc- 
 tor's son ; that though he hadn't been to college he could buy 
 and pay them as had ; and that if Philip liked to come into the 
 back yard for ten minutes, he'd give him one — two, and show 
 him whether he was a man or not. Poor Char, who, indeed, 
 fancied that her husband had gone back to light his cigar, sat 
 awhile unconscious in her cab, and supposed that the two gen- 
 tlemen were engaged on newspaper business. When Mugford 
 began to pull his coat off, she sat wondering, but not in the 
 least understanding the meaning of the action. Philip had 
 described his employer as walking about his office without a 
 coat and using energetic language. 
 
 But when, attracted by the loudness of the talk, Mrs. Mug- 
 ford came forth from her neighboring drawing-room, accom- 
 panied by such of her children as had not yet gone to roost — 
 when seeing Mugford pulling off his dress-coat, she began to 
 scream — when, lifting his voice over hers, Mugford poured forth 
 oaths, and frantically shook his fists at Philip, asking how that 
 blackguard dared insult him in his own house, and proposing 
 to knock his head off at that moment — then poor Char, in wild 
 alarm, sprang out of the cab, and ran to her husband, whose 
 whole frame was throbbing, whose nostrils were snorting with 
 passion. Then Mrs. Mugford springing forward, placed her 
 ample form before her husband's, and calling Philip a great 
 cowardly beast, asked him if he was going to attack that little 
 old man } Then Mugford dashing his coat down to the ground, 
 called with fresh oaths to Philip to come on. And, in fine, 
 there was a most unpleasant row, occasioned by Mr. Philip 
 Finnin's hot temper. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXV. 
 
 RES ANGUSTA DOMI. 
 
 To reconcile these two men was impossible, after such a 
 quarrel as that described in the last chapter. The only chance 
 of peace was to keep the two men apart. If they met, they
 
 536 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 would fly at each other, Mugford always persisted that he could 
 have got the better of his great hulking sub-editor, who did not 
 know the use of his fists. In Alugford's youthful time, bruising 
 was a fashionable art ; and the old gentleman still believed in 
 his own skill and prowess. " Don't tell me," he would say ; 
 " though the fellar is as big as a life-guardsman, I would have 
 doubled him up in two minutes." I am very glad, for poor 
 Charlotte's sake and his own, that Philip did not undergo the 
 doubling-up process. He himself felt such a wrath and sur- 
 prise at his employer as, I suppose, a lion does when a little 
 dog attacks him. I should not like to be that little dog; nor 
 nor does my modest and peaceful nature at all prompt and 
 impel me to combat with lions. 
 
 It was mighty well Mr. Philip Firmin had shown his spirit, 
 and quarrelled with his bread-and-butter ; but when Saturday 
 came, what philanthropist would hand four sovereigns and four 
 shillings over to Mr. F., as Mr. Burjoice, the publislier of the 
 Pall Mall Gazette, had been accustomed to do ? I will say for 
 my friend that a still keener remorse than that which he felt 
 about money thrown away attended him when he found tliat 
 Mrs. Woolsey, towards whom he had cast a sidelong stone of 
 persecution, was a most respectable and honorable lady. '' I 
 should like to go, sir, and grovel before her," Philip said, in his 
 energetic way. " If T see that tailor, I will request him to put 
 his foot on my head, and trample on me with his high-lows. 
 Oh, for shame ! for shame ! Shall I never learn cliarity .to- 
 wards my neighbors, and always go on believing in the lies 
 which people tell me ? When I meet that scoundrel Trail at 
 the club, I must chastise him. How dared he take away the 
 reputation of an honest woman ? " Philip's friends besought 
 him, for the sake of society and peace, not to carry this quarrel 
 farther. " If," we said, " every woman whom Trail has ma- 
 ligned had a champion who should box Trail's ears at the club, 
 what a vulgar, quarrelsome place that club would become ! 
 My dear Philip, did you ever know Mr. Trail say a good word 
 of man or woman ? " and by these or similar entreaties and 
 arguments, we succeeded in keeping the Queen's peace. 
 
 Yes : but how find another Pall Mall Gazette/ Had Philip 
 possessed se\en tliousand pounds in the three per cents., his 
 income would ha\-e been no greater than that whicli he drew 
 from Mugford's faithful bank. Ah ! how wonderful ways and 
 means are ! When I think how this very line, this very word, 
 which 1 am writing represents money, I am lost in respectful 
 astonishment. A man takes his own case, as he says his own
 
 OiV irrs J FA V through the world. 
 
 537 
 
 prayers, on behalf of himself and liis family. I am paid, we 
 will say, for the sake of illustration, at the rate of sixpence per 
 line. With the words, " Ah, how wonderful," to the words 
 "per line," I can buy a loaf, a piece of butter, a jug of milk, a 
 modicum of tea, — actually enough to make breakfast for the 
 family; and the servants of the house ; and the charwoman, 
 fheir servant, can shake up the tea-leaves with a fresh supply of 
 water, sop the crusts, and get a meal taut hieii que ?iial. Wife, 
 children, guests, servants, charwoman, we are all actually mak- 
 ing a meal off Philip Firmin's bones as it were. And my next- 
 door neighbor, whom I see marching away to chambers, um- 
 brella in hand ? And next door but one the City man ? And 
 next door but two the doctor ? — I know the baker has left 
 loaves at every one of their doois this morning, that all their 
 chimneys are smoking, and they will all have breakfast. Ah, 
 thank God for it ! I hope, friend, you and I are not too proud 
 to ask for our dailv bread, and to be grateful for getting it ? 
 Mr. Philip had to work for his, in care and trouble, like other 
 children of men : — to work for it, and I hope to pray for it, too. 
 It is a thought to me awful and beautiful, that of the daily 
 prayer, and of the m^Tiads of fellow-men uttering it, in care 
 and in sickness, in doubt and in poverty, in health and in 
 wealth. Panem nostrutn da nobis hodie. Philip whispers it by 
 the bedside where wife and child lie sleeping, and goes to his 
 early labor with a stouter heart : as he creeps to his rest when 
 the day's labor is over, and the quotidian bread is earned, and 
 breathes his hushed thanks to tl;e bountiful Giver of the meal. 
 All over this world what an endless chorus is singing of love, 
 and thanks, and prayer. Day tells to day the wondrous story, 
 
 and night recounts it unto night. How do I come to think 
 
 of a sunrise which I saw near twenty years ago on the Nile, 
 when the river and sky flushed and glowed with the dawning 
 light, and as the luminary appeared, the boatman knelt on the 
 rosy deck, and adored Allah ? So, as thy sun rises, friend, 
 over the humble housetops round about your home, shall you 
 wake many and many a day to duty and labor. May the task 
 have been honestly done when the night comes ; and the stew- 
 ard deal kindly with the laborer. 
 
 So two of Philip's cables cracked and gave way after a very 
 brief strain, and the poor fellow held by nothing now but that 
 wonderful European Rei'iew established by the mysterious Tre- 
 garvan. Actors, a people of superstitions and traditions, opine 
 that heaven, in some mysterious way, makes managers for their 
 benefit. In like manner, Review proprietors are sent to pro
 
 5^8 'J^ffi-- ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 vide the pabulum for us men of letters. With what compla- 
 cency did my wife listen to the somewhat long-winded and 
 pompous oratory of Tregarvan ! He pompous and common- 
 place ? Tregarvan spoke with excellent good sense. That 
 wily woman never showed she was tired of his conversation. 
 She praised him to Philip behind his back, and would not allow 
 a word in his disparagement. As a doctor will punch your 
 chest, your liver, your heart, listen at your lungs, squeeze your 
 pulse, and what not, so this practitioner studied, shampooed, aus- 
 cultated Tregarvan. Of course, he allowed himself to be oper- 
 ated upon. Of course, he had no idea that the lady was flatter- 
 ing, wheedling, humbugging him ; but thought that he was a very 
 well-informed, eloquent man, who had seen and read a great deal, 
 and had an agreeable method of imparting his knowledge, and 
 that the lady in question was a sensible woman, naturally ea- 
 ger for more information. Go, Delilah ! T understand your 
 tricks ! I know many another Omphale in London, who will 
 coax Hercules away from his club, to come and listen to her 
 wheedling talk. 
 
 One great difficulty we had was to make Philip read Tre- 
 garvan's own articles in the Review. He at first said he could 
 not, or that he could not remember them ; so that there was 
 no use in reading them. And Philip's new master used to 
 make artful allusions to his own writings in the course of con- 
 versation, so that our unwary friend would find himself under 
 examination in any casual interview with Tregarvan, whose 
 opinions on free-trade, malt-tax, income-lax, designs of Russia, 
 or what not, might be accepted or denied, but ought at least 
 to be known. We actually made Philip get up his owner's ar- 
 ticles. We put questions to him, privily, regarding them — 
 "coached" him, according to the university phrase. My wife 
 humbugged that wretched Member of Parliament in a way 
 which makes me shudder, when I think of what hypocrisy the 
 sex is capable. Those arts and dissimulations with which she 
 wheedles others, suppose she exercise them on 77ie7 Horrible 
 thought ! No, angel ! To others thou mayest be a coaxing 
 hypocrite ; to me thou art all candor. Other men may have 
 been humbugged by other women ; but I am not to be taken 
 in by that sort of thing ; and thou art all candor ! 
 
 We had then so much per annum as editor. We were 
 paid, besides, for our articles. We had really a snug little 
 pension out of this Review^ and we prayed it might last for 
 ever. W'e misht write a novel. We mijiht contribute articles to 
 a daily paper; get a little parliamentary practice as a barrister.
 
 O.V HIS WA Y THROUGH THE WORLD. 539 
 
 We actually did get Philip into a railway case or two, and my 
 wife must be coaxing and hugging solicitors' ladies, as she had 
 wheedled and coaxed Members of Parliament. Why, I do be- 
 lieve my Delilah set up a flirtation with old Bishop Crossticks, 
 with an idea of getting her /r^/^^/ a living; and though the 
 lady indignantly repudiates this charge, will she be pleased to 
 explain how the bishop's sermons were so outrageously praised 
 in the Revieiv ? 
 
 Philip's roughness and frankness did not displease Tregar- 
 van, to the wonder of us all, who trembled lest he should lose 
 this as he had lost his former place. Tregarvan had more 
 country-houses than one, and at these not only was the editor 
 of the Review made welcome, but the editor's wife and chil- 
 dren, whom Tregarvan's wife took into especial regard. In 
 London, Lady Mary had assemblies where our little friend 
 Charlotte made her appearance ; and half-a-dozen times in the 
 course of the season the wealthy Cornish gentleman feasted 
 his retainers of the Review. His wine was excellent and old ; 
 his jokes were old, too ; his table pompous, grave, plentiful. 
 If Philip was to eat the bread of dependence, the loaf was 
 here very kindly prepared for him ; and he ate it humbly, and 
 with not too much grumbling. This diet chokes some proud 
 stomachs and disagrees with them ; but Philip was very hum- 
 ble now, and of a nature grateful for kindness. He is one 
 who requires the help of friends, and can accept benefits 
 without losing independence — not all men's gifts, but some 
 men's, whom he repays not only with coin, but with an im- 
 mense affection and gratitude. How that man did laugh 
 at my witticisms ! How he worshipped the ground on which 
 my wife walked ! He elected himself our champion. He 
 quarrelled with other people who found fault with our char- 
 acters, or would not see our perfections. There was some- 
 thing affecting in the way in which this big man took the 
 humble place. We could do no wrong in his eyes ; and woe 
 betide the man w^ho spoke disparaingly of us in his presence ! 
 
 One day, at his patron's table, Philip exercised his valor 
 and championship in our behalf by defending us against the 
 evil speaking of that Mr. Trail, who has been mentioned before 
 as a gentleman difficult to please, and credulous of ill regarding 
 his neighbor. The talk happened to fall upon the character 
 of the reader's most humble servant, and Trail, as may be 
 imagined, spared me no more than the rest of mankind. 
 Would you like to be liked by all people ? That would be a 
 reason why Trail should hate you. Were you an angel fresh
 
 540 
 
 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 dropped from the skies, he would espy dirt on your robe, and 
 a black feather or two in vour wing:. As for me, I know I am 
 not angelical at all ; and in walking my native earth, can't help 
 a little mud on my trousers. Well : Mr. Trail began to paint 
 my portrait, laying on those dark shadows which that well- 
 known master is in the habit of employing. I was a parasite 
 of the nobility ; 1 was a heartless sycophant, house-breaker, 
 drunkard, murderer, returned convict, &c., &c. With a little 
 imagination, Mrs. Candour can fill up the outline, and arrange 
 the colors so as to suit her amiable fancy. 
 
 Philip had come late to dinner ; — of this fault, I must con- 
 fess, he is guilty only too often. The company were at table ; 
 he took the only place vacant, and this happened to be at the 
 side of Mr. Trail. On Trail's other side was a portly individual, 
 of a healthy and rosy countenance and voluminous white 
 waistcoat, to whom Trail directed much of his amiable talk, 
 and whom he addressed once or twice as Sir John. Once or 
 twice already we have seen how Philip has quarrelled at table. 
 He cried niea culpa loudly and honestly enough. He made 
 vows of reform in this particular. He succeeded, dearly be- 
 loved brethren, not much worse or better than you or I do, 
 who confess our faults, and go on promising to improve, and 
 stumbling and picking ourselves up every day. The pavement 
 of life is strewed with orange-peel ; and who has not slipped on 
 the flags ? 
 
 " He is the most conceited man in London," — Trail was 
 going on, " and one of the most worldly. He will throw over 
 a colonel to dine with a general. He wouldn't throw over you 
 two baronets — he is a great deal too shrewd a fellow for that. 
 He wouldn't give you up, perhaps, to dine with a lord ; but any 
 ordinary baronet he would." 
 
 " And why not us as well as the rest ? " asks Tregarvan, 
 who seemed amused at the speaker's chatter. 
 
 " Because you are not like common baronets at all. Be- 
 cause your estates are a great deal too large. Because, I 
 suppose, you might either of you go to the Upper House any 
 day. Because, as an author, he may be supposed to be afraid 
 of a certain Review,^'' cries Trail, with a loud laugh. 
 
 "Trail is speaking of a friend of yours," said the host, 
 nodding and smiling, to the new-comer. 
 
 " Ver}^ lucky for my friend," growls Philip, and eats his 
 soup in silence. 
 
 " By the way, that article of his on Madame de Sevign^ is 
 poor stuff. No knowledge of the period. Three gross blunders
 
 ox Ills \VA y THROUGH the world. 
 
 541 
 
 m French. A man can't write of French society unless he has 
 Hved in French society. What does Pendennis know of it ? 
 A man who makes blunders like those can't understand French. 
 A man who can't speak French can't get on in French society. 
 Therefore he can't write about French society. All these prop- 
 ositions are clear enough. Thank you. Dry champagne, if 
 you please. He is enormously over-rated, 1 tell you ; and so 
 is his wife. They used to put her forward as a beauty : and 
 she is only a dowdy woman out of a nurserj'. She has no 
 style about her." 
 
 " She is only one of the best women in the world," Mr. 
 Firmin called out, turning very red ; and hereupon entered into 
 a defence of characters, and pronounced a eulogium upon both 
 and each of us, in which I hope there was some little truth. 
 However, he spoke with great enthusiasm, and Mr. Trail found 
 himself in a minority. 
 
 " You are right to stand up for your friends, Firmin ! " 
 cried the host. " Let me introduce you to " 
 
 " Let me introduce myself," said the gentleman on the other 
 side of Mr. Trail. " Mr. Firmin, you and I are kinsmen, — I 
 am Sir John Ringwood." And Sir John reached a hand to 
 Philip across Trail's chair. They talked a great deal together 
 ill the course of the evening : and when Mr. Trail found that 
 the great county gentleman was friendly and familiar with 
 Philip, and claimed a relationship with him, his manner towards 
 Firmin altered. He pronounced afterwards a warm eulogy 
 upon Sir John for his frankness and good nature in recognizing 
 his unfortunate relative, and charitably said, " Philip might not 
 be like the doctor, and could not help having a rogue for a 
 father." In former days. Trail had eaten and drunken freely 
 at that rogue's table. But we must have truth, you know, 
 before all things : and if )^our own brother has committed a sin, 
 common justice requires that you should stone him. 
 
 In former days, and not long after Lord Ringwood's death, 
 Philip had left his card at this kinsman's door, and Sir John's 
 butler, driving in his master's brougham, had left a card upon 
 Philip, who was not over well pleased by this acknowledgment 
 of his civility, and, in fact, employed abusive epithets when he 
 spoke of the transaction. But when the two gentlemen actually 
 met, their intercourse was kindly and pleasant enough. Sir 
 John listened to his relative's talk — and it appears, Philip 
 comported himself with his usual free and easy manner — with 
 interest and curiosity ; and owned afterwards that evil tongues 
 had previously been busy with the young man's character, and
 
 r^2 JIJI: AjUyi^JVJt.hJ^^ U'l' /'///LIP 
 
 that slander and uniruth had been spoken regarding him. To 
 this respect, if Philip is worse off than his neighbors, I can only 
 say his neighbors are fortunate. 
 
 Two days after the meeting of the cousins, the tranquillity 
 of Thornhaugh Street was disturbed by the appearance of a 
 magnificent yellow cnariot, with crests, hammer-cloths, a bewig 
 ged coachman, and a powdered footman. Betsy, the nurse, 
 who was going to take baby out for a walk, encountered this 
 giant on the threshold of Mrs. Brandon's door : and a lady 
 within the chariot delivered three cards to the tall menial, who 
 transferred them to Betsy. And Betsy persisted in saying that 
 the lady in the carriage admired baby very much, and asked its 
 age, at which baby's mamma was not in the least surprised. In 
 due course, an invitation to dinner followed, and our friends 
 became acquainted with their kinsfolk. 
 
 If you have a good memory for pedigrees — and in my 
 youthful time every man de bonne 7naisim studied genealogies, 
 and had his English families in his memory — you know that 
 this Sir John Ringwood, who succeeded to the principal portion 
 of the estates, but not to the titles of the late earl, was 
 descended from a mutual ancestor, a Sir John, whose elder son 
 was ennobled (temp Geo. I.), whilst the second son, following 
 the legal profession, became a judge, and had a son, who 
 became a baronet, and who begat that present Sir John who 
 has just been shaking hands with Philip across Trail's back.* 
 
 * Copied, by permission of P. Firmin, Esq., from the Genealogical Tree in his pes* 
 session. 
 
 Sir J. Ringwood, Bart., 
 
 of Wingate and Whipham. 
 
 b. 1649 ; ob. 1725. 
 
 Sir J., Bart., Sir Philip, Knt., 
 
 ist Baron Ringwood. a Baron of the Exchequer. 
 
 ob. 1770. ' 
 
 John, 2nd Baron, Philip, Sir John Bart-, 
 
 created Karl of Ringwood a Colonel in the Army. of the Hays, 
 
 and Visct. Cinqbars. ob. 1803. I 
 
 Charles, Visct. Cinqbars, 
 b. 1802 ; ob. 1824. 
 
 Sir John of the Hays, 
 
 and now of 
 
 Wingate and Whipham, 
 
 has issue. 
 
 Maria, Louisa, 
 
 b. 1801, b. 1802, Oliver, Philip, 
 
 md Talbot Twysden, mdG. B. Kirmin, Esq.,M.D. Hampden, FrankliB 
 
 and had issue. I and daughters. 
 
 Philip, b. 1825, 
 
 subject of the 
 
 present Memoir.
 
 ON HIS WAY THROUGH THE WOKI.D. 543 
 
 Thus the two men were cousins ; and in right of the heiress, 
 his poor mother, Philip might quarter the Ringwood arms on 
 his carriage, whenever ]ie drove out. These, you know, are 
 argent, a dexter sinople on a fesse wavy of the first — or pick 
 out, my dear friend, any coat you like out of the whole heraldic 
 wardrobe, and accommodate it to our friend Firmin. 
 
 When he was a young man at college, Philip had dabbled a 
 little in this queer science of heraldry, and used to try and 
 believe the legends about his ancestry, which his fond mother 
 imparted to him. He had a great book-plate made for himself, 
 with a prodigious number of quarterings, and could recite the 
 alliances by which such and such a quartering came into his 
 shield. His father rather confirmed these histories, and spoke 
 of them and of his wife's noble family with much respect ; and 
 Philip, artlessly whispering to a vulgar boy at school that he 
 was descended from King John, was thrashed very unkindly by 
 the vulgar upper boy, and nicknamed King John for many a 
 long day after. I dare say many other gentlemen who profess 
 to trace their descent from ancient kings have no better or 
 worse authority for their pedigree than friend Philip. 
 
 When our friend paid his second visit to Sir John Ring- 
 wood, he was introduced to his kinsman's library ; a great 
 family tree hung over the mantel-piece, surrounded' by a whole 
 gallery of defunct Ringwoods, of whom the Baronet was now 
 the representative. He quoted to Philip the hackneyed old 
 Ovidian lines (some score of years ago a great deal of that old 
 coin was current in conversation). As for family, he said, and 
 ancestors, and what we have not done ourselves, these things 
 we can hardly call ours. Sir John gave Philip to understand 
 that he was a staunch Liberal. Sir John was for going with 
 the age. Sir John had fired a shot from the Paris barri^ 
 cades. Sir John was for the rights of man everywhere all over 
 the world. He had pictures of Franklin, Lafayette, Washing- 
 ton, and the First Consul Bonaparte, on his walls along with 
 his ancestors. He had lithograph copies of Magna Charta, 
 the Declaration of American Independence, and the Signatures 
 to the Death of Charles L He did not scruple to own his 
 IDreference for republican institutions. He wished to know what 
 right had any man — the late Lord Ringwood, for example — to 
 sit in a hereditary House of Peers and legislate over him 1 That 
 lord had had a son, Cinqbars, who died many years before, a 
 victim of his own follies and debaucheries. Had Lord Cinqbars 
 survived his father, he would now be sitting an earl in the 
 House of Peers — the most- ignorant young man, the most
 
 544 
 
 THE AD\-EXTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 unprincipled young man, reckless, dissolute, of the feeblest 
 intellect, and the worst life. Well, had he lived and inherited 
 the Ringwood property, that creature would have been an earl : 
 whereas he, Sir John, his superior in morals, in character, in 
 intellect, his equal in point (jf birth (for had they not both a 
 common ancestor ?_) was Sir John still. The inequalities in 
 men's chances in life were monstrous and ridiculous. He was 
 determined, henceforth, to look at a man for himself alone, and 
 not esteem him for any of the absurd caprices of fortune. 
 
 As the republican was talking to his relative, a servant 
 came into the room and whispered to his master that the 
 plumber had come with his bill as by appointment ; upon 
 which Sir John rose up in a fury, asked the servant how he 
 dared to disturb him, and bade \\\w\ to tell the plumber to go 
 to the lowest depth of Tartarus. Nothing could equal the 
 insolence and rapacity of tradesmen, he said, except the inso- 
 lence and idleness of servants; and he called this one back, 
 and asked him how he dared to leave the fire in that state ? — 
 stormed and raged at him with a volubility which astonished 
 his new acquaintance \ and, the man being gone, resumed his 
 previous subject of conversation, viz., natural equality and the 
 outrageous injustice of the present social system. After talking 
 for half an hour, during which Philip found that he himself 
 could hardly find an opportunity of uttering a word, Sir John 
 took out his watch, and got up from his chair ; at which hint 
 Philip too rose, not sorry to bring the interview to an end. 
 And herewith Sir John accompanied his kinsman into the hall, 
 and to the street door, before which the Baronet's groom was 
 riding, leading his master's horse. And Philip heard the 
 Baronet using violent language to the groom, as he had done 
 to the servant within doors. Why, the army in Flanders did 
 not swear more terribly than this admirer of republican institu- 
 tions and advocate of the rights of man. 
 
 Philip was not allowed to go away without appointing a day 
 when he and his wife would partake of their kinsman's hospi- 
 tality. On this occasion, Mrs. Philip comported herself with 
 so much grace and simplicity, that Sir John and Lady Ring- 
 wood pronounced her to be a very pleasmg and ladylike 
 person ; and I dare say wondered how a person in her rank of 
 life could have acquired manners that were so refined and 
 agreeable. Lady Ringwood asked after the child which she 
 had seen, praised its beauty ; of course, won the mother's 
 lieart, and thereby caused her to speak with perhaps more free- 
 dom than she would otherwise have felt at a first mterview,
 
 ON HIS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. 545 
 
 Mrs. Philip has a dainty touch on the piano, and a sweet singing 
 voice that is charmingly true and neat. She performed at the 
 dinner some of the songs of her little repertoire, and pleased her 
 audience. Lady Ringwood loved good music, and was herself 
 a fine performer of the ancient school, when she played Haydn 
 and Mozart under the tuition of good old Sir George Thrum. 
 The tall and handsome beneficed clergyman who acted as 
 major-domo of Sir John's establishment, placed a parcel in the 
 carriage when Mr. and Mrs. Philip took their leave, and 
 announced with much respectful deference that the cab was 
 paid. Our friends no doubt would have preferred to dispense 
 with this ceremony ; but it is ill looking even a gift cab-horse 
 in the mouth, and so Philip was a gainer of some two shillings 
 by his kinsman's liberality. 
 
 When Charlotte came to open the parcel which major-domo, 
 with his lady's compliments, had placed in the cab, I fear she 
 did not exhibit that elation which we ought to feel for the favors 
 of our friends. A couple of little frocks, of the cut of George 
 IV,, some little red shoes of the same period, some crumpled 
 sashes, and other small articles of wearing apparel, by her lady- 
 ship's order by her ladyship's lady's-maid ; and Lady Ringwood 
 kissing Charlotte at her departure, told her that she had caused 
 this little packet to be put away for her. "H'm," says Philip, 
 only half pleased. " Suppose Sir John had told his butler to 
 put up one of his blue coats and brass buttons for me, as well 
 as pay the cab ? " 
 
 " If it was meant in kindness, Philip, we must not be angry," 
 pleaded Philip's wife ; — " and I am sure if you had heard her 
 and the Miss Ringwoods speak of bab}^, you would like them, 
 as I intend to do." 
 
 But Mrs. Philip never put those mouldy old red shoes upon 
 baby ; and as for the little frocks, children's frocks are made 
 so much fuller now that Lady Ringwood's presents did not an- 
 swer at all. Charlotte managed to furbish up a sash, and a 
 pair of epaulets for her child — epaulets are they called? 
 Shoulder-knots — what you will, ladies ; and with these orna- 
 ments Miss Firmin was presented to Lady Ringwood and some 
 of her family. 
 
 The good-will of these new-found relatives of Philip's was 
 laborious was evident, and yet I must say was not altogether 
 agreeable. At the first period of their intercourse — for this, 
 too, I am sorry to say, came to an end, or presently suffered 
 interruption — tokens of affection in the shape of farm produce, 
 country butter and poultry, and actual butcher's meat, came 
 
 35
 
 546 THE ADVENTURES OF PH/LIP 
 
 from Berkeley Square to Thornhaugh Street. The Duke of 
 Double-glo'ster 1 know is much richer than you are ; but if he 
 were to offer to make you a present of half-a-crown, I doubt 
 whether you would be quite pleased. And so with Philip and 
 his relatives. A hamper brought in the brougham, containing 
 hot-house grapes and country butter, is very well, but a leg of 
 mutton 1 own was a gift that was rather tough to swallow. It 
 was tough. That point we ascertained and established amidst 
 roars of laughter one day when we dined with our friends. 
 Did Lady Ringwood send a sack of turnips in the brougham 
 too ? In a word, we ate Sir John's mutton, and we laughed at 
 him, and be sure many a man has done the same by you and 
 me. Last Friday, for instance, as Jones and Brown go away 
 after dining with your humble servant. " Did you ever see 
 such profusion and extravagance .-* " asks Brown. " Profusion 
 and extravagance ! " cries Jones, that well-known epicure. " I 
 never saw anything so shabby in my life. What does the fellow 
 mean by asking mcXo such a dinner .'' " " True," says the other, 
 " it was an abominable dinner, Jones, as you justly say ; but it 
 was very profuse in him to give it. Don't you see ? " and so 
 both our good friends are agreed. 
 
 Ere many days were over the great yellow chariot and its 
 powdered attendants again made their appearance before Mrs. 
 Brandon's modest door in Thornhaugh Street, and Lady Ring- 
 wood and two daughters descended from the carriage and made 
 their way to Mr. Philip's apartments in the second floor, just 
 as that worthy gentleman was sitting down to dinner with his 
 wife. Lady Ringwood, bent upon being gracious, was in ecsta- 
 sies with everything she saw — a clean house — a nice little maid 
 — pretty picturesque rooms — odd rooms — and what charming 
 pictures ! Several of these were the work of the fond pencil 
 of poor J. J., who, as has been told, had painted Philip's beard 
 and Charlotte's eyebrow, and Charlotte's baby a thousand and 
 a thousand times. " May we come in ? Are we disturbing 
 you ? What dear little bits of china ! What a beautiful mug, 
 Mr. Firmin ! " This was poor J. J.'s present to his goddaughter. 
 ■' How nice the luncheon looks ! Dinner, is it ? How pleasant 
 to dine at this hour ! " Tiie ladies were determined to be 
 charmed with everything round about them. 
 
 " We are dining on your poultry. May we offer some to you 
 and Miss Ringwood," says the master of the house. 
 
 "Why don't you dine in the dining-room? Why do you 
 dine in a bedroom ? " asks Franklin Ringwood, the interesting 
 young son of the Baron of Ringwood.
 
 ON HIS WA Y THROUGH THE WORLD. 
 
 547 
 
 "Somebody else lives in the parlor," says Mrs. Philip. 
 " On which the boy remarks, " We have two dhiing-rooms in 
 Berkeley Square. I mean for us, besides papa's study, which 
 I mustn't go into. And the servants have two dining-rooms 
 and " 
 
 " Hush ! " here cries mamma, with the usual remark regard- 
 ing the beauty of silence in little boys. 
 
 But Franklin persists in spite of the " Hushes ! " "And so 
 we have at Ringwood ; and at Whipham there's ever so many 
 dining-rooms — ever so many — and I like Whipham a great deal 
 better than Ringwood, because my pony is at Whipham. You 
 have not got a pony. You are too poor." 
 
 " Franklin ! " 
 
 " You said he was too poor ; and you would not have had 
 chickens if we had not given them to you. Mamma, you know 
 you said they were verj^ poor, and would like them." 
 
 And here mamma looked red, and I dare say Philip's cheeks 
 and ears tingled, and for once Mrs. Philip was thankful at hear- 
 ing her baby cry, for it gave her a pretext for leaving the room 
 and flying to the nursery, whither the other two ladies accom- 
 panied her. 
 
 Meanwhile Master Franklin went on with his artless conver- 
 sation. " Mr. Philip, why do they say you are wicked ? You 
 do not look wicked ; and I am sure Mrs. Philip does not look 
 wicked — she looks very good." 
 
 " Who says I am wicked .-' " asks Mr. Firmin of his candid 
 young relative. 
 
 " Oh, ever so many ! Cousin Ringwood says so ; and 
 Blanche says so ; and Woolcomb says so ; only I don't like him, 
 he's so very brown. And when they heard you had been to 
 dinner, ' Has that beast been here ? ' Ringwood says. And I 
 don't like \\xm. a bit. But I like you, at least I think I do. You 
 only have oranges for dessert. We always have lots of things 
 for dessert at home. You don't, I suppose, because you've got 
 no money — only a very little." 
 
 " Well : I have got only a very little," says Philip. 
 
 " I have some — ever so much. And I'll buy something for 
 your wife ; and I shall like to have you better at home than 
 Blanche, and Ringwood, and that ^Voolcomb ; and they never 
 give me anything. You can't, you know ; because you are so 
 very poor — you are ; but we'll often send you things, I dare say. 
 And I'll have an orange, please, thank you. And there's a 
 chap at our school, and his name is Suckling, and he ate eigh- 
 teen oranges, and wouldn't give one away to anybody. Wasn't
 
 548 
 
 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 he a greedy pig ? And I have wine with my oranges — I do : a 
 glass of wine — thank you. That's jolly. 15ut you don't have 
 it often, I suppose, because you're so very poor." 
 
 I am glad Philip's infant could not understand, being yet 
 of too tender age, the compliments which Lady Ringwood and 
 her daughter passed upon her. As it was, the compliments 
 charmed the mother, for whom indeed they were intended, and 
 did not infiame the unconscious baby's vanity. 
 
 What would the polite mamma and sister have said if they 
 had heard that unlucky Franklin's prattle .-' The boy's simpli- 
 city amused his tall cousin. "Yes," says Philip, "we are very 
 jDOor, but we are very happy, and don't mind — that's the truth." 
 
 " Mademoiselle, that's the German governess, said she won- 
 dered how you could live at all ; and I don't think you could if 
 you ate as much as she did. You should see her eat ; she is 
 such a oner at eating. Fred, my brother, that's the one who is 
 at college, one day tried to see how Mademoiselle Wallfisch 
 could eat, and she had twice of soup, and then she said sivoplay ; 
 and then twice of fish, and she said sivoplay for more ; and then 
 she had roast mutton — no, I think, roast beef it was ; and she 
 eats the pease with her knife ; and then she had raspberry jam 
 
 pudding, and ever so much beer, and then " But what 
 
 came then we never shall know ; because while young Franklin 
 was choking with laughter (accompanied with a large piece of 
 orange) at the ridiculous recollection of Miss Wallfisch's ap- 
 petite, his mamma and sister came down stairs from Charlotte's 
 nursery, and brought the dear boy's conversation to an end. 
 The ladies chose to go home, delighted with Philip, baby, Char- 
 lotte. Everything was so proper. Everything was so nice. 
 Mrs. Firmin was so ladylike. The fine ladies watched her, and 
 her behavior, with that curiosity which the Brobdingnag ladies 
 displayed when they held up little Gulliver on their palms, 
 and saw him bow, smile, dance, draw his sword, and take off 
 his hat, just like a man.
 
 oisr ins IV A y tiirougii the world. 549 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVI. 
 
