The Newcomes: Memoirs of a Most Respectable Family Part 4

"I say," says Clive.

"What were you about to remark?" asks Mr. Warrington, with an air of great interest.

"I say, Pendennis," continued the artless youth, "I thought you were a great swell. When we used to read about the grand parties in the Pall Mall Gazette, the fellows used to say you were at every one of them, and you see, I thought you must have chambers in the Albany, and lots of horses to ride, and a valet and a groom, and a cab at the very least."

"Sir," says the Colonel, "I hope it is not your practice to measure and estimate gentlemen by such paltry standards as those. A man of letters follows the n.o.blest calling which any man can pursue. I would rather be the author of a work of genius, than be Governor-General of India. I admire genius. I salute it wherever I meet it. I like my own profession better than any in the world, but then it is because I am suited to it. I couldn't write four lines in verse, no, not to save me from being shot. A man cannot have all the advantages of life. Who would not be poor if he could be sure of possessing genius, and winning fame and immortality, sir? Think of Dr. Johnson, what a genius he had, and where did he live? In apartments that, I daresay, were no better than these, which, I am sure, gentlemen, are most cheerful and pleasant," says the Colonel, thinking he had offended us. "One of the great pleasures and delights which I had proposed to myself on coming home was to be allowed to have the honour of meeting with men of learning and genius, with wits, poets, and historians, if I may be so fortunate; and of benefiting by their conversation. I left England too young to have that privilege.

In my father's house money was thought of, I fear, rather than intellect; neither he nor I had the opportunities which I wish you to have; and I am surprised you should think of reflecting upon Mr.

Pendennis's poverty, or of feeling any sentiment but respect and admiration when you enter the apartments of the poet and the literary man. I have never been in the rooms of a literary man before," the Colonel said, turning away from his son to us: "excuse me, is that--that paper really a proof-sheet?" We handed over to him that curiosity, smiling at the enthusiasm of the honest gentleman who could admire what to us was as unpalatable as a tart to a pastrycook.

Being with men of letters, he thought proper to make his conversation entirely literary; and in the course of my subsequent more intimate acquaintance with him, though I knew he had distinguished himself in twenty actions, he never could be brought to talk of his military feats or experience, but pa.s.sed them by, as if they were subjects utterly unworthy of notice.

I found he believed Dr. Johnson to be the greatest of men: the Doctor's words were constantly in his mouth; and he never travelled without Boswell's Life. Besides these, he read Caesar and Tacitus, "with translations, sir, with translations--I'm thankful that I kept some of my Latin from Grey Friars;" and he quoted sentences from the Latin Grammar, apropos of a hundred events of common life, and with perfect simplicity and satisfaction to himself. Besides the above-named books, the Spectator, Don Quixote, and Sir Charles Grandison formed a part of his travelling library. "I read these, sir," he used to say, "because I like to be in the company of gentlemen; and Sir Roger de Coverley, and Sir Charles Grandison, and Don Quixote are the finest gentlemen in the world." And when we asked him his opinion of Fielding,--

"Tom Jones, sir; Joseph Andrews, sir!" he cried, twirling his mustachios. "I read them when I was a boy, when I kept other bad company, and did other low and disgraceful things, of which I'm ashamed now. Sir, in my father's library I happened to fall in with those books; and I read them in secret, just as I used to go in private and drink beer, and fight c.o.c.ks, and smoke pipes with Jack and Tom, the grooms in the stables. Mrs. Newcome found me, I recollect, with one of those books; and thinking it might be by Mrs. Hannah More, or some of that sort, for it was a grave-looking volume: and though I wouldn't lie about that or anything else--never did, sir; never, before heaven, have I told more than three lies in my life--I kept my own counsel; I say, she took it herself to read one evening; and read on gravely--for she had no more idea of a joke than I have of Hebrew--until she came to the part about Lady B---- and Joseph Andrews; and then she shut the book, sir; and you should have seen the look she gave me! I own I burst out a-laughing, for I was a wild young rebel, sir. But she was in the right, sir, and I was in the wrong. A book, sir, that tells the story of a parcel of servants, of a pack of footmen and ladies'-maids fuddling in alehouses! Do you suppose I want to know what my kitmutgars and cousomahs are doing? I am as little proud as any man in the world: but there must be distinction, sir; and as it is my lot and Clive's lot to be a gentleman, I won't sit in the kitchen and boose in the servants'-hall. As for that Tom Jones--that fellow that sells himself, sir--by heavens, my blood boils when I think of him! I wouldn't sit down in the same room with such a fellow, sir. If he came in at that door, I would say, 'How dare you, you hireling ruffian, to sully with your presence an apartment where my young friend and I are conversing together? where two gentlemen, I say, are taking their wine after dinner? How dare you, you degraded villain?'

