to a good private school; and a commission in the army
for his son had been a source of no small pride to
him; for little George and his future prospects the old
man looked much higher. He would make a gentleman
of the little chap, was Mr. Osborne's constant saying
regarding little Georgy. He saw him in his mind's eye, a
collegian, a Parliament man, a Baronet, perhaps. The
old man thought he would die contented if he could see
his grandson in a fair way to such honours. He would
have none but a tip-top college man to educate him--
none of your quacks and pretenders--no, no. A few years
before, he used to be savage, and inveigh against all
parsons, scholars, and the like declaring that they were
a pack of humbugs, and quacks that weren't fit to get
their living but by grinding Latin and Greek, and a set
of supercilious dogs that pretended to look down upon
British merchants and gentlemen, who could buy up half
a hundred of 'em. He would mourn now, in a very
solemn manner, that his own education had been neglected,
and repeatedly point out, in pompous orations to Georgy,
the necessity and excellence of classical acquirements.
When they met at dinner the grandsire used to ask
the lad what he had been reading during the day, and
was greatly interested at the report the boy gave of his
own studies, pretending to understand little George
when he spoke regarding them. He made a hundred
blunders and showed his ignorance many a time. It did not
increase the respect which the child had for his senior.
A quick brain and a better education elsewhere showed
the boy very soon that his grandsire was a dullard, and
he began accordingly to command him and to look down
upon him; for his previous education, humble and
contracted as it had been, had made a much better
gentleman of Georgy than any plans of his grandfather could
make him. He had been brought up by a kind, weak,
and tender woman, who had no pride about anything
but about him, and whose heart was so pure and whose
bearing was so meek and humble that she could not but
needs be a true lady. She busied herself in gentle offices
and quiet duties; if she never said brilliant things, she
never spoke or thought unkind ones; guileless and artless,
loving and pure, indeed how could our poor little Amelia
be other than a real gentlewoman!
Young Georgy lorded over this soft and yielding
nature; and the contrast of its simplicity and delicacy with
the coarse pomposity of the dull old man with whom
he next came in contact made him lord over the latter
too. If he had been a Prince Royal he could not have
been better brought up to think well of himself.
Whilst his mother was yearning after him at home, and
I do believe every hour of the day, and during most
hours of the sad lonely nights, thinking of him, this young
gentleman had a number of pleasures and consolations
administered to him, which made him for his part bear
the separation from Amelia very easily. Little boys who
cry when they are going to school cry because they
are going to a very uncomfortable place. It is only a
few who weep from sheer affection. When you think
that the eyes of your childhood dried at the sight of a
piece of gingerbread, and that a plum cake was a
compensation for the agony of parting with your mamma
and sisters, oh my friend and brother, you need not be
too confident of your own fine feelings.
Well, then, Master George Osborne had every comfort
and luxury that a wealthy and lavish old grandfather
thought fit to provide. The coachman was instructed to
purchase for him the handsomest pony which could be
bought for money, and on this George was taught to
ride, first at a riding-school, whence, after having
performed satisfactorily without stirrups, and over the
leaping-bar, he was conducted through the New Road to
Regent's Park, and then to Hyde Park, where he rode
in state with Martin the coachman behind him. Old
Osborne, who took matters more easily in the City now,
where he left his affairs to his junior partners, would
often ride out with Miss O. in the same fashionable direction.
As little Georgy came cantering up with his dandified
air and his heels down, his grandfather would nudge
the lad's aunt and say, "Look, Miss O." And he would
laugh, and his face would grow red with pleasure, as
he nodded out of the window to the boy, as the groom
saluted the carriage, and the footman saluted Master
George. Here too his aunt, Mrs. Frederick Bullock
(whose chariot might daily be seen in the Ring, with
bullocks or emblazoned on the panels and harness, and
three pasty-faced little Bullocks, covered with cockades
and feathers, staring from the windows) Mrs. Frederick
Bullock, I say, flung glances of the bitterest hatred at
the little upstart as he rode by with his hand on his side
and his hat on one ear, as proud as a lord.
Though he was scarcely eleven years of age, Master
George wore straps and the most beautiful little boots
like a man. He had gilt spurs, and a gold-headed whip,
and a fine pin in his handkerchief, and the neatest little
kid gloves which Lamb's Conduit Street could furnish.
His mother had given him a couple of neckcloths, and
carefully hemmed and made some little shirts for him;
but when her Eli came to see the widow, they were
replaced by much finer linen. He had little jewelled buttons
in the lawn shirt fronts. Her humble presents had been put
aside--I believe Miss Osborne had given them to the
coachman's boy. Amelia tried to think she was pleased
at the change. Indeed, she was happy and charmed to
see the boy looking so beautiful.
She had had a little black profile of him done for a
shilling, and this was hung up by the side of another
portrait over her bed. One day the boy came on his
accustomed visit, galloping down the little street at
Brompton, and bringing, as usual, all the inhabitants to the
windows to admire his splendour, and with great eagerness
and a look of triumph in his face, he pulled a case
out of his great-coat--it was a natty white great-coat,
with a cape and a velvet collar--pulled out a red
morocco case, which he gave her.
"I bought it with my own money, Mamma," he said.
"I thought you'd like it."
Amelia opened the case, and giving a little cry of
delighted affection, seized the boy and embraced him a
hundred times. It was a miniature-of himself, very prettily
done (though not half handsome enough, we may be
sure, the widow thought). His grandfather had wished
to have a picture of him by an artist whose works,
exhibited in a shop-window, in Southampton Row, had
caught the old gentleman's eye; and George, who had
plenty of money, bethought him of asking the painter
how much a copy of the little portrait would cost, saying
that he would pay for it out of his own money and
that he wanted to give it to his mother. The pleased
painter executed it for a small price, and old Osborne
himself, when he heard of the incident, growled out his
satisfaction and gave the boy twice as many sovereigns
as he paid for the miniature.
But what was the grandfather's pleasure compared to
Amelia's ecstacy? That proof of the boy's affection
charmed her so that she thought no child in the world
was like hers for goodness. For long weeks after, the
thought of his love made her happy. She slept better
with the picture under her pillow, and how many many
times did she kiss it and weep and pray over it! A
small kindness from those she loved made that timid
heart grateful. Since her parting with George she had had
no such joy and consolation.
At his new home Master George ruled like a lord;
at dinner he invited the ladies to drink wine with the
utmost coolness, and took off his champagne in a way
which charmed his old grandfather. "Look at him," the
old man would say, nudging his neighbour with a
delighted purple face, "did you ever see such a chap?
Lord, Lord! he'll be ordering a dressing-case next, and
razors to shave with; I'm blessed if he won't."
The antics of the lad did not, however, delight Mr.
Osborne's friends so much as they pleased the old
gentleman. It gave Mr. Justice Coffin no pleasure to hear
Georgy cut into the conversation and spoil his stories.
Colonel Fogey was not interested in seeing the little boy
half tipsy. Mr. Sergeant Toffy's lady felt no particular
gratitude, when, with a twist of his elbow, he tilted a
glass of port-wine over her yellow satin and laughed at
the disaster; nor was she better pleased, although old
Osborne was highly delighted, when Georgy "whopped"
her third boy (a young gentleman a year older than
Georgy, and by chance home for the holidays from Dr.
Tickleus's at Ealing School) in Russell Square. George's
grandfather gave the boy a couple of sovereigns for that
feat and promised to reward him further for every boy
above his own size and age whom he whopped in a
similar manner. It is difficult to say what good the old man
saw in these combats; he had a vague notion that
quarrelling made boys hardy, and that tyranny was a useful
accomplishment for them to learn. English youth have
been so educated time out of mind, and we have
hundreds of thousands of apologists and admirers of
injustice, misery, and brutality, as perpetrated among
children. Flushed with praise and victory over Master Toffy,
George wished naturally to pursue his conquests further,
and one day as he was strutting about in prodigiously
dandified new clothes, near St. Pancras, and a young
baker's boy made sarcastic comments upon his appearance,
the youthful patrician pulled off his dandy jacket
with great spirit, and giving it in charge to the friend
who accompanied him (Master Todd, of Great Coram
Street, Russell Square, son of the junior partner of the
house of Osborne and Co.), George tried to whop the
little baker. But the chances of war were unfavourable
this time, and the little baker whopped Georgy, who
came home with a rueful black eye and all his fine shirt
frill dabbled with the claret drawn from his own little
nose. He told his grandfather that he had been in
combat with a giant, and frightened his poor mother at
Brompton with long, and by no means authentic,
accounts of the battle.
This young Todd, of Coram Street, Russell Square,
was Master George's great friend and admirer. They both
had a taste for painting theatrical characters; for
hardbake and raspberry tarts; for sliding and skating in the
Regent's Park and the Serpentine, when the weather
permitted; for going to the play, whither they were often
conducted, by Mr. Osborne's orders, by Rowson, Master
George's appointed body-servant, with whom they sat in
great comfort in the pit.
In the company of this gentleman they visited all the
principal theatres of the metropolis; knew the names of
all the actors from Drury Lane to Sadler's Wells; and
performed, indeed, many of the plays to the Todd family
and their youthful friends, with West's famous characters,
on their pasteboard theatre. Rowson, the footman, who
was of a generous disposition, would not unfrequently,
when in cash, treat his young master to oysters after
the play, and to a glass of rum-shrub for a night-cap.
We may be pretty certain that Mr. Rowson profited in
his turn by his young master's liberality and gratitude
for the pleasures to which the footman inducted him.
A famous tailor from the West End of the town--
Mr. Osborne would have none of your City or Holborn
bunglers, he said, for the boy (though a City tailor was
good enough for HIM)--was summoned to ornament little
George's person, and was told to spare no expense in so
doing. So, Mr. Woolsey, of Conduit Street, gave a loose
to his imagination and sent the child home fancy trousers,
fancy waistcoats, and fancy jackets enough to furnish a
school of little dandies. Georgy had little white
waistcoats for evening parties, and little cut velvet waistcoats
for dinners, and a dear little darling shawl dressing-gown,
for all the world like a little man. He dressed for dinner
every day, "like a regular West End swell," as his
grandfather remarked; one of the domestics was affected to
his special service, attended him at his toilette,
answered his bell, and brought him his letters always on a
silver tray.
Georgy, after breakfast, would sit in the arm-chair in
the dining-room and read the Morning Post, just like a
grown-up man. "How he DU dam and swear," the
servants would cry, delighted at his precocity. Those who
remembered the Captain his father, declared Master
George was his Pa, every inch of him. He made the house
lively by his activity, his imperiousness, his scolding, and
his good-nature.
George's education was confided to a neighbouring
scholar and private pedagogue who "prepared young
noblemen and gentlemen for the Universities, the senate,
and the learned professions: whose system did not
embrace the degrading corporal severities still practised at
the ancient places of education, and in whose family the
pupils would find the elegances of refined society and
the confidence and affection of a home." It was in this
way that the Reverend Lawrence Veal of Hart Street,
Bloomsbury, and domestic Chaplain to the Earl of
Bareacres, strove with Mrs. Veal his wife to entice pupils.
By thus advertising and pushing sedulously, the
domestic Chaplain and his Lady generally succeeded in
having one or two scholars by them--who paid a high
figure and were thought to be in uncommonly comfortable
quarters. There was a large West Indian, whom
nobody came to see, with a mahogany complexion, a woolly
head, and an exceedingly dandyfied appearance; there
was another hulking boy of three-and-twenty whose