 IN WHICH THE DRAWING-ROOMS ARE NOT FURNISHED 
 
 AFTER ALL. 
 
 We cannot expect to be loved by a relative whom we have 
 knocked into an illuminated pond, and whose coat-tails, pan- 
 taloons, nether limbs, and best feelings we have lacerated with 
 ill treatment and broken glass. A man whom you have so 
 treated behind his back will not be sparing of his punishment 
 behind yours. Of course all the Twysdens, male and female, 
 and Woolcomb, the dusky husband of Philip's former love, hated 
 and feared, and maligned him ; and were in the habit of speak- 
 ing of him as a truculent and reckless savage and monster, 
 coarse and brutal in his language and behavior, ragged, dirty 
 and reckless in his personal appearance ; reeking with smoke, 
 perpetually reeling in drink, indulging in oaths, actions, laugh- 
 ter which rendered him intolerable in civilized society. The 
 Twysdens, during Philip's absence abroad, had been very 
 respectful and assiduous in courting the new head of the Ring- 
 wood family. They had flattered Sir John, and paid court to 
 my lady. They had been welcomed at Sir John's houses in 
 town and country. They had adopted his politics in a great 
 measure, as they had adopted the politics of the deceased peer. 
 They had never lost an opportunity of abusing poor Philip and 
 of ingratiating themselves. They had never refused any invita- 
 tion from Sir John in town or country, and had ended by utterly 
 boring him and Lady Ringwood and the Ringwood family in 
 general. Lady Ringwood learned somewhere how pitilessly 
 Mrs. Woolcomb had jilted her cousin when a richer suitor 
 appeared in the person of the West Indian. Then news came 
 how Philip had administered a beating to Woolcomb, to young 
 Twysden, to a dozen who set on him. The early prejudices 
 began to pass away. A friend or two of Philip's told Ring- 
 wood how he was mistaken in the young man, and painted a 
 portrait of him in colors much more favorable than those which 
 his kinsfolk employed. Indeed, dear relations, if the public 
 wants to know our little faults and errors, I think I know who 
 will not grudge the requisite information. Dear aunt Candour, 
 are you not still alive, and don't you know what we had for 
 dinner yesterday, and the amount (monstrous extravagance !) 
 of the washerwoman's bill ?
 
 55^ 
 
 THE AD VENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 Well, the Twysden family so bespattered poor Philip with 
 abuse, and represented him as a monster of such hideous mien, 
 that no wonder the Ringwoods avoided him. I'hey then began 
 to grow utterly sick and tired of his detractors. And then Sir 
 John, happening to talk with his brother Member of Parlia- 
 ment, Tregarvan, in the House of Commons, heard quite a 
 different story regarding our friend to that with which the Twys- 
 dens had regaled him, and, with no little surprise on Sir John's 
 part, was told by Tregarx^an how honest, rough, worthy, affec- 
 tionate and gentle this poor maligned fellow was; how he had 
 been sinned against by his wretch of a father, whom he had for- 
 given and actually helped out of his wretched means; and how 
 he was making a brave battle against poverty, and had a sweet 
 little loving wife and child, whom every kind heart would will- 
 ingly strive to help. Because people are rich they are not of 
 necessity ogres. Because they are born gentlemen and ladies 
 of good degree, are in easy circumstances, and hav.e a generous 
 education, it does not follow that they are heartless aiid will turn 
 their back on a friend. Mois que vons park — I have been in a 
 great strait of sickness near to death, and the friends who came to 
 help me with every comfort, succor, sympathy were actually gen- 
 tlemen, who lived in good houses, and had a good education. 
 They didn't turn away because I was sick, or fly from me because 
 they thought I was poor ; on the contrary, hand, purse, succor, 
 sympathy were ready, and praise be to heaven. And so too did 
 Philip find help when he needed it, and succor when he was in 
 poverty. Tregarvan, we will own, was a pompous little man, his 
 House of Commons speeches were dull, and his written docu- 
 ments awfully slow ; but he had a kind heart : he was touched 
 by that picture which Laura drew of the young man's poverty, 
 and honesty, and simple hopefulness in the midst of hard 
 times : and we ha\-e seen how the European Review was thus 
 entrusted to Mr. Philip's management. Then some artful 
 friends of Philip's determined that he should be reconciled to 
 his relations, who were well to do in the world, and might serve 
 him. And I wish, dear reader, that your respectable relatives 
 and mine would bear this little paragraph in mind and leave us 
 both handsome legacies. Then Tregarvan spoke to Sir John 
 Ringwood, and that meeting was brought about, where, for once 
 at least, Mr. Philip quarrelled with nobody. 
 
 And now came another little piece of good luck, w^hich, I 
 suppose, must be attributed to the same kind friend who had 
 been scheming for Philip's benefit, and who is never so happy 
 as when her little plots for her friends' benefit can be made to
 
 O.V HIS IVAY THROUGH THE WORLD. 
 
 551 
 
 succeed. Yes : when that arch-jobber — don't tell me ; — I never 
 knew a woman worth a pin who wasn't — when that arch-jobber, 
 I say, has achieved a job by which some friend is made happy, 
 her eyes and cheeks brighten with triumph. Whether she has 
 put a sick man into a hospital, or got a poor woman a family's 
 washing, or made a sinner repent and return to wife, husband, 
 or what not, that woman goes off and pays her thanks, where 
 thanks are due, with such fervor, with such lightsomeness, with 
 such happiness, that I assure you she is a sight to behold. 
 Hush ! When one sinner is saved, who are glad ? Some of us 
 know a woman or two pure as angels — know, and are thankful. 
 
 When the person about whom I have been prattling has one 
 of her benevolent jobs on hand, or has completed it, there is 
 a sort of triumph and mischief in her manner, which I don't 
 know otherwise how to describe. She does not understand my 
 best jokes at this period, or answers them at random, or laughs 
 very absurdly and vacantly. She embraces her children wildly, 
 and, at the most absurd moments, is utterly unmindful when 
 they are saying their lessons, prattling their little questions and 
 so forth. I recall all these symptoms (and put this and that to- 
 gether, as the saying is) as happening on one especial day, 
 at the commencement of Easter Term, eighteen hundred and 
 never mind what — as happening on one especial morning when 
 this lady had been astoundingly distraite and curiously excited. 
 I now remember how, during her children's dinner-time, she 
 sat looking into the square out of her window, and scaicely 
 attending to the little innocent cries for mutton which the 
 children were offering up. 
 
 At last there was a rapid clank over the pavement, a tall 
 figure passed the parlor windows, which our kind friends know 
 look into Queen Square, and then came a loud ring at the bell, 
 and I thought the mistress of the house gave an ah — a sigh — 
 as though her heart was relieved. 
 
 The street door was presently opened, and then the dining- 
 room door, and Philip walks in with his hat on, his blue eyes 
 staring before him, his hair flaming about, and " La, uncle 
 Philip ! " cry the children. " What have you done to yourself? 
 You have shaved off your mustache." And so he had, I declare. 
 
 " I say. Pen, look here I This has been left at chambers ; 
 and Cassidy has sent it on by his clerk," our friend said. I 
 forget whether it has been stated that Philip's name still re- 
 mained on the door of those chambers in Parchment Buildings, 
 where we once heard his song of " Dr. Luther," and were 
 present at his call-supper.
 
 252 THE A D VENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 The document which PhiHp prockiced was actually a brief. 
 The papers were superscribed, " In Parliament, Pohvheedle 
 and Tredyddlum Railway. To support bill, Mr„ Firmin ; re- 
 tainer, five guineas ; brief, fifty guineas ; consultation, five 
 guineas. With you Mr. Armstrong, Sir J. Whitworth, Mr. Pink- 
 erton." Here was a wonder of wonders ! A shower of gold 
 was poured out on my friend. A light dawned upon me. The 
 proposed bill was for a Cornish line. Our friend Tregarvan 
 was concerned in it, the line passing through his property, and 
 my wife had canvassed him privately, and by her wheedling and 
 blandishments had persuaded Tregarvan to use his interest 
 with the agents and get Philip this welcome aid. 
 
 Philip ej^ed the paper with a queer expression. He handled 
 it as some men handle a baby. He looked as if he did not 
 know what to do with it, and as if he should like to drop it. I 
 believe I made some satirical remark to this effect as I looked 
 at our friend with his paper. 
 
 " He holds a child beautifully," said my wife with much 
 enthusiasm ; " much better than some people who laugh at him." 
 
 " And he will hold this no doubt much to his credit. May 
 this be the father of many briefs. May you have bags full of 
 them ! " Philip has all our good wishes. They did not cost 
 much, or avail much, but they were sincere. I know men who 
 can't for the lives of them give even that cheap coin of good 
 will, but hate their neighbors' prosperity, and are angry with 
 them when they cease to be dependent and poor. 
 
 We have said how Cassidy's astonished clerk had brought 
 the brief from chambers to Firmin at his lodgings at Mrs. Bran- 
 don's in Thornhaugh Street. Had a bailiff served him with a 
 writ, Philip could not have been more surprised, or in a greater 
 tremor. A brief } Grands Dieux ! What was he to do with 
 a brief ? He thought of going to bed, and being ill, or flying 
 from home, country, family. Brief ? Charlotte, of course, 
 seeing her husband alarmed, began to quake too. Indeed, if 
 his worship's finger aches, does not her whole body suffer.? 
 But Charlotte's and Philip's constant friend, the Little Sister, 
 felt no such fear. '• Now there's this opening, you must take 
 it, my dear," she said. " Suppose you clon't know much about 
 
 law " " Much ! nothing," interposed Philip. " You might 
 
 ask me to play the piano ; but as I never happened to have 
 learned " 
 
 "La — don't tell me! You mustn't show a faint heart. 
 Take the business, and do it as best you can. You'll do it 
 better next time, and next. The Bar's a gentleman's business.
 
 ON HIS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. 553 
 
 Don't I attend a judge's lady, which I remember her with her 
 first in a little bit of a house in Bernard Street, Russell Square ; 
 and now haven't I been to her in Eaton Square, with a butler 
 and two footmen, and carriages ever so many ? You may work 
 on at your newspapers, and get a crust, and when you're old, 
 and if you quarrel — and you have a knack of quarrelling — he 
 has, Mrs. Firmin. I knew him before you did. Quarrelsome 
 he is, and he will be, though you think him an angel, to be 
 sure. — Suppose you quarrel with your newspaper masters, and 
 your reviews, and that, you lose your place. A gentleman like 
 Mr. Philip oughtn't to have a master. I couldn't bear to think 
 of your going down of a Saturday to the publishing office to 
 get your wages like a workman." 
 
 " But I am a workman," interposes Philip. 
 
 " La ! But do you mean to remain one for ever ? I would 
 rise, if I was a man ! " said the intrepid little woman : " I 
 would rise, or I'd know the reason why. Who knows how 
 many in family you're going to be ? I'd have more spirit than 
 to live in a second floor — I would ! " 
 
 And the Little Sister said this, though she clung round 
 Philip's child with a rapture of fondness which she tried in vain 
 to conceal ; though she felt that to part from it would be to 
 part from her life's chief happiness ; though she loved Philip 
 as her own son : and Charlotte — well, Charlotte for Philip's 
 sake — as women love other women. 
 
 Charlotte came to her friends in Queen Square, and told us 
 of the resolute Little Sister's advice and conversation. She 
 knew that Mrs. Brandon only loved her as something belonging 
 to Philip. She admired this Little Sister ; and trusted her ; 
 and could afford to bear that little somewhat scornful domina- 
 tion which Brandon exercised. " She does not love me, be- 
 cause Philip does," Charlotte said. " Do you think I could 
 like her, or any woman, if I thought Philip loved them ? I 
 could kill them, Laura, that I could ! " And at this sentiment 
 I imagine daggers shooting out of a pair of eyes that were or- 
 dinarily very gentle and bright. 
 
 Not having been engaged in the case in which Philip had 
 the honor of first appearing, I cannot enter into particulars 
 resrarding; it, but am sure that case must have been uncommonly 
 strong in itself which could survive such an advocate. He 
 passed a frightful night of torture before appearing in com- 
 mittee-room. During that night, he says, his hair grew gray. 
 His old college friend and comrade Pinkerton, who was with 
 him in the case, " coached " him on the day previous ; and in-
 
 224 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 deed it must be owned that the work which he had to perform 
 was not of a nature to impair the inside or the outside of his 
 skull. A i^reat man was his leader; his friend Pinkerton fol- 
 lowed ; and all Mr. Philip's business was to examine a half- 
 dozen witnesses by questions previously arranged between them 
 and the agents. 
 
 When you hear that, as a reward of his services in this case, 
 Mr. Firmin received a sum of money sufficient to pay his mod- 
 est family expenses for some four months, I am sure, dear and 
 respected literary friends, that you will wish the lot of a parlia- 
 mentary barrister had been yours, or that your immortal works 
 could be paid with such a liberality as rewards the labors of these 
 lawyers. " N"nni)icr erschc'uim die Goiter al/ein.'" After one 
 agent had employed Philip, another came and secured his valu- 
 able services : him two or three others followed, and our friend 
 positively had money in bank. Not only were apprehensions 
 of poverty removed for the present, but we had every reason to 
 hope that Firmin's prosperity would increase and continue. 
 And when a little son and heir was born, which blessing was 
 conferred upon jNIr. Philip about a year after his daughter, our 
 godchild, saw the light, we should have thought it shame to 
 have any misgivings about the future, so cheerful did Philip's 
 prospects appear. " Did 1 not tell you," said my wife, with 
 her usual kindling romance, " that comfort and succor would 
 be found for these in the hour of their need ? " Amen. We 
 were grateful that comfort and succor should come. No one, 
 I am sure, was more humbly thankful than Philip himself for 
 the fortunate chances which befell him. 
 
 He was alarmed rather than elated by his sudden pros- 
 perity. " It can't last,'* he said. " Don't tell me. The attor- 
 neys must find me out before long. They cannot continue to 
 give their business to such an ignoramus : and I really think I 
 must remonstrate with them." You should have seen the 
 Little Sister's indignation when Philip uttered this sentiment 
 in her presence. " Give up your business ? Yes, do ! " she 
 cried, tossing up Philip's youngest born. " Fling this baby out 
 of window, why not indeed, which heaven has sent it you ! You 
 ought to go down on your knees and ask pardon for having 
 thought anything so wicked." Philip's heir, by the way, imme- 
 diately on his entrance into the world, had become the prime 
 favorite of this unreasoning woman. The little daughter was 
 passed over as a little person of no account, and so began to 
 entertain the passion of jealousy at almost the very earliest age 
 at which even the female breast is capable of enjoying it.
 
 On HIS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. 555 
 
 And though this Little Sister loved all these people with 
 an almost ferocious passion of love, and lay awake, I believe, 
 hearing their infantine cries, or crept on stealthy feet in dark- 
 ness to their mother's chamber door, behind which they lay 
 sleeping ; though she had, as it were, a rage for these infants, 
 and was wretched out of their sight, yet, when a third and a 
 fourth brief came to Philip, and he was enabled to put a little 
 money aside, nothing would content Mrs. Brandon but that he 
 should go into a house of his own. "A gentleman," she said, 
 " ought not to live in a two-pair lodging ; he ought to have a 
 house of his own." So, you see, she hastened on the prepara- 
 tions for her own execution. She trudged to the brokers' shops 
 and made wonderful bargains of furniture. She cut chintzes, 
 and covered sofas, and sewed, and patched, and fitted. She 
 found a house and took it — iMilman Street, Guildford Street, 
 opposite the Fondling (as the dear little soul called it), a most 
 genteel, quiet little street, " and quite near for me to come," 
 she said, " to see my dears." Did she speak with dry eyes ? 
 Mine moisten sometimes when I think of the faith, of the gen- 
 erosity, of the sacrifice, of that devoted, loving creature. 
 
 I am very fond of Charlotte. Her sweetness and simplicity 
 won all our hearts at home. No wife or mother ever was more 
 attached and affectionate ; but I own there was a time when I 
 hated her, though of course that highly principled woman, the 
 wife of the author of the present memoirs, says that the state- 
 ment I am making here is stuff and nonsense, not to say im- 
 moral and irreligious. Well, then, I hated Charlotte for the 
 horrible eagerness which she showed in getting away from this 
 Little Sister, who clung round those children, whose first cries 
 she had heard. I hated Charlotte for a cruel hai^piness which 
 she felt as she hugged the children to her heart : her own 
 children in their own room, whom she would dress, and watch, 
 and wash, and tend ; and for whom she wanted no aid. No 
 aid, entendez-vous ! Oh, it was a shame, a shame ! In the new 
 house, in the pleasant little trim new nursery (fitted up by 
 whose fond hands we will not say), is the mother glaring over 
 the cot, where the little, soft, round cheeks are pillowed ; and 
 yonder in the rooms in Thornhaugh Street, where she has 
 tended them for two years, the Little Sister sits lonely, as the 
 moonlight streams in. God help thee, little suffering faithful 
 heart ! Never but once in her life before had she known so 
 exquisite a pain. 
 
 Of course, we had an entertainment in the new house ; and 
 Philip's friends, old and new, came to the house-warming. The
 
 256 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 family coach of the Ringwoods blocked up that astonished little 
 street. The powder on their footmen's heads nearly brushed 
 the ceiling, as the monsters rose when the guests passed in and 
 out of the hall. The Little Sister merely took charge of the 
 tea-room. Philip's " library " was that usual little cupboard 
 beyond the dining-room. The little drawing-room was dread- 
 fully crowded by an ex-nursery piano, which the Ringwoods 
 bestowed upon their friends ; and somebody was in duty bound 
 to play upon it on the evening of this soiree ; though the 
 Little Sister chafed down stairs at the music. In fact her very 
 words were *' Rat that piano ! " She " ratted " the instni- 
 nient, because the music would wake her little dears up stairs, 
 And that music did wake them ; and they howled melodiously, 
 and the Little Sister, who was about to serve Lady Jane 
 Tregarvan with some tea, dashed up stairs to the nursery : and 
 Charlotte had reached the room already : and she looked angry 
 when the Little Sister came in : and she said, " I am sure, Mrs. 
 Brandon, the people down stairs will be wanting their tea ; " 
 and she spoke with some asperity. And Mrs. Brandon went 
 down stairs without one word ; and, happening to be on the 
 landing, conversing with a friend, and a little out of the way of 
 the duet w'hich the Miss Ringwoods were performing — 
 riding their great old horse, as it were, and putting it through 
 its paces in Mrs. Lirmin's little paddock ; — happening, I say, to 
 be on the landing when Caroline passed, I took a hand as cold 
 as stone, and never saw a look of grief more tragic than that 
 worn by her poor little face as it passed. " Aly children cried," 
 she said, " and I went up to the nursery. But she don't want 
 me there now." Poor Little Sister ! She humbled herself and 
 grovelled before Charlotte. You could not help trampling 
 upon her then, madam ; and I hated you — and a great number 
 of other women. Ridley and I went down to her tea-room, 
 where Caroline resumed her place. She looked very nice and 
 pretty, with her pale sweet face, and her neat cap and blue 
 ribbon. Tortures I know she was suffering. Charlotte had 
 been stabbing her. Women will use the edge sometimes, and 
 drive the steel in. Charlotte said to me, some time afterwards, 
 I was jealous of her, and you were right ; and a dearer, more 
 faithful creature never lived." But who told Charlotte I said 
 she was jealous ? O fool ! I told Ridley, and Mr. Ridley told 
 Mrs. Firmin. 
 
 If Charlotte stabbed Caroline, Caroline could not help 
 coming back again and again to the knife. On Sundays, when 
 she was free, there was always a place for her at Philip's modest
 
 ON HIS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. 557 
 
 table ; and when Mrs. Philip went to church, Caroline was 
 allowed to reign in the nursery. Sometimes Charlotte was 
 generous enough to give Mrs. Brandon tliis chance. When 
 Philip took a house — a whole house to himself — Philip's 
 mother-in-law proposed to come and stay with him, and said 
 chat, wishing to be beholden to no one, she would pay for her 
 board and lodging. But Philip declined this treat, represent- 
 ing, justly, that his jDresent house was no bigger than his former 
 lodgings. " My poor love is dying to have me," Mrs. Baynes 
 remarked on this. " But her husband is so cruel to her, and 
 keeps her under such terror, that she dares not call her life her 
 own." Cruel to her! Charlotte was the happiest of the happy 
 in her little house. In consequence of his parliamentary suc- 
 cess, Philip went regularly to chambers now, in the fond hope 
 that more briefs might come. At chambers he likewise con- 
 ducted the chief business of his Review : and, at the accus- 
 tomed hour of his return, that usual little procession of mother 
 and child and nurse would be seen on the watch for him ; and 
 the young woman — the happiest woman in Christendom — 
 would walk back clinging on her husband's arm. 
 
 All this while letters came from Philip's dear father at New 
 York, where, it appeared, he was engaged not only in his 
 profession, but in various speculations, with which he was 
 always about to make his fortune. One day Philip got a 
 newspaper advertising a new insurance company, and saw, to 
 his astonishment, the announcement of " Counsel in London, 
 Philip Firmin, Esq., Parchment Buildings, Temple." A pater- 
 nal letter promised Philip great fees out of this insurance 
 company, but I never heard that poor Philip was any the 
 richer. In fact his friends advised him to have nothing to do 
 with this insurance company, and to make no allusion to it in 
 his letters. "They feared the Danai, and the gifts they 
 brought," as old Firmin would have said. They had to 
 impress upon Philip an abiding mistrust of that wily old Greek, 
 his father. Firmin senior always wrote hopefully and magnifi- 
 cently, and persisted in believing or declaring that ere very 
 long he should have to announce to Philip that his fortune was 
 made. He speculated in Wall Street, I don't know in what 
 shares, inventions, mines, railways. One day, some few months 
 after his migration to Milman Street, Philip, blushing and 
 hanging down his head, had to tell me that his father had 
 drawn upon him again. Had he not paid up his shares in a 
 certain mine, they would have been forfeited, and he and /lis 
 son after him would have lost a certain fortune, old Danaus
 
 558 
 
 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 said. I fear an artful, a long-bow-pulling Danaus. What, 
 shall a man have birth, wealth, friends, high position, and end 
 so that we dare not. leave him alone in the room with our 
 spoons? "And you have paid this bill which the old man 
 drew ? " we asked. Yes, Philip had paid the bill. He vowed 
 he would pay no more. But it was not difficult to see that the 
 doctor would draw more bills upon this accommodating banker. 
 "I dread the letters which begin with a flourish about the for- 
 tune which he is just going to make," Philip said. He knew 
 that the old parent prefaced his demands for money in that 
 way. 
 
 Mention has been made of a great medical discovery which 
 he had announced to his correspondent, Mrs. Brandon, and by 
 which the doctor declared as usual that he was about to make 
 a fortune. In New York and Boston he had tried experiments 
 which had been attended with the most astonishing success. 
 A remedy was discovered, the mere sale of which in Europe 
 and America must bring an immense revenue to the fortunate 
 inventors. For the ladies whom Mrs. Brandon attended, the 
 remedy was of priceless value. He would send her some. His 
 friend, Captain Morgan, of the Southampton packet-ship, would 
 bring her some of this astonishing inedicine. Let her try it. 
 Let her show the accompanying cases to Doctor Goodenough 
 — to any of his brother physicians in London. Though himself 
 an exile from his country, he loved it, and was proud in being 
 able to confer upon it one of the greatest blessings with which 
 science had endowed mankind. 
 
 Goodenough, I am sorry to say, had such a mistrust of his 
 cojifrere \\\zX. he chose to disbelieve any statement Firmin made. 
 " I don't believe, my good Brandon, the fellow has nous enough 
 to light upon any scientific disco\ery more useful than a new 
 sauce for cutlets. He invent anything but fibs, never ! " You 
 see this Goodenough is an obstinate old heathen ; and when he 
 has once found reason to mistrust a man, he for ever after 
 declines to believe him. 
 
 However, the doctor is a man for ever on the look-out for 
 more knowledge of his profession, and for more remedies to 
 benefit mankind : he hummed and ha'd over the pamphlet, as 
 the Little Sister sat watching him in his study. He clapped it 
 down after a while, and slapped his hands on his little legs as 
 his wont is. " Brandon," he says, " 1 think there is a great 
 deal in it, and I think so the more because it turns out that 
 Firmin has nothing to do with the discovery, which has been 
 made at Boston," In fact, Dr. Firmin, late of London, had
 
 ON HIS WAY TIIROUarr TriE WORLD. 55() 
 
 only been present in the Boston hospital, where the experiments 
 were made with the new remedy'. He had cried " Halves," and 
 proposed to sell it as a secret remedy, and the bottle which he 
 forwarded to our friend the Little Sister was labelled " Firmin's 
 Anodyne." What Firmin did, indeed, was what he had been 
 in the habit of doing. He had taken another man's property, 
 and was endeavoring to make a flourich with it. The Little 
 Sister returned home, then, with her bottle of Chloroform — for 
 this was what Dr. Firmin chose to call his discovery, and he 
 had sent home a specimen of it; as he sent home a cask of 
 petroleum from Virginia ; as he sent proposals for new railways 
 upon which he promised Philip a munificent commission, if his 
 son could but place the shares amongst his friends. 
 
 And with regard to these valuables, the sanguine doctor got 
 to believe that he really was endowing his son with large sums 
 of money. " My boy has set up a house, and has a wife and 
 two children, the young jackanapes ! " he would say to people 
 in New York ; " as if he had not been extravagant enough in 
 former days ! When I married, I had private means, and 
 married a nobleman's niece with a large fortune. Neither 
 of these two young folks has a penny. Well, well, the old fathei 
 must help them as well as he can ! " And I am told there were 
 ladies who dropped the tear of sensibilit}^, and said, "What a 
 fond father this doctor is ! How he sacrifices himself for that 
 scapegrace of a son ! Think of the dear doctor at his age, toil- 
 ing cheerfully for that young man, who helped to ruin him ! " 
 And Firmin sighed ; and passed a beautiful white handkerchief 
 over his eyes with a beautiful white hand ; and, I believe, really 
 cried \ and thought himself quite a good, affectionate, injured 
 man. He held the plate at church ; he looked very handsome 
 and tall, and bowed with a charming melancholy grace to the 
 ladies as they put in their contributions. The dear man ! His 
 plate was fuller than other people's — so a traveller told us who 
 saw him in New York ; and described a very choice dinner 
 which the doctor gave to a few friends, at one of the smartest 
 hotels just then opened. 
 
 With all the Little Sister's good management Mr. and Mrs. 
 Philip were only able to install themselves in their new house 
 at a considerable expense, and beyond that great Ringwood 
 piano which swaggered in Philip's little drawing-room, I am 
 constrained to say that there was scarce any furniture at all. 
 One of the railway accounts was not paid as yet, and poor 
 Philip could not feed upon mere paper promises to pay. Nor 
 was he inclined to accept the offers of private friends, who were
 
 560 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 willing enough to be his bankers, " One in a family is enough 
 for that kind of business," he said, gloomily ; and it came out 
 that again and again the interesting exile at New York who 
 was deploring his son's extravagance and foolish marriage, had 
 drawn bills upon Philip which our friend accepted and paid — ■ 
 bills, who knows to what amount ? He has never told ; and 
 the engaging parent who robbed him — must I use a word 
 so unpolite ? — will never now tell to what extent he helped 
 himself to Philip's small means. This I know, that when au- 
 tumn came — when September was j^ast — we in our cozy little 
 retreat at the sea-side received a letter from the Little Sister, in 
 her dear little bad spelling (about which there used to be 
 somehow a pathos which the very finest writing does not 
 possess) ; there came, I say, a letter from the Little Sister in 
 which she told us, with many dashes, that dear Mrs. Philip and 
 the children were pining and sick in London, and " that Philip, 
 he had too much jDride and spirit to take money from any one ; 
 that Mr. Tregarvan was away travelling on the continent, and 
 that wretch — that monster, yoii know who — have drawn upon 
 Philip again for money, and again he have paid, and the dear, 
 dear children can't have fresh air." 
 
 " Did she tell you," said Philip, brushing his hands across 
 his eyes when a friend came to remonstrate with him, " did she 
 tell you that she brought me money herself, but we would not 
 use it .'' Look ! I have her little marriage gift yonder in 
 my desk, and pray God I shall be able to leave it to my chil- 
 dren. The fact is, the doctor has drawn upon me as usual ; he 
 is going to make a fortune next week. I have paid another 
 bill of his. The parliamentary agents are out of town, at their 
 moors in Scotland, I suppose. The air of Russell Square 
 is uncommonly wholesome, and when the babies have had 
 enough of that, why, they must change it for Brunswick Square. 
 Talk about the country ! what country can be more quiet 
 than Guildford Street in September ? 1 stretch out of a morn- 
 ing, and breathe the mountain air on Ludgate Hill." And 
 with these dismal pleasantries and jokes our friend chose to 
 put a good face upon bad fortune. The kinsmen of Ringwood 
 offered hospitality kindly enough, but how was poor PhiUp to 
 pay railway expenses for servants, babies, and wife ? In this 
 strait Tregarvan from abroad, having found out some monstrous 
 
 design of Russ of the great Power of which he stood 
 
 in daily terror, and which, as we are in strict amity with that 
 Power, no other Power shall induce me to name — Tregarvan 
 wrote to his editor, and communicated to him in confidence a
 
 ON HIS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. 56 1 
 
 most prodigious and nefarious plot against the liberties of all 
 the rest of Europe, in which the Power in question was engaged, 
 and in a postscript added, " By the way, the Michaelmas 
 quarter is due, and I send you a check," &c., &c. O precious 
 postscript. 
 
 " Didn't I tell you it would be so ? " said my wife, with 
 a self-satisfied air. " Was I not certain that succor would 
 come .'' " 
 
 And succor did come, sure enough ; and a very happy 
 little party went down to Brighton in a second-class carriage, 
 and got an extraordinary cheap lodging, and the roses came 
 back to the little pale cheeks, and mamma was wonderfully 
 invigorated and refreshed, as all her friends could have seen 
 when the little family came back to town, only there was such a 
 thick dun fog that it was impossible to see complexions at all. 
 
 When the shooting season was come to an end, the 
 parliamentary agents who had employed Philip came back to 
 London : and, I am happy to say, gave him a check for his 
 little account. My wife cried, " Did I not tell you so> " more 
 than ever. " Is not everything for the best ? I knew dear 
 Philip would prosper ! " 
 
 "Everything was for the best, was it.^" Philip was sure to 
 prosper, was he ? What do you think of the next news which 
 the poor fellow brought to us ? One night in December he 
 came to us, and I saw by his face that some event of import- 
 ance had befallen him. 
 
 " I am almost heart-broken," he said, thumping on the table 
 when the young ones had retreated from it. " I don't know 
 what to do. I have not told you all. I have paid four bills for 
 him already, and now he has he has signed my name." 
 
 "Who has.?" 
 
 " He at New York. You know," said poor Philip. " I tell 
 you he has put my name on a bill, and without my authority." 
 
 " Gracious heavens ! You mean your father has for " 
 
 I could not say the word. 
 
 " Yes," groaned Philip. " Here is a letter from him ; " and 
 he handed a letter across the table in the doctor's well-known 
 handwriting. 
 
 '&• 
 
 "Dearest Philip," tlie father wrote, " a sad misfortune has befallen me, which I had 
 hoped to conceal, or at any rate, to avert from my dear son. For you, Philip, are a partici- 
 pator in that misfortune througli the imprudence— must I say it ?— of your father. Would 
 I had struck off the hand wliich has done the deed, ere it had been done ! But the fault 
 has taken wings and flown out vi my reach. Imtneritus, dear boy, you have to suffer for 
 the delicta tnajorinn. Ah, that a father should have to own his fault ; to kneel and ask 
 pardon of his son ! 
 
 "I am engaged in many speculations. Some have succeeded beyond my wildest hope; 
 
 36
 
 562 
 
 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 some have taken in the most rational, the most prudent, the least sanguuic 01 our capitalists 
 in Wall Street, and, promising the greatest results, have ended in the most extreme 
 failure ! To meet a call in an undertaking which seemed to offer the most certain pros- 
 pects of success, which seemed to promise a fortune for me and my boy, and your dear 
 children, i put in amongst other securities which 1 had to realize on a sudden, a bill, on 
 which I used your name. I dated it as drawn six month; back by me at New York, on you 
 at Parchment Buildings, Temple ; and I wrote your acceptance, as though the signature 
 wer: yours. I give mvself up to you. I tell you what I have done. Make the matter 
 public. Give my confession to the world, as here I write, and sign it, and your father is 
 branded for ever to the world as a Spare me the word ! 
 
 " As I live, as I hope for your forgiveness, long ere that bill became due — it is at five 
 months' dale, for 3S6/. 41. 3rf. value received, and dated from the Teniple, on the 4th of 
 July — f passed it to one who promised to keep it until I myself should redeem it 1 The 
 commission wliich he charged me was enormous, rascally; and not content with the 
 immense interest which he extorted from me, the scoundrel has passed the bill away, and it 
 is in Europe, in the hands of an enemy. 
 
 " You remember Tufton Hunt? Yes. You most jiisUy chastised him. The wretch 
 lately made his detested appearance in this city, associated with the loivest 0/ the base, and 
 endeavored to resume his old iiracticc of threats, cnjoleries, wwA extortions! \\\ ■a. fatal 
 hour the villain heard of the bill of which 1 have warned you. He purchased "t from the 
 gambler, to whom it had been jiassed. As New York was speedily too hot to hold him {for 
 the lothappy man has ezien left me to fay his hotel score) he has fled— and fled {o Europe — 
 taking with him that fatal bill, which he says he knows you will pay. Ah.' dear Philip, if 
 that bill were but once out of the wretch's hands ! What sleepless hours of agony should 
 I be spared! I pray you, I implore you, make every sacrifice to meet it! You will not 
 disown it ? No. As you have children of your own — as you love them — you would not 
 willingly let them leave a dishonored 
 
 " Father." 
 
 " I have a share in z. great tneeiical discovery,* regarding which I have written to our 
 friend, Mrs. Rrandon, and which is sure to realize an immense profit, as introduced into 
 England by a physician so well known — may I not say professionally ? respected as myself. 
 The very first profits resulting from that discovery I promise, on my honor, to devote to 
 you. They will very %oq\\ Jar more than repay the loss which my inprudence has brought 
 on my dear boy. Farewell ! Love to your wife and little ones. — G. B. F." 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVII. 
 
 NEC PLENA CRUORIS HIRUDO. 
 
 The reading of this precious letter filled Philip's friend 
 with an inward indignation which it was very hard to control 
 or disguise. It is no pleasant task to tell a gentleman that his 
 father is a rogue. Old Firmin would have been hanged a few 
 years earlier, for practices like these. As you talk with a very 
 great scoundrel, or with a madman, has not the respected 
 reader sometimes reflected, with a grim self-humiliation, how 
 the fellow is of our own kind ; and homo est? Let us, dearly 
 beloved, who are outside — I mean outside the hulks or the 
 asylum — be thankful that we have to pay a barber for snipping 
 
 * /Ether was first employed, I believe, in America ; and I h»pe the reader will excuse 
 the substitution of Chloroform in this instance. — W. M. T.
 
 ON HIS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. 563 
 
 our hair, and are entrusted with the choice of the cut of our 
 own jerkins. As poor Philip read his father's letter, my 
 thought was : " And I can remember the soft white hand of 
 that scoundrel, which has just been forging his own son's name, 
 putting sovereigns into my own palm, when I w-asa schoolboy." 
 I always liked that man : — but the story is not deme — it regards 
 Philip. 
 
 " You won't pay this bill } " Philip's friend indignantly said, 
 then. 
 
 " What can I do ? " says poor Phil, shaking a sad head. 
 
 "You are not worth five hundred pounds in the world," 
 remarks the friend. 
 
 " Who ever said I was ? I am worth this bill : or my credit 
 is," answers the victim. 
 
 " If you pay this, he will draw more." 
 
 " I dare say he will : " that Firmin admits. 
 
 " And he will continue to draw as long as there is a drop of 
 blood to be had out of you." 
 
 " Yes," owns poor Philip, putting a finger to his lip. He 
 thought I might be about to speak. His artless wife and mine 
 were conversing at that moment upon the respective merits of 
 some sweet chintzes which they had seen at Shoolbred's, in 
 Tottenham Court Road, and which were so cheap and pleas- 
 ant, and lively to look at ! Really those drawing-room curtains 
 would cost scarcely anything ! Our Regulus, you see, before 
 stepping into his torture-tub, was smiling on his friends, and 
 talking upholstery with a cheerful, smirking countenance. On 
 chintz, or some other household errand, the ladies went prat- 
 tling off : but there was no care, save for husband and chil- 
 dren, in Charlotte's poor little innocent heart just then. 
 
 "Nice to hear her talking about sweet drawing-room 
 chintzes, isn't it ? " says Philip. " Shall we try Shoolbred's 
 or the other shop ? " And then he laughs. It was not a very 
 livelv laugh. 
 
 " You mean that you are determined, then, on '■ 
 
 " On acknowledging mj signature ? Of course," says Philip, 
 " if ever it is presented to me, I would own it." And having 
 formed and announced this resolution, I knew my stubborn 
 friend too well to think that lie ever \\o\x\d shirk it. 
 
 The most exasperating part of the matter was, that however 
 generously Philip's friends might be disposed towards him, they 
 could not in this case give him a helping hand. The doctor 
 would draw more bills, and more. As sure as Philip supplied, 
 the parent would ask ; and that devouring dragon of a doctoi
 
 564 "^^^^ ^ D VENTURES OF PIIIL If 
 
 had stomach enough for the blood of all of us, were we inclined 
 to give it. In fact, Philip saw as much, and owned everything 
 with his usual candor. " I see what is going on in your mind, 
 old boy," the poor fellow said, "as well as if you spoke. You 
 mean that 1 am helpless and irreclaimable, and doomed to 
 liopeless ruin. So it would seem. A man can't escape his 
 fate, friend, and my father has made mine for me. If I manage 
 to struggle through the payment of this bill, of course he will 
 draw another. ^ly only chance of escape is, that he should 
 succeed in some of his speculations. As he is always gam- 
 bling, there may be some luck for him one day or another. He 
 won't benefit me, then. That is not his way. If lie makes a 
 coup, he will keep the monc}^, or spend it. He won't gi\e me 
 any. But he will not draw upon me as he does now, or send 
 forth fancy imitations of the filial autograph. It is a blessing 
 to have such a father, isn't it .'' I say, Pen, as I think from 
 whom I am descended, and look at your spoons, I am aston- 
 ished I have not put any of them in my pocket. You leave 
 me in the room with 'cm quite unprotected. I say, it is quite 
 affecting the way in which you and your dear wife have confi- 
 dence in me." x\nd with a bitter execration at his fate, the 
 poor fellow pauses for a moment in his lament. 
 
 His father was his fate, he seemed to think, and there were 
 no means of averting it. " You remember that picture of 
 Abraham and Isaac in the doctor's study in Old Parr Street ? " 
 he would say. " My patriarch has tied me up, and had the 
 knife m me repeatedly. He does not sacrifice me at one oper- 
 ation ; but there will be a final one some day, and I shall bleed 
 no more. It's gay and amusing, isn't it? Especially when one 
 has a wife and children." I, for my part, felt so indignant, 
 that I was minded to advertise in the papers that all accept- 
 ances drawn in Philip's name were forgeries ; and let his father 
 take the consequences of his own act. But the consequences 
 would have been life imprisonment for the old man, and almost 
 as much disgrace and ruin for the young one, as were actually 
 impending. He pointed out this clearly enough ; nor could 
 we altogether gainsay his dismal logic. It was better, at any 
 rate, to meet his bill, and give the doctor warning for the 
 future. Well : perhaps it was ; only suppose the doctor should 
 take the warning in good part, accept the rebuke with perfect 
 meekness, and at an early opportunity commit another forgery? 
 To this Philip replied, that no man could resist his fate : that 
 he had always expected his own doom through his father : that 
 when the ejdej: went to America he thought possibly the ch^rm
 
 ON HIS WA Y THROUGH THE WORLD. ^6^ 
 
 was broken ; "but you see it is not," groaned Philip, "and my 
 father's emissaries reach me, and I am still under the spell." 
 The bearer of the bowstring., we knew, was on his way, and 
 would deliver his grim message ere long. 
 
 Having frequently succeeded in extorting money from Dr. 
 Firmin, Mr. Tufton Hunt thought he could not do better than 
 follow his banker across the Atlantic ; and we need not describe 
 the annoyance and rage of the doctor on finding this black care 
 still behind his back. He had not much to give ; indeed the 
 sum which he took away with him, and of which he robbed his 
 son and his other creditors, was but small : but Hunt was bent 
 upon having a portion of this ; and, of course, hinted that, if 
 the doctor refused, he would carry to the New York press the 
 particulars of Firmin's early career and latest defalcations. 
 Mr. Hunt had been under the gallery of the House of Com- 
 mons half a dozen times, and knew our public men by sight. 
 In the course of a pretty long and disreputable career he had 
 learned anecdotes regarding members of the aristocracy, turf- 
 men, and the like ; and he offered to sell this precious knowl- 
 edge of his to more than one American paper, as other amiable 
 exiles from our country have done. But Hunt was too old, and 
 his stories too stale for the New York public. They dated 
 from George IV., and the boxing and coaching times. He 
 found but little market for his wares ; and the tipsy parson 
 reeled from tavern to bar, only the object of scorn to younger- 
 reprobates who despised his old-fashioned stories, and could, 
 top them with blackguardism of a much more modern date. 
 
 After some two years' sojourn in the United States, this-, 
 worthy felt the passionate longing to revisit his native country 
 which generous hearts often experience, and made his way from 
 Liverpool to London ; and when in London directed his steps, 
 to the house of the Little Sister, of which he expected to findl 
 Philip still an inmate. Although Hunt had been once kicked 
 out of the premises, he felt little shame now about re-entering; 
 them. He had that in his pocket which would insure him 
 respectful behavior from Philip. What were the circumstances 
 under which that forged bill was obtained ? Was it a specula- 
 tion between Hunt and Philip's father ? Did Hunt suggest 
 that, to screen the elder Firmin from disgrace and ruin, Philip 
 would assuredly take the bill up ? That a forged signature 
 was, in fact, a better document than a genuine acceptance ? 
 We shall never know the truth regarding this transaction now. 
 We have but the statements of the two parties concerned ; and 
 as both of them, I grieve to say, are entirely unworthy of credit,
 
 ^66 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILTP 
 
 we must remain in ignorance regarding this matter. Perhaps 
 Hunt forged PhiHp's acceptance : perhaps his unhappy father 
 wrote it : perhaps the doctor's story that the paper was extorted 
 from him was true, perhaps false. What matters ? ]5oth the 
 men have passed away from amongst us, and will write and 
 speak no more lies. 
 
 Caroline was absent from home, when Hunt paid his first 
 visit after his return from America. Her servant described the 
 man, and his appearance. Mrs. Brandon felt sure that Hunt 
 was her visitor, and foreboded no good to Philip from the par- 
 son's arrival. In former days we have seen how the Little 
 Sister had found favor in the eyes of this man. The besotted 
 creature, shunned of men, stained with crime, drink, debt, had 
 still no little vanity in his composition, and gave himself airs 
 in the tavern parlors which he frequented. Because he had 
 been at the University thirty years ago, his idea was that he 
 was superior to ordinary men who had not had the benefit of 
 an education at Oxford or Cambridge ; and that the " snobs," 
 as he called them, respected him. He would assume grandiose 
 airs in talking to a tradesman ever so wealthy ; speak to such 
 a man by his surname ; and deem that he honored him by his 
 patronage and conversation. The Little Sister's grammar, I 
 have told you, was not good ; her poor little It's were sadly 
 irregular. A letter was a painful task to her. She knew how 
 ill she performed it, and that she was for ever making blunders. 
 
 She would invent a thousand funny little pleas and excuses 
 for her faults of writing. With all the blunders of spelling, her 
 little letters had a pathos which somehow brought tears into 
 the eyes. The Rev. Mr. Hunt believed himself to be this 
 woman's superior. He thought his University education gave 
 him a claim upon her respect, and draped himself and swag- 
 gered before her and others in bis dingy college gown. Pie had 
 paraded his Master of Arts degree in many thousand tavern 
 parlors, where his Greek and learning had got him a kind of 
 respect. He patronized landlords, and strutted by hostesses' 
 bars with a vinous leer or a tipsy solemnity. He must have 
 been very far gone and debased indeed when he could still 
 think that he was any living man's better : — he, who ought to 
 have waited on the waiters, and blacked Boots's own slioes. 
 When he had reached a certain stage of liquor he commonly 
 began to brag about the University, and recite the titles of his 
 friends of early days. Never was kicking more righteously 
 administered than that wliich Philip once bestowed on this mis- 
 cj:t«int. The fellow took to the gutter as naturally as to his
 
 ON HIS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. 567 
 
 bed, Firmin used to say ; and vowed that the washing there 
 was a novelty which did him good. 
 
 Mrs. Brandon soon found that her surmises were correct 
 regarding her nameless visitor. Next day, as she was watering 
 some little flowers in her window, she looked from it into the 
 street, where she saw the shambling parson leering up at her. 
 When she saw him he took off his greasy hat and made her a 
 bow. At the moment she saw him, she felt that he was come 
 upon some errand hostile to Philip. She knew* he meant mis- 
 chief as he looked up with that sodden face, those bloodshot 
 eyes, those unshorn, grinning lips. 
 
 She might have been inclined to faint, or disposed to scream, 
 or to hide herself from the man, the sight of whom she loathed. 
 She did not faint, or hide herself, or cry out : but she instantly 
 nodded her head and smiled in the most engaging manner on 
 that unwelcome, dingy stranger. She went to her door ; she 
 opened it (though her heart beat so that you might have heard 
 it, as she told her friend afterwards). She stood there a 
 moment archly smiling at him, and she beckoned him into her 
 house with a little gesture of welcome. " Law bless us " (these 
 I have reason to believe, were her very words) — " Law bless 
 us, Mr. Hunt, where ever have you been this ever so long ? " 
 And a smiling face looked at him resolutely from under a neat 
 cap and fresh ribbon. Why, I know some women can smile, 
 and look at ease, when they sit down in a dentist's chair. 
 
 "Law bless me, Mr. Hunt," then says the artless creature, 
 " who ever would have thought of seeing you, I do declare ! " 
 And she makes a nice cheery little curtsey, and looks quite gay, 
 pleased, and pretty ; and so did Judith look gay, no doubt, and 
 smile, and prattle before Holofernes ; and then of course she 
 said, " Won't you step in ? " And then Hunt swaggered up 
 the steps of the house, and entered the little parlor, into which 
 the kind reader has often been conducted, with its neat little 
 ornaments, its pictures, its glistening corner cupboard, and its 
 well-scrubbed, shining furniture. 
 
 " How is the captain ? " asks the man (alone in the company 
 of this Little Sister, the fellow's own heart began to beat, and 
 his blood shot eyes to glisten). 
 
 He had not heard about poor Pa ? " That shows how long 
 you have been away 1 " Mrs. Brandon remarks, and mentions 
 the date of her father's fatal illness. Yes : she was alone now, 
 and had to care for herself ; and straightway, I have no doubt, 
 Mrs. Brandon asked Mr. Hunt whether he would " take " 
 anything. Indeed, that good little woman was for ever press-
 
 568 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 ing her friends to " take " something, and would have tliought 
 the laws of hospitality violated unless she had made this offer. 
 
 Hunt was never known to refuse a proposal of this sort. 
 
 He would take a taste of something of something warm. 
 
 He had had fever and ague at New York, and the malady hung 
 about him. Mrs. Erandon was straightway very much interested 
 to hear about Mr. Hunt's complaint, and knew that a com- 
 fortable glass was very efficacious in removing threatening 
 fever. Her nimble, neat little hands mixed him a cup. He 
 could not but see what a trim little housekeeper she was. " Ah, 
 Mrs. Brandon, if I had had sucli a kind friend watching over 
 me, I should not be such a wreck as I am ! " he sighed. He 
 must have advanced to a second, nay, a third glass, when he 
 sighed and became sentimental regarding his own unhappy 
 condition ; and Brandon owned to her friends afterwards that 
 she made those glasses ver}' strong. 
 
 Having " taken something," in considerable quantities, then, 
 Hunt condescended to ask how his hostess was getting on, 
 and how were her lodgers. How she was getting on ? 
 Brandon drew the most cheerful picture of herself and her 
 circumstances. The apartments let well, and were never empty. 
 Thanks to good Dr. Goodenough and other friends, she had as 
 much professional occupation as she could desire. Since jw^ 
 knotv who has left the country, she said, her mind had been 
 ever so much easier. As long as he was near, she never felt 
 secure. But he was gone, and bad luck go with him ! said this 
 vindictive Little Sister. 
 
 " Was his son still lodging up stairs ? " asked Mr. Hunt. 
 
 On this, what does Mrs. Brandon do but begin a most 
 angry attack upon Philip and his family. He lodge there .-* 
 No, thank goodness ! She had had enough of him and his wife 
 with her airs and graces, and the children crying all night, and 
 the furniture spoiled, and the bills not even paid ! " I wanted 
 him to think that me and Philip was friends no longer ; and 
 heaven forgive me for telling stories ! I know this fellow means 
 no good to Philip ; and before long I will know what he means, 
 that I will," she vowed. 
 
 For, on the very day when Mr. Hunt paid her a visit, 
 Mrs. Brandon came to see Philip's friends, and acquaint them 
 with Hunt's arrival. We could not be sure that he was the 
 bearer of the forged bill with which poor Philip was threatened. 
 As yet Hunt had made no allusion to it. But, though we 
 are far from sanctioning deceit or hypocrisy, we own that we 
 were not very angry with the Little Sister for employing dissim-
 
 ON HIS WA Y THROUGH THE WORLD. 569 
 
 Illation in the present instance, and inducing Hunt to believe 
 that she was by no means an accomplice of riiilip's. If Philip's 
 wife pardoned her, ought his friends to be less forgiving ? To 
 do right, you know you must not do wrong ; though I own this 
 was one of the cases in which I am inclined not to deal very 
 hardly with the well-meaning little criminal. 
 
 Now, Charlotte had to pardon (and for this fault, if not for 
 some others, Charlotte did most hearfily pardon) our little friend, 
 for this reason, that Brandon most wantonly maligned her. 
 When Hunt asked what sort of wife Philip had married ? Mrs. 
 Brandon declared that Mrs. Philip was a pert, odious little 
 thing ; that she gave herself airs, neglected her children, bullied 
 her husband, and what not ; and, finally, Brandon vowed that 
 she disliked Charlotte, and was very glad to get her out of the 
 house : and that Philip was not the same Philip since he mar- 
 ried her, and that he gave himself airs, and was rude, and in 
 all things led by his wife ; and to get rid of them was a good 
 riddance. 
 
 Hunt gracefully suggested that quarrels between landladies 
 and tenants were not unusual ; that lodgers sometimes did not 
 pay their rent punctually ; that others were unreasonably anx- 
 ious about the consumption of their groceries, liquors, and so 
 forth ; and little Brandon, who, rather than steal a pennyworth 
 from her Philip, would have cut her hand off, laughed at her 
 guest's joke, and pretended to be amused with his knowing 
 hints that she was a rogue. There was not a word he said but 
 she received it with a gracious acquiescence : she might shud- 
 der inwardly at the leering familiarity of the odious tipsy wretch, 
 but she gave no outward sign of disgust or fear.. She allowed 
 him to talk as much as he would, in hopes that he would come 
 to a subject which deeply interested her. She asked about the 
 doctor, and what he was doing, and whether it was likely that 
 he would ever be able to pay back any of that money which he 
 had taken from his son } And she spoke with an indifferent 
 tone, pretending to be very busy over some work at which she 
 was stitching. 
 
 " Oh, you are still hankering after him," says the chaplain, 
 winking a bloodshot eye. 
 
 " Hankering after that old man ! What should I care for 
 him ? As if he haven't done me harm enough alreadv ! " cries 
 poor Caroline. 
 
 " Yes. But women don't dislike a man the worse for a little 
 ill-usage," suggests Hunt. No doubt the fellow had made his 
 own experiments on woman's fidelity.
 
 S70 
 
 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 li 
 
 Well, I suppose," says Brandon, with a toss of her head, 
 " women may get tired as well as men, mayn't they ? I found 
 out that man, and wearied of him years and years ago. Another 
 little drop out of the green bottle, Mr. Hunt ! It's very good 
 for ague-fever, and keeps the cold fit olif wonderful ! " 
 
 And Hunt drank, and he talked a little more — much more : 
 and he gave his opinion of the elder Firniin, and spoke of his 
 chances of success, and of his rage for speculations, and doubted 
 whether he would ever be able to lift his head again — though 
 he might, he might still. He was in the country where, if ever 
 a man could retrieve himself, he had a chance. And Philip 
 was giving himself airs, was he ? He was always an arrogant 
 chap, that Mr. Philip. And he had left her house ? and was 
 gone ever so long ? and where did he live now ? 
 
 Then I am sorry to say Mrs. Brandon asked, how should 
 she know where Philip lived ? She believed it was near Gray's 
 Inn, or Lincoln's Inn, or somewhere ; and she was for turning 
 the conversation away from this subject altogether : and sought 
 to do so by many lively remarks and ingenious little artifices 
 which I can imagine, but which she only in part acknowledged 
 to me — for you must know that as soon as her visitor took 
 leave — to turn into the " Admiral Byng " public-house, and 
 renew acquaintance with the worthies assembled in the parlor 
 of that tavern, Mrs. Brandon ran away to a cab, drove in it to 
 Philip's house in Milman Street, where only Mrs. Philip was at 
 home — and after a banalc conversation with her, which puzzled 
 Charlotte not a little, for Brandon would not say on what 
 errand she came, and never mentioned Hunt's arrival and visit 
 to her, — the Little Sister made her way to another cab, and 
 presently made her appearance at the house of Philip's friends 
 in Queen Square. And here she informed me, how Hunt had 
 arrived, and how she was sure he meant no good to Philip, and 
 how she had told certain — certain stories which were not 
 founded in fact — to Mr. Hunt ; for the telling of which fibs I 
 am not about to endeavor to excuse her. 
 
 Though the interesting clergyman had not said one word 
 regarding that bill of which Philip's father had warned him, we 
 believed that the document was in Hunt's possession, and that 
 it would be produced in due season. We happened to know 
 where Philip dined, and sent him word to come to us. 
 
 "What can he mean ? " the people asked at the table — a 
 bachelors' table at the Temple (for Philip's good wife actually 
 encouraged him to go abroad from time to time, and make 
 merry with his friends). " What can this mean t " and they
 
 ON ms WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. 571 
 
 read out tlie scrap of paper which he had cast down as he was 
 summoned away. 
 
 PhiUp's correspondent wrote : " Dear Phihp, — I believe the 
 REARER OF THE BOWSTRING has arrived ; and has been with 
 the L. S. this verj' day." 
 
 The L. S. ? the bearer of the bowstring ? Not one of the 
 bachelors dining in Parchment Building could read the riddle. 
 Only after receiving the scrap of paper Philip had jumped up 
 and left the room; and a friend of ours, a sly wag and Don 
 Juan of Pump Court, oifered to take odds that there was a lady 
 in the case. 
 
 At the hasty little council which was convened at our house 
 on the receipt of the news, the Little Sister, whose instinct had 
 not betrayed her, was made acquainted with the precise nature 
 of the danger which menaced Philip ; and exhibited a fine 
 hearty wrath when she heard how he proposed to meet the 
 enemy. He had a certain sum in hand. He would borrow 
 more of his friends, who knew that he was an honest man. 
 This bill he would meet, whatever mfght come ; and avert at 
 least this disgrace from his father. 
 
 What .^ Give in to those rogues } Leave his children to 
 starve, and his poor wife to turn drudge and house-servant, 
 who was not fit for anything but a fine lady ? (There was ;.io 
 love lost, you see, between these two ladies, who both loved 
 Mr. Philip.) It was a sin and a shame ! Mrs. Brandon averred, 
 and declared she thought Philip had been a man of more spirit. 
 Philip's friend has before stated his own private sentimeiits 
 regarding the calamity which menaced Firmin, To pay this 
 bill was to bring a dozen more down upon him. Philip might 
 as well resist now as at a later day. Such, in fact, was the 
 opinion given by the reader's very humble servant at command. 
 
 My wife, on the other hand, took Philip's side. She was 
 very much moved at his announcement that he would forgive 
 his father this once at least, and endeavor to cover his sin. 
 
 "As you hope to be forgiven yourself, dear Philip, I am 
 sure you are doing right," Laura said ; " I am sure Charlotte 
 will think so." 
 
 " Oh, Charlotte, Charlotte ! " interposes the Little Sister, 
 rather peevishly ; " of course, Mrs. Philip thinks whatever her 
 husband tells her ! " 
 
 " In his own time of trial Philip has been met with wonder- 
 ful succor and kindness," Laura urged. " See how one thing 
 after another has contributed to help him ! When he wanted, 
 there were friends always at his need. If he wants again, I am
 
 572 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 sure my husband and I will share with him." (I may have 
 made a wry face at this ; for with the best feelings towards a 
 man, and that kind of thing, you know it is not always con- 
 venient to be lending him fi\'e or six hundred pounds without 
 security.) " My dear husband and I will share with him," goes 
 on Mrs. Laura; "won't we, Arthur? Yes, Brandon, that we 
 will. Be sure, Charlotte and the children shall not want 
 because Philip covers his father's wrong, and hides it from the 
 world ! God bless you, dear friend ! " and what does this 
 woman do next, and before her husband's face ? Actually she 
 
 goes up to Philip ; she takes his hand — and Well, what 
 
 took place before my own eyes, I do not choose to write 
 down. 
 
 " She's encouraging him to ruin the children for the sake of 
 that — that wicked old brute ! " cries Mrs. Brandon. " It's 
 enough to provoke a saint, it is ! " And she seizes up her 
 bonnet from the table, and claps it on her head, and walks out 
 of our room in a little tempest of wrath. 
 
 My wife, clasping her hands, whispers a few words, which 
 say : " Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them who tres- 
 pass against us." 
 
 "Yes," says PhiliiD, very much moved. "It is the Divine 
 order. You are right, dear Laura. I have had a weary time; 
 and a terrible gloom of doubt and sadness over my mind whilst 
 I have been debating this matter, and before I had determined 
 to do as you would have me. But a great weight is off my 
 heart since I have been enabled to see what my conduct should 
 be. What hundreds of struggling men as well as myself have 
 met with losses, and faced them ! I will pay this bill, and I 
 will warn the drawer to — to spare me for the future." 
 
 Now that the Little Sister had gone away in her fit of indig- 
 nation, you see I was left in a minority in the council of war, 
 and the opposition was quite too strong for me. I began to be 
 of the majority's opinion. I dare say I am not the only 
 gentleman who has been led round by a woman. We men of 
 great strength of mind very frequently are. Yes : my wife 
 convinced me with passages from her text-book, admitting of no 
 contradiction according to her judgment, that Philip's duty was 
 to forgive his father. 
 
 " And how lucky it was we did not buy the chintzes that 
 day ! " says Laura, with a laugh. " Do you know there were 
 two which were so pretty that Charlotte could not make up 
 her mind which of the two she would take 'i " 
 
 Philip roared out one of his laughs, which made the
 
 OM JUS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. 
 
 573 
 
 windows shake. He was in great spirits. For a man who was 
 going to ruin himself, he was in the most enviable good-humor. 
 Did Charlotte know about this — this claim which was impend- 
 ing over him ? No. It might make her anxious, — poor little 
 thing ! Philip had not told her. He had thought of concealing 
 the matter from her. What need was there to disturb her rest, 
 poor innocent child ? You see, we all treated Mrs. Charlotte 
 more or less like a child. Philip played with her. J. [., the 
 painter, coaxed and dandled her, so to speak. The Little Sis- 
 ter loved her, but certainly with a love that was not respect- 
 ful ; and Charlotte took everybody's good-will with a pleasant 
 meekness and sweet smiling content. It was not for Laura 
 to give advice to man and wife (as if the woman was not always 
 giving lectures to Philip and his 3'oung wife !) ; but in the 
 present instance she thought Mrs. Philip certainly ought to 
 know what Philip's real situation was ; what danger was men- 
 acing ; " and how admirable and right, and Christian — and you 
 will have your reward for it, dear Philip ! " interjects the en- 
 thusiastic lady — "your conduct has been ! " 
 
 When we came, as we straightway did in a cab, to Char- 
 lotte's house, to expound the matter to her, goodness bless us I 
 she was not shocked, or anxious, or frightened at all. Mrs. 
 Brandon had just been with her, and told her of what was hap- 
 pening, and she had said, " Of course, Philip ought to help his 
 father ; and Brandon had gone away quite in a tantrum of 
 anger, and had really been quite rude ; and she should not 
 pardon her, only she knew how dearly the Little Sister loved 
 Philip ; and of course they must help Dr. Firmin ; and what 
 dreadful, dreadful distress he must have been in to do as he 
 did ! But he had warned Philip, you know," and so forth. 
 "And as for the chintzes, Laura, why I suppose we must go on 
 with the old shabby covers. You know they will do very well 
 till next year." This was the way in which Mrs. Charlotte 
 received the news which Philip had concealed from her, lest 
 it should terrify her. As if a loving woman was ever very 
 much frightened at being called upon to share her husband's 
 misfortune ! 
 
 As for the little case of forgery, I don't believe the young 
 person could ever be got to see the heinous nature of Dr. 
 Firmin's offence. The desperate little logician seemed rather 
 to pity the father than the son in the business. " How dread- 
 fully pressed he must have been when he did it, poor man ! " 
 she said. " To be sure, he ought not to have done it at all ; 
 but think of his necessity ! That is what I said to Brandon,
 
 574 
 
 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 Now, there's little Philip's cake in the cupboard which you 
 brouglu him. Now suppose papa was very hungry, and went 
 and took some without asking Philly, he wouldn't be so very 
 wrong, I think, would he ? A child is glad enough to give for 
 his father, isn't he ? And when I said this to Brandon, she 
 was so rude and violent, I really had no patience with her ! 
 And she forgets that I am a lad}', and " &c., &c. So it ap- 
 peared the Little Sister had made a desperate attempt to bring 
 over Charlotte to her side, was still minded to rescue Philip in 
 spite of himself, and had gone off in wrath at her defeat. 
 
 We looked to the doctor's letters, ascertained the date of 
 the bill. It had crossed the water and would be at Philip's 
 door in a very few days. Had Hunt brought it? The rascal 
 would have it presented through some regular channel, no 
 doubt ; and Philip and all of us totted up ways and means, 
 and strove to make the slender figures look as big as possible, 
 as the thrifty housewife puts a patch here and a darn there, 
 and cuts a little slice out of this old garment, so as to make 
 the poor little frock serve for winter wear. We had so much 
 at the banker's. A friend might help with a little advance. 
 We would fairly ask a loan from the Review. We were in a 
 scrape, but we would meet it. And so with resolute hearts, we 
 would jDrepare to receive the Bearer of the Bowstring. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVIII. 
 
 THE BEARER OF THE BOWSTRING. 
 
 The poor Little Sister trudged away from Milman Street 
 exasperated with Philip, with Philip's wife, and with the deter- 
 mination of the pair to accept the hopeless ruin impending 
 over them. "Three hundred and eighty-six pounds four and 
 threepence," she thought, " to pay for that wicked old villain ! 
 It is more than poor Philip is worth, with all his savings and 
 his little sticks of furniture. I know what he will do : he will 
 borrow of the money-lenders, and give those bills, and renew 
 them, and end by ruin. When he have paid this bill, that old 
 villain will forge another, and that precious wife of his will tell 
 him to pay that, I suppose ; and those little darlings will be 
 begging for bread, unless they come and eat mine, to which — 
 God bless them ! — they are always wekome." She calculated
 
 ON HIS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. 575 
 
 — it was a sum not difficult to reckon — the amount of her own 
 little store of saved ready money. To pay four hundred 
 pounds out of such an income as Philip's, she felt, was an 
 attempt vain and impossible. "And he mustn't have my poor 
 little stocking now," she argued ; " they will want that pres- 
 ently when their pride is broken down, as it will be, and my 
 darlings are hungering for their dinner ! " Revolving this dis- 
 mal matter in her mind, and scarce knowing where to go for 
 comfort and counsel, she made her way to her good friend, Dr. 
 Goodenough, and found that worthy man, who had always a 
 welcome for his Little Sister. 
 
 She found Goodenough alone in his great dining-room, 
 taking a very slender meal, after visiting his hospital and his 
 fifty patients, among whom I think there were more poor than 
 rich : and the good sleepy doctor woke up with a vengeance, 
 when he heard his little nurse's news, and fired off a volley of 
 angry language against Philip and his scoundrel of a father ; 
 " which it was a comfort to hear him," little Brandon told us 
 afterwards. Then Goodenough trotted out of the dining-room 
 into the adjoining library and consulting-room, whither his old 
 friend followed him. Then he pulled out a bunch of keys and 
 opened a secretaire, from which he took a parchment-covered 
 volume, on which J. Goodenough, Esq., AT. 2D., was written in a 
 fine legible hand, — and which, in fact, was a banker's book. 
 The inspection of the MS. volume in question must have 
 pleased the worthy physician ; for a grin came over his vener- 
 able features, and he straightway drew out of the desk a slim 
 volume of grey paper, on each page of which were inscribed 
 the highly respectable names of Messrs. Stumpy and Rowdy 
 and Co., of Lombard Street, Bankers. On a slip of gray paper 
 the doctor wrote a prescription for a draught, statim sumendus 
 — (a draught — mark my pleasantry) — which he handed over to 
 his little friend. 
 