I don't mean you, sir. I--I--I beg your pardon."

The Colonel was striding about the room in his loose garments, puffing his cigar fiercely anon, and then waving his yellow bandana; and it was by the arrival of Larkins, my clerk, that his apostrophe to Tom Jones was interrupted; he, Larkins, taking care not to show his amazement, having been schooled not to show or feel surprise at anything he might see or hear in our chambers.

"What is it, Larkins?" said I. Larkins' other master had taken his leave some time before, having business which called him away, and leaving me with the honest Colonel, quite happy with his talk and cigar.

"It's Brett's man," says Larkins.

I confounded Brett's man, and told the boy to bid him call again. Young Larkins came grinning back in a moment, and said:

"Please, sir, he says his orders is not to go away without the money."

"Confound him again," I cried. "Tell him I have no money in the house.

He must come to-morrow."

As I spoke, Clive was looking in wonder, and the Colonel's countenance a.s.sumed an appearance of the most dolorous sympathy. Nevertheless, as with a great effort, he fell to talking about Tom Jones again, and continued:

"No, sir, I have no words to express my indignation against such a fellow as Tom Jones. But I forgot that I need not speak. The great and good Dr. Johnson has settled that question. You remember what he said to Mr. Boswell about Fielding?"

"And yet Gibbon praises him, Colonel," said the Colonel's interlocutor, "and that is no small praise. He says that Mr. Fielding was of the family that drew its origin from the Counts of Hapsburg; but----"

"Gibbon! Gibbon was an infidel, and I would not give the end of this cigar for such a man's opinion. If Mr. Fielding was a gentleman by birth, he ought to have known better; and so much the worse for him that he did not. But what am I talking of, wasting your valuable time? No more smoke, thank you. I must away into the City, but would not pa.s.s the Temple without calling on you, and thanking my boy's old protector. You will have the kindness to come and dine with us--to-morrow, the next day, your own day? Your friend is going out of town? I hope, on his return, to have the pleasure of making his further acquaintance. Come, Clive."

Clive, who had been deep in a volume of Hogarth's engravings during the above discussion, or rather oration of his father's, started up and took leave, beseeching me, at the same time, to come soon and see his pony; and so, with renewed greetings, we parted.

I was scarcely returned to my newspaper again, when the knocker of our door was again agitated, and the Colonel ran back, looking very much agitated and confused.

"I beg pardon," says he; "I think I left my--my----" Larkins had quitted the room by this time, and then he began more unreservedly. "My dear young friend," says he, "a thousand pardons for what I am going to say, but, as Clive's friend, I know I may take that liberty. I have left the boy in the court. I know the fate of men of letters and genius: when we were here just now, there came a single knock--a demand--that, that you did not seem to be momentarily able to meet. Now do, do pardon the liberty, and let me be your banker. You said you were engaged in a new work: it will be a masterpiece, I am sure, if it's like the last. Put me down for twenty copies, and allow me to settle with you in advance. I may be off, you know. I'm a bird of pa.s.sage--a restless old soldier."

"My dear Colonel," said I, quite touched and pleased by this extreme kindness, "my dun was but the washerwoman's boy, and Mrs. Brett is in my debt, if I am not mistaken. Besides, I already have a banker in your family."

"In my family, my dear Sir?"

