The Newcomes: Memoirs of a Most Respectable Family Part 12

"Yes, Doctor," interposes Lady Julia, blushing; "but Signor Pozzoprofondo was in the carriage too--a-a-sitting behind with the groom. He was indeed, mamma."

"Julia, vous n'etes qu'une panache," says Lady Kew, shrugging her shoulders, and looking at her daughter from under her bushy black eyebrows. Her ladyship, a sister of the late lamented Marquis of Steyne, possessed no small share of the wit and intelligence, and a considerable resemblance to the features, of that distinguished n.o.bleman.

Lady Kew bids her daughter take a pen and write:--"Monsieur le Mauvais Sujet,--Gentlemen who wish to take the sea air in private, or to avoid their relations, had best go to other places than Brighton, where their names are printed in the newspapers. If you are not drowned in a pozzo--"

"Mamma!" interposes the secretary.

"--in a pozzo-profondo, you will please come to dine with two old women, at half-past seven. You may bring Mr. Belsize, and must tell us a hundred stories.--Yours, etc., L. Kew."

Julia wrote all the letter as her mother dictated it, save only one sentence, and the note was sealed and despatched to my Lord Kew, who came to dinner with Jack Belsize. Jack Belsize liked to dine with Lady Kew. He said, "she was an old dear, and the wickedest old woman in all England;" and he liked to dine with Lady Julia, who was "a poor suffering dear, and the best woman in all England." Jack Belsize liked every one, and every one liked him.

Two evenings afterwards the young men repeated their visit to Lady Kew, and this time Lord Kew was loud in praises of his cousins of the house of Newcome.

"Not of the eldest, Barnes, surely, my dear?" cries Lady Kew.

"No, confound him! not Barnes."

"No, d---- it, not Barnes. I beg your pardon, Lady Julia," broke in Jack Belsize. "I can get on with most men; but that little Barney is too odious a little sn.o.b."

"A little what--Mr. Belsize?"

"A little sn.o.b, ma'am. I have no other word, though he is your grandson.

I never heard him say a good word of any mortal soul, or do a kind action."

"Thank you, Mr. Belsize," says the lady.

"But the others are capital. There is that little chap who has just had the measles--he's a clear little brick. And as for Miss Ethel----"

"Ethel is a trump, ma'am," says Lord Kew, slapping his hand on his knee.

"Ethel is a brick, and Alfred is a trump, I think you say," remarks Lady Kew, nodding approval; "and Barnes is a sn.o.b. This is very satisfactory to know."

"We met the children out to-day," cries the enthusiastic Kew, "as I was driving Jack in the drag, and I got out and talked to 'em."

"Governess an uncommonly nice woman--oldish, but--I beg your pardon, Lady Julia," cries the inopportune Jack Belsize--"I'm always putting my foot in it."

"Putting your foot into what? Go on, Kew."

"Well, we met the whole posse of children; and the little fellow wanted a drive, and I said I would drive him and Ethel too, if she would come.

Upon my word she is as pretty a girl as you can see on a summer's day.

And the governess said 'No,' of course. Governesses always do. But I said I was her uncle, and Jack paid her such a fine compliment, that the young woman was mollified, and the children took their seats beside me, and Jack went behind."

"Where Monsieur Pozzoprofondo sits, bon."

"We drove on to the Downs, and we were nearly coming to grief. My horses are young, and when they get on the gra.s.s they are as if they were mad.

It was very wrong; I know it was."

"D----d rash," interposes Jack. "He had nearly broken all our necks."

"And my brother Frank would have been Lord Kew," continued the young Earl, with a quiet smile. "What an escape for him! The horses ran away--ever so far--and I thought the carriage must upset. The poor little boy, who has lost his pluck in the fever, began to cry; but that young girl, though she was as white as a sheet, never gave up for a moment, and sate in her place like a man. We met nothing, luckily; and I pulled the horses in after a mile or two, and I drove 'em into Brighton as quiet as if I had been driving a hea.r.s.e. And that little trump of an Ethel, what do you think she said? She said, 'I was not frightened, but you must not tell mamma.' My aunt, it appears, was in a dreadful commotion--I ought to have thought of that."

"Lady Anne is a ridiculous old dear. I beg your pardon, Lady Kew," here breaks in Jack the apologiser.

"There is a brother of Sir Brian Newcome's staying with them," Lord Kew proceeds; "an East India Colonel--a very fine-looking old boy."

"Smokes awfully, row about it in the hotel. Go on, Kew; beg your----"

"This gentleman was on the look-out for us, it appears, for when we came in sight he despatched a boy who was with him, running like a lamplighter back to my aunt, to say all was well. And he took little Alfred out of the carriage, and then helped out Ethel, and said, 'My dear, you are too pretty to scold; but you have given us all a belle peur.' And then he made me and Jack a low bow, and stalked into the lodgings."

