education had been neglected and whom Mr. and Mrs. Veal
were to introduce into the polite world; there were two
sons of Colonel Bangles of the East India Company's
Service: these four sat down to dinner at Mrs. Veal's
genteel board, when Georgy was introduced to her
establishment.
Georgy was, like some dozen other pupils, only a
day boy; he arrived in the morning under the
guardianship of his friend Mr. Rowson, and if it was fine,
would ride away in the afternoon on his pony, followed by
the groom. The wealth of his grandfather was reported
in the school to be prodigious. The Rev. Mr. Veal used
to compliment Georgy upon it personally, warning him
that he was destined for a high station; that it became
him to prepare, by sedulity and docility in youth, for the
lofty duties to which he would be called in mature age;
that obedience in the child was the best preparation for
command in the man; and that he therefore begged George
would not bring toffee into the school and ruin the health
of the Masters Bangles, who had everything they wanted
at the elegant and abundant table of Mrs. Veal.
With respect to learning, "the Curriculum," as Mr.
Veal loved to call it, was of prodigious extent, and the
young gentlemen in Hart Street might learn a
something of every known science. The Rev. Mr. Veal had
an orrery, an electrifying machine, a turning lathe, a
theatre (in the wash-house), a chemical apparatus, and
what he called a select library of all the works of the
best authors of ancient and modern times and languages.
He took the boys to the British Museum and descanted
upon the antiquities and the specimens of natural history
there, so that audiences would gather round him as he
spoke, and all Bloomsbury highly admired him as a
prodigiously well-informed man. And whenever he spoke
(which he did almost always), he took care to produce the
very finest and longest words of which the vocabulary
gave him the use, rightly judging that it was as cheap to
employ a handsome, large, and sonorous epithet, as to
use a little stingy one.
Thus he would say to George in school, "I observed
on my return home from taking the indulgence of an
evening's scientific conversation with my excellent friend
Doctor Bulders--a true archaeologian, gentlemen, a true
archaeologian--that the windows of your venerated
grandfather's almost princely mansion in Russell Square were
illuminated as