"Messrs. Newcome, in Threadneedle Street, are good enough to keep my money for me when I have any, and I am happy to say they have some of mine in hand now. I am almost sorry that I am not in want, in order that I might have the pleasure of receiving a kindness from you." And we shook hands for the fourth time that morning, and the kind gentleman left me to rejoin his son.

CHAPTER V. Clive's Uncles

The dinner so hospitably offered by the Colonel was gladly accepted, and followed by many more entertainments at the cost of that good-natured friend. He and an Indian chum of his lived at this time at Nerot's Hotel, in Clifford Street, where Mr. Clive, too, found the good cheer a great deal more to his taste than the homely, though plentiful, fare at Grey Friars, at which, of course, when boys, we all turned up our noses, though many a poor fellow, in the struggles of after-life, has looked back with regret very likely to that well-spread youthful table. Thus my intimacy with the father and the son grew to be considerable, and a great deal more to my liking than my relations with Clive's City uncles, which have been mentioned in the last chapter, and which were, in truth, exceedingly distant and awful.

If all the private accounts kept by those worthy bankers were like mine, where would have been Newcome Hall and Park Lane, Marblehead and Bryanstone Square? I used, by strong efforts of self-denial, to maintain a balance of two or three guineas untouched at the bank, so that my account might still remain open; and fancied the clerks and cashiers grinned when I went to draw for money. Rather than face that awful counter, I would send Larkins, the clerk, or Mrs. Flanagan, the laundress. As for entering the private parlour at the back, wherein behind the glazed part.i.tion I could see the bald heads of Newcome Brothers engaged with other capitalists or peering over the newspaper, I would as soon have thought of walking into the Doctor's own library at Grey Friars, or of volunteering to take an armchair in a dentist's studio, and have a tooth out, as of entering into that awful precinct.

My good uncle, on the other hand, the late Major Pendennis, who kept naturally but a very small account with Hobsons', would walk into the parlour and salute the two magnates who governed there with the ease and gravity of a Rothschild. "My good fellow," the kind old gentleman would say to his nephew and pupil, "il faut se faire valoir. I tell you, sir, your bankers like to keep every gentleman's account. And it's a mistake to suppose they are only civil to their great moneyed clients. Look at me. I go in to them and talk to them whenever I am in the City. I hear the news of 'Change, and carry it to our end of the town. It looks well, sir, to be well with your banker; and at our end of London, perhaps, I can do a good turn for the Newcomes."

It is certain that in his own kingdom of Mayfair and St. James's my revered uncle was at least the bankers' equal. On my coming to London, he was kind enough to procure me invitations to some of Lady Anne Newcome's evening parties in Park Lane, as likewise to Mrs. Newcome's entertainments in Bryanstone Square; though, I confess, of these latter, after a while, I was a lax and negligent attendant. "Between ourselves, my good fellow," the shrewd old Mentor of those days would say, "Mrs.

Newcome's parties are not altogether select; nor is she a lady of the very highest breeding; but it gives a man a good air to be seen at his banker's house. I recommend you to go for a few minutes whenever you are asked." And go I accordingly did sometimes, though I always fancied, rightly or wrongly, from Mrs. Newcome's manner to me, that she knew I had but thirty shillings left at the bank. Once and again, in two or three years, Mr. Hobson Newcome would meet me, and ask me to fill a vacant place that day or the next evening at his table; which invitation I might accept or otherwise. But one does not eat a man's salt, as it were, at these dinners. There is nothing sacred in this kind of London hospitality. Your white waistcoat fills a gap in a man's table, and retires filled for its service of the evening. "Gad," the dear old Major used to say, "if we were not to talk freely of those we dine with, how mum London would be! Some of the pleasantest evenings I have ever spent have been when we have sate after a great dinner, en pet.i.t comite, and abused the people who are gone. You have your turn, mon cher; but why not? Do you suppose I fancy my friends haven't found out my little faults and peculiarities? And as I can't help it, I let myself be executed, and offer up my oddities de bonne grace. Entre nous, Brother Hobson Newcome is a good fellow, but a vulgar fellow; and his wife--his wife exactly suits him."