"I think you do deserve to be whipped, both of you," cries Lady Kew.

"We went up and made our peace with my aunt, and were presented in form to the Colonel and his youthful cub."

"As fine a fellow as ever I saw: and as fine a boy as ever I saw," cries Jack Belsize. "The young chap is a great hand at drawing--upon my life the best drawings I ever saw. And he was making a picture for little What-d'you-call-'em. And Miss Newcome was looking over them. And Lady Anne pointed out the group to me, and said how pretty it was. She is uncommonly sentimental, you know, Lady Anne."

"My daughter Anne is the greatest fool in the three kingdoms," cried Lady Kew, looking fiercely over her spectacles. And Julia was instructed to write that night to her sister, and desire that Ethel should be sent to see her grandmother:--Ethel, who rebelled against her grandmother, and always fought on her Aunt Julia's side, when the weaker was oppressed by the older and stronger lady.

CHAPTER XI. At Mrs. Ridley's

Saint Peter of Alcantara, as I have read in a life of St. Theresa, informed that devout lady that he had pa.s.sed forty years of his life sleeping only an hour and a half each day; his cell was but four feet and a half long, so that he never lay down: his pillow was a wooden log in the stone wall: he ate but once in three days: he was for three years in a convent of his order without knowing any one of his brethren except by the sound of their voices, for he never during this period took his eyes off the ground: he always walked barefoot, and was but skin and bone when he died. The eating only once in three days, so he told his sister Saint, was by no means impossible, if you began the regimen in your youth. To conquer sleep was the hardest of all austerities which he practised:--I fancy the pious individual so employed, day after day, night after night, on his knees, or standing up in devout meditation in the cupboard--his dwelling-place; bareheaded and barefooted, walking over rocks, briars, mud, sharp stones (picking out the very worst places, let us trust, with his downcast eyes), under the bitter snow, or the drifting rain, or the scorching sunshine--I fancy Saint Peter of Alcantara, and contrast him with such a personage as the Inc.u.mbent of Lady Whittlesea's Chapel, Mayfair.

His hermitage is situated in Walpole Street, let us say, on the second floor of a quiet mansion, let out to hermits by a n.o.bleman's butler, whose wife takes care of the lodgings. His cells consist of a refectory, a dormitory, and an adjacent oratory where he keeps his shower-bath and boots--the pretty boots trimly stretched on boot-trees and blacked to a nicety (not varnished) by the boy who waits on him. The barefooted business may suit superst.i.tious ages and gentlemen of Alcantara, but does not become Mayfair and the nineteenth century. If St. Pedro walked the earth now with his eyes to the ground he would know fashionable divines by the way in which they were shod. Charles Honeyman's is a sweet foot. I have no doubt as delicate and plump and rosy as the white hand with its two rings, which he pa.s.ses in impa.s.sioned moments through his slender flaxen hair.

A sweet odour pervades his sleeping apartment--not that peculiar and delicious fragrance with which the Saints of the Roman Church are said to gratify the neighbourhood where they repose--but oils, redolent of the richest perfumes of Maca.s.sar, essences (from Truefitt's or Delcroix's) into which a thousand flowers have expressed their sweetest breath, await his meek head on rising; and infuse the pocket-handkerchief with which he dries and draws so many tears. For he cries a good deal in his sermons, to which the ladies about him contribute showers of sympathy.

By his bedside are slippers lined with blue silk and worked of an ecclesiastical pattern, by some of the faithful who sit at his feet.

They come to him in anonymous parcels: they come to him in silver paper: boys in b.u.t.tons (pages who minister to female grace!) leave them at the door for the Rev. C. Honeyman, and slip away without a word. Purses are sent to him--penwipers--a portfolio with the Honeyman arms; yea, braces have been known to reach him by the post (in his days of popularity); and flowers, and grapes, and jelly when he was ill, and throat comforters, and lozenges for his dear bronchitis. In one of his drawers is the rich silk ca.s.sock presented to him by his congregation at Leatherhead (when the young curate quitted that parish for London duty), and on his breakfast-table the silver teapot, once filled with sovereigns and presented by the same devotees. The devo-teapot he has, but the sovereigns, where are they?