 " There, you little fool ! " said he. " The father is a rascal, 
 but the boy is a fine fellow ; and you, you little silly thing, I 
 must help in this business myself, or you will go and ruin your- 
 self ; I know you will ! Offer this to the fellow for his bill. 
 Or, stay ! How much money is there in the house ? Perhaps 
 the sight of notes and gold will tempt him more than a 
 cheque." And the doctor emptied his pockets of all the fees 
 which happened to be therein — I don't know how many fees of 
 shining shillings and sovereigns, neatly wrapped up in paper ; 
 and he emptied a drawer in which there was more silver and 
 gold : and he trotted up to his bedroom, and came panting,
 
 ^^6 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILTP 
 
 presently, down stairs with a fat little pocket-book, containing a 
 bundle of notes, and, with one thing or another, he made up a 
 sum of — I won't mention what ; but this sum of money, I say, 
 he thrust into the Little Sister's hand, and said, "Try the fellow 
 with this. Little Sister ; and see if you can get the bill from 
 him. Don't say it's my money, or the scoundrel will be for 
 having twenty shillings in the pound. Say it's yours, and 
 there's no more where that came from ; and coax him, and 
 wheedle him, and tell him plenty of lies, my dear. It won't 
 break your heart to do that. What an immortal scoundrel 
 Brummell Firmin is, to be sure ! Though, by the way, in two 
 
 more cases at the hospital I have tried that " And here 
 
 the doctor went ofT into a professional conv£rsation with his 
 favorite nurse, which I could not presume to repeat to any non- 
 medical men. 
 
 The Little Sister bade God bless Dr. Goodenough, and 
 wiped her glistening eyes with her handkerchief, and put away 
 the notes and gold with a trembling little hand, and trudged off 
 with a lightsome step and happy heart. Arrived at Tottenham 
 Court Road, she thought, shall I go home, or shall I go to poor 
 Mrs. Philip and take her this money ? No. Their talk that day 
 had not been very pleasant : words, very like high words, had 
 passed between them, and our Little Sister had to own herself 
 that she had been rather rude in her late colloquy with Char- 
 lotte. And she was a proud Little Sister : at least she did 
 not care to own that she had been hasty or disrespectful in her 
 conduct to that young woman. She had too much spirit for 
 that. Have we ever said that our little friend was exempt from 
 the prejudices and vanities of this wicked world ? Well, to 
 rescue Philip, to secure the fatal bill, to go with it to Charlotte, 
 and say, " There, Mrs. Philip, there's your husband's liberty." 
 It would be a rare triumph, that it would ! And Philip would 
 promise, on his honor, that this should be the last and only bill 
 he would pay for that wretched old father. With these 
 happy thoughts swelling in her little heart, Mrs. Brandon made 
 her way to the familiar little house in Thornhaugh Street, and 
 would have a little bit of supper, so she would. And laid her 
 own little cloth ; and set forth her little forks and spoons, 
 which were as bright as rubbing could make them ; and I am 
 authorized to state that her repast consisted of two nice little 
 lamb chops, which she purchased from her neighbor, Mr. 
 Chump, in Tottenham Court Road, after a pleasant little con- 
 versation with that gentleman and his good lady. And, with 
 her bit of supper, after a day's work, our little friend would
 
 ON HIS IVA V THROUGH THE WORLD. 
 
 577 
 
 sometimes indulge in a glass — a little glass — of something com- 
 fortable. The case bottle was in the cupboard, out of which 
 her poor Pa had been wont to mix his tumbler for many a long 
 day. So, having prepared it with her own hands, down she sat 
 to her little meal, tired and happy; and as she thought of the 
 occurrences of the day, and of the rescue which had come so 
 opportunely to her beloved Philip and his children, I am sure 
 she said a grace before her meat. 
 
 Her candles being lighted and her blind up, any one in the 
 street could see that her chamber was occupied ; and at about 
 ten o'clock at night there came a heavy step clinking along the 
 pavement, the. sound of which, 1 have no doubt, made the 
 Little Sister start a little. The heavy foot paused before her 
 window, and presently clattered up the steps of her door. Then 
 as her bell rang — I consider it is most probable that her cheeks 
 flushed a little — she went to her hall door and opened it herself. 
 " Lor', is it you, Mr. Hunt ? Well, I never ! that is, I thought 
 you might come. Really, now " — and with the moonlight 
 behind him, the dingy Hunt swaggered in. 
 
 "How comfortable you looked at your little table," says 
 Hunt, with his hat over his eye. 
 
 " Won't you step in and sit down to it, and take something ? " 
 asks the smiling hostess. 
 
 Of course. Hunt would take something. And the greasy 
 hat is taken off his head with a flourish, and he struts into the 
 poor Little Sister's little room, pulling a wisp of grizzling hair, 
 and endeavoring to assume a careless, fashionable look. The 
 ding}' hand had seized the case-bottle in a moment. '' What ! 
 you do a little in this way, do you .'' " he says, and winks 
 amiably at Mrs. Brandon and the bottle. She takes ever so 
 little, she owns ; and reminds him of days which he must 
 remember, when she had a wine-glass out of poor Pa's tumbler. 
 A bright little kettle is singing on the fire, — will not Mr. Hunt 
 mix a glass for himself ? She takes a bright beaker from the 
 corner-cupboard, which is near her, with her keys hanging in it. 
 
 " Oh — ho ! that's where we keep the ginnims, is it ? " says 
 the graceful Hunt, with a laugh. 
 
 " My papa always kept it there," says Caroline, meekly. 
 And whilst her back is turned to fetch a canister from the cup- 
 board, she knows that the astute Mr. Hunt has taken the 
 opportunity to fill a good large measure from the square bottle. 
 " Make yourself welcome," says the Little Sister, in her gay, 
 artless way ; '' there's more where that came from ! " And 
 Hunt drinks his hostess's health : and she bows to him and 
 
 37
 
 578 
 
 THE ADVENTURES OF TITILTP 
 
 smiles, and sips a little from her own glass ; and the little iady 
 looks quite pretty and rosy and bright. Her cheeks are like 
 apples, her figure is trim and graceful, and always attired in 
 the neatest-fitting gown. 15y tiie comfortable light of the candles 
 on her sparkling tables, you scarce see the silver lines in her 
 light hair, or the marks which time has made round her eyes. 
 Hunt gazes on her with admiration. 
 
 " Why," says he, " I vow you look younger and prettier than 
 when — when I saw you first." 
 
 " Ah, Mr. Hunt 1 " cries Mrs. Brandon, with a flush on her 
 clieek, which becomes it, " don't recall that time, or that — that 
 wretch who served me so cruel ! " 
 
 " He was a scoundrel, Caroline, to treat as he did such a 
 woman as you ! The fellow has no principle ; he was a bad 
 one from the beginning. Why, he ruined me as well as you : 
 got me to play ; run me into debt by introducing me to his fine 
 companions. I was a simple young fellow then, and thought 
 it was a fine thing to live with fellow-commoners and noblemen 
 who drove their tandems and gave their grand dinners. It was 
 he that led me astray, I tell you. I might have been Fellow of 
 my college — had a living — married a good wife — risen to be a 
 bishop, by George ! — for I had great talents, Caroline ; only I 
 was so confounded idle, and fond of the cards and the bones." 
 
 " The bones ? " cries Caroline, with a bewildered look. 
 
 "The dice, my dear! 'Seven's the main' was my ruin. 
 Seven's the main and eleven's the nick to seven. That used 
 to be the little game ! " And he made a graceful gesture with 
 his empty wine-glass, as though he were tossing a pair of dice 
 on the table. " The man next to me in a lecture is a bishop 
 now, and I could knock his head off in Greek iambics and 
 Latin hexameters too. In my second year I got the Latin decla- 
 mation prize, I tell you " 
 
 " Ikandon always said you were one of the cleverest men 
 at the college. He always said that, I remember," remarks the 
 lady, very respectfully. 
 
 '• Did he } He did S2iy a good word for me then ? Brum- 
 mell Firmin wasn't a clever man ; he wasn't a reading man. 
 Whereas I would back myself for a Sapphic o(\e. against any 
 man in my college — against any man ! Thank vou. You do 
 mix it so uncommon hot and well, there's no saying no; indeed, 
 there ain't ! Though I have had enough — upon my honor, I 
 have." 
 
 " Lor' ! I thought you men could drink anything ! And Mr. 
 Brandon — Mr. Firmin you said ? "
 
 ON HIS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. 579 
 
 Well, I said Brummell Firmin was a swell somcliow. He 
 had a sort of grand manner with him " 
 
 " Yes, he had," sighed Caroline. And I dare say her 
 thoughts wandered back to a time long, long ago, when this 
 grand gentleman had captivated her. 
 
 " And it was trying to keep up with him that ruined me ! 
 I quarrelled with my poor old governor about money, of course ; 
 grew idle, and lost my Fellowship. Then the bills came down 
 upon me. I tell you, there are some of my college ticks ain't 
 paid now." 
 
 " College ticks ? Law ! " ejaculates the lady. " And " 
 
 "Tailors' ticks, tavern ticks, livery stable ticks — for there 
 were famous hacks in our days, and I used to hunt with the 
 tip-top men. I wasn't bad across country, I wasn't. But we 
 can't keep the pace with those rich fellows. We try, and they 
 go ahead — they ride us down. Do you think, if I hadn't been 
 very hard up, I would have done what I did to you, Caroline? 
 You poor little innocent suffering thing. It was a shame. It 
 was a shame ! " 
 
 " Yes, a shame it was," cries Caroline. " And that I never 
 gainsay. You did deal hard with a poor girl, both of you." 
 
 " It was rascally. But Firmin was the worst. He had me 
 in his power. It was he led me wrong. It was he drove me 
 
 into debt, and then abroad, and thffli into qu • into jail, 
 
 perhaps : and then into this kind of thing." (" This kind of 
 thing " has before been explained elegantly to signify a tumbler 
 of hot grog.) " And my father wouldn't see me on his death- 
 bed ; and my brothers and sisters broke with me ; and I owe 
 it all to Brummell Firmin — all. Do you think, after ruining 
 me, he ouglUn't to pay me ? " and again he thumps a dusky 
 hand upon the table. It made dingy marks on the poor Little 
 Sister's spotless tablecloth. It rubbed its owner's forehead, 
 and lank, grizzling hair. 
 
 "And me, Mr. Hunt ? What do he owe me } " asks Hunt's 
 hostess. 
 
 " Caroline ! " cries Hunt, " I have made Brummell P'irmin 
 pay me a good bit back already, and I'll have more ;" and he 
 thumped his breast, and thrust his hand into his breast-pocket 
 as he spoke, and clutched at something within. 
 
 " It is there ! " thought Caroline. She might turn pale ; 
 but he did not remark her pallor. He was all intent on drink, 
 on vanity, on revenge. 
 
 " I have him, I say. He owes me a good bit ; and he has 
 paid me a good bit ; and he shall pay me a good bit more. Do
 
 580 THE ADVENTURES OF PHTLTP 
 
 you think 1 am a fellow who will be ruined and insulted, and 
 won't revenge myself? Vou should ha\e seen his face when I 
 turned up at New York at the ' Astor Plouse,' and said, ' Brum- 
 mell, old fellow, here I am,' I said ; and he turned as white — 
 as white as this tablecloth. ' /'// never leave you, my boy,' I 
 said. 'Other fellows may 2:0 from vou, but old Tom Hunt will 
 Stick to you. Let's go into the bar and have a drink ! ' and he 
 was obliged to come. And I have him now in my power, I tell 
 you. And when T say to him, ' IJrummell, have a drink,' drink 
 he must. His bald old head must go into the jiail ! " And 
 Mr. Hunt laughed a laugh which I dare say was not agreeable. 
 
 After a pause he went on : " Caroline ! Do you hate him, 
 I say .-' or do you like a fellow who deserted you and treated 
 you like a scoundrel .'' Some women do. I could tell of wo- 
 men who do. I could tell you of other fellows, perhaps, but I 
 won't. Do vou hate Brummell Firmin, that bald-headed Brum 
 — hypocrite, and that — that insolent rascal who laid his hand 
 on a clergyman, and an old man, by George, and hit me — and 
 hit me in that street. Do you hate him, 1 say ? Hoo ! hoo ! 
 hick 1 I've got 'em both ! — here, in my pocket — both ! " 
 
 " You have got — what ? " gasped Caroline. 
 
 " I have got their — hallo ! stop, what's that to you what I've 
 got ? " And he sinks back in his chair, and grins, and leers, 
 and triumphantly tossesJiis glass. 
 
 " Well, it ain't much to me ; 1 — I never got any good out 
 of either of 'em yet," says poor Caroline, with a sinking heart. 
 " Let's talk about somebody else than them two plagues. Be- 
 cause you were a little merry one night — and I don't mind what 
 a gentleman says when he has had a glass — for a big strong 
 man to hit an old one " 
 
 " To strike a clerg}'man ! " yells Hunt. 
 
 " It was a shame — a cowardly shame ! And I gave it him 
 for it, I promise you ! " cries Mrs, Brandon. 
 
 "On your honor, now, do you hate 'em?" cries Hunt, 
 starting up, and clenching his fist, and dropping again into his 
 chair. 
 
 " Have I any reason to love 'em, Mr. Hunt? Do sit down 
 and have a little " 
 
 " No : you have no reason to like 'em. You hate 'em — I 
 hate 'em. Look here. Promise — 'pon your honor, now, Caro- 
 line — I've got 'em both, I tell you. Strike a clergyman, will 
 he ? What do you say to that ? " 
 
 And starting from his chair once more, and supporting him- 
 self against the wall (where hung one of J. J.'s pictures of
 
 ON HIS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. 58 i 
 
 Philip), Hunt pulls out the greasy pocket-book once more, and 
 fumbles amongst the greasy contents : and as the papers flutter 
 on the floor and the table, he pounces down on one with a 
 dingy hand, and yells a laugh, and says, " I've cotched you ! 
 That's it. What do you say to that ? — ' London, July 4th. — ■ 
 
 Five months after date, I promise to pay to ' No, you 
 
 don't." 
 
 " La ! Mr. Hunt, won't you let me look, at it ? " cries the 
 hostess. " Whatever is it ? A bill. My Pa had plenty of 
 'em." 
 
 " What .'' with candles in the room .'' No, you don't, I say." 
 
 " What is it ? Won't you tell me ? " 
 
 " It's the young one's acceptance of the old man's draft," 
 says Hunt, hissing and laughing. 
 
 " For how much ? " 
 
 " Three hundred and eighty-six four three — that's all ; and 
 I guess I can get more where that came from ! " says Hunt, 
 laughing more and more cheerful. 
 
 " What will you take for it t I'll buy it of 3'ou," cries the 
 Little Sister. " I — I've seen plenty of my Pa's bills ; and I'll 
 — I'll discount this, if you like." 
 
 " What ! are you a little discounter ? Is that the way you 
 make your money, and the silver spoons, and the nice supper, 
 and everything delightful about you ? A little discountess, are 
 you — you little rogue ? Little discountess, by George ! How 
 much will you give, little discountess ? " And the reverend 
 gentleman laughs and winks, and drinks and laughs, and tears 
 twinkle out of his tipsy old eyes, as he wipes them with one 
 hand, and again says, " How much will you give, little dis- 
 countess ? " 
 
 When poor Caroline went to her cupboard, and from it took 
 the notes and the gold which she had had we know from whom, 
 and added to these out of a cunning box a little heap of her 
 own private savings, and with trembling hands poured the 
 notes, and the sovereigns, and the shillings into a dish on the 
 table, I never heard accurately how much she laid down. But 
 she must have spread out everything she had in the world ; for 
 she felt her pockets and emptied them ; and, tapping her head, 
 she again applied to the cupboard, and took from thence a 
 little store of spoons and forks, and then a brooch, and then a 
 watch ; and she piled these all up in a dish, and she said, 
 "Now, Mr. Hunt, I will give you all these for that bill." And 
 she looked up at Philip's picture, which hung over the parson's 
 bloodshot, satyr face. " Take these," she said, " and give me
 
 ^32 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 that ! There's two hundred pound, I know ; and there's thirty- 
 four, and two eighteen, thirty-six eighteen, and there's the plate 
 and watch, and 1 wan't that bill." 
 
 " What ? have you got all this, you little dear ? " cried Hunt, 
 dropping back into his chair again. " Why, you're a little for- 
 tune, by Jove — a pretty little fortune, a little discountess, a 
 little wife, a little fortune. I say, I'm a University man ; I 
 could write alcaics once as well as any man. I'm a gentleman. 
 I say, how much have you got ? Count it over again, my dear." 
 
 And again she told him the amount of the gold, and the 
 notes, and the silver, and the number of the poor little spoons. 
 
 A thought came across the fellow's boozy brain : " If you 
 offer so nuich," says he, '• and you're a little discountess, the 
 bill's worth more; that fellow must be making his fortune ! Or 
 do you know about it 1 I say, do you know about it ? No. 
 I'll have my bond. I'll have my bond ! " And he gavea tipsy 
 imitation of Shylock, and lurched back into his chair, and 
 laughed. 
 
 " Let's have a little more, and talk about things," said the 
 poor Little Sister ; and she daintily heaped her little treasures 
 and arranged them in her dish, and smiled upon the parson 
 laughing in his chair. 
 
 " Caroline," says he, after a pause, "you are still fond of 
 that old bald-headed scoundrel ! That's it ! Just like you 
 women — just like, but I won't tell. No, no, I won't tell ! You 
 are fond of that old swindler still, I say ! Wherever did you 
 get that lot of money ? Look here now — with that, and this 
 little bill in my pocket, there's enough to carry us on for ever 
 so long. And when this money's gone, I tell you I know who'll 
 give us more, and who can't refuse us, I tell you. Look here, 
 Caroline, dear Caroline ! I'm an old fellow, I know ; but I'm a 
 good fellow : I'm a classical scholar : and I am a gentleman." 
 
 The classical scholar and gentleman bleared o\er his words 
 as he uttered them, and with his vinous eyes and sordid face 
 gave a leer, which must have frightened the poor little lady to 
 whom he profifered himself as a suitor, for she started back with 
 a pallid face, and an aspect of such dislike and terror, that 
 even her guest remarked it. 
 
 " I said I was a scholar and gentleman," he shrieked again. 
 " Do you doubt it ? I am as good a man as Lrummell Firmin, 
 I say. I ain't so tall. But I'll do a copy of Latin alcaics or 
 Greek iambics against him or any man of my weight. Do you 
 mean to insult me t Don't I know who you are ? Are you 
 better than a Master of Arts and a clergyman } He went out
 
 or/ ins IVAY TIIROUGir THE WORLD. 583 
 
 in medicine, Firmin did. Do you mean, when a Master of Arts 
 
 and classical scholar offers you his hand and fortune, that 
 you're above him and refuse him, by George ? " 
 
 The Little Sister was growing bewildered and frightened 
 by the man's energy and horrid looks. " Oh, ]\Ir. Hunt ! " she 
 cried, " see here, take this ! See — there are two hundred and 
 thirty — thirty-six pounds and all these things ! Take them, and 
 give me that paper." 
 
 " Sovereigns, and notes, and spoons, and a watch, and what 
 I have in my pocket — and that ain't much — and Firmin's bill ! 
 Three hundred and eighty-six four three. It's a fortune, my dear, 
 with economy ! I won't have you going on being a nurse and 
 that kind of thing. Fm a scholar and a gentleman — I am — and 
 that place ain't fit for Mrs. Hunt. We'll first spend your money. 
 No : we'll first spend my money — three hundred and eighty-six 
 and — and hang the change — and when that's gone, we'll have 
 another bill from that bald-headed old scoundrel : and his son 
 who struck a poor cler We will, I say, Caroline — we " 
 
 The wretch was suiting actions to his words, and rose once 
 more, advancing towards his hostess, who shrank back, laugh- 
 ing half-hysterically, and retreating as the other neared her. 
 Behind her was that cupboard which had contained her poor 
 little treasure and other stores, and appended to the lock of 
 which her keys were still hanging. As the brute approached 
 her, she flung back the cupboard door smartly upon him. The 
 keys struck him on the head ; and bleeding, and with a curse 
 and a cry, he fell back on his chair. 
 
 In the cupboard was that bottle which she had received from 
 America not long since ; and about which she had talked with 
 Goodenough on that very day. It had been used twice or 
 thrice by his direction, by hospital surgeons, and under her 
 eye. She suddenly seized this bottle. As the ruffian before 
 her uttered his imprecations of wrath, she poured out a quantity 
 of the contents of the bottle on her handkerchief. She said, 
 " Oh ! Mr. Hunt, have I hurt you ? I didn't mean it. But you 
 shouldn't — you shouldn't frighten a lonely woman so ! Here, 
 let me bathe you ! Smell this I It will — it will do you — good 
 — it will — it will, indeed." The handkerchief was over his face. 
 Bewildered by drink before, the fumes of the liquor which he 
 was absorbing served almost instantly to overcome him. He 
 struggled for a moment or two. " Stop — stop ! you"ll be 
 better in a moment," she whispered. " Oh, yes ! better, quite 
 better ! " She squeezed more of the liquor from the bottle on 
 to (he handkerchief. Iw a minute Ilunt was quite inanimate.
 
 584 THE ADVENTURES OF PITILIP 
 
 Then the little pale woman leant over him, and took the 
 pocket-book out of his pocket, and from it the bill which bore 
 Philip's name. As Hunt lay in stupor before her, she now 
 squeezed more of the liquor over his head ; and then thrust the 
 bill into the fire, and saw it burn to ashes. Then she put back 
 the pocket-book into Hunt's breast. She said afterwards that 
 she never should have thought about that Chloroform, but for 
 her brief conversation with Dr. Gooclenough that evening, re- 
 garding a case in which she had employed the new remedy 
 under his orders. 
 
 How long did Hunt lie in that stupor ? It seemed a whole 
 long night to Caroline. She said afterwards that the thought 
 of that act that night made her hair grow gray. Poor little 
 head ! Indeed, she would have laid it down for Philip. 
 
 Hunt, I suppose, came to himself when the handkerchief 
 was withdrawn, and the fumes of the potent liquor ceased to 
 work on his brain. He was very much frightened and bewil- 
 dered. " What was it .'' Where am I .?" he asked, in a husky voice. 
 
 " It was the keys struck you in the cupboard door when 
 you — you ran against it," said pale Caroline. " Look ! you 
 are all bleeding on the head. Let me dry it." 
 
 " No ; keep off ! " cried the terrified man. 
 
 " Will you have a cab to go home ? The poor gentleman 
 hit himself against the cupboard door, ]\Iary. You remember 
 him here before, don't you, one night "i " And Caroline, with a 
 shrug, pointed out to her maid, whom she had summoned, the 
 great square bottle of spirits still on the table, and indicated 
 that there lay the cause of Hunt's bewilderment. 
 
 " Are you better now ? Will you — will you — take a little 
 more refreshment .^ " asked Caroline. 
 
 " No ! " he cried with an oath, and with glaring, bloodshot 
 eyes he lurched towards his hat. 
 
 " Lor', mum ! what ever is it ? And this smell in the room, 
 and all this here heap of money and things on the table } " 
 
 Caroline flung open her window. " It's medicine, which 
 Dr. Goodenough has ordered for one of his patients. I must 
 go and see her to-night," she said. And at midnight, looking 
 as pale as death, the Little Sister went to the doctor's house, 
 and roused him up from his bed, and told him the story here 
 narrated. " I offered him all you gave me," she said. " and 
 
 all I had in the world besides, and he wouldn't — and " 
 
 Here she broke out into a fit of hysterics. The doctor had to 
 ring up his servants ; to administer remedies to his little nurse; 
 to put her to bed in his own house.
 
 JUDITH AND HOI.OFERNES.
 
 ON HIS WA Y THROUGH THE WORLD. 
 
 585 
 
 " By the immortal Jove," he said afterwards, " I had a great 
 mind to beg her never to leave it ! Jkit that my housekeeper 
 would tear Caroline's eyes out, Mrs. Brandon should be wel- 
 come to stay for ever. Except her /^'s, that woman has every 
 virtue : constancy, gentleness, generosity, cheerfulness, and the 
 courage of a lioness ! To think of that fool, that dandified 
 idiot, that triple ass, Firmin " — (there were few men in the world 
 for whom Goodenough entertained a greater scorn than for his 
 late conffere, Firmin of Old Parr Street) — " think of the villain 
 having possessed such a treasure — let alone his having deceixcd 
 and deserted her — of his having possessed such a treasure and 
 flung it away ! Sir, I always admired Mrs. Brandon ; but I 
 think ten thousand times more highly of her since her glorious 
 crime, and most righteous robbery. If the villain had died, 
 dropped dead in the street — the drunken miscreant, forger, 
 housebreaker, assassin — so that no punishment could have 
 fallen upon poor Brandon, I think I should have respected her 
 only the more ! " 
 
 At an early hour Dr. Goodenough had thought proper to 
 send off messengers to Philip and myself, and to make us ac- 
 quainted with the strange adventure of the previous night. We 
 both hastened to him. I myself was summoned, no doubt, in 
 consequence of my profound legal knowledge, which might be 
 of use in poor little Caroline's present trouble. And Philip 
 came because she longed to see him. By some instinct she 
 knew when he arrived. She crept down from the chamber 
 where the doctor's housekeeper had laid her on a bed. She 
 knocked at the doctor's study, where we were all in consulta- 
 tion. She came in quite pale, and tottered towards Philip, 
 and flung herself into his arms, with a burst of tears that 
 greatly relieved her excitement and fever. Firmin was scarcely 
 less moved. 
 
 " You'll pardon me for what I have done, Philip," she 
 sobbed. " If they — if they take me up, yaw won't forsake 
 me .'' ' 
 
 " Forsake you ? Pardon you ? Come and live with us, 
 and never leave us ! " cried Philip. 
 
 " I don't think Mrs. Philip would like that, dear," said tlie 
 little woman sobbing on his ai-m ; " but ever since the Grey 
 Friars school, when you was so ill, you have been like a son 
 to me, and somehow I couldn't help doing that last night to 
 that villain — I couldn't." 
 
 " Serve the scoundrel right. Never deserved to come to 
 life again, my dear," said Dr. Goodenough. " Don't you be
 
 586 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 exciting yourself, little lirandon ! I must have you sent back 
 to lie down on your bed. Take her up, Philip, to the little 
 room next mine ; and order her to lie down and be as quiet as a 
 mouse. You are not to move till I give you leave, Jirandon — 
 mind that, and come back to us, I'^irmin, or we shall have the 
 patients coming." 
 
 So I'hilip led away this poor Little Sister ; and trembling, 
 and clinging to his arm, she returned to the room assigned to 
 her. 
 
 " She wants to be alone with him," the doctor said ; and he 
 spoke a brief word or two of that strange delusion under 
 which the little woman labored, that this was her dead child 
 come back to her. 
 
 " I know that is in her mind,'' Goodenough said ; " she 
 never got over that brain fever in which I found her. If I 
 were to swear her on the book, and say, ' Brandon, don't you be- 
 lieve he is your son alive again ? ' she would not dare to say no. 
 She will leave him everything she has got. I only gave her so 
 much less than that scoundrel's bill yesterday, because I knew 
 she would like to contribute her own share. It would have of- 
 fended her mortally to have been left out of the subscription. 
 They like to sacrifice themselves. Why, there are women in 
 India who, if,, not allowed to roast with their dead husbands, 
 would die of vexation." And by this time Mr. Philip came strid- 
 ing back into the room again, rubbing a pair of very red eyes. 
 
 • Long ere this, no doubt, that drunken ruffian is sobered, 
 and knows that the bill is gone. He is likely enough to accuse 
 her of tlie robbery," says the doctor. 
 
 " Suppose," says Philip's other friend, " I had put a pistol 
 to your head, and was going to shoot you, and the doctor took 
 the pistol out of my hand, and flung it into the sea, would you 
 help me to prosecute the doctor for robbing me of the pistol ? " 
 
 " You don't suppose it will be a pleasure to me to pay that 
 bill ? " said Philip. " I said, if a certain bill were presented to 
 me, purporting to be accepted by Philip l''irmin, I would joay 
 it. But if that scoundrel, Hunt, only says that he had such a 
 bill, and has lost it ; I will cheerfully take my oath that I have 
 never signed any bill at all — and they can't find Prandon guilty 
 of stealing a tiling which never existed." 
 
 " Let us hope, then, that the bill was not in duplicate ! " 
 
 And to this wish all three gentlemen heartily said Amen ! 
 
 And now the doctor's door bell began to be agitated by 
 arriving patients. His dining-room was already full of them. 
 The Little Sister must lie still, and the discussion of her affairs
 
 OiV HIS WAY TIIROUUII THE WORLD. 587 
 
 must be deferred to a more convenient hour ; and Philip and 
 his friend agreed to -reconnoitre the house in Thornhaugh 
 Street, and see if anything had happened since its mistress 
 had left it. 
 
 Yes : something had happened. Mrs. Brandon's maid, who 
 ushered us into her mistress's little room, told us that in the 
 early morning that horrible man who had come over night, and 
 been so tipsy, and behaved so ill, — the very same man who 
 had come there tipsy afore once, and whom Mr. Philip had flung 
 into the street — had come battering at the knocker, and pulling 
 at the bell, and swearing and cursing most dreadful, and calling 
 for " Mrs. Brandon ! Mrs. Brandon ! Mrs. Brandon ! " and 
 frightening the whole street. After he had rung, he knocked 
 and battered ever so long. Mary looked out at him from 
 the upper window, and told him to go along home, or she 
 would call the police. On this the man roared out that he 
 would call the police himself if Mary did not let him in ; and 
 as he went on calling " Police ! " and yelling from the door, 
 Mary came down stairs, and opened the hall door, keeping the 
 chain fastened, and asked him what he wanted ? 
 
 Hunt, from the steps without, began to swear and rage 
 more loudly, and to demand to be let in. He must and would 
 see Mrs. Brandon. 
 
 Mary, from behind her chain barricade, said that her mis- 
 tress was not at home, but that she had been called out that 
 night to a patient of Dr. Goodenough's. 
 
 Hunt, with more shrieks and curses, said it was a lie : and 
 that she was at home ; and that he would see her ; and that he 
 must go into her room ; and that he had left something there \ 
 that he had lost something ; and that he would have it. 
 
 " Lost something here .'' " cried Mary. " Why here ? when 
 you reeled out of this house, you couldn't scarce walk, and you 
 almost fell into the gutter, which I have seen you there before. 
 Get away and go home ! You are not sober yet, you horrible 
 man I " 
 
 On this, clinging on to the area-railings, and demeaning him- 
 self like a madman. Hunt continued to call out, " Police, police ! 
 I have been robbed, I've been robbed ! Police ! " until astonished 
 "{leads appeared at various windows in the quiet street, and a 
 policeman actually came up. 
 
 When the policeman appeared, Hunt began to sway and pull 
 at the door, confined by its chain ; and he frantically reiterated 
 his charge, that he had been robbed and hocussed in that house, 
 that night, by Mrs. Brandon.
 
 588 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 The policeman, l^y a familiar expression, conveyed his uttei 
 disbclict of the statement, and told the dirly, disreputable man 
 to move on, and go to bed. Mrs. Brandon was known and re- 
 spected all around the neighborhood. She had befriended 
 numerous poor round about ; and was known for a hundred 
 charities. She attended many respectable families. In that 
 parish there was no woman more esteemed. And by the word 
 "Gammon," the policeman expressed his sense of the utter 
 absurdity of the charge against the good ladv. 
 
 Hunt still continued to yell out that he had been robbed and 
 hocussed ; and Mary from behind her door repeated to the 
 officer (with whom she perhaps had relations not unfriendly) her 
 statement that the beast had gone reeling away from the house 
 the night before, and if he had lost anything, who knows where 
 he might not have lost it .'' 
 
 "It was taken out of this pocket, and out of this pocket- 
 book," howled Hunt clinging to the rail. " I give her in charge. 
 I give the house in charge ! It's a den of thieves ! " 
 
 During this shoutin'g and turmoil, the sash of a window in 
 Ridley's studio was thrown up. The painter was going to his 
 morning work. He had appointed an early model. The sun 
 could not rise too soon for Ridley ; and, as soon as ever it gave 
 its light, found him happy at his labor. He had heard from his 
 bedroom the brawl going on about the door. 
 
 "Mr. Ridley ! " says the policeman, touching the glazed hat 
 with much respect — (in fact, in and out of uniform, Z 25 has 
 figured in more than one of J. J.'s pictures) — " Here's a fellow 
 disturbing the whole street, and shouting out that Mrs. Brandon 
 have robbed and hocussed him I " 
 
 Ridley ran down stairs in a high state of indignation. 
 He is nervous, like men of his tribe; quick to feel, to pity, 
 to love, to be angry. He undid the chain, and ran into the 
 street. 
 
 " I remember that fellow drunk here before," said the 
 painter ; " and lying in that very gutter." 
 
 "Drunk and disorderly! Come along 1" cries Z 25 ; and 
 his hand was quickly fastened on the parson's greasy collar, and 
 under its strong grasp Hunt is forced to move on. He goes, 
 still yelling out that he has been robbed. 
 
 "Tell that to his worship," said the incredulous Z. And 
 this was the news which Mrs. Brandon's friends received from 
 her maid, when they called at her house.
 
 ON UTS WA Y THROUGH THE WORLD. 589 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIX. 
 
 IN WHICH SEVERAL PEOPLE HAVE THEIR TRIALS. 
 
 If Philip and his friend had happened to pass through High 
 Street, Marylebone, on their way to Thornhaugh Street to re- 
 connoitre the Little Sister's house, they would have seen the 
 Reverend Mr. Hunt, in a verj^ dirty, battered, crestfallen and 
 unsatisfactory state, marching to Marylebone from the station, 
 where the reverend gentleman had passed the night, and under 
 the custody of the police. A convoy of street boys followed the 
 prisoner and his guard, making sarcastic remarks on both. 
 Hunt's appearance was not improved since we had the pleasure 
 of meeting him on the previous evening. \\'ith a grizzled beard 
 and hair, a dingy face, a dingy shirt, and a countenance mottled 
 with dirt and drink, we may fancy the reverend man passing in 
 tattered raiment through the street to make his appearance be- 
 fore the magistrate. 
 
 You have no doubt forgotten the narrative which appeared 
 in the morning papers two days after the Thornhaugh Street 
 incident, but my clerk has been at the pains to hunt up and copy 
 the police report, in which events connected with our history 
 are briefly recorded. 
 
 " Marylebone, Wednesday. — Thomas Tufton Hunt, profess- 
 ing to be a clergyman, but wearing an appearance of extreme 
 squalor, was brought before Mr. Beaksby at this office, charged 
 by Z 25 with being drunk and very disorderly on Tuesday se'n- 
 night, and endeavoring by force and threats to effect his re- 
 entrance into a house in Thornhaugh Street, from which he 
 had been previously ejected in a most unclerical and inebriated 
 state. 
 
 " On being taken to the station-house, the reverend gentle- 
 man lodged a complaint on his own side, and averred that he 
 had been stupefied and hocussed in the house in Thornhaugh 
 Street by means of some drug, and that, whilst in this state, he 
 had been robbed of a bill for 386/. 4^. 3^., drawn by a person 
 in New York, and accepted by Mr. P. Firmin, barrister, of 
 Parchment Buildings, Temple. 
 
 " Mrs. Brandon, the landlady of the house. No. — , I'horn- 
 haugh Street, has been in the habit of letting lodgings for many 
 years past, and several of her friends, including Mr. Firinin,
 
 59° 
 
 THE ADVENTURES OF PIHLTP 
 
 Mr, Ridley, the Rl. Acad., and other gentlemen, were in attend- 
 ance to speak to her character, which is most respectable. 
 After Z 25 had given evidence, the servant deposed that Hunt 
 had been more than once disorderl}' and drunk before that house, 
 and had been forcibly ejected from it. On the night when the 
 alleged robbery was said to have taken place, he had visited 
 the house in Thornhaugh Street, had left it in an inebriated 
 state, and returned some hours afterwards, vowing that he had 
 been robbed of the document in question. 
 
 " Mr. r. I'irmin said : ' I am a barrister, and have chambers 
 at Parchment Buildings, Temple, and know the person calling 
 himself Hunt. I have not accepted any bill of Exchange, nor 
 is my signature affixed to any such document.' 
 
 " At this stage the worthy magistrate interposed, and said 
 that this only went to prove that the bill was not completed by 
 Mr. F.'s acceptance, and would by no means conclude the case 
 set up before him. Dealing with it, however, on the merits, and 
 looking at the way in which the charge had been preferred, and 
 the entire absence of sufficient testimony to warrant him in 
 deciding that even a piece of pajoerhad been abstracted in that 
 house, or by the person accused, and believing that if he were 
 to commit, a conviction would be impossible, he dismissed the 
 charge. 
 
 " The lady left the court with her friends, and the accuser, 
 when c.illed upon to pay a fine for drunkenness, broke out into 
 very unclerical language, in the midst of which he was forcibly 
 removed." 
 
 Philip Firmin's statement, that he had given no bill of ex- 
 change, was made not without hesitation on his part, and indeed 
 at his friends' strong entreaty. It was addressed not so much 
 to the sitting magistrate, as to that elderlv individual at New 
 York, who was warned no more to forge his son's name. I fear 
 a coolness ensued between Philip and his parent in consequence 
 of the younger man's behavior. The doctor had thought better 
 of his boy than to suppose that, at a moment of neccasity^ Philip 
 would desert him. He forgave Philip, nevertheless. Perhaps 
 since his marriage other injfucficcs were at work upon him, &c. 
 The parent made further remnrks in this strain. A man who 
 takes your money is naturally offended if you remonstrate ; you 
 wound his sense of delicacy by protesting against his putting 
 his hand in your pocket. The elegant doctor in New York 
 continued to speak of his unhappy son with a mournful shake 
 of the head ; he said, perhaps believed, that Philip's imprudence 
 was in jKirt the cause of his own exile. " This is not the kind
 
 ON ins WA V THROUGH THE WORLD. 
 
 591 
 
 of entertainment to which I would have invited you at my own 
 house in England," he would say. " I tliought to have ended 
 my days there, and to have left my son in comfort — nay, splen- 
 dor. I am an exile in poverty : and he — but I will use no 
 hard words." And to his female patients he would say : " No, 
 my dear madam ! — not a syllable of reproach shall escape these 
 lips regarding that misguided boy ! But you can feel for me ; 
 I know you can feel for me." In the old days, a high-spirited 
 highwayman, who took a coach-passenger's purse, thought him- 
 self injured, and the traveller a shabby fellow, if he secreted a 
 guinea or two under the cushions. In the doctor's now rare 
 letters, he breathed a manly sigh here and there, to think that 
 he had lost the confidence of his boy. I do believe that certain 
 ladies of our acquaintance were inclined to think that the elder 
 Firmin had been not altogether well used, however much they 
 loved and admired the Little Sister for her lawless act in her 
 boy's defence. But this main point we had won. The doctor 
 at New York took the warning, and wrote his son's signature 
 upon no more bills of exchange. The good Goodenough's loan 
 was carried back to him in the very coin which he had supplied. 
 He said that his little nurse Brandon was splendide maulax, and 
 that her robbery was a sublime and courageous act of war. 
 
 In so far, since his marriage, Mr. Philip had been pretty 
 fortunate. At need, friends had come to him. In moments of 
 peril he had had succor and relief. Though he had married 
 without money, fate had sent him a sufficiency. His flask had 
 never been empty, and there was always meal in his bin. But 
 now hard trials were in store for him : hard trials which we ha\-e 
 said were endurable, and which he has long since lived through. 
 Any man who has played the game of life or whist, knows how 
 for one while he will have a series of good cards dealt him, and 
 again will get no trumps at all. After he got into his house in 
 Milman Street and quitted the Little Sister's kind roof, our 
 friend's good fortune seemed to desert him. " Perhaps it was 
 a punishment for my pride, because I was haughty with her, 
 and — and jealous of that dear good little creature," poor Char- 
 lotte afterwards owned in conversation with other friends : — 
 "but our fortune seemed to change when we were away from 
 her, and that I must own." 
 
 Perhaps, when she was yet under Mrs. Brandon's roof, the 
 Little Sister's provident care had done a great deal more for 
 Charlotte than Charlotte knew. Mrs. Philip had the most 
 simple tastes in the world, and upon herself never spent an 
 unnecessary shilling. Indeed, it was a wonder, considering her
 
 2^2 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 small expenses, how neat and nice Mrs. Philip ever looked. 
 But she never could deny herself when the children were in 
 question ; and had them arrayed in all sorts of fnie clothes ; and 
 stitched and hemmed all day and night to decorate their little 
 persons ; and in reply to the remonstrances of the matrons her 
 friends, showed hov^' it was impossible children could be dressed 
 for less cost. If anything ailed them, quick, the doctor must 
 be sent for. Not worthy Goodenough, who came without a fee, 
 and pooh-poohed her alarms and anxieties ; but dear Mr. Inland, 
 who had a feeling heart, and was himself a father of children, 
 and who supported those children by the produce of the pills, 
 draughts, powders, visits, which he bestowed on all families 
 into whose doors he entered. Bland's sympathy was very con- 
 solatory ; but it was found to be very costly at the end of the 
 year. " And, what then ? " says Charlotte, with kindling cheeks. 
 " Do you suppose we should grudge that money, which was to 
 give health to our dearest, dearest babies ? No. You can't 
 have such a bad opinion of me as that ! " And accordingly 
 Mr. Bland received a nice little annuity from our friends. 
 Philip had a joke about his wife's housekeeping which perhaps 
 may apply to other young women who are kept by overwatchful 
 mothers too much in statu pupillari. When they were married, 
 or about to be married, Philip asked Charlotte what she would 
 order for dinner ? She promptly said she would order leg of 
 mutton. "And after leg of mutton?" "Leg of beef, to be 
 sure ! " says Mrs. Charlotte, looking veiy pleased, and knowing. 
 And the fact is, as this little lio':sekeeper was obliged demurely 
 to admit, their household bills increased prodigiously after they 
 left Thornhaugh Street. " And I can't understand, my dear, 
 how the grocer's book should mount up so ; and the butter- 
 man's, and the beer," &c., &c. We have often seen the pretty 
 little head bent over the dingy volumes, puzzling, puzzling : and 
 the eldest child would holdup a warning finger to ours, ^and 
 tell them to be very quiet, as mamma was at her "atounts." 
 
 And now, I grieve to say, money became scarce for the pay- 
 ment of these accounts ; and though Philip fancied he hid his 
 anxieties from his wife, be sure she loved him too much to be 
 deceived by one of the clumsiest hypocrites in the world. 
 Only, being a much cleverer hypocrite than her husband, she 
 pretended to be deceived, and acted her part so well that poor 
 Philip was mortified with her gayety, and chose to fancy his 
 wife was indifferent to their nfipiortunes. She ought not to be 
 so smiling and happy, he thought ; and, as usual, bemoaned 
 his lot to^ his friends. " 1 come home racked with care, and
 
 ON HIS WA Y THROUGH THE WOk^tf -93 
 
 thinking of those inevitable bills; I shuddei, sir, at<«jv£ry note 
 that lies on the hall table, and would tremble as I dasned them 
 open as they do on the stage. But I laugn and put on a jaunty 
 air and humbug Char. And I hear her singing about the house 
 and laughing and cooing with the childien, by Jove ! She's not 
 aware of anything. She does not know how dreadfully the res 
 domi is squeezing me. But before marriage she did, I tell you. 
 Then, if anything annoyed me, she di\dned it. If I felt ever so 
 little unwell, you should have seen the alarm on her face ! It 
 was, 'Philip dear, how pale you are;' or, 'Philip, how flushed 
 you are;' or, 'I am sure you have had a letter from your 
 father. Why do you conceal anything from me, sir ? You 
 never should — never ! ' And now when the fox is gnawing at 
 my side under my cloak, I laugh and grin so naturally that she 
 believes I am all right, and she comes to meet me flouncing the 
 children about in my face, and wearing an air of consummate 
 happiness ! I would not deceive her for the world, you know. 
 But it's mortifying. Don't tell me. It is mortifying to be 
 tossing awake all night, and racked with care all day, and have 
 the wife of your bosom chattering and singing and laughing, as 
 if there were no cares, or doubts, or duns in the world. If I 
 had the gout and she were to laugh and sing, I should not call 
 that sympathy. If I were arrested for debt, and she were to 
 come grinning and laughing to the sponging-house, I should 
 not call that consolation. Why doesn't she feel ? She ought to 
 feel. There's Betsy, our parlor-maid. There's the old fellow 
 who comes to clean the boots and knives. They know how 
 hard up I am. And my wqfe sings and dances whilst I am on 
 the verge of ruin, by Jove ; and giggles and laughs as if life 
 was a pantomime ! " 
 
 Then the man and woman into whose ears poor Philip 
 roared out his confessions and griefs, hung down their blushing 
 heads in humble silence. They are tolerably prosperous in 
 life, and, I fear, are pretty well satisfied with themselves and 
 each other. A woman who scarcely ever does any wrong, 
 
 and rules and governs her own house and family, as my , 
 
 as the wife of the reader's humble servant most notoriously 
 does, often becomes — must it be said ? — too certain of her own 
 virtue, and is too sure of the correctness of her own opinion. 
 We virtuous people give advice a good deal, and set a consider- 
 able value upon that advice. We meet a certain man who has 
 fallen among thieves, let us say. We succor him readily enough. 
 We take him kindly to the inn, and pay his score there ; but we 
 say to the landlord, " You must give this poor man his bed ; 
 
 38
 
 594 
 
 THE ADVENTURES OF PIl/LIP 
 
 his medicine at such a time, and his broth at such another. 
 But, mind you, he must have that physic, and no other; that 
 brotli when we order it. JVe take his case in hand, you under- 
 stand. Don't listen to him or anybody else. W'e know all 
 about everything. Good-by. Take care of him. Mind the 
 medicine and the broth ! " and Mr. Benefactor or Lady Bounti- 
 ful goes away, perfectly self-satisfied. 
 
 Do you take this allegory? When Philip complained to us 
 of his wife's friskiness and gayety ; when he bitterly contrasted 
 her levity and carelessness with his own despondency and 
 doubt, Charlotte's two principal friends were smitten by shame. 
 "Oh, Philip! dear Philip!" his female adviser said (having 
 looked at her husband once or twice as Firmin spoke, and in 
 \'ain endeavored to keep her guilty eyes down on her work), 
 " Charlotte has done this, because she is humble, and because 
 she takes the advice of friends who are not. She knows every- 
 thing, and more than everything ; for her dear tender heart is 
 filled with apprehension. But we told her to show no sign of 
 care, lest her husband should be disturbed. And she trusted 
 in us ; and she puts her trust elsewhere, Philip ; and she has 
 hidden her own anxieties, lest yours should be increased ; and 
 has met you gayly when her heart was full of dread. We think 
 she has done wrong now ; but she did so because she was so 
 simple, and trusted in us who advised her wrongly. Now we 
 see that there ought to have been j^erfect confidence always 
 between you, and that it is her simplicity and faith in us which 
 have misled her." 
 
 Philip hung down his head for a moment, and hid his eyes ; 
 and we knew, during that minute when his face was concealed 
 from us, how his grateful heart was employed. 
 
 " And you know, dear Philip " says Laura, looking at 
 
 her husband, and nodding to that person, who certainly under- 
 stood the hint. 
 
 "And f say, Firmin," breaks in the lady's husband, "you 
 understand, if you are at all — that is, if you — that is if we 
 can " 
 
 " Plold your tongue ! " shouts Firmin, with a face beaming 
 over with happiness. " I know what you mean. You beggar, 
 you are going to offer me money! I see it in your face; bless 
 you both ! But we'll try and do without, please heaven. And 
 — and it's worth feeling a pinch of poverty to find such friends 
 as I have had, and to share it with such a — such a — dash — 
 dear little thing as I have at home. And I won't try and 
 humbug Char any more. Fm bad at that sort of business.
 
 ON HIS WA Y THROUGH THE WORLD. 
 
 595 
 
 And good-night, and I'll never forget your kindness, never ! " 
 And he is off a moment afterwards, and jumping down the steps 
 of our door, and so into the park. And though there were not 
 five pounds in the poor little house in Milman Street, there 
 were not two happier people in London that night than Char- 
 lotte and Philip Firmin. If he had his troubles, our friend 
 had his immense consolations. Fortunate he, however poor, 
 who has friends to help, and love to console him in his trials. 
 
 CHAPTER XL. 
 
 IN WHICH THE LUCK GOES VERY MUCH AGAINST US. 
 
 Every man and woman amongst us has made his voyage to 
 Lilliput, and his tour in the kingdom of Brobdingnag. When 
 I go to my native country town, the local paper announces our 
 arrival ; the laborers touch their hats, as the pony-chaise 
 passes, the girls and old women drop curtsies ; Mr. Hicks, the 
 grocer and hatter, comes to his door and makes a bow, and 
 smirks and smiles. When our neighbor Sir John arrives at the 
 hall, he is a still greater personage ; the bell-ringers greet the 
 hall family with a peal ; the rector walks over on an early day, 
 and pays his visit ; and the farmers at market press round for 
 a nod of recognition. Sir John at h»me is in Lilliput : in 
 Belgrave Square he is in Brobdingnag, where almost everybody 
 we meet is ever so much taller than ourselves. '' Which do 
 you like best, to be a giant amongst the pigmies, or a pigmy 
 amongst the giants ? " I know what sort of company I prefer 
 myself : but that is not the point. What I would hint is, that 
 we possibly give ourselves patronizing airs before small people, 
 as folks higher placed than ourselves give themselves airs 
 before ns. Patronizing airs ? Old Miss Mumbles, the half-pay 
 lieutenant's daughter, who lives over the plumber's, with her 
 maid, gives herself in her degree more airs than any duchess 
 in Belgravia, and would leave the room if a tradesman's wife 
 sat down in it. 
 
 Now it has been said that few men in this city of London 
 are so simple in their manners as Philip Firmin, and that he 
 treated the patron whose bread h.e ate, and the wealthy relative 
 who condescended to visit him, with a like freedom. He is
 
 596 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 blunt, but :iot familiar, aud is not a whit more polite to my 
 lord than to Jack or Tom at the coffee-house. He resents 
 familiarity from vulgar persons, and those who venture on it 
 retire maimed and mortified after coming into collision with 
 him. As for the people he loves, he grovels before them, 
 worships their boot-tips, and their gown-hems. But he submits 
 to tliem, not for their wealth or rank, but for love's sake. He 
 submitted very magnanimously, at first, to the kindnesses and 
 caresses of Lady Ringwood and her daughters, being softened 
 and won by the regard which they showed for his wife and 
 children. 
 
 Although Sir John was for the Rights of Man everywhere, 
 all over the world, and had pictures of Franklin, Lafavette, and 
 Washington in his library, he likewise had portraits of his own 
 ancestors in that apartment, and entertained a ver};- high 
 opinion of the present representative of the Ringwood family. 
 The character of the late chief of the house was notorious. 
 Lord Ringwood's life had been irregular and his morals loose. 
 His talents were considerable, no doubt, but they had not been 
 devoted to serious study or directed to useful ends. A wild 
 man in early life, he had only changed his practices in later life 
 in consequence of ill health, and became a hermit as a Certain 
 Person became a monk. He was a frivolous person to the end, 
 and was not to be considered as a public man and statesman ; 
 and this light-minded man of pleasure had been advanced to the 
 third rank of the peerage, whilst his successor, his superior in 
 intellect and morality, remained a Baronet still. How blind 
 the Ministry was whi(^h refused to recognize so much talent and 
 worth ! Had there been public virtue or common sense in the 
 governors of the nation, merits like Sir John's never could have 
 been overlooked. But Ministers were notoriously a family 
 clique, and only helped each other. Promotion and patronage 
 were disgracefully monopolized by the members of a very few 
 families who were not better men of business, men of better 
 character, men of more ancient lineage (though birth, of course, 
 was a mere accident) than Sir John himself. In a word, until 
 they gave him a peerage, he saw very little hope for the cabinet 
 or the country. 
 
 In a very early page of this history mention was made of a 
 certain Philip Ringwood, to whose protection Pliilii) Firmin's 
 mother confided her boy when he was first sent to school. 
 Philip Ringwood was Firmin's senior by seven years ; he came 
 to Old Parr Street twice or thrice during his stay at school, 
 condescended to take the " tips," of which the poor doctor
 
 ON HIS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. 597 
 
 was liberal enough, but never deigned to take any notice of 
 young Firmin, who looked up to his kinsman with awe and 
 trembling. From school Philip Ringwood speedily departed to 
 college, and then entered upon public life. He was the eldest 
 son of Sir John Ringwood, with whom our friend has of late 
 made acquaintance. 
 
 Mr. Ringwood was a much greater personage than the 
 baronet his father. Even when the latter succeeded to Lord 
 Ringwood's estates and came to London, he could scarcely be 
 said to equal his son in social rank ; and the younger patronized 
 his parent. What is the secret of great social success 1 It is 
 not to be gained by beauty, or wealth, or birth, or wit, or valor, 
 or eminence of any kind. It is a gift of Fortune, bestowed, 
 like that goddess's favors, capriciously. Look, dear madam, at 
 the most fashionable ladies at present reigning in London. 
 Are they better bred, or more amiable, or richer, or more 
 beautiful than yourself ? See, good sir, the men who lead the 
 fashion, and stand in the bow-window at " Black's ; " are they 
 wiser, or wittier, or more agreeable people than you ? And yet 
 you know what your fate would be if you were put up at that 
 club. Sir John Ringwood never dared to be proposed there, 
 even after his great accession of fortune on the earl's death. 
 His son did not encourage him. People even said that Ring- 
 wood would blackball his father if he dared to ofTer himself as 
 a candidate. 
 
 I never, I say, could understand the reason of Philip Ring- 
 wood's success in life, though you must acknowledge that he is 
 one of our most eminent dandies. He is affable to dukes. He 
 patronizes marquises. He is not witty. He is not clever. 
 He does not give good dinners. How many baronets are there 
 in the British empire ? Look to your book, and see. I tell you 
 there are many of these whom Philip Ringwood would scarcely 
 admit to wait at one of his bad dinners. By calmly asserting 
 himself in life, this man has achieved his social eminence. We 
 may hate him ; but we acknowledge his superiority. For 
 instance, I should as soon think of asking him to dine with 
 me, as I should of slapping the Archbishop of Canterbury on 
 the back. 
 
 Mr. Ringwood has a meagre little house in May Fair, and 
 belongs to a public office, where he patronizes his chef. His 
 own family bow down before him ; his mother is humble in his 
 company ; his sisters are respectful ; his father does not brag 
 of his own liberal principles, and never alludes to the rights of 
 man in the son's presence. He is called " Mr. Ringwood " in
 
 598 
 
 THE AD VENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 tlie family. The person who is least in awe of him is his 
 younger brother, who has been known to make faces behind 
 the elder's back. JJut he is a dreadfully lieadstrong and ig- 
 norant child, and respects nothing. Lady Ringwood, by the 
 way, is Mr. Ringwood's step-mother. His own mother was the 
 daughter of a noble house, and died in giving birth to this par- 
 
 agon. 
 
 Philip Firmin, who had not set eyes upon his kinsman since 
 they were at school together, remembered some stories which 
 were current about Ringwood, and by no means to that eminent 
 dandy's credit — stories of intrigue, of play, of various libertine 
 exploits on Mr. Ringwood's part. One day, Philip and Char- 
 lotte dined with Sir John, who was talking and chirping, and 
 laying down the law, and bragging away according to his wont, 
 when his son entered and asked for dinner. He had accepted 
 an invitation to dine at Carterton House. The Duke had one 
 of his attacks of gout just before dinner. The dinner w-as off. 
 If Lady Ringwood would give him a slice of mutton, he would 
 be very much obliged to her. A place w-as soon found for 
 him. " And, Philip, this is your namesake, and our cousin, 
 Mr. Philip Firmin," said the Baronet, presenting his son to his 
 kinsman. 
 
 " Your father used to give me. sovereigns, when I was at 
 school. I have a faint recollection of you, too. Little white- 
 headed boy, weren't you ? How is the doctor, and Mrs. Fir- 
 min ? All right ? " 
 
 "Why, don't you know his father ran away? " calls out the 
 youngest'member of the family. " Don't kick me, Emily. He 
 did run away." 
 
 Then Mr. Ringwood remembered, and a faint blush tinged 
 his face. " Lapse of time. I know^ Shouldn't have asked 
 after such a lapse of time." And he mentioned a case in which 
 a duke, who was very forgetful, had asked a marquis about his 
 wife who had run away with an earl, and made inquiries about 
 the duke's son, who, as everybody knew-, was not on terms with 
 his father. 
 
 " This is Mrs. Firmin — Mrs. Philip Firmin i " cried Lady 
 Ringwood, rather nervously ; and 1 suppose Mrs. Philip blushed, 
 and the blush became her ; for Mr. Ringwood afterwards con- 
 descended to say to one of his sisters, that their new-found 
 relative seemed one of your rough-and-ready sort of gentlemen, 
 but his wife was really very well bred, and quite a pretty young 
 woman, and presentable anywhere — really anywhere. Char- 
 lottr was asked to sing one or two of her little songs after
 
 ON HIS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. 599 
 
 dinner, Mr. Ringwood was delighted. Her voice was perfectly 
 true. What she sang, she sang admirably. And he was good 
 enough to lium over one of her songs (during which performance 
 he showed that his voice was not exempt from little frailties), 
 and to say he had heard Lady Philomela Shakerley sing that 
 very song at Glenmavis, last autumn ; and it was such a favorite 
 that the Duchess asked for it every night — actually every night. 
 When our friends were going home, Mr. Ringwood gave Philip 
 almost the whole of one finger to shake ; and while Philip was 
 inwardly raging at his impertinence, believed that he had 
 entirely fascinated his humble relatives, and that he had been 
 most good-natured and friendly. 
 
 I cannot tell why this man's patronage chafed and goaded 
 our worthy friend so as to drive him beyond the bounds of all 
 politeness and reason. The artless remarks of the little boy, 
 and the occasional simple speeches of the young ladies, had 
 only tickled Philip's humor, and served to amuse him when he 
 met his relatives. I suspect it was a certain free-and-easy manner 
 which Mr. Ringwood chose to adopt towards Mrs. Philip, which 
 annoyed her husband. He had said nothing at which offence 
 could be taken : perhaps he was quite unconscious of offend- 
 ing ; nay, thought himself eminently pleasing : perhaps he was 
 not more impertinent towards her than towards other women : 
 but in talking about him, Mr. Firmin's eyes flashed very fiercely, 
 and he spoke of his new acquaintance and relative, with his 
 usual extreme candor, as an upstart, and an arrogant conceited 
 puppy whose ears he would like to pull. 
 
 How do good women learn to discover men who are not 
 good ? Is it by instinct ? How do they learn those stories 
 about men ? I protest I never told my wife anything good or bad 
 regarding this Mr. Ringwood, though of course, as a man about 
 town, I have heard — who has not ? — little anecdotes regard- 
 ing his career. His conduct in that aft'air with Miss Willowby 
 was heartless and cruel ; his behavior to that unhappy Blanche 
 Painter nobody can defend. My wife conveys her opinion 
 regarding Philip Ringwood, his life, principles, and morality, by 
 looks and silences which are more awful and killing than the 
 bitterest words of sarcasm cr reproof. Philip Firmin, who 
 knows her ways, watches her features, and, as I have said, hum- 
 bles himself at her feet, marked the lady's awful looks, when 
 he came to describe to us his meeting with his cousin, and 
 the magnificent patronizing airs which Mr. Ringwood assumed. 
 
 "What.?" he said, "you don't like him anymore than I 
 do ? I thought you would not ; and I am so glad."
 
 6oo THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 Philip's friend said she did not know Mr. Ringwood, and 
 '.ad never spoken a word to him in her life. 
 
 " Yes ; but you know of him," cries the impetuous Firmin. 
 " What do you know of him, with his monstrous puppyism and 
 arrogance ? " Oh, Mrs. Laura knew very little of him. She 
 did not believe — she had much rather not believe — what the 
 tvorld said about Mr. Ringwood. 
 
 " Suppose we were to ask the Woolcombs their opinion of 
 your character, Philip ? " cries that gentleman's biographer, 
 with a laugh. 
 
 " My dear ! " says Laura, with a yet severer look, the severity 
 of which glance I must explain. The differences of Woolcomb 
 and his wife were notorious. Their unhappiness was known to 
 all the world. Society was beginning to look with a very, very 
 cold face upon Mrs. Woolcomb. After quarrels, jealousies, 
 battles, reconciliations, scenes of renewed violence and furious 
 language, had come indifference, and the most reckless gayety 
 on the woman's part. Her home was splendid, but mean and 
 miserable ; all sorts of stories were rife regarding her hus- 
 band's brutal treatment of poor Agnes, and her own imprudent 
 behavior. Mrs. Laura was indignant when this unhappy 
 woman's name was ever mentioned, except when she thought 
 how our warm, true-hearted Philip had escaped from the heart- 
 less creature. " What a blessing it was that you were ruined, 
 Philip, and that she deserted you ! " Laura would say. " What 
 fortune w^ould repay you for marrying such a woman } " 
 
 " Indeed it was worth all I had to lose her," says Philip, 
 " and so the doctor and I are quits. If he had not spent my 
 fortune, Agnes would have married me. If she had married 
 me, I might have turned Othello, and have been hung for 
 smothering her. Why, if I had not been poor, I should never 
 have been married to little Char — and fancy not being married 
 to Char ! " The worthy fellow here lapses into silence, and in- 
 dulges in an inward rupture at the idea of his own excessive 
 happiness. Then he is scared again at the thought which his 
 own imagination has raised. 
 
 "I say! Fancy being without the kids and Char!" he 
 cries with a blank look. 
 
 " That horrible father — that dreadful mother — pardon me, 
 Philip ; but when I think of the worldliness of those unhappy 
 people, and how that poor unhappy woman has been bred in it, 
 and ruined by it — I am so, so, so enraged, that I can't keep my 
 temper ! " cries the lady. " Is the woman answerable, or the 
 parents, who hardened her heart, and sold her — sold her to
 
 ON HIS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. 60 1 
 
 that O ! " Our illustrious friend Woolcomb was signified 
 
 by "that O," anjl the lady once more paused, choked with 
 wrath as she thougiit about that O, and that O's wife. 
 
 " I wonder he has not Othello'd her," remarks Philip, with 
 his hands in his pockets. " I should, if she had been mine, 
 and gone on as they say she is going on." 
 
 " It is dreadful, dreadful to contemplate ! " continues the 
 lady. " To think she was sold by her own parents, poor thing, 
 poor thing ! The guilt is with them who led her wrong." 
 
 " Nay," says one of the three interlocutors. "Why stop 
 at poor Mr. and Mrs. Twysden ? Why not let them off, and 
 accuse theit- parents ? who lived worldly too in their generation. 
 Or stay ; they descend from William the Conqueror. Let us 
 absolve poor Talbot Twysden and his heartless wife, and have 
 the Norman into court." 
 
 " Ah, Arthur ! Did not our sin begin with the beginning," 
 cries the lady, " and have we not its remedy ? Oh, this poor 
 creature, this poor creature ! May she know where to take re- 
 fuge from it, and learn to repent in time ! " 
 
 The Georgian and Circassian girls, they say, used to sub- 
 mit to their lot very complacently, and were quite eager to get 
 to market at Constantinople and be sold. Mrs. Woolcomb 
 wanted nobody to tempt her away from poor Philip. She hop- 
 ped away from the old love soon as ever the new one appeared 
 with his bag of money. She knew quite well to whom she was 
 selling herself, and for what. The tempter needed no skill, or 
 artifice, or eloquence. He had none. But he showed her a 
 purse, and three fine houses — and she came. Innocent child, 
 forsooth ! She knew quite as much about the world as papa 
 and mamma ; and the lawyers did not look to her settlement 
 more warily, and coolly, than she herself did. Did she not 
 live on it afterwards ? I do not say she lived reputably, but 
 most comfortably : as Paris, and Rome, and Naples, and Flor- 
 ence can tell you, where she is known ; where she receives a 
 great deal of a certain kind of company ; where she is scorned 
 and flattered, and splendid, and lonely, and miserable. She is 
 not miserable when she sees children : she does not care for 
 other persons' children, as she never did for her own, even 
 when they were taken from her. She is of course hurt and 
 angry, when quite common, vulgar people, not in society, you 
 understand, turn away from her, and avoid her, and won't 
 come to '-"tr parties. She gives excellent dinners which jolly 
 fogeys, rattling bachelors, and doubtful ladies frequent : but 
 she is alone and unhappy — unhappy because she does not see
 
 6o2 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 parents, sister, or brother? AHons, mon bon Monsieur/ She 
 never cared for parents, sister, or brother ; or for baby : or 
 for man (except once for PiiiHp a Httle, little bit, when her 
 pulse would sometimes go up two beats in a minute at his ap- 
 pearance). But she is unhappy, because she is losing her 
 figure, and from tight lacing her nose has become very red, and 
 the pearl-powder won't lie on it somehow. And though you 
 may have thought Woolcomb an odious, ignorant, and under- 
 bred little wretch, you must own that at least he had red blood 
 in his veins. Did he not spend a great part of his fortune for 
 the possession of this cold wife } For whom did she ever make 
 a sacrifice, or feel a pang > I am sure a greater misfortune 
 than any which has befallen friend Philip might have happened 
 to him, and so congratulate him on his escape. 
 
 Having vented his wrath upon the arrogance and imper- 
 tinence of this solemn puppy of a Phili]) Ringwood, our friend 
 went away somewhat soothed to his club in St. James's Street. 
 The " Megatherium Club " is only a very few doors from the 
 much more aristocratic establishment of "Black's." Mr. Philip 
 Pangwood and Mr. Woolcomb were standing on the steps of 
 " Black's." Mr. Ringwood waved a graceful little kid-gloved 
 hand to Philip, and smiled on him. Mr. Woolcomb glared at 
 our friend out of his opal eyeballs. Philip had once proposed 
 to kick Woolcomb into the sea. He somehow felt as if he 
 would like to treat Ringwood to the same bath. Meanwhile, 
 Mr. Ringwood labored under the notion that he and his new- 
 found acquaintance were on the very best possible terms. 
 
 At one time poor little Woolcomb loved to be seen with 
 Philip Ringwood. He thought he acquired distinction from 
 the companionship of that man of fashion, and would hang on 
 Ringwood as they walked the Pall Mall pavement. 
 
 '" Do you know that great hulking, overbearing brute ? " 
 says Woolcomb to his companion on the steps of " Black's." 
 Perhaps somebody overheard them from the bow-window. (I 
 tell you everything is overheard in London, and a great deal 
 more too.) 
 
 " Brute, is he?" says Ringwood; "seems a rough, over- 
 bearing sort of chap." 
 
 " Blackguard doctor's son. Bankrupt. Father ran away," 
 says the dusky man with the opal eyeballs. 
 
 " I have heard he was a rogue — the doctor ; but I like him. 
 Remember he gave me three sovereigns when I was at school. 
 Always like a fellow who tips you when you are at school." And 
 here Ringwood beckoned his brougham which was in waiting.
 
 OiV HIS IVAY TlIROUGir THE WORLD. 603 
 
 "Shall we see you at dinner? Where are you going?" 
 asked Mr. Woolcomb. "If you are going towards " 
 
 "Towards Gray's Inn, to see my lawyer; have an appoint- 
 ment there ; be with you at eight ! " And Mr. Ringwood skip- 
 ped into his little brougham and was gone. 
 
 Tom Eaves told Philip. Tom Eaves belongs to " Black's 
 Club," to " Bays's," to the " Megatherium," I don't know to how 
 many clubs in St, James's Street. Tom Eaves knows every- 
 body's business, and all the scandal of all the clubs for the last 
 forty years. He knows who has lost money and to whom ; 
 what is the talk of the opera-box and what the scandal of the 
 coulisses ; who is making love to whose daughter. Whatever 
 men and women are doing in May Fair, is the farrago of Tom's 
 libel. He knows so many stories, that of course he makes mis- 
 takes in names sometimes, and says that Jones is on the verge 
 of ruin, when he is thriving and prosperous, and it is poor 
 Brown who is in difficulties ; or informs us that Mrs. Fanny is 
 flirting with Captain Ogle when both are as innocent of a flirta- 
 tion as you and I are. Tom certainly is mischievous, and 
 often is wrong ; but when he speaks of our neighbors he is 
 amusing. 
 
 " It is as good as a play to see Ringwood and Otliello to- 
 gether," says Tom to Philip. " How proud the black man is to 
 be seen with him ! Heard him abuse you to Ringwood. Ring- 
 wood stuck up for you and for your poor governor — spoke up 
 like a man — like a man who sticks up for a fellow who is down. 
 How the black man brags about having Ringwood to dinner ! 
 Always having him to dinner. You should have seen Ringwood 
 shake him off ! Said he was going to Gray's Inn. Heard him 
 say Gray's Inn Lane to his man. Don't believe a word of it." 
 
 Now I dare say you are much too fashionable to know that 
 Milman Street is a little cul de sac of a street, which leads into 
 Guildford Street, which leads into Gray's Inn Lane. Philip 
 went his way homewards, shaking off Tom Eaves, who for his 
 part, trotted off to his other clubs, telling people how he had 
 just been talking with that bankrupt doctor's son, and wonder- 
 ing how Philip should get money enough to pay his club sub- 
 scription. Philip then went on his way, striding homewards at 
 his usual manly pace. 
 
 Whose black brougham was that ? — the black brougham with 
 the chestnut horse walking up and down Guildford Street. 
 Mr. Ringwood's crest was on the brougham. When Philip 
 entered his drawing-room, having opened the door with his own 
 key, there sat Mr. Ringwood, talking to Mrs. Charlotte, who
 
 604 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 was taking a cup of tea at five o'clock. She and the childrea 
 Hked that cup of tea. Sometimes it served Mrs. Char for din- 
 ner when Philip dined from home. 
 
 " If I had known you were coming here, you might have 
 brought me home and saved me a long walk," said Philip, wip- 
 ing a burning forehead. 
 
 " So 1 might — so I might ! " said the other. " I never 
 thought of it. I had to see my lawyer in Gray's Inn ; and it 
 was then I thought of coming on to see you, as I was telling 
 Mrs. Firmin ; and a very nice quiet place you live in ! " 
 
 This was very well. But for the first and only time of his 
 life, Philip was jealous. 
 
 " Don't drub so with your feet ! Don't like to ride when 
 you jog so on the floor," said Philip's eldest darling, who had 
 clambered on papa's knee. "Why do you look so ? Don't 
 squeeze my arm, papa ! " 
 
 Mamma was utterly unaware that Philip had any cause for 
 agitation. " You have walked all the way from Westminster, 
 and the club, and you are quite hot and tired ! " she said. 
 " Some tea, my dear ? " 
 
 Philip nearly choked with the tea. From under his hair, 
 which fell over his forehead, he looked into his wife's face. It 
 wore such a sweet look of innocence and wonder, that, as he 
 regarded her, the spasm of jealousy passed off. No : there 
 was no look of guilt in those tender eyes. Philip could only 
 read in them the wife's tender love and anxiety for himself. 
 
 But what of Mr. Ringwood's face ? When the first little 
 blush and hesitation had passed away, Mr. Ringwood's pale 
 countenance reassumed that calm self-satisfied smile, which it 
 customarily wore. "The coolness of the man maddened me," 
 said Philip, talking about the little occurrence afterwards, and to 
 his usual confidant. 
 
 " Gracious powers," cries the other. " If I went to see 
 Charlotte and the children, would you be jealous of me, you 
 bearded Turk ? Are you prepared with sack and bowstring 
 for every man who visits Airs. Firmin .? If you are to come 
 out in this character, you will lead yourself and your wife pretty 
 lives. Of course you quarrelled with Lovelace then and there, 
 and threatened to throw him out of window then and there ? 
 Your custom is to strike when you are hot, witness " 
 
 " Oh, dear, no ! " cried Philip, interrupting me. " I have 
 not quarrelled with liim yet." And he ground his teeth, and 
 gave a very fierce glare with his eyes. " I sat him out quite 
 civilly. I went with him to the door ; and 1 have left direc-
 
 MORE FREE THAN WELCOME.
 
 ON HIS W/ r THROUGH THE WORLD. 605 
 
 tions that he is never 10 pass it again — that's all. But I have 
 not quarrelled with hi.vi in the least. Two men never behaved 
 more politely than \\2 did. We bowed and grinned at each 
 other quite amiably. But I own, when he held out his hand, 
 I was obliged to keep mine behind my back, for tiiey felt very 
 
 mischievous, and inclined to Well, never mind. Perhaps 
 
 it is, as you say : and he meant no sort of harm." 
 
 Where, I say again, do women learn all the mischief they 
 know ? Why should my wife have such a mistrust and horror 
 of this gentleman ? She took Philip's side entirely. She said 
 she thought he was quite right in keeping that person out of 
 his house. What did she know about that person ? Did I not 
 know myself? He was a libertine, and led a bad life. He had 
 led young men astray, and taught them to gamble, and helped 
 them to ruin themselves. We have all heard stories about the 
 late Sir Philip Ringwood ; that last scandal in which he was 
 engaged, three years ago, and which brought his career to an 
 end at Naples, I need not, of course, allude to. But fourteen 
 or fifteen years ago, about which time this present portion of 
 our little story is ens^cted, what did she know about Ringwood's 
 misdoings ? 
 
 No : Philip Firmin did not quarrel with Philip Ringwood 
 on this occasion. But he shut his door on Mr. Ringwood. He 
 refused all invitations to Sir John's house, which of course, 
 came less frequently, and which then ceased to come at all. 
 Rich folks do not like to be so treated by the poor. Had Lady 
 Ringwood a notion of the reason why Philip kept away from 
 her house ? I think it is more than possible. Some of Philip's 
 friends knew her ; and she seemed only pained, not surprised 
 or angry, at a quarrel which somehow did take place between 
 the two gentleman not very long after that visit of Mr. Ring- 
 wood to his kinsman in Milman Street. 
 
 " Your friend seems ver}^ hot-headed and violent-tempered," 
 Lady Ringwood said, speaking of that very quarrel. " I am 
 sorry he keeps that kind of company. I am sure it must be 
 too expensive for him." 
 
 " As luck would have it, Philip's old school-friend, Lord 
 Egham, met us a very few days after the meeting and parting 
 of Philip and his cousin in Milman Street, and invited us to a 
 bachelor's dinner on the river. Our wives (without whose 
 sanction no good man would surely ever look a whitebait in the 
 face) gave us permission to attend this entertainment, and 
 remained at home, and partook of a tea-dinner (blessings on 
 them I) with the dear children. Men grow young again when
 
 6o6 THE ADVENTURES OF PHTLIP 
 
 they meet at these parties. We talk of flogging, proctors, old 
 cronies ; we recite old school and college jokes. I hope that 
 some of us may carry on these pleasant entertainments until 
 we are fourscore, and that our toothless old gums will mumble 
 the old stories, and will laugh over the old jokes with ever- 
 renewed gusto. Does the kind reader remember the account 
 of such a dinner at the commencement of this history ? On this 
 afternoon, Eghani, Maynard, Burroughs (several of the men 
 formerly mentioned), reassembled. I think we actually like 
 each other well enough to be pleased to hear of each other's 
 successes. I know that one or two good fellows, upon whom 
 fortune has frowned, have found other good fellows in that com- 
 pany to help and aid them ; and that all are better for that 
 kindly freemasonry. 
 
 Before the dinner was served, the guests met on the green 
 of the hotel, and examined that fair landscape, which surely 
 does not lose its charm in our eyes because it is commonly seen 
 before a good dinner. The crested elms, the shining river, the 
 emerald meadows, the painted parterres of flowers around, all 
 wafting an agreeable smell of y>v/«;r, of flowers and flounders 
 exquisitely commingled. Who has not enjoyed these delights ? 
 May some of us, I say, live to drink the '58 claret in the year 
 1900 ! I have no doubt that the survivors of our society will 
 still laugh at the jokes which we used to relish when the pres- 
 ent century was still only middle-aged. Egham was going to 
 be married. Would he be allowed to dine next year ? Frank 
 Berry's wife would not let him come. Do 3-ou remember his 
 tremendous fight with Biggs ? Remember ? who didn't t Mars- 
 ton was Berry's bottle-holder ; poor Marston, who was killed 
 in India. And Biggs and Berry were the closest friends in life 
 ever after. Who would ever have thought of Brackley be- 
 coming serious, and being made an archdeacon? Do you 
 remember his fight with Ringwood ? What an infernal bully 
 he was, and how glad we all were when l^rackley thrashed him. 
 What different fates await men ! Who would ever have imagined 
 Nosey Brackley a curate in the mining districts, and ending by 
 wearing a rosette in his hat ? Who would ever have thought of 
 Ringwood becoming such a prodigious swell and leader of 
 fashion ? He was a very shy fellow ; not at all a good-looking 
 fellow : and what a wild fellow he had become, and what a lady- 
 killer! Isn't he some connection of yours, Plrmin ? Philip 
 said yes, but that he had scarcely met Ringwood at all. And 
 one man after another told anecdotes of Ringwood ; how he 
 had young men to play in his house j how he had played in that
 
 ny Hi.'^ WAY 'niRocGn rnr. world. 
 
 G07 
 
 f^xx " Star and Garter ; " and how lie always won. You must 
 picnsc to remember that our story dates back some sixteen 
 vears, when the dice-box still rattled occasionally and the kinir 
 was turned. 
 
 As this old school gossip is going on, Lord Egham arrives, 
 and with him this very Ringwood about whom the old school- 
 fellows had just been talking. He came down in Egham's 
 pjiaeton. Of course, the greatest man of the party always waits 
 for Ringwood. " If we had had a duke at Grey Friars," says 
 some grumbler, " Ringwood would have made the duke bring 
 him down." 
 
 Philip's friend, when he beheld the arrival of Mr. Ring- 
 wood, seized Plrmin's big arm, and whispered — 
 
 '' Hold your tongue. No fighting. No quarrels. Let by- 
 gones be by-gones. Remember, there can be no earthly use in 
 a scandal." 
 
 " Leave me alone," sa\s Philip, " and don't be afraid.'' 
 
 I thought Ringwood seemed to start back for a moment, 
 and perhaps fancied that he looked a little pale, but he advanced 
 with a gracious smile towards Philip, and remarked, '" It is a 
 long time since we ha\e seen you at my father's." 
 
 Philip grinned and smiled too. " It was a long time since 
 he had been in Hill Street." But Philip's smile was not at all 
 pleasing to behold. Indeed, a worse performer of comedy than 
 our friend does not walk the stage of this life. 
 
 On this the other gayly remarked he was glad Philip had 
 leave to join the bachelor's party. " Meeting of old school- 
 fellows very pleasant. Hadn't been to one of them for along 
 time : though the ' Friars ' was an abominable hole : that was 
 the truth. Who was that in the shovel-hat ? a bishop ? what 
 bishop ? " 
 
 It was Brackley, the Archdeacon, who turned very red on 
 seeing Ringwood. For the fact is, Brackley was talking to 
 Pennystone, the little boy about whom the quarrel and fight 
 had taken place at school, when Ringwood had proposed 
 forcibly to take Pennystone's money from him. " I think, Mr, 
 Ringwood, that Pennystone is big enough to hold his own now, 
 don't you ? " said the Archdeacon ; and with this the Venerable 
 man turned on his heel, leaving Ringwood to face the little 
 Pennystone of former years ; now a gigantic country squire, 
 with health ringing in his voice, and a pair of great arms and 
 fists that would have demolished six Ringwoods in the field. 
 
 The sight of these quondam enemies rather disturbed Mr. 
 Ringwood's tranquillity.
 
 6o8 ■ THE ADVEiYTURES OF P/r/L/P 
 
 " I was dreadfully bullied at that school," he said, in an 
 appealing manner, to Mr. Pennystone. " I did as others did. 
 It was a horrible place, and I hate the name of it. I say, 
 Egham, don't you think that Barnaby's motion last night was 
 very ill-timed, and that the Chancellor of the Exchequer 
 answered him very neatly ? " 
 
 This became a cant phrase amongst some of us wags after 
 wards. Whenever we wished to change a conversation, it wasi 
 " I say, Egham. don't you think Barnaby's motion was very ill- 
 timed ; and that the Chancellor of the Exchequer answered 
 him very neatly ? " You know Mr.- Ringwood would scarcely 
 have thought of coming amongst such common people as his 
 old schoolfellows, but seeing Lord Egham's phaeton at 
 " Black's," he condescended to drive down to Richmond with 
 his lordship, and I hope a great number of his friends in St. 
 James's wStreet saw him in that noble company. 
 
 Windham was the chairman of the evening — elected to that 
 post because he is very fond of making speeches to which he 
 does not in the least expect you to listen. All men of sense are 
 ^lad to hand over this office to him : and I hope, f ^r my part, 
 a day will soon arrive (but I own, mind you, that I do not carve 
 well) when we shall have the speeches done by a skilled waiter 
 at the side table, as we now have the carving. Don't you find 
 that you splash the gravy, that you mangle the meat, that you 
 can't nick the joint in helping the company to a dinner-speech .? 
 I, for my part, own that I am in a state of tremor and absence 
 of mind before the operation ; in a condition of imbecility dur- 
 ing the business ; and that I am sure of a headache and indi- 
 gestion the next morning. What then ? Ha\'e I not seen one 
 of the bravest men in the world, at a City dinner last year, in a 
 
 state of equal panic .^ 1 feel that I am wandering from 
 
 Philip's adventures to his biographer's, and confess I am think- 
 ing of the Cas\x\:v\Jiasco I myself made on this occasion at the 
 Richmond dinner. 
 
 You see, the order of the day at these meetings is to joke 
 at everything — to joke at the chairman, at all the speakers, at 
 the army and navy, at the venerable the legislature, at the bar 
 and bench, and so forth. If we toast a barrister, we show how 
 admirably he would have figured in the dock : it a sailor, how 
 lamentably sea-sick he was : if a soldier, how nimbly he ran 
 away. For example, we drank the Yenerable Archdeacon 
 Brackley and the army. We deplored the perverseness which 
 had led him to adopt a black coat instead of a red. War had 
 evidently been his vocation, as he had shown by the frequent
 
 O^ HIS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. 609 
 
 battles in which he had been engaged at school. For what was 
 the other great warrior of the age famous ? for that Roman 
 feature in his face, which distinguished, which gave a name to, 
 our Brackley — a name by which we fondly clung (cries of 
 " Nosey, Nosey ! ") Might that feature ornament ere long the 
 face of — of one of the chiefs of that army of which he was a 
 
 distinguished field-officer ! Might Here I confess I fairly 
 
 broke down, lost the thread of my joke — at which Brackley 
 seemed to look rather severe — and finished the speech with a 
 gobble about regard, esteem, everybody respect you, and good 
 health, old boy — which answered quite as well as a finished 
 oration, however the author might be discontented with it. 
 
 The Archdeacon's little sermon was very brief, as the dis- 
 courses of sensible divines sometimes will be. He was glad 
 to meet old friends — to make friends with 'old foes (loud cries 
 of " Bravo, Nosey ! ") In the battle of life, every man must 
 meet with a blow or two ; and every brave one would take his 
 facer with good-humor. Had he quarrelled with any old school- 
 fellow in old times .? He wore peace not only on his coat, but 
 in his heart. Peace and good-will were the words of the day 
 in the army to which he belonged ; and he hoped that all 
 officers in it were animated by one esprit de corps. 
 
 A silence ensued, during which men looked towards Mr. 
 Ringwood, as the " old foe " towards whom the Archdeacon 
 had held out the hand of amity : but Ringwood, who had 
 listened to the Archdeacon's speech with an expression of great 
 disgust, did not rise from his chair — only remarking to his 
 neighbor Egham, " Why should I get up ? Hang him, I have 
 nothing to say. I say, Egham, why did you induce me to come 
 into this kind of thins; ? " 
 
 Fearing that a collision might take place between Philip and 
 his kinsman, I had drawn Philip away from the place in the 
 room to which Lord Egham beckoned him, saying, " Never 
 mind, Philip, about sitting by the lord," by whose side I knew 
 perfectly well that Mr. Ringwood would find a place. But it 
 was our lot to be separated from his lordship by merely the 
 table's breadth, and some intervening vases of flowers and 
 fruits through which we could see and hear our opposite 
 neighbors. When Ringwood spoke " of this kind of thing,"' 
 Philip glared across the table, and started as if he was going 
 to speak ; but his neighbor pinched him on the knee, and 
 whispered to him, " Silence — no scandal. Remember ! " The 
 other fell back, swallowed a glass of wine, and made me far 
 from comfortable by performing a tattoo on my chair. 
 
 39
 
 6 1 o THE AD VENTURES OF PHILIF 
 
 The speeches went on. If they were not more eloquent 
 they were more noisy and lively than before. Then the aid of 
 song was called in to enliven the banquet. The Archdeacon, 
 who had looked a little uneasy for the last half hour, rose up at 
 the call for a song, and quitted the room. " Let us go too, 
 Philip," said Philip's neighbor. "You don't want to hear 
 those dreadful old college songs over again 1 " But Philip 
 sulkily said, " You go, I should like to stay." 
 
 Lord Egham was seeing the last of his bachelor life. He 
 liked those last evenings to be merry ; he lingered over them, 
 and did not wish them to end too quickly. His neighbor was 
 long since tired of the entertainment, and sick of our company. 
 Mr. Ringwood had lived of late in a world of such fashion that 
 ordinary mortals w.ere despicable to him. He had no affection- 
 ate remembrance of his early days, or of anybody belonging to 
 them. Whilst Philip was singing his song of " Doctor Luther," 
 I was glad that he could not see the face of surprise and dis- 
 gust which his kinsman bore. Other vocal performances fol- 
 lowed, including a song by Lord Egham, which I am bound to 
 say was hideously out of tune ; but was received by his near 
 neighbor complacently enough. 
 
 The noise now began to increase, the choruses were fuller, 
 the speeches were louder and more incoherent. I don't think 
 the company heard a speech by little Mr. Vanjohn, whose 
 health was drank as representative of the British Turf, and who 
 said that he had never known anything about the turf or about 
 play, until their old schoolfellow, his dear friend — his swell 
 friend, if he might be permitted the expression — Mr. Ringwood, 
 taught him the use of cards ; and once, in his own house, in 
 May Fair, and once in this very house, the " Star and Garter," 
 showed him how to play the noble game of Blind Hookey, 
 "The men are drunk. Let us go away, Egham. I didn't 
 come for this kind of thing ! " cries Ringwood, furious, by Lord 
 Egham's side. 
 
 This w^as the expression which Mr. Ringwood had used a 
 short time before, when Philip was about to interrupt him. Pie 
 had lifted his gun to fire then, but his hand had been held back. 
 The bird passed him once more, and he could not help taking 
 aim. "This kind of thing is very dull, isn't it, Ringwood?" 
 he called across the table, pulling away a flower, and glaring at 
 the other through the little open space. 
 
 " Dull, old boy ? I call it doosed good fun," cries Lord 
 Egham, in the height of good-humor. 
 
 " Dull ? What do you mean ? " asked my lord's neighbor.
 
 ON HIS WAY THROUGH 7HE WORLD. 6ii 
 
 " I mean you would prefer having a couple of packs of 
 cards, and a little room, where you could win three or four 
 hundred from a young fellow ? It's more profitable and more 
 quiet than 'this kind of thing.' " 
 
 " I say, I don't know what you mean ! " cries the other, 
 
 " What ! You have forgotten already ? Has not Vanjohn 
 just told you, how you and Mr. Deuceace Irought him down 
 here, and won his money from him ; and then how you gave 
 him his revenge at your own house in " 
 
 " Did I come here to be insulted by that fellow ? " cries Mr. 
 Ringwood, appealing to his neighbor. 
 
 " If that is an insult, you may put it in your pipe and smoke 
 it, Mr. Ringwood ! '' cries Philip. 
 
 " Come away, come away, Egham ! Don't keep me here 
 listening to this bla — " 
 
 " If you say another word," say, Philip, " I'll send this de- 
 canter at your head ! " 
 
 " Come, come — nonsense ! No quarrelling ! Make it up ! 
 Everybody has had too much ! Get the bill and order the 
 omnibus round ! " A crowd was on one side of the table, and 
 the other. One of the cousins had not the least wish that the 
 quarrel should proceed any further. 
 
 When, being in a quarrel, Philip Firmin assumes the calm 
 and stately manner, he is perhaps in his most dangerous state. 
 Lord Egham's phaeton (in which Mr. Ringwood showed a 
 great unwillingness to take a seat by the driver) was at the 
 hotel gate, an omnibus and a private carriage or two were in 
 readiness to take home the other guests of the feast. Egham 
 went into the hotel to light a final cigar, and now Philip spring- 
 ing forward, caught by the arm the gentleman sitting on the 
 front seat of the phaeton. 
 
 "Stop ! " he said. "You used a word just now " 
 
 " What word .-' I don't know anything about words ! " cries 
 the other, in a loud voice. 
 
 "You said 'insulted,' " murmured Philip, in the gentlest 
 tone. 
 
 " I don't know what I said," said Ringw^ood, peevishly. 
 
 " I said in reply to the words which you forget, ' that I 
 would knock you down,' or words to that effect. If you feel in 
 the least aggrieved, you know where my chambers are — with 
 Mr. Vanjohn, whom you and your mistress inveigled to play 
 cards when he was a boy. You are not fit to come into an 
 honest man's house. It was only because I wished to spare a 
 lady's feeling that I refrained from turning you out of mine.
 
 6i2 THE ADVENTURES OF rillLIP 
 
 Good-night, Egham ! " and with great majesty Mr. Philip returned 
 to his companion and the Hansom cab which was in waiting to 
 convey these two gentlemen to London. 
 
 I was quite correct in my surmise that Philip's antagonist 
 would take no further notice of the quarrel to Philip personally. 
 Indeed, he affected to treat it as a drunken brawl, regarding 
 which no man of sense would allow himself to be seriously dis- 
 turbed. A quarrel between two men of the same family : — be- 
 tween Philip and his own relative who had only wished him 
 well ? — It was absurd and impossible. What Mr. Ringwood 
 deplored was the obstinate ill temper and known violence of 
 Philip, which were for ever leading him into these brawls, and 
 estranging his family from him. A men seized by the coat, in- 
 sulted, threatened with a decanter ! A man of station so treated 
 by a person whose own position was most questionable, whose 
 father w^as a fugitive, and who himself was struggling for pre- 
 carious subsistence ! The arrogance was too great. With the 
 best wishes for the unhappy young man, and his amiable (but 
 empty-headed) little wife, it was impossible to take further 
 notice of them. Let the visits cease. Let the carriage no 
 more drive from Berkeley Square to Milman Street. Let there 
 be no presents of game, poultry, legs of mutton, old clothes, 
 and what not. Henceforth, therefore, the Ringwood carriage 
 was unknown in the neighborhood of the Foundling, and the 
 Ringwood footmen no more scented with their powdered heads 
 the Firmins' little hall ceiling. Sir John said to the end that 
 he was about to procure a comfortable place for Philip, when 
 his deplorable violence obliged Sir John to break off all rela- 
 tions with the most misguided young man. 
 
 Nor was the end of the mischief here. We have all read 
 how the gods never appear alone — the gods bringing good or 
 evil fortune. When two or three little pieces of good luck had 
 befallen our poor friend, my wife triumphantly cried out, " I 
 told you so ! Did I not always say that heaven would befriend 
 that dear, innocent wife and children ; that brave, generous, 
 imprudent father?" And now when the evil days came, this 
 monstrous logician insisted that poverty, sickness, dreadful 
 doubt and terror, hunger and want almost, were all equally in- 
 tended for Philip's advantage, and would work for good in the 
 end. So that rain was good, and sunshine was good ; so that 
 sickness was good, and health was good ; that Philip ill was to 
 be as happy as Philip well, and as thankful for a sick house and 
 an empty pocket as for a warm fireside and a comfortable 
 larder. Mind, I ask no Christian philosopher to revile at his
 
 ON HIS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. 613 
 
 ill fortunes, or to despair. I will accept a toothache (or any 
 evil of life), and bear it without too much grumbling. Ikit I 
 cannot say that to have a tooth pulled out is a blessing, or 
 fondle the hand which wrenches at my jaw. 
 
 " They can live without their fine relations, and their donations 
 of mutton and turnips," cries my wife with a toss of her head. 
 "The way in which those people patronized Philip and dear 
 Charlotte was perfectly intolerable. Lady Ringwood knows how 
 dreadful the conduct of that Mr. Ringwood is, and — and I have 
 no patience with her ! " How, I repeat, do women know about 
 men ? How do they telegraph to each other their notices of 
 alarm and mistrust ? and fly as birds rise up with a rush and a 
 skurry when danger appears to be near ? All this was very- 
 well. But Mr. Tregarvan heard some account of the dispute 
 between Philip and Mr. Ringwood, and applied to Sir John for 
 further particulars ; and Sir John — liberal man as he was and 
 ever had been, and priding himself little, heaven knew, on the 
 privilege of rank, which was merely adventitious — was con- 
 strained to confess that this young man's conduct showed a 
 great deal too much laisscz aller. He had constantly, at Sir 
 John's own house, manifested an independence which had 
 bordered on rudeness ; he was always notorious for his quarrel- 
 some disposition, and lately had so disgraced himself in a 
 scene with Sir John's eldest son, Mr. Ringwood, had exhibited 
 such brutality, ingratitude, and — and inebriation, that Sir John 
 was free to confess he had forbidden the gentleman his door. 
 
 " An insubordinate, ill-conditioned fellow, certainly ! " thinks 
 Tregarvan. (And I do not say, though Philip is my friend, 
 that Tregarvan and Sir John were altogether wrong regarding 
 \\\€\x protege?) Twice Tregarvan had invited him to breakfast, 
 and Philip had not appeared. More than once he had con- 
 tradicted Tregarvan about the Review. He had said that the 
 Revieta was not getting on, and if you asked Philip his candid 
 opinion, it would not get on. Six numbers had appeared, and 
 it did not meet with that attention which the public ought to 
 pay to it. The public was careless as to the designs of that 
 Great Power which it was Tregarvan's aim to defy and con- 
 found. He took counsel with himself. He walked over to the 
 publisher's, and inspected the books ; and the result of that 
 inspection was so disagreeable, that he went home straightway 
 and wrote a letter to Philip Firmin, Esq., New Milman Street, 
 Guildford Street, which that poor fellow brought to his usual 
 advisers. 
 
 That letter contained a check for a quarter's salary and
 
 6i4 
 
 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 bade adieu to Mr. Firniiii. The writer would not recapitulate 
 the causes of dissatisfaction which he felt respecting the con- 
 duct of the Review. He was much disappointed in its pro- 
 gress, and dissatisfied with its general management. He 
 thought an opportunity was lost which never could be recovered 
 for exposing the designs of a Power which menaced the liberty 
 and tranquillity of Europe. Had it been directed with proper 
 energy that Review might have been an regis to that threatened 
 liberty, a lamp to lighten the darkness of that menaced free- 
 dom. It might have pointed the way to the cultivation honarum 
 literanim ; it might have fostered rising talent, it might have 
 chastised the arrogance of so-called critics; it might have 
 served the cause of truth. Tregarvan's hopes were disap- 
 pointed : he would not say by whose remissness or fault. He 
 had done his utmost in the good work, and, finally, would 
 thank Mr. Firmin to print off the articles already purchased 
 and paid for, and to prepare a brief notice for the next num- 
 ber, announcing the discontinuance of the Review ; and Tre- 
 garvan showed my wife a cold shoulder for a considerable time 
 afterwards, nor were we asked to his tea-parties, I forget for 
 how many seasons. 
 
 This to us was no great loss or subject of annoyance : but 
 to poor Philip ? It was a matter of life and almost death to 
 him. He never could save much out of his little pittance. 
 Plere were fifty pounds in his hand, it is true ; but bills, taxes, 
 rent, the hundred little obligations of a house, were due and 
 pressing upon him ; and in th« midst of his anxiety, our dear 
 little Mrs. Philip was about to present him with a third orna- 
 ment to his nursery. Poor little Tertius arrived duly enough ; 
 and, such hypocrites were we, that the poor mother was abso- 
 lutely thinking of calling the child Tregarvan Firmin, as a com- 
 pliment to Mr. Tregarvan, who had been so kind to them, and 
 Tregarvan Firmin would be such a pretty name, she thought. 
 We imagined the Little Sister knew nothing about Philip's 
 anxieties. Of course, she attended Mrs. Philip through her 
 troubles, and we vow that we never said a word to her regard- 
 ing Philip's own. But Mrs. Brandon went in to Philip one 
 day, as he was sitting very grave and sad with his two first-born 
 children, and she took both his hands, and said, " You know, 
 dear, I have saved ever so much : and I always intended it for 
 — you know who." And here she loosened one hand from 
 him, and felt in her pocket for a purse, and put it into Philip's 
 hand, and w^ept on his shoulder. And Philip kissed her, and 
 thanked God for sending him such a dear friend, and gave her
 
 ON HIS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. 615 
 
 back her purse, though indeed he had but five pounds left in 
 his own when this benefactress came to him. 
 
 Yes : but there were debts owing to him. There was his 
 wife's little portion of fifty pounds a year, which had never 
 been paid since the second quarter after their marriage, which 
 had happened now more than three years ago. As Philip had 
 scarce a guinea in the world, he wrote to Mrs. Baynes, his 
 wife's mother, to explain his extreme want, and to remind her 
 that this money was due. Mrs. General Baynes was living at 
 Jersey at this time in a choice society of half-pay ladies, clergy- 
 men, captains, and the like, among whom I have no doubt she 
 moved as a great lady. She wore a large medallion of the 
 deceased General on her neck. She wept dry tears over that 
 interesting cameo at frequent tea-parties. She never could for- 
 give Philip for taking away her child from her, and if any one 
 would take away others of her girls, she would be equally 
 unforgiving. Endowed with that wonderful logic with which 
 women are blessed, I believe she never admitted, or has been 
 able to admit to her own mind, that she did Philip or her 
 daughter a wrong. In the tea-parties of her acquaintance she 
 groaned over the extravagance of her son-in-law and his brutal 
 treatment of her blessed child. Many good people agreed 
 with her and shook their respectable noddles when the name of 
 that prodigal Philip was mentioned over her mufiins and Bohea. 
 He was prayed for ; his dear widowed mother-in-law was pitied, 
 and blessed with all the comfort reverend gentlemen could 
 supply on the spot. " Upon my honor, Firmin, Emily and I 
 were made to believe that you were a monster, sir," the stout 
 Major MacWhirter once said ; '• and now I have heard your 
 story, by Jove, I think it is you, and not Eliza Baynes, who 
 were wronged. She lias a deuce of a tongue, Eliza has : and a 
 temper — poor Charles knew what that was ! " In fine, when 
 Philip, reduced to his last guinea, asked Charlotte's mother to 
 pay her debt to her sick daughter, Mrs. General B. sent Philip 
 a ten-pound note, open, by Captain Swang, of the Indian army, 
 who happened to be coming to England. And that, Philip 
 says, of all the hard knocks of fate, has been the very hardest 
 which he has had to endure. 
 
 But the poor little wife knew nothing of this cruelty, nor hi- 
 deed of the very poverty which was hemming round her cur- 
 tain ; and in the midst of his griefs, Philip Firmin was im- 
 mensely consoled by the tender fidelity of the friends whom 
 God had sent him. Their griefs were drawing to an end now. 
 Kind readers all, may your sorrows, may mine, leave us with 
 hearts not embittered, and humbly acquiescent to the Great Will \
 
 6 1 6 THE A D VENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 CHAPTER XLI. 
 
 IN WHICH WE REACH THE LAST STAGE BUT ONE OF THIS 
 
 JOURNEY. 
 
 Although poverty was knocking at Philip's humble door, 
 fittle Charlotte in all her trouble never knew how menacing the 
 grim visitor had been. She did not quite understand that her 
 husband in his last necessity sent to her mother for his due, 
 and that the mother turned away and refused him. "Ah," 
 thought poor Philip, groaning in his despair, " I wonder whether 
 the thieves who attacked the man in the parable were robbers 
 of his own family, who knew that he carried money with him to 
 Jerusalem, and waylaid him on the journey ? " But again and 
 again he has thanked God, with grateful heart, for the Samari- 
 tans whom he has met on life's road, and if he has not forgiven, 
 it must be owned he has never done any wrong to those \A\q 
 robbed him, 
 
 Charlotte did not know that her husband was at his last 
 guinea, and a prey to dreadful anxiety for her dear sake, for 
 after the birth of her child a fever came upon her ; in the delir- 
 ium consequent upon which the poor thing was ignorant of all 
 that happened round her. A fortnight with a wife in extremity, 
 with crying infants, with hunger menacing at the door, passed 
 for Philip somehow. The young man became an old man in 
 this. time. Indeed, his fair hair was streaked with white at the 
 temples afterwards. But it must not be imagined that he had 
 not friends during his affliction, and he always can gratefully 
 count up the names of many persons to whom he might have 
 applied had he been in need. He did not look or ask for these 
 succors from his relatives. Aunt and uncle Twysden shrieked 
 and cried out at his extravagance, imprudence, and folly. Sir 
 John Ringwood said he must really wash his hands of a young 
 man who menaced the life of his own son. Grenville Wool- 
 comb, with many oaths, in which brother-in-law Ringwood 
 joined chorus, cursed Philip, and said he didn't care, and the 
 beggar ought to be hung, and his father ought to be hung. But 
 I think I know half-a-dozen good men and true who told a dif- 
 ferent tale, and who were ready with their sympathy and suc- 
 cor. Did not Mrs. Flanagan, the Irish laundress, iii a voice 
 broken by sobs and gin. offer to go and chare at Philip's house
 
 ON HIS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. 617 
 
 for nothing, and nurse tlie dear cliildren ? Did not Goodenough 
 say, " If you are in need, my dear fellow, of course you know 
 where to come ; " and did he not actually give two prescrip- 
 tions, one for poor Charlotte, and one for fifty pounds to be 
 taken immediately, which he handed to the nurse by mistake ? 
 You may be sure she did not appropriate the money, for of 
 course you know that the nurse was Mrs. Brandon. Charlotte 
 has one remorse in her life. She owns she was jealous of the 
 Little Sister. And now when that gentle life is over, when 
 Philip's poverty trials are ended, when the children go some 
 times and look wistfully at the grave of their dear Caroline, 
 friend Charlotte leans her head against her husband's shoulder, 
 and owns humbly how good, how bra\'e, how generous a friend 
 heaven sent them in that humble defender. 
 
 Have you ever felt the pinch of poverty ? In many cases 
 it is like the dentist's chair, more dreadful in the contemplation 
 than in the actual suffering. Philip says he was never fairly 
 beaten, but on that day when, in reply to his solicitation to have 
 his due, Mrs. Baynes's friend. Captain Swang, brought him the 
 open ten-pound note. It was not much of a blow ; the hand 
 which dealt it made the hurt so keen. " I remember," says he, 
 " bursting out crjung at school, because a big boy hit me a 
 slight tap, and other boys said, ' Oh, you coward.' It was that 
 I knew the boy at home, and my parents had been kind to him. 
 It seemed to me a wrong that Bumps should strike me," said 
 Philip ; and he looked, while telling the story, as if he could cry 
 about this injury now. I hope he has revenged himself by pre- 
 senting coals of fire to his wife's relations. But this day, when 
 he is enjoying good health, and competence, it is not safe to 
 mention mothers-in-law in his presence. He fumes, shouts and 
 rages against them, as if all were like his ; and his, I have been 
 told, is a lady perfectly well satisfied with herself and her con- 
 duct in this world ; and as for the next but our story does 
 
 not dare to point so far. It only interests itself about a little 
 clique of people here below — their griefs, their trials, their 
 weaknesses, their kindly hearts. 
 
 People there are in our history who do not seem to me to 
 have kindly hearts at all ; and yet, perhaps, if a biography 
 could be written from their point of view, some other novelist 
 might show how Philip and his biographer were a pair of selfish 
 worldlings unworthy of credit : how uncle and aunt Twysden 
 were most exemplary people, and so forth. Have I not told 
 you how many people at New York shook their heads when 
 Philip's name was mentioned, and intimated a strong opinion
 
 6iS THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 that he used his father very ill ? When he fell wounded and 
 bleeding, patron Tregarvan dropped him off his horse, and cousin 
 Ringwood did not look behind to see how he fared. But these, 
 again, may have had their opinion regarding our friend, who 
 
 may have been misrepresented to them 1 protest as I look 
 
 back at the past portions of this history, I begin to have qualms, 
 and ask myself whether the folks of whom we have been prat- 
 ling have had justice done to them ; whether Agnes Twysden 
 is not a suffering martyr justly offended by Philip's turbulent 
 behavior, and whether Philip deserves any particular attention 
 or kindness at all. He is not transcendently clever ; he is not 
 gloriously beautiful. He is not about to illuminate the dark- 
 ness in which the people grovel, with the flashing emanations 
 of his truth. He sometimes owes money, which he cannot pay. 
 He slips, stumbles, blunders, brags. Ah ! he sins and repents 
 — pray heaven — of faults, of vanities, of pride, of a thousand 
 shortcomings! This I say — Ego — as my friend's biographer. 
 Perhaps I do not understand the other characters round about 
 him so well, and have overlooked a number of iheir merits, and 
 caricatured and exaggerated their little defects. 
 
 Among the Samaritans who came to Philip's help in these 
 his straits, he loves to remember the name of J. J-, the painter, 
 whom he found sitting with the children one day making 
 drawings for them, which the good painter never tired to 
 sketch. 
 
 Now if those children would but have kept Ridley's 
 sketches, and waited for a good season at Christie's I have no 
 doubt they might have got scores of pounds for the drawings ; 
 but then, you see, they chose to improve the drawings with their 
 own hands. They painted the soldiers yellow, the horses blue, 
 and so forth. On the horses they put soldiers of their own con- 
 struction. Ridley's landscapes were enriched with representa- 
 tions of "omnibuses," which the children saw and admired in 
 the neighboring New Road. I dare say, as the fever left her, 
 and as she came to see things as they were, Charlotte's eyes 
 dwelt fondly on the pictures of the omnibuses inserted in Mr. 
 Ridley's sketches, and she put some aside and showed them 
 to her friends, and said, " Doesn't our darling show extraordi- 
 nary talent for drawing ? Mr. Ridley says he does. He did a 
 great part of this etching." 
 
 But, besides the drawings, what do you think Master Rid- 
 ley offered to draw for his friends ? Besides the prescriptions 
 of medicine, what drafts did Dr. Goodenough prescribe ? When 
 nurse Brandon came to Mrs. Philip in her anxious time, we
 
 ON HIS WA Y THROUGH THE WORLD. 
 
 619 
 
 know what sort of paj-ment she proposed for her services. 
 Who says the world is all cold ? There is the sun and the 
 shadows. And the heaven which ordains poverty and sickness 
 sends pity, and love, and succor. 
 
 During Charlotte's fever and illness, the Little Sister had 
 left her but for one day, when her patient was quiet, and pro- 
 nounced to be mending. It appears that Mrs. Charlotte was 
 very ill indeed on this occasion ; so ill that Dr. Goodenough 
 thought she she might have given us all the slip : so ill that, 
 but for Brandon, she would, in all probability, have escaped 
 out of this troublous world, and left Philip and her orphaned 
 little ones. Charlotte mended then : could take food, and 
 liked it, and was specially pleased with some chickens which 
 her nurse informed her were " from the country." " From 
 Sir John Ringwood, no doubt?" said Mrs. Firmin, remember- 
 ing the presents sent from Berkeley Square, and the mutton 
 and the turnips. 
 
 " Well, eat and be thankful ! " says the Little Sister, who 
 was as gay as a little sister could be, and who had prepared a 
 beautiful bread sauce for the fowl ; and who had tossed the 
 baby, and who showed it to its admiring brother and sister 
 ever so many times ; and who saw that Mr. Philip had his din- 
 ner comfortable ; and who never took so much as a drop of 
 porter — at home a little glass sometimes was comfortable, but 
 on duty, never, never ! No, not if Dr. Goodenough ordered it ! 
 she vowed. And the doctor wished he could sav as much, or 
 believe as much, of all his nurses. 
 
 Milman Street is such a quiet little street that our friends 
 had not carpeted it in the usual way ; and three days after her 
 temporary absence, as nurse Brandon sits by her patient's bed, 
 powdering the back of a small pink infant that makes believe 
 to swim upon her apron, a rattle of wheels is heard in the quiet 
 street — of four wheels, of one horse, of a jingling carriage, 
 which stops before Philip's door. " It's the trap," says nurse 
 Brandon, delighted. " It must be those kind Ringwoods," 
 says Mrs. Philip. " But stop, Brandon. Did not they, did not 
 we? — oh, how kind of them!" She was trving to recall the 
 past. Past and present for days had been strangely mingled 
 in her fevered brain. *' Hush, my dear ! you are to be kep' 
 quite still," says the nurse — and then proceeded to finish the 
 polishing and powdering of the pink frog on her lap. 
 
 The bedroom window was open towards the sunny street : 
 but Mrs. Philip did not hear a female voice say, " 'Old the 
 'orse's 'ead, Jim," or she might have been agitated. The
 
 62 o THE ADVENTURES OF nil LIP 
 
 horse's head was held, and a gentleman and a lady with a great 
 basket containing pease, butter, greens, flowers, and other 
 rural produce, descended from the vehicle and rang at the bell. 
 
 Philip opened it ; with his little ones, as usual, trotting at 
 his knees. 
 
 " Why, my darlings, how you air grown ! " cries the lady. 
 
 " By-gones be by-gones. Give us your 'and. Firm in : here's 
 mine. My missus has brought some country butter and things 
 for your dear good lady. And we hoped you liked the chick- 
 ens. And God bless you, old fellow, how are you ? " The 
 tears were rolling down the good man's cheeks as he spoke. 
 And Mrs. Mugford was likewise exceedingly hot, and very 
 much affected. And the children said to her, " Mamma is 
 better now : and we have a little brother, and he is crying now 
 up stairs." 
 
 " Bless you, my darlings ! " Mrs. Mugford was off by this 
 time. She put down her peace-offering of carrots, chickens, 
 bacon, butter. She cried plentifully. " It was Brandon came 
 and told us," she said ; " and when she told us how all your 
 great people had flung you over, and you'd been quarrelling 
 again, you naughty fellar, I says to Mugford, ' Let's go and see 
 after that dear thing, Mugford,' I says. And here we are. 
 And year's two nice cakes for your children " (after a forage 
 in the cornucopia), " and, lor', how they are grown ! " 
 
 A little nurse from the up stairs regions here makes her ap- 
 pearance, holding a bundle of cashmere shawls, part of which 
 is removed, and discloses a being pronounced to be ravishingly 
 beautiful, and "jest like Mrs. Mugford's Enialy ! " 
 
 " I say," says Mugford, " the old shop's still open to you. 
 T'other chap wouldn't do at all. He was wild when he got 
 the drink on board. Hirish. Pitched into lUckerton, and 
 black'd 'is eye. It was Bickerton who told you lies about that 
 poor lady. Don't see 'em no more now. Borrowed some 
 money of me ; haven't seen him since. We were both wrong, 
 and we must make it up — the missus says we must." 
 
 "Amen!" said Philip, with a grasp of the honest fellow's 
 hand. And next Sunday he and a trim little sister, and two 
 children, went to an old church in Queen Square, Bloomsbury, 
 which was fashionable in the reign of Queen Anne, when 
 Richard Steele kept house, and did not pay rent, hard by. 
 And when the clergyman in the Thanksgi\'ing particularized 
 those who desired now to " offer up their praises and thanks- 
 giving for late mercies vouchsafed to them," once more Philip 
 Firmin said " Amen," on Iiis knees, and with all his heart. ,
 
 ON HIS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. 6>5 
 
 CHAPTER XLII. 
 
 THE REALMS OF BLISS. 
 
 You know — all good boys and girls at Christmas know- 
 that, before the last scene of the pantomime, when the Good 
 Fairy ascends in a blaze of glory, and Harlequin and Colum- 
 bine take hands, having danced through all their tricks and 
 troubles and tumbles, there is a dark, brief, seemingly meaning- 
 less, penultimate scene, in which the performers appear to grope 
 about perplexed, whilst the music of bassoons and trombones, 
 and the like, groans tragically. As the actors, with gestures of 
 dismay and outstretched arms, move hither and thither, the wary 
 frequenter of pantomimes sees the illuminators of the Abode of 
 Bliss and Hall of Prismatic Splendor nimbly moving behind the 
 canvas, and streaking the darkness with twinkling fires — fires 
 which shall blaze out presently in a thousand colors round the 
 Good Fairy in the Revolving temple of Blinding Bliss. Be 
 happy. Harlequin ! Love and be happy and dance, pretty 
 Columbine ! Children, mamma bids you put your shawls on. 
 And Jack and Mary (who are young and love pantomimes) look 
 lingeringly still over the ledge of the box, whilst the fairy tem- 
 ple yet revolves, whilst the fireworks play, and ere the Great 
 Dark Curtain descends. 
 
 My dear young people, who have sat kindly through the 
 scenes during which our entertainment has lasted, be it known 
 to you that last chapter was the dark scene. Look to your 
 cloaks, and tie up your little throats, for I tell you the great 
 baize will soon fall down. Have I had any secrets from you 
 all through the piece ? I tell you the house will be empty and 
 you will be in the cold air. When the boxes have got their 
 nightgowns on, and you are all gone, and I have turned off the 
 gas, and am in the empty theafre alone in the darkness, I 
 promise you I shall not be merry. Never mind ! We can make 
 jokes though we are ever so sad. We can jump overhead and 
 heels, though I declare the pit is half emptied already, and the 
 last orange-woman has slunk away. Encore une pirouette, 
 Colombine ! Saute, Arlequin, mon ami ! Though there are 
 but five bars more of the music, my good people, we must jump 
 over them briskly, and then go home to supper and bed.
 
 62 2 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 Philip Firniin, then, was immensely moved by this magna- 
 nimity and kindness on the part of his old employer, and has 
 always considered Mugford's arrival and friendliness as a special 
 interposition in his favor. He owes it all to Brandon, he says. 
 It was she who bethought herself of his condition, represented 
 it to Mugford, and reconciled him to his enemy. Others were 
 most ready with their money. It was Brandon who brought 
 him work rather than alms, and enabled him to face fortune 
 cheerfully. His interval of poverty was so short, that he 
 actually had not occasion to borrow. A week more, and he 
 could not have held out, and poor Brandon's little marriage 
 present must have gone to the cenotaph of sovereigns — the 
 dear Little Sister's gift which Philip's family cherish to this 
 hour. 
 
 So Philip, with a humbled heart and demeanor, clambered up 
 on his sub-editorial stool once more at the Pall Mall Gazette, 
 and again brandished the paste-pot and the scissors. I forget 
 whether Bickerton still remained in command at the Pall Mall 
 Gazette, or was more kind to Philip than before, or was afraid 
 of him, having heard of his exploits as a fire-eater ; but certain 
 it is, the two did not come to a quarrel, giving each other a wide 
 berth, as the saying is, and each doing his own duty. Good-by, 
 Monsieur Bickerton. Except mayhap, in the final group, round 
 the Fairy Chariot (when, I promise you, there will be such a 
 blaze of glory that he will be invisible), we shall never see the 
 little spiteful envious creature more. Let him pop down his 
 appointed trap-door ; and, quick fiddles ! let the brisk music 
 jig on. _ 
 
 Owing to the coolness which had arisen between Philip and 
 his father on account of their difTerent view's regarding the use 
 to be made of Philip's signature, the old gentleman drew no 
 further bills in his son's name, and our friend w-as spared from 
 the unpleasant persecution. Mr. Hunt loved Dr. Firmin .so 
 ardently that he could not bear to be separated from the doctor 
 long. Without the doctor, London was a dreary wilderness to 
 Hunt. Unfortunate remembrances of past pecuniary transac- 
 tions haunted him here. We' were all of us glad when he finally 
 retired from the Covent Garden taverns and betook himself to 
 the Bowery once more. 
 
 And now friend Philip was at work again, hardly earning a 
 scanty meal for self, wife, servant, children. It was indeed a 
 meagre meal, and a small wage. Charlotte's illness, and other 
 mishaps, had swept away poor Philip's little savings. It was 
 determined that we would let the elegantly-furnished apartments
 
 ox JJJS IV.n rilKOL'GH TIJE WORLD. 62' 
 
 on the first floor. You might have fancied the proud Mr. Fir- 
 min rather repugnant to such a measure. And so he was on 
 the score of convenience, but of dignity, not a whit. To this 
 day, if necessity called, Philip would turn a mangle with perfect 
 gravity, I believe the thought of Mrs. General Baynes's horror 
 at the idea of her son-in-law letting lodgings greatly soothed and 
 comforted Philip. The lodgings were absolutely taken by our 
 country acquaintance, Miss Pybus, who was coming up for the 
 May meetings, and whom we persuaded (heaven be good to us \) 
 that she would find a most desirable quiet residence in the house 
 of a man with three squalling children. Miss P. came, then, 
 with my wife to look at the apartments ; and we allured her by 
 describing to her the delightful musical services at the Found- 
 ling hard by ; and she was very much pleased with IVIrs. Philip, 
 and did not even wince at the elder children, whose pretty 
 faces won the kind old lady's heart : and I am ashamed to say 
 we were nium about the baby : and Pybus was going to close 
 for the lodgings, when Philip burst out of his little room without 
 his coat, I believe, and objurgated a little printer's boy, who was 
 sitting in the hall, waiting for some " copy " regarding which he 
 had made a blunder ; and Philip used such violent language to- 
 wards the little lazy boy, that Pybus said " she never could think 
 of taking apartments in that house," and hurried thence in a 
 panic. \Vhen Brandon heard of this project of letting lodgings, 
 she was in a fury. She might let lodgin's, but it wasn't for 
 Philip to do so. " Let lodgin's, indeed ! Buy a broom, and 
 sweep a crossin' ! " Brandon always thought Charlotte a poor- 
 spirited creature, and the way she scolded Mrs. Firmin about 
 this transaction was not a little amusing. Charlotte was not 
 angry. She liked the scheme as little as Brandon. No other 
 person ever asked for lodgings in Charlotte's house. May and 
 its meetings came to an end. The old ladies went back to their 
 country towns. The missionaries returned to Caffraria. (Ah ! 
 where are the pleasant-looking Quakeresses of our youth, with 
 their comely faces, and pretty dove-colored robes ? They say 
 the goodly sect is dwindling — dwindling.) The Quakeresses 
 went out of town ■ then the fashionable world began to move : 
 the Parliament went out of town. In a word, everybody who 
 could, made away for a holiday, whilst poor Philip remained at 
 his work, snipping and pasting his paragraphs, and doing his 
 humble drudgery. 
 
 A sojourn, on the sea-shore was prescribed by Dr. Good- 
 enough, as absolutely necessary for Charlotte and her young 
 ones, and when Philip pleaded certain cogent reasons why the
 
 624 ^'^^^ ADVENTURES OF PIHUr 
 
 family could not take the medicine prescribed bj- the doctor^ 
 that eccentric physician had recourse to the same pocket-book 
 which we have known him to produce on a former occasion ; 
 and took from it, for what I know, some of Ihe very same 
 notes which he had formerly given to the Little Sister. " I 
 suppose you may as well have them as that rascal Hunt ? " 
 said the Doctor, scowling very fiercely. " Don't tell 7nc. Stuff 
 and nonsense. Pooh ! Pay me when you are a rich man ! " 
 And this Samaritan had jumped into his carriage, and was 
 gone, before Philij) or ]\Irs. Philip could say a word of thanks. 
 Look at him as he is going off. See the green brougham 
 drive away, and turn westward, and mark it well. A shoe go 
 after thee, John Goodenough ; we shall see thee no more in 
 this story. You are not in the secret, good reader : but I, 
 who have been living with certain people for many months 
 past, and have a hearty liking for some of them, grow very 
 soft when the hour for shaking hands comes, to think we are 
 to meet no more. Go to ! when this tale began, and for some 
 months after, a pair of kind old eyes used to read these pages, 
 which are now closed in the sleep appointed for all of us. And 
 so page is turned after page, and behold Finis and the volume's 
 end. 
 
 So Philip and his young folks came down to Periwinkle 
 Bay, where we were staying, and the girls in the two families 
 nursed the baby, and the child and mother got health and com- 
 fort from the fresh air, and Mr. Mugford — who believes him- 
 self to be the finest sub-editor in the world, and I can tell you 
 there is a great art in sub-editing a paper — Mr. Mugford, I 
 say, took Philip's scissors and paste-pot, whilst the latter en- 
 joyed his holiday. And J. J. Ridley, R.A., came and joined 
 us presently, and we had many sketching parties, and my draw- 
 ings of the various points about the bay, viz.. Lobster Head, 
 the Mollusc Rocks, &c., &:c., are considered to be very spirited, 
 though my little boy (who certainly has not his father's taste 
 for art) mistook for the rock a really capital portrait of Philip, 
 in a gray hat and paletot, sprawling on the sand. 
 
 Some twelve miles inland from the bay is the little town of 
 Whipham Market, and Whipham skirts the park palings of 
 that castle where Lord Ringwood had lived, and where Philip's 
 mother was born and bred. There is a statue of the late lord 
 in Whipham market-place. Could he have had his will, the 
 borouHi would have continued to return two Members to Par- 
 liament, as in the good old times before us. In that ancient 
 and grass-grown little place, where your footsteps echo as you
 
 OiV Ills WAY THRO UGH THE WORLD. 625 
 
 pass through the street, where you hear distmctly the creaking 
 of the sign of the " Ringwo<',d Arms" hotel and posting-house, 
 and the opposition creaking of the " Ram Inn " over the way 
 — where the half-pay captain, the curate, and the medical man 
 stand before the fly-blown window-blind of the " Ringwood In- 
 stitute '' and sur\'ey the strangers — there is still a respect felt 
 for the memory of the great lord who dwelt behind the oaks 
 in yonder hall. He had his faults. His lordship's life was 
 not that of an anchorite. The company his lordship kept, es- 
 pecially in his latter days, was not of that select description 
 which a nobleman of his lordship's rank might command. 
 But he was a good friend to Whipham. He was a good land- 
 lord to a good tenant. If he had his will, Whipham would 
 have kept its own. His lordship paid half the expense after 
 the burning of the town hall. He was an arbitrary man, cer- 
 tainly, and he flogged Alderman Duffle before his own shop, 
 but he apologized for it most handsome afterwards. Would 
 the gentlemen like port or sherry t Claret not called for in 
 Whipham ■ not at all : and no fish, because all the fish at Peri- 
 winkle Bay is brought up and goes to London, Such were the 
 remarks made by the landlord of the " Ringwood Arms " to 
 three cavaliers who entered that hostelry. And you may be 
 sure he told us about Lord Ringwood's death in the post-chaise 
 as he came from Turreys Regum ] and how his lordship went 
 through them gates (pointing to a pair of gates and lodges 
 which skirt the town), and was drove up to the castle and laid 
 in state ; and his lordship never would take the railway, never ; 
 and he always travelled like a nobleman, and when he came to 
 a hotel and changed horses, he always called for a bottle of 
 wine, and only took a glass, and sometimes not even that. And 
 the present Sir John has kept no company here as yet ; and 
 they say he is close of his money, they say he is. And this is 
 certain, Whipham haven't seen much of it, Whipham haven't. 
 
 We went into the inn yard, which may have been once a 
 stirring place, and then sauntered up to the park gate, sur- 
 mounted by the supporters and armorial bearings of the Ring- 
 woods. " I wonder whether my poor mother came out of that 
 gate when she eloped with my father?'' said PhiHp. "Poor 
 thing, poor thing ! " The great gates were shut. The wester- 
 ing sun cast shadows over the sward where here and there the 
 deer were browsing, and at some mile distance lay the house, 
 with its towers and porticos and vanes flaming in the sun. The 
 small gate was open, and a girl was standing by the lodge door. 
 
 Was the house to be seen ? 
 
 -.0
 
 626 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 "Yes," says a little red-cheeked girl, with a curtsey. 
 
 " No ! " calls out a harsh voice from within, and an old wo- 
 man comes out from the lodge and looks at us fiercely. " No- 
 body is to go to the house. The family is a-coming." 
 
 That was provoking. Philip would have liked to behold 
 the great house where his mother and her ancestors were born, 
 
 " Marry, good dame,'* Philip's companion said to the old 
 beldam, " this goodly gentleman hath a right of entrance to 
 yonder castle, which I trow, ye wot not of. Heard ye never 
 tell of one Philip Ringwood, slain at Eusaco's glorious fi " 
 
 " Hold your tongue, and don't chaff her, Pen," growled 
 Firmin. 
 
 " Nay, and she knows not Philip Ringwood's grandson," 
 the other wag continued, in a softened tone, "this will convince 
 her of our right to enter. Canst recognize this image of your 
 queen ? " 
 
 " Well, I suppose 'ee can go up," said the old woman, at the 
 sight of this talisman. " There's only two of them staying 
 there, and they're out a-drivin'," 
 
 Philip was bent on seeing the halls of his ancestors. Gray 
 and huge, with towers, and vanes, and porticos, they lay before 
 us a mile off, separated from us by a streak of glistening river. 
 A great chestnut avenue led up to the river, and in the dappled 
 grass the deer was browsing. 
 
 You know the house of course. There is a picture of it in 
 Watts, bearing date 1783. A gentleman in a cocked hat and 
 pigtail is rowing a lady in a boat on the shining river. An- 
 other nobleman in a cocked hat is angling in the glistening river 
 from the bridge, over which a post-chaise is passing. 
 
 "Yes, the place is like enough," said Philip; "but I miss 
 the post-chaise going over the bridge, and the lady in the punt 
 with the tall parasol. Don't you remember the print in our 
 housekeeper's room in Old Parr Street t My poor mother used 
 to tell me about the house, and I imagined it grander than the 
 palace of Aladdin. It is a very handsome house," Philip went 
 on. " ' It extends two hundred and sixty feet by seventy-five, 
 and consists of a rustic basement and jDrincipal story, with an 
 attic in the centre, the whole executed in stone. The grand 
 front towards the park is adorned with a noble portico of the 
 Corinthian order, and may with propriety be considered one oi 
 
 the finest elevations in the .' I tell you I am quoting out 
 
 of Watts's ' Seats of the Nobility and Gentry,' published by 
 John and Josiah Boydell, and lying in our drawing-room. y\h, 
 •■lear me ! I painted the boat and the lady and gentleman in
 
 ON HIS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. 627 
 
 the drawing-room copy, and my father boxed my ears, and my 
 mother cried out, poor dear soul ! And this is the river, is it ? 
 And over this the post-chaise went with the club-tailed horses, 
 and here was the pigtailed gentleman fishing. It gives me a 
 queer sensation," says Philip, standing on the bridge, and 
 stretching out his big arms. " Yes, there are the two people in 
 the punt by the rushes. I can see them, but you can't ; and I 
 hope, sir, you will have good sport." And here he took off his 
 hat to an imaginary gentleman supposed to be angling from the 
 balustrade for ghostly gudgeon. We reach the house presently. 
 We ring at the door in the basement under the portico. The 
 porter demurs, and says some of the family is down, but they 
 are out, to be sure. The same half-crown argument answers 
 with him which persuaded the keeper at the lodge. We go 
 through the show-rooms of the stately but somewhat faded and 
 melancholy palace. In the cedar dining-room there hangs the 
 grim portrait of the late earl ; and that fair-haired officer in 
 red ? that must be Philip's grandfather. And those two slim 
 girls embracing, surely those are his mother and his aunt. 
 Philip walks softly through the vacant rooms. He gives the 
 porter a gold piece ere he goes out of the great hall, forty feet 
 cube ornamented with statues brought from Rome by John first 
 Baron, namely, Heliogabalus, Nero's mother, a priestess of Isis, 
 and a river god ; the pictures over the doors by Pedimento \ 
 the ceiling by Leotardi, &:c. ; and in a window in the great hall 
 there is a table with a visitors' book, in which Philip writes his 
 name. As we went away, we met a carriage which drove rapidly 
 towards the house, and which no doubt contained the members 
 of the Ringwood family, regarding whom the porteress had 
 spoken. After the family differences previously related, we did 
 not care to face these kinsfolks of Philip, and passed on quickly 
 in twilight beneath the rustling umbrage of the chestnuts. J. 
 J. saw a hundred fine pictorial effects as we walked ; the palace 
 reflected in the water ; the dappled deer under the chequered 
 shadow of the trees. It was, " Oh, what a jolly bit of color,'' 
 and, " I say, look, how well that old woman's red cloak comes 
 in ! " and so forth. Painters never seem tired of their work. 
 At seventy they are students still, patient, docile, happy. May 
 we too, my good sir, live for fourscore years, and never be too 
 old to learn ! The walk, the brisk accompanying conversation, 
 amid stately scenery around, brought us with good appetites 
 and spirits to our inn, where we were told that dinner would be 
 served when the omnibus arrived from the railway. 
 
 At a short distance from the " Ringwood Arms," and on the
 
 628 THE ADVENTURES OF PI f I UP 
 
 opposite side of the street, is the " Ram Inn," neat post-chaises 
 and farmers' ordinary ; a house, of which the pretensions seemed 
 less, though the trade was somewhat more lively. When the 
 tooting of the horn announced the arrival of the omnibus from 
 the railway, I should think a crowd of at least fifteen people 
 assembled at various doors of the High Street and IVIarket. 
 The half-pay captain and the curate came out from the " Ring- 
 wood Athenaeum. " The doctor's apprentice stood on the step 
 of the surgery door, and the surgeon's lady looked out from the 
 first floor. We shared the general curiosity. We and the 
 waiter stood at the door of the " Ringwood Arms." We were 
 mortified to see that of the five persons conveyed by the 'bus, 
 one was a tradesman, who descended at his door, (Mr. Pack- 
 wood, the saddler, so the waiter informed us,) three travellers 
 were discharged at the " Ram," and only one came to us. 
 
 "Mostly bagmen goes to the ' Ram,' " the waiter said, with 
 a scornful air ; and these bagmen, and their bags, quitted the 
 omnibus. 
 
 Only one passenger remained for the " Ringwood Arms 
 Hotel," and he presently descended under i\\& porte-cochere ; and 
 the omnibus — I own, with regret, it was but a one-horse ma- 
 chine — drove rattling into the court-yard, where the bells of the 
 "Star," the "George," the "Rodney," the "Dolphin," and so 
 on, had once been wont to jingle, and the court had echoed 
 with the noise and clatter of hoofs and ostlers, and the cries of 
 " First and second, turn out." 
 
 Who was the merry-faced little gentleman in black, who got 
 out of the omnibus, and cried, when he saw us, " What, you 
 here ? " It was Mr. Bradgate, that lawyer of Lord Ringwood's 
 with whom we made a brief acquaintance just after his lord- 
 ship's death. " What, you here ? " cries Bradgate, then, to 
 Philip. " Come down about this business, of course ? Very 
 glad that you artti — and certain parties have made it up. 
 Thought you w^eren't friends." 
 
 What business? What parties? We had not heard the 
 news ? We had only come over from Periwinkle Bay by chance, 
 in order to see the house. 
 
 " How very singular ! Did you meet the — the people who 
 were staying there ? " 
 
 We said we had seen a carriage pass, but did not remark 
 who was in it. What, however, was the news ? Well. It 
 would be known immediately, and would appear in Tuesday's 
 Gazette. The news was that Sir John Ringwood was going to 
 take a peerage, and that the seat for Whipham would be vacant.
 
 ON ms IVA y THROUGH THE WORLD. 629 
 
 And herewith our friend produced from liis travellnig bag a 
 proclamation, whicii he read to us, and which was addressed — 
 
 *' To the worthy and independent Electors of the Borough of 
 
 Ringwood. 
 
 " Lofidon, Wednesday. 
 " Gentlemen, — A gracious Sovereign having been pleased to 
 order that the family of Ringwood should continue to be repre- 
 sented in the House of Peers, I take leave of my friends and 
 constituents who have given me their kind confidence hitherto, 
 and promise them that my regard for them will never cease, or 
 my interest in the town and neighborhood where my family 
 have dwelt for many centuries. The late lamented Lord Ring- 
 wood's brother died in the service of his Sovereign in Portugal, 
 following the same flag under which his ancestors for centuries 
 have fought and bled. My own son serves the Crown in a 
 civil capacity. It was natural that one of our name and family 
 should continue the relations which so long have subsisted 
 between us and this loyal, affectionate, but independent borough, 
 Mr. Ringwood's onerous duties in the office which he holds are 
 sufficient to occupy his time. A gentleman united to our family 
 by the closest ties will offer himself as a candidate for your 
 suffrages " 
 
 
 Why, who is it .'' He is not going to put in uncle Twys- 
 den, or my sneak of a cousin .'' " 
 
 "No," says Mr. Bradgate. 
 
 "Well, bless my soul! he can't mean me," said Philip. 
 " Who is the dark horse he has in his stable .' " 
 
 Then Mr. Bradgate laughed. " Dark horse you may call 
 him. The new Member is to be Grenville Woolcomb, Esq., 
 your West India relative, and no other." 
 
 Those who know the extreme energy of Mr. P. Firmin's 
 language when he is excited, may imagine the explosion of 
 Philippine wrath which ensued as our friend heard this name. 
 " That miscreant : that skinflint : that wealthy crossing-sweeper : 
 that ignoramus who scarce could do more than sign his name ! 
 Oh, it was horrible, shameful ! Why, the man is on such ill 
 terms with his wife that they say he strikes her. When I see 
 him I feel inclined to choke him, and murder him. T/urf brute 
 going into Parliament, and the republican Sir John Ringwood 
 sending him there ! It's monstrous ! " 
 
 " Family arrangements. Sir John, or, I should say, my 
 Lord Ringwood, is one of the most affectionate of parents," 
 Mr, Bradgate remarked, " He has a large family by his
 
 630 THE ADVENTURES OF PHI UP 
 
 second marriage, and his estates go to his eldest son. We 
 must not quarrel with Lord Ringwood for wishing to provide 
 for his young ones. I don't say that he quite acts up to the 
 extreme Liberal principle of which he was once rather fond of 
 boasting. But if you were offered a peerage, what would you 
 do ; what would I do t If you wanted money for your young 
 ones, and could get it, would you not take it t Come, come, 
 don't let us have too much of this Spartan virtue ! If we were 
 tried, my good friend, we should not be much worse or better 
 than our neighbors. Is my fly coming, waiter ? " We asked 
 Mr. Bradgate to defer his departure, and to share our dinner. 
 But he declined, and said he must go up to the great house, 
 where he and his client had plenty of business to arrange, and 
 where no doubt he would stay for the night. He bade the inn 
 servants put his portmanteau into his carriage when it came. 
 " The old lord had some famous port-wine," he said ; " I hope 
 my friends have the key of the cellar." 
 
 The waiter was just putting our meal on the table, as we 
 stood in the bow-window of the " Ringwood Arms " coffee- 
 room, engaged in this colloquy. Hence we could see the street, 
 and the opposition inn of the "Ram," where presently a great 
 placard was posted. At least a dozen street-boys, shopmen, 
 and rustics were quickly gathered round this manifesto, and we 
 ourselves went out to examine it. The " Ram " placard de. 
 nounced, in terms of unmeasured wrath, the impudent attempt 
 from the Castle to dictate to the free and independent electors 
 of the borough. Freemen were invited not to promise their 
 votes ; to show themselves worthy of their name ; to submit to 
 no Castle dictation. A county gentleman of property, of in- 
 fluence, of liberal principles— no West Indian, no Castle 
 Flunkey, but a True English Gentleman, would come for- 
 ward to rescue them from the tyranny under which they 
 labored. On this point the electors might rely on the word of 
 A Briton. 
 
 " This was brought down by the clerk from Bedloe's. He 
 and a newspaper man came down in the train with me ; a 
 Mr. ." 
 
 As he spoke, there came forth from the " Ram " the news- 
 paper man of whom Mr. Bradgate spoke— an old friend and 
 comrade of Philip, that energetic man and able reporter, Phipps 
 of the Daily Intelligencer, who recognized Philip, and cordially 
 greeting him, asked what he did down here, and supposed he 
 had come to support his family. 
 
 Philip explained that we were strangers, had come from a
 
 ON HIS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. 63 1 
 
 neighboring watering-place to see the home of Philip's ances- 
 tors, and were not even aware, until then, that an electioneering 
 contest was pending in the place, or that Sir John Ringwood 
 was about to be promoted to the peerage. Meanwhile, Mr. 
 Bradgate's fly had driven out of the hotel yard of the " Ring- 
 wood Arms," and the lawyer running to the house for a bag of 
 papers, jumped into the carriage and called to the coachman to 
 drive to the Castle. 
 
 " Bonappeiit /" says he, in a confident tone, and he was gone. 
 
 ' Would Phipps dine with us ? " Phipps whispered, " I am 
 on the other side, and the ' Ram ' is our house." 
 
 We, who were on no side, entered into the " Ringwood 
 Arms," and sat down to our meal — to the mutton and the cat- 
 sup, cauliflower, and potatoes, the copper-edged side-dishes, 
 and the watery melted butter, with which strangers are regaled 
 in inns in declining towiis. The town badauds, who had read 
 the placard at the " Ram," now came to peruse the proclama- 
 tion in our window. I dare say thirty pairs of clinking boots 
 stopped before the one window and the other, the while we ate 
 tough mutton and drank fiery sherry. And J. J., leaving his 
 dinner, sketched some of the figures of the townsfolk staring at 
 the manifesto, with the old-fashioned '' Ram Inn " for a back- 
 ground — a picturesque gable enough. 
 
 Our meal was just over, when, somewhat to our surprise, 
 our friend Mr. Bradgate the lawyer returned to the " Ring- 
 wood Arms." He wore a disturbed countenance. He asked 
 what he could have for dinner "i Mutton, neither hot nor cold. 
 Hum ! That must do. So he had not been invited to dine at 
 the Park ? We rallied him with much facetiousness on this 
 disappointment. 
 
 Little Bradgate's eyes started with wrath. "What a churl 
 the little black fellow is ! " he cried. '• I took him his papers. 
 I talked with him till dinner was laid in the very room where 
 we were. French beans and neck of venison — I saw the house- 
 keeper and his man bring them in ! And Mr. Woolcomb did 
 not so much as ask me to sit down to dinner — but told me to 
 come again at nine o'clock ! Confound this mutton — it's neither 
 hot nor cold ! The little skinflint ! The glasses of fiery sherry 
 which Bradgate now swallowed served rather to choke than 
 appease the lawyer. We laughed, and this jocularity angered 
 him more. "Oh," said he, "I am not the only person Wool- 
 comb was rude to. He was in a dreadful ill temper. He 
 abused his wife : and when he read somebody's name in the 
 stranger's book, I promise you, Firmin, he abused you. I had
 
 632 
 
 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 a mind to say to him, ' Sir, Mr. Firmin is dining at the '' Ring- 
 wood Arms," and I will tell him what you say of him.' What 
 india-rubber mutton this is ! What villanous sherry ! Go back 
 to him at nine o'clock, indeed ! Be hanged to his impudence ! " 
 
 " You must not abuse Woolcomb before Firmin," said one 
 of our party. '' Philip is so fond of his cousin's husband, that 
 he cannot bear to hear the black man abused." 
 
 This was not a very brilliant joke, but Philip grinned at it 
 with much savage satisfaction. 
 
 " Hit Woolcomb as hard as you please, he has no friends 
 here, Mr. Bradgate," growled Philip. " So he is rude to his 
 lawyer, is he ? " 
 
 " I tell you he is worse than the old earl," cried the indig- 
 nant Bradgate. " At least the old man was a peer of England, 
 and could be a gentleman when he wished. But to be bullied 
 by a fellow who might be a black footman, or ought to be 
 sweeping a crossing ! It's monstrous ! " 
 
 " Don't speak ill of a man and a brother, Mr. Bradgate. 
 Woolcomb can't help his complexion." 
 
 " But he can help his confounded impudence, and sha'n't 
 practise it on me !^^ the attorney cried. 
 
 As Bradgate called out from his box, puffing and fuming, 
 friend J. J. was scribbling in the little sketch-book which he 
 always carried. He smiled over his work. " I know," he said, 
 " the Black Prince well enough. I have often seen him driving 
 his chestnut mares in the Park, with that bewildered white wife 
 by his side. I am sure that woman is miserable, and, poor 
 thing " 
 
 " Serve her right ! What did an English lady mean by 
 marrying such a fellow ! " cries Bradgate. 
 
 " A fellow who does not ask his lawyer to dinner ! " remarks 
 one of the company ; perhaps the reader's very humble ser- 
 vant. " But what an imprudent lawyer he has chosen — a lawyer 
 who speaks his mind." 
 
 " 1 have spoken my mind to his betters, and be hanged to 
 him ! Do you think I am going to be afraid of /«>«/" bawls the 
 irascible solicitor. 
 
 " Contempsi Catilmce gladios — do you remember the old 
 quotation at school, Philip.^ " And here there was a break in 
 our conversation, for chancing to look at friend J. J.'s sketch- 
 book, we saw that he had made a wonderful little drawing, 
 representing Woolcomb and Woolcomb's wife, grooms, phaeton, 
 and chestnut mares, as they were to be seen any afternoon in 
 Hvd'~ Park durin? the London season.
 
 ON HIS WA V THROUGH THE WORLD. 633 
 
 Admirable ! Capital 1 Everybody at once knew the like- 
 ness of the dusky charioteer. Iracundus himself smiled and 
 sniggered over it. " Unless you behave yourself, Mr. Brad- 
 gate, Ridley vi^ill make a picture oi you,'' says Philip. Bradgate 
 made a comical face, and retreated into his box, of which he 
 pretended to draw the curtain. But the sociable little man did 
 not long remain in his retirement ; he emerged from it in a 
 short time, his wine decanter in his hand, and joined our little 
 party ; and then we fell to talking of old times ; and we all 
 remembered a famous drawing by H. B., of the late Earl of 
 Ringwood, in the old-fashioned swallow-tailed coat and tight 
 trousers, on the old-fashioned horse, with the old-fashioned 
 groom behind him, as he used to be seen pounding along 
 Rotten Row. 
 
 " I speak my mind, do I ? " says Bradgate, presently. " I 
 know somebody who spoke his mind to that old man, and who 
 would have been better off if he had held his tongue." 
 
 " Come, tell me, Bradgate," cried Philip. " It is all over 
 and past now. Had Lord Ringwood left me something ? I 
 declare I thought at one time that he intended to do so." 
 
 " Nay, has not your friend here been rebuking me for 
 speaking my mind ? I am going to be as mum as a mouse. 
 Let us talk about the election," and the provoking lawyer 
 would say no more on a subject possessing a dismal interest 
 for poor Phil. 
 
 " I have no more right to repine," said that philosopher, 
 "than a man would have who drew number x in the lottery, 
 when the winning ticket was number y. Let us talk, as you 
 say, about the election. Who is to oppose Mr. Woolcomb ? " 
 
 Mr. Bradgate believed a neighboring squire, Mr. Plornblow, 
 was to be the candidate put forward against the Ringwood 
 nominee. 
 
 " Hornblow ! what, Hornblow of Grey Friars ? " cries Philip. 
 "A better fellow never lived. In this case he shall have our 
 vote and interest ; and I think we ought to go over and take 
 another dinner at the 'Ram.' " 
 
 The new candidate actually turned out to be Philip's old 
 school and college friend, Mr. Hornblow. After dinner we 
 met him with a staff of canvassers on the tramp through the 
 little town. Mr. Hornblow was paying his respects to such 
 tradesmen as had their shops yet open. Next day being market- 
 day, he proposed to canvass the market-people. '' If I meet 
 the black man, Firmin," said the burly squire, " I think I can 
 chaff him off his legs. He is a bad one at speaking, I am told."
 
 634 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 As if the tongue of Plato would have prevailed in Whipham 
 and against the nominee of the great house ! The hour was 
 late to be sure, but the companions of Mr. Hornblow on his 
 canvass augured ill of his success after half-an-hour's walk at 
 his heels. Baker Jones would not promise no how: that 
 meant Jones would vole for the Castle, Mr. Hornblow's legal 
 ai'de-de-camp, Mr. Batley, was forced to allow. Butcher Brown 
 was having his tea, — his shriil-voiced wife told us, looking out 
 from her glazed back parlor : Brown would vote for the Castle. 
 Saddler Briggs would see about it. Grocer Adams fairly said 
 he would vote against us — against u^ ? — against Hornblow, 
 whose part we were taking already. I fear the flattering 
 promises of support of a great body of free and unbiassed 
 electors, which had induced Mr. Hornblow to come forward 
 and, &c., were but inventions of that little lawyer, Batley, who 
 found his account in having a contest In the borough. When 
 the polling-day came — ^you see I disdain to make any mysteries 
 in this simple and veracious story — Mr. Grenville Wool- 
 comb, whose solicitor and agent spoke for him — Mr. Grenville 
 Woolcomb, who could not spell or speak two sentences of 
 decent English, and whose character for dulness, ferocity, pe- 
 nuriousness, jealousy, almost fatuity, was notorious to all the 
 world — was returned by an immense majority, and the country 
 gentleman brought scarce a hundred votes to the poll. 
 
 We who were in nowise engaged in the contest, neverthe- 
 less found amusement from it in a quiet country place where 
 little else was stirring. We came over once or twice from 
 Periwinkle Bay. We mounted Hornblow's colors openly. We 
 drove up ostentatiously to the "Ram," forsaking the "Ring- 
 wood Arms," where Mr. Grenville Woolcomb's Committee 
 Room was now established in that very coffee-room where we 
 had dined in Mr. Bradgate's company. We warmed in the 
 contest. We met Bradgate and his principal more than once, 
 and our Montagus and Capulets defied each other in the public 
 street. It was fine to see Philip's great figure and noble scowl 
 when he met Woolcomb at the canvass. Gleams of mulatto 
 hate quivered Trom the eyes of the little captain. Darts of fire 
 flashed from beneath Philip's eyebrows as he elbowed his way 
 forward, and hustled Woolcomb off the pavement. Mr. Philip 
 never disguised any sentiment of his. " Hate the little igno- 
 rant, spiteful, vulgar, avaricious beast ? Of course I hate him, 
 and I should like to pitch him into the river." " Oh, Philip ! " 
 Charlotte pleaded. But there was no reasoning with this 
 savage when in wrath. I deplored, though perhaps I was 
 amused by, his ferocity.
 
 ON HIS VVA Y THROUGH THE WORLD. C35 
 
 The local paper on our side was filled with withering 
 epigrams against this poor Woolcomb, of w^hich, 1 suspect, 
 Philip was the author. I think I know that fierce style and 
 tremendous invective. In the man whom he hatQ^ he can see 
 no good : and in his friend no fault. When we met Bradgate 
 apart from his principal, we were friendly enough. He said 
 we had no chance in the contest. He did not conceal his dis- 
 like and contempt for his client. He amused us in later days 
 (when he actually became Philip's man of law) by recounting 
 ancedotes of Woolcomb, his fury, his jealousy, his avarice, his 
 brutal behavior. Poor Agnes had married for money, and he 
 gave her none. Old Twysden, in giving his daughter to this 
 man, had hoped to have the run of a fine house ; to ride in Woot 
 comb's carriages, and feast at his table. But Woolcomb was 
 so stingy that he grudged the meat which his wife ate, and 
 would give none to her relations. He turned those relations 
 out of his doors. Talbot and Ringwood Twysden, he drove 
 them both away. He lost a child, because he would not send 
 for a physician. His wife never forgave him that meanness. 
 Her hatred for him became open and avowed. They parted, 
 and she led a life into which we will look no farther. She 
 quarrelled with parents as well as husband. " Why," she said. 
 " did they sell me to that man ? " Why did she sell herelf ? 
 She required little persuasion from father and mother when she 
 committed that crime. To be sure, they had educated her so 
 well to worldliness, that when the occasion came she was 
 ready. 
 
 We used to see this luckless woman, with her horses and 
 servants decked with Woolcomb's ribbons, driving about the 
 little town, and making feeble efforts to canvass the towns- 
 people. They all knew how she and her husband quarrelled. 
 Reports came very quickly from the Hall to the town. Wool- 
 comb had not been at Whipham a week when people began to 
 hoot and jeer at him as he passed in his carriage. " Think 
 how weak you must be," Bradgate said, " when we can win 
 with this horse ! I wish he would stay away, though. We 
 could manage much better without him. He has insulted I 
 don't know how many free and independent electors, and in- 
 furiated others, because he will not give them beer when they 
 come to the house. If Woolcomb would stay in the place, and 
 we could have the election next year, I think your man might 
 win. But, as it is, he may as well give in, and spare the ex- 
 pense of a poll." Meanwhile Hornblow was very confident. 
 We believe what we wish to belie\e. It is marvellous what
 
 6^6 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 faith an enthusiastic electioneering agent can inspire in his 
 client. At any rate, if Hornblovv did not win this time, he 
 would at the next election. The old Ringvvood domination 
 in Whipham was gone henceforth for ever. 
 
 When the day of election arrived, you may be sure we came 
 over from Periwinkle Bay to see the battle. By this time Philip 
 had grown so enthusiastic in Hornblow's cause — (Philip, by the 
 way, never would allow the possibility of a defeat) — that he 
 had his children decked in the Hornblow ribbons, and drove 
 from the bay, wearing a cockade as large as a pancake. He, I, 
 and Ridley the painter, went together in a dog-cart. We were 
 hopeful, though we knew the enemy was strong ; and cheerful, 
 though, ere we had driven five miles, the rain began to fall. 
 
 Philip was very anxious about a certain great roll of paper 
 which we carried with us. When I asked him what it contained, 
 he said it was a gun ; which was absurd. Ridley smiled in his 
 silent way. When the rain came, Philip cast a cloak over his 
 artillery, and sheltered his powder. We little guessed at the 
 time what strange game his shot would bring down. 
 
 When we reached Whipham, the polling had continued 
 for some hours. The confounded black miscreant, as Philip 
 called his cousin's husband, was at the head of the poll, and 
 with every hour his majority increased. The free and indepen- 
 dent electors did not seem to be in the least influenced by 
 Philip's articles in the county paper, or by the placards which 
 our side had pasted over the little town, and in which freemen 
 were called upon to do their duty, to support a fine old English 
 gentleman, to submit to no Castle nominee, and so forth. The 
 pressure of the Ringwood steward and bailiffs was too strong. 
 However much they disliked the black man, tradesman after 
 tradesman, and tenant after tenant, came up to \'0te for him. 
 Our drums and trumpets" at the " Ram " blew loud defiance to 
 the brass band at the " Ringwood Arms." From our balcony, 
 I flatter myself, we made much finer speeches than the Ring- 
 wood people could deliver. Hornblow was a popular man in 
 the county. When he came forward to speak, the market-place 
 echoed with applause. The farmers and small tradesmen 
 touched their hats to him kindly, but slunk off sadly to the 
 polling-booth, and voted according to order. A fine, healthy, 
 handsome, red-cheeked squire, our champion's personal appear- 
 ance enlisted all the ladies in his favor, 
 
 " If the two men," bawled Philip, from the " Ram " window, 
 " could decide the contest with their coats off before the 
 market-house yonder, which do you think would win — the fair
 
 ON Ills \VA Y rHROUGII THE WORLD. 637 
 
 man or the darkey ? " (Loud cries of " Hornblow for iver ! " 
 or " Mr. Philip, we'll have _;■«*;'.") " But you see, my friends, 
 Mr. Woolcomb does not like a fair fight. Why doesn't he 
 show at the ' Ringwood Arms ' and speak ? I don't believe he 
 can speak — not English. Are you men ? Are you English- 
 men ? Are you white slaves to be sold to that fellow ? " (Im- 
 mense uproar. Mr. Finch, the Ringwood agent, in vain tries to 
 get a hearing from the balcony of the " Ringwood Arms.") 
 " \\'hy does not Sir John Ringwood — my Lord Ringwood now 
 ■ — come down amongst his tenantry and back the man he has 
 sent dovvn ? I suppose he is ashamed to look his tenants in 
 the face. I should be if I ordered them to do such a degrad- 
 ing job. You know, gentlemen, that I am a Ringwood myself. 
 My grandfather lies buried — no, not buried — in yonder church. 
 His tomb is there. His body lies on the glorious field of 
 Busaco ! " (" Hurray ! ") " I am a Ringwood." (Cries of 
 " Hoo — down. No Ringwoods year. We wunt have un ! ") 
 . " And before George, if I had a vote, I would give it for the 
 gallant, the good, the admirable, the excellent Hornblow. 
 Some one holds up the state of the poll, and Woolcomb is 
 ahead ! I can only say, electors of Whipham, the more shame 
 for you ! " " Hooray ! Bravo ! " The boys, the people, the 
 shouting are all on our side. The voting, I regret to say, 
 steadily continues in favor of the enemy. 
 
 As Philip was making his speech, an immense banging of 
 drums and blowing of trumpets arose from the balcony of the 
 *' Ringwood Arms," and a something resembling the song of 
 triumph called, "See the Conquering Hero comes," was per- 
 formed by the opposition orchestra. The lodge-gates of the 
 park were now decorated with the Ringwood and Woolcomb 
 flags. They were flung open, and a dark green chariot with 
 four gray horses issued from the park. On the chariot was an 
 earl's coronet, and the people looked rather scared as it came 
 towards us, and said — " Do'ee look, now, 'tis my lard's own 
 post-chaise ! " On former days Mr, Woolcomb, and his wife as 
 his aide-de-camp, had driven through the town in an open 
 barouche, but, to-day being rainy, preferred the shelter of the 
 old chariot, and we saw, presently, within, Mr. Bradgate, the 
 London agent, and by his side the darkling figure of Mr. Wool- 
 comb. He had passed many agonizing hours, we were told 
 svibsequently, in attempting to learn a speech. He cried over 
 It. He never could get it by heart. He swore like a frantic 
 child at his wife who endeavored to teach him his lesson. 
 *' Now's the time, Mr. Briggs ! " Philip said to Mr. B., our law-
 
 638 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 yer's clerk, and the intelligent Briggs sprang down stairs to obey 
 his orders. Clear the road there ! make way ! was heard from 
 the crowd below us. The gates of our inn court-yard v \ich 
 had been closed, were suddenly flung open, and, amidst the 
 roar of the multitude, there issued out a cart drawn by two don- 
 keys, and driven by a negro, beasts and man all wearing Wool- 
 comb's colors. In the cart was fixed a placard, on which a 
 most undeniable likeness of Mr. Woolcomb was designed : who • 
 was made to say, "Vote for me! Am I not a man and a 
 Brudder ? " This cart trotted out of the yard of the " Ram," 
 and, with a cortege of shouting boys, advanced into the mar- 
 ket-place, which Vlx. Woolcomb's carriage was then crossing. 
 
 Before the market-house stands the statue of the late earl, 
 whereof mention has been ma; if. In his peer's robes, a hand 
 extended, he points towards his park gates. An inscription, 
 not more mendacious than many other epigraphs, records his 
 rank, age, virtues, and the esteem in which the people of Whip- 
 ham held him. The mulatto who drove the team of donkeys 
 was an itinerant tradesman who brought fish from the bay to 
 the little town ; a jolly wag, a fellow of indifferent character, a 
 frequenter of all the alehouses in the neighborhood, and 
 rather celebrated for his skill as a bruiser. He and his steeds 
 streamed with Woolcomb ribbons. With ironical shouts of 
 "Woolcomb for ever!" Yellow Jack urged his cart towards 
 the chariot with the white horses. He took off his hat with 
 mock respect to the candidate sitting within the green chariot. 
 From the balcony of the " Ram " we could see the two vehicles 
 approaching each otiier ; and Yellow Jack waving his ribboned 
 hat, kicking his bandy legs here and there, and urging on his 
 donkeys. What with the roar of the peeple, and the banging 
 and trumpeting of the rival bands, we could hear but little : but 
 I saw Woolcomb thrust his yellow head out of his chaise 
 window — he pointed towards that impudent donkey-cart, and 
 urged, seemingly, his postilions to ride it down. Plying their 
 whips, the postboys galloped towards Yellow Jack and his 
 vehicle, a yelling crowd scattering from before the horses, and 
 rallying behind them, to utter execrations at Woolcomb. His 
 horses were frightened, no doubt ; for just as Yellow Jack 
 wheeled nimbly round one side of the Ringwood statue. Wool- 
 comb's horses weie all huddled together and plunging in con- 
 fusion beside it, the fore-wheel came in abrupt collision with 
 the stonework of the statue railing: and then we saw the 
 vehicle turn over altogether, one of the wheelers down with its 
 rider, and the leaders kicking, plunging, lashing out right and
 
 ON HIS WA Y THROUGH THE WORLD. C39 
 
 left, wild and maddened with fear. Mr. Philip's countenance, 
 I am bound to say, wore a most guilty and queer expression. 
 This accident, this collision, < his injury, perhaps death of Wool- 
 comb and his lawyer, arose out of our fine joke about the Man 
 and the Brother. 
 
 We dashed down the stairs from the " Ram " — Hornblow, 
 Philip, and half-a-dozen more — and made a way through the 
 crowd towards the carriage, with its prostrate occupants. The 
 mob made way civilly for the popular candidate — the losing 
 candidate. When we reached the chaise, the traces had been 
 cut : the horses were free : the fallen postilion was up and 
 rubbing his leg : and, as soon as the wheelers were taken out 
 of the chaise, Woolcomb emerged from it. He had said from 
 within (accompanying his speech with many oaths, which need 
 not be repeated, and showing a just sense of his danger), " Cut 
 the traces, hang you ! And take the horse away : I can wait 
 until they're gone. I'm sittin' on my lawyer ; I ain't going to 
 have my head kicked off by those wheelers." And just as we 
 reached the fallen post-chaise he emerged from it, laughing and 
 saying, " Lie still, you old beggar ! " to Mr. Bradgate, who was 
 writhing underneath him. His issue from the carriage was 
 received with shouts of laughter, which increased prodigiously 
 when Yellow Jack, nimbly clambering up the statue-railings, 
 thrust the outstretched arm of the statue through the picture 
 of the Man and the Brother, and left that cartoon flapping in 
 the air over Woolcomb's head. 
 
 Then a shout arose, the like of which has seldom been 
 heard in that quiet little town. Then Woolcomb, who had 
 been quite good-humored as he issued out of the broken post- 
 chaise, began to shriek, curse and revile more shrilly than 
 before ; and was heard, in the midst of his oaths, and wrath, to 
 say, " He would give any man a shillin' who would bring him 
 down that confounded thing ! " Then scared, bruised, contused, 
 confused, poor Mr. Bradgate came out of the carriage, his 
 employer taking not the least notice of him. 
 
 Hornblow hoped Woolcomb was not hurt, on which the 
 little gentleman turned round and said, " Hurt ? no ; who are 
 you ? Is no fellah goin' to bring me down that confounded 
 thing ? I'll give a shillin', I say, to the fellah who does ! " 
 
 *' A shilling is offered for that picture ! " shouts Philip with 
 a red face, and wild with excitement. " Who will take a whole 
 shilling for that beauty ? " 
 
 On which W^oolcomb began to scream, curse, and revile 
 more bitterly than before, " You here ? Hang you, why ar©
 
 640 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 you here ? Don't come bullyin' me. Take that fellah away, 
 some of you fellahs. Bradgate, come to my committee-room, 
 I won't stay here, I say. Let's have the beast of a carriage, 
 and Well, what's up now ? " 
 
 While he was talking, shrieking, and swearing, half-a-dozen 
 shoulders in the crowd had raised the carriage up on its three 
 wheels. The panel which had fallen towards the ground had 
 split agamst a stone, and a great gap was seen in the side. A 
 lad was about to thrust his hand into the orifice, when Wool- 
 comb turned upon him. 
 
 " Hands off, you little beggar ! " he cried, *' no priggin' ! 
 Drive away some of these fellahs, you postboys ! Don't stand 
 rubbin' your knee there, you great fool. What's this ? " and he 
 thrusts his own hand into the place where the boy had just 
 been marauding. 
 
 In the «ld travelling carriages there used to be a well or 
 sword-case, in which travellers used to put swords and pistols i>» 
 days when such weapons of defence were needful on the road. 
 Out of this sword-case of Lord Ringwood's old post-chariot, 
 Woolcomb did not draw a sword, but a foolscap paper folded 
 and tied with a red tape. And he began to read the superscrip- 
 tion — " Will of the Right Honorable John, Earl of Ringwood. 
 Bradgate, Smith and Burrows." 
 
 "God bless my soul ! It's the will he had back from my 
 office, and which I thought he had destroyed. My dear fellow, 
 I congratulate you with all my heart ! " And herewith Mr. 
 Bradgate the lawyer began to shake Philip's hand with much 
 warmth. " Allow me to look at that paper. Yes, this is in 
 my handwriting. Let us come into the ' Ringwood Arms ' — the 
 * Ram ' — anywhere, and read it to you ! " 
 
 * * Here we looked up to the balcony of the " Ringwood 
 Arms," and beheld a great placard announcing the state of tlie 
 poll at I o'clock. 
 
 Woolcomb . . 216 
 
 HoRNBLOw ... 92 
 
 *' We are beaten," said Mr. Hornblow, very good-naturedly. 
 " We may take our flag down. Mr. Woolcomb, I congratulate 
 you." 
 
 " I knew we should do it," said Mr. Woolcomb, putting out 
 a little yellow-kidded hand. " Had all the votes beforehand — 
 knew we should do the trick, I say. Hi ! you — What-do-you- 
 call'im — Bradgate ! What is it about, that will ? It does not 
 do any good to that beggar, does it ? " and with laughter and 
 shouts, and cries of " Woolcomb for ever," and " Give us somC'
 
 CN HIS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD. 641 
 
 thing to drink, your honor," the successful candidate marched 
 into his hotel. 
 
 And was the tawny Woolcomb the fairy who was to rescue 
 Philip from grief, debt, and poverty ? Yes. And the old post- 
 chaise of the late Lord Ringwood was the fairy chariot. You 
 have read in a past chapter how the old lord, being transported 
 with anger against Philip, desired his lawyer to bring back a 
 will in which he had left a handsome legacy to the young man, 
 as his mother's son. My lord had intended to make'a provision 
 for Mrs. Firmin, when she was his dutiful niece, and yet under 
 his roof. When she eloped with Mr. Firmin, Lord Ringwood 
 v^owed he would give his niece nothing. But he was pleased 
 with the independent and forgiving spirit exhibited by her son ; 
 and, being a person of much grim humor, I dare say chuckled 
 inwardly at thinking how furious the Twysdens would be, when 
 they found Philip was the old lord's favorite. Then Mr. 
 Philip chose to be insubordinate, and to excite the wrath of his 
 great-uncle, who desired to have his will back again. He put 
 the document into his carriage, in the secret box, as he drove 
 away on that last journey, in the midst of which death seized 
 him. Had he survived, would he have made another will, leaving 
 out all mention of Philip ? Who shall say ? My lord made and 
 cancelled many wills. This certainly, duly drawn and witnessed, 
 vyas the last he ever signed ; and by it Philip is put in posses- 
 sion of a sum of money which is sufficient to ensure a provision 
 for those whom he loves. Kind readers, I know not whether 
 the fairies be rife now, or banished from this work-a-day earth, 
 but Philip's biographer wishes you some of those blessings 
 which never forsook Philip in his trials : a dear wife and child- 
 ren to love you, a true friend or two to stand by you, and in 
 health or sickness a clear conscience, and a kindly heart. If 
 you fall upon the way, may succor reach you. And may you, 
 in your turn, have help and pity in store for the unfortunate 
 whom you overtake on life's journey. 
 
 Would you care to know what happened to the other per- 
 sonages ol our narrative ? Old Twysden is still babbling and 
 bragging at clubs, and though aged is not the least venerable. 
 He has quarrelled with his son for not calling Woolcomb out, 
 when that unhappy difference arose between the Black Prince 
 and his wife. He says his family has been treated with cruel 
 injustice by the late Lord Ringwood, but as soon as Philip had 
 a little fortune left him he instantly was reconciled to his wife's 
 nephew. There are other friends of Firmin's who were kind 
 
 41
 
 642 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP 
 
 enough to him in his evil days, but cannot pardon his pros- 
 perity. Being in that benevolent mood whicli must accompany 
 any leave-taking, we will not name these ill-wishers of Philip, 
 but wish that all readers of his story may have like reason to 
 make some of their acquaintances angry. 
 
 Our dear Little Sister would never live with Philip and 
 Charlotte, though the latter especially and with all her heart 
 besought Mrs. Brandon to come to them. That pure and use- 
 ful and modest life ended a few years since. She died of a 
 fever caught from one of her patients. She would not allow 
 Philip or Charlotte to come near her. She said she was justly 
 punished for being so proud as to refuse to live with them. All 
 her little store she left to Philip. He has now in his desk the 
 five guineas which she gave him at his marriage; and J. J. has 
 made a little picture of her, with her sad smile and her sweet 
 face, which hangs in Philip's drawing-room, where father, 
 mother, and children talk of the Little Sister as though she 
 were among them still. 
 
 She was dreadfullv agitated when the news came from New 
 York of Doctor Firmin's second marriage. " His second ? 
 His third.?" she said. "The villain, the villain!" That 
 strange delusion which we have described as sometimes posses- 
 sing her increased in intensity after this news. More than 
 ever, she believed that Philip was her own child. She came 
 wildly to him, and cried that his father had forsaken them. It 
 was only when she was excited that she gave utterance to this 
 opinion. Doctor Goodenough says that though generally silent 
 about it, it never left her. 
 
 Upon his marriage Dr. Firmin wrote one of his long letters 
 to his son, announcing the event. He described the wealth of 
 the lady (a widow from Norfolk, in Virginia) to whom he was 
 about to be united. He would pay back, ay, with interest, 
 every pound, every dollar, every cent he owed his son. Was 
 the lady wealthy ? We had only the poor doctor's word. 
 
 Three months after his marriage he died of yellow fever, on 
 his wife's estate. It was then the Little Sister came to see us 
 in widow's mourning, very wild and flushed. She bade our 
 servant say, " Mrs. Firmin was at the door ; " to the astonish- 
 ment of the man, who knew her. She had even caused a 
 mourning-card to be printed. Ah, there is rest now for that 
 little fevered brain, and peace, let us pray, for that fond faith- 
 ful heart. 
 
 The mothers in Philip's household and mine have already 
 made a match between our children. We had a great gathering
 
 ON HIS WA Y THROUGH THE WORLD. 643 
 
 the other day at Roehampton, at the house of our friend, Mr. 
 Clive Newcome (whose tall boy, my wife says, was very attentive 
 to our Helen), and, having been educated at the same school, 
 we sat ever so long at dessert, telling old stories, whilst the 
 children danced to piano music on the lawn. Dance on the 
 lawn, young folks, whilst the elders talk in the shade ! What ? 
 The night is falling : we have talked enough over our wine: 
 and it is time to go home ? Good-night. Good-night, friendSj 
 old and young ! The night will fall: the stories must end? 
 and the best friends must part.
 
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