Once a year Lady Anne Newcome (about whom my Mentor was much more circ.u.mspect; for I somehow used to remark that as the rank of persons grew higher, Major Pendennis spoke of them with more caution and respect)--once or twice in a year Lady Anne Newcome opened her saloons for a concert and a ball, at both of which the whole street was crowded with carriages, and all the great world, and some of the small, were present. Mrs. Newcome had her ball too, and her concert of English music, in opposition to the Italian singers of her sister-in-law. The music of her country, Mrs. N. said, was good enough for her.

The truth must be told, that there was no love lost between the two ladies. Bryanstone Square could not forget the superiority of Park Lane's rank; and the catalogue of grandees at dear Anne's parties filled dear Maria's heart with envy. There are people upon whom rank and worldly goods make such an impression, that they naturally fall down on their knees and worship the owners; there are others to whom the sight of Prosperity is offensive, and who never see Dives' chariot but to growl and hoot at it. Mrs. Newcome, as far as my humble experience would lead me to suppose, is not only envious, but proud of her envy. She mistakes it for honesty and public spirit. She will not bow down to kiss the hand of a haughty aristocracy. She is a merchant's wife and an attorney's daughter. There is no pride about her. Her brother-in-law, poor dear Brian--considering everybody knows everything in London, was there ever such a delusion as his?--was welcome, after banking-hours, to forsake his own friends for his wife's fine relations, and to dangle after lords and ladies in Mayfair. She had no such absurd vanity--not she. She imparted these opinions pretty liberally to all her acquaintances in almost all her conversations. It was clear that the two ladies were best apart. There are some folks who will see insolence in persons of rank, as there are others who will insist; that all clergymen are hypocrites, all reformers villains, all placemen plunderers, and so forth; and Mrs. Newcome never, I am sure, imagined that she had a prejudice, or that she was other than an honest, independent, high-spirited woman. Both of the ladies had command over their husbands, who were of soft natures easily led by woman, as, in truth, are all the males of this family. Accordingly, when Sir Brian Newcome voted for the Tory candidate in the City, Mr. Hobson Newcome plumped for the Reformer.

While Brian, in the House of Commons, sat among the mild Conservatives, Hobson unmasked traitors and thundered at aristocratic corruption, so as to make the Marylebone Vestry thrill with enthusiasm. When Lady Anne, her husband, and her flock of children fasted in Lent, and declared for the High Church doctrines, Mrs. Hobson had paroxysms of alarm regarding the progress of Popery, and shuddered out of the chapel where she had a pew, because the clergyman there, for a very brief season, appeared to preach in a surplice.

Poor bewildered Honeyman! it was a sad day for you, when you appeared in your neat pulpit with your fragrant pocket-handkerchief (and your sermon likewise all millefleurs), in a trim, prim, freshly mangled surplice, which you thought became you! How did you look aghast, and pa.s.s your jewelled hand through your curls, as you saw Mrs. Newcome, who had been as good as five-and-twenty pounds a year to you, look up from her pew, seize hold of Mr. Newcome, fling open the pew-door, drive out with her parasol her little flock of children, bewildered but not ill-pleased to get away from the sermon, and summon John from the back seats to bring away the bag of prayer-books! Many a good dinner did Charles Honeyman lose by a.s.suming that unlucky ephod. Why did the high-priest of his diocese order him to put it on? It was delightful to view him afterwards, and the airs of martyrdom which he a.s.sumed. Had they been going to tear him to pieces with wild beasts next day, he could scarcely have looked more meek, or resigned himself more pathetically to the persecutors. But I am advancing matters. At this early time of which I write, a period not twenty years since, surplices were not even thought of in conjunction with sermons: clerical gentlemen have appeared in them, and under the heavy hand of persecution have sunk down in their pulpits again, as Jack pops back into his box. Charles Honeyman's elegant discourses were at this time preached in a rich silk Master of Arts' gown, presented to him, along with a teapot full of sovereigns, by his affectionate congregation at Leatherhead.

But that I may not be accused of prejudice in describing Mrs. Newcome and her family, and lest the reader should suppose that some slight offered to the writer by this wealthy and virtuous banker's lady was the secret reason for this unfavourable sketch of her character, let me be allowed to report, as accurately as I can remember them, the words of a kinsman of her own, ---- Giles, Esquire, whom I had the honour of meeting at her table, and who, as we walked away from Bryanstone Square, was kind enough to discourse very freely about the relatives whom he had just left.

"That was a good dinner, sir," said Mr. Giles, puffing the cigar which I offered to him, and disposed to be very social and communicative.

"Hobson Newcome's table is about as good a one as any I ever put my legs under. You didn't have twice of turtle, sir, I remarked that--I always do, at that house especially, for I know where Newcome gets it. We belong to the same livery in the City, Hobson and I, the Oystermongers'

Company, sir, and we like our turtle good, I can tell you--good, and a great deal of it, you say. Hay, hay, not so bad!

"I suppose you're a young barrister, sucking lawyer, or that sort of thing. Because you was put at the end of the table and n.o.body took notice of you. That's my place too; I'm a relative and Newcome asks me if he has got a place to spare. He met me in the City to-day, and says, 'Tom,' says he, 'there's some dinner in the Square at half-past seven: I wish you would go and fetch Louisa, whom we haven't seen this ever so long.' Louisa is my wife, sir--Maria's sister--Newcome married that gal from my house. 'No, no,' says I, 'Hobson; Louisa's engaged nursing number eight'--that's our number, sir. The truth is, between you and me, sir, my missis won't come any more at no price. She can't stand it; Mrs.

Newcome's dam patronising airs is enough to choke off anybody. 'Well, Hobson, my boy,' says I, 'a good dinner's a good dinner; and I'll come though Louisa won't, that is, can't.'"

While Mr. Giles, who was considerably enlivened by claret, was discoursing thus candidly, his companion was thinking how he, Mr.

Arthur Pendennis, had been met that very afternoon on the steps of the Megatherium Club by Mr. Newcome, and had accepted that dinner which Mrs.

Giles, with more spirit, had declined. Giles continued talking--"I'm an old stager, I am. I don't mind the rows between the women. I believe Mrs. Newcome and Lady Newcome's just as bad too; I know Maria is always driving at her one way or the other, and calling her proud and aristocratic, and that; and yet my wife says Maria, who pretends to be such a Radical, never asks us to meet the Baronet and his lady. 'And why should she, Loo, my dear?' says I. 'I don't want to meet Lady Newcome, nor Lord Kew, nor any of 'em.' Lord Kew, ain't it an odd name? Tearing young swell, that Lord Kew: tremendous wild fellow."

"I was a clerk in that house, sir, as a young man; I was there in the old woman's time, and Mr. Newcome's--the father of these young men--as good a man as ever stood on 'Change." And then Mr. Giles, warming with his subject, enters at large into the history of the house. "You see, sir," says he, "the banking-house of Hobson Brothers, or Newcome Brothers, as the partners of the firm really are, is not one of the leading banking firms of the City of London, but a most respectable house of many years' standing, and doing a most respectable business, especially in the Dissenting connection." After the business came into the hands of the Newcome Brothers, Hobson Newcome, Esq., and Sir Brian Newcome, Bart., M.P., Mr. Giles shows how a considerable West End connection was likewise established, chiefly through the aristocratic friends and connections of the above-named Bart.

But the best man of business, according to Mr. Giles, whom the firm of Hobson Brothers ever knew, better than her father and uncle, better than her husband Sir T. Newcome, better than her sons and successors above mentioned, was the famous Sophia Alethea Hobson, afterwards Newcome--of whom might be said what Frederick the Great said of his sister, that she was s.e.xu foemina, vir ingenio--in s.e.x a woman, and in mind a man.

Nor was she, my informant told me, without even manly personal characteristics: she had a very deep and gruff voice, and in her old age a beard which many a young man might envy; and as she came into the bank out of her carriage from Clapham, in her dark green pelisse with fur tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs, in her grey beaver hat, beaver gloves, and great gold spectacles, not a clerk in that house did not tremble before her, and it was said she only wanted a pipe in her mouth considerably to resemble the late Field-Marshal Prince Blucher.

Her funeral was one of the most imposing sights ever witnessed in Clapham. There was such a crowd you might have thought it was a Derby-day. The carriages of some of the greatest City firms, and the wealthiest Dissenting houses; several coaches full of ministers of all denominations, including the Established Church; the carriage of the Right Honourable the Earl of Kew, and that of his daughter, Lady Anne Newcome, attended that revered lady's remains to their final resting-place. No less than nine sermons were preached at various places of public worship regarding her end. She fell upstairs at a very advanced age, going from the library to the bedroom, after all the household was gone to rest, and was found by the maids in the morning, inarticulate, but still alive, her head being cut frightfully with the bedroom candle with which she was retiring to her apartment. "And,"

said Mr. Giles with great energy, "besides the empty carriages at that funeral, and the parson in black, and the mutes and feathers and that, there were hundreds and hundreds of people who wore no black, and who weren't present; and who wept for their benefactress, I can tell you.

She had her faults, and many of 'em; but the amount of that woman's charities are unheard of, sir--unheard of,--and they are put to the credit side of her account up yonder.

"The old lady had a will of her own," my companion continued. "She would try and know about everybody's business out of business hours: got to know from the young clerks what chapels they went to, and from the clergymen whether they attended regular; kept her sons, years after they were grown men, as if they were boys at school--and what was the consequence? They had a quarrel with Sir Thomas Newcome's own son, a harum-scarum lad, who ran away, and then was sent to India; and, between ourselves, Mr. Hobson and Mr. Brian both, the present Baronet, though at home they were as mum as Quakers at a meeting, used to go out on the sly, sir, and be off to the play, sir, and sowed their wild oats like any other young men, sir, like any other young men. Law bless me, once, as I was going away from the Haymarket, if I didn't see Mr. Hobson coming out of the Opera, in tights and an opera-hat, sir, like 'Froggy would wooing go,' of a Sat.u.r.day-night, too, when his ma thought him safe in bed in the City! I warrant he hadn't his opera-hat on when he went to chapel with her ladyship the next morning--that very morning, as sure as my name's John Giles.

"When the old lady was gone, Mr. Hobson had no need of any more humbugging, but took his pleasure freely. Fighting, tandems, four-in-hand, anything. He and his brother--his elder brother by a quarter of an hour--were always very good friends; but after Mr.

Brian married, and there was only court-cards at his table, Mr. Hobson couldn't stand it. They weren't of his suit, he said; and for some time he said he wasn't a marrying man--quite the contrary; but we all come to our fate, you know, and his time came as mine did. You know we married sisters? It was thought a fine match for Polly Smith, when she married the great Mr. Newcome; but I doubt whether my old woman at home hasn't had the best of it, after all; and if ever you come Bernard Street way on a Sunday, about six o'clock, and would like a slice of beef and a gla.s.s of port, I hope you'll come and see us."

Do not let us be too angry with Colonel Newcome's two most respectable brothers, if for some years they neglected their Indian relative, or held him in slight esteem. Their mother never pardoned him, or at least by any actual words admitted his restoration to favour. For many years, as far as they knew, poor Tom was an unrepentant prodigal, wallowing in bad company, and cut off from all respectable sympathy. Their father had never had the courage to acquaint them with his more true, and kind, and charitable version of Tom's story. So he pa.s.sed at home for no better than a black sheep; his marriage with a penniless young lady did not tend to raise him in the esteem of his relatives at Clapham; it was not until he was a widower, until he had been mentioned several times in the Gazette for distinguished military service, until they began to speak very well of him in Leadenhall Street, where the representatives of Hobson Brothers were of course East India proprietors, and until he remitted considerable sums of money to England, that the bankers his brethren began to be reconciled to him.