What a different life this is from our honest friend of Alcantara, who eats once in three days! At one time if Honeyman could have drunk tea three times in an evening, he might have had it. The gla.s.s on his chimneypiece is crowded with invitations, not merely cards of ceremony (of which there are plenty), but dear little confidential notes from sweet friends of his congregation. "Ob, dear Mr. Honeyman," writes Blanche, "what a sermon that was! I cannot go to bed to-night without thanking you for it." "Do, do, dear Mr. Honeyman," writes Beatrice, "lend me that delightful sermon. And can you come and drink tea with me and Selina, and my aunt? Papa and mamma dine out, but you know I am always your faithful Chesterfield Street." And so on. He has all the domestic accomplishments; he plays on the violoncello: he sings a delicious second, not only in sacred but in secular music. He has a thousand anecdotes, laughable riddles, droll stories (of the utmost correctness, you understand) with which he entertains females of all ages; suiting his conversation to stately matrons, deaf old dowagers (who can hear his clear voice better than the loudest roar of their stupid sons-in-law), mature spinsters, young beauties dancing through the season, even rosy little slips out of the nursery, who cl.u.s.ter round his beloved feet. Societies fight for him to preach their charity sermon. You read in the papers, "The Wapping Hospital for Wooden-legged Seamen.--On Sunday the 23rd, Sermons will be preached in behalf of this charity, by the Lord Bishop of Tobago in the morning, in the afternoon by the Rev. C. Honeyman, A.M., Inc.u.mbent of," etc. "Clergymen's Grandmothers' Fund.--Sermons in aid of this admirable inst.i.tution will be preached on Sunday, 4th May, by the Very Rev. the Dean of Pimlico, and the Rev. C. Honeyman, A.M." When the Dean of Pimlico has his illness, many people think Honeyman will have the Deanery; that he ought to have it, a hundred female voices vow and declare: though it is said that a right reverend head at headquarters shakes dubiously when his name is mentioned for preferment. His name is spread wide, and not only women but men come to hear him. Members of Parliament, even Cabinet Ministers, sit under him. Lord Dozeley of course is seen in a front pew: where was a public meeting without Lord Dozeley? The men come away from his sermons and say, "It's very pleasant, but I don't know what the deuce makes all you women crowd so to hear the man." "Oh, Charles! if you would but go oftener!" sighs Lady Anna Maria. "Can't you speak to the Home Secretary? Can't you do something for him?" "We can ask him to dinner next Wednesday if you like," Says Charles. "They say he's a pleasant fellow out of the wood. Besides there is no use in doing anything for him," Charles goes on. "He can't make less than a thousand a year out of his chapel, and that is better than anything any one can give him. A thousand a year, besides the rent of the wine-vaults below the chapel."

"Don't, Charles!" says his wife, with a solemn look. "Don't ridicule things in that way.

"Confound it! there are wine-vaults under the chapel!" answers downright Charles. "I saw the name, Sherrick and Co.; offices, a green door, and a bra.s.s plate. It's better to sit over vaults with wine in them than coffins. I wonder whether it's the Sherrick with whom Kew and Jack Belsize had that ugly row?"

"What ugly row?--don't say ugly row. It is not a nice word to hear the children use. Go on, my darlings. What was the dispute of Lord Kew and Mr. Belsize, and this Mr. Sherrick?"

"It was all about pictures, and about horses, and about money, and about one other subject which enters into every row that I ever heard of."

"And what is that, dear?" asks the innocent lady, hanging on her husband's arm, and quite pleased to have led him to church and brought him thence. "And what is it, that enters into every row, as you call it, Charles?"

"A woman, my love," answers the gentleman, behind whom we have been in imagination walking out from Charles Honeyman's church on a Sunday in June: as the whole pavement blooms with artificial flowers and fresh bonnets; as there is a buzz and cackle all around regarding the sermon; as carriages drive off; as lady-dowagers walk home; as prayer-books and footmen's sticks gleam in the sun; as little boys with baked mutton and potatoes pa.s.s from the courts; as children issue from the public-houses with pots of beer; as the Reverend Charles Honeyman, who has been drawing tears in the sermon, and has seen, not without complacent throbs, a Secretary of State in the pew beneath him, divests himself of his rich silk ca.s.sock in the vestry, before he walks away to his neighbouring hermitage--where have we placed it?--in Walpole Street. I wish St. Pedro of Alcantara could have some of that shoulder of mutton with the baked potatoes, and a drink of that frothing beer. See, yonder trots little Lord Dozeley, who has been asleep for an hour with his head against the wood, like St. Pedro of Alcantara.

An East Indian gentleman and his son wait until the whole chapel is clear, and survey Lady Whittlesea's monument at their leisure, and other hideous slabs erected in memory of defunct frequenters of the chapel.

Whose was that face which Colonel Newcome thought he recognised--that of a stout man who came down from the organ-gallery? Could it be Broff the ba.s.s singer, who delivered the "Red Cross Knight" with such applause at the Cave of Melody, and who has been singing in this place? There are some chapels in London, where, the function over, one almost expects to see the s.e.xtons put brown hollands over the pews and galleries, as they do at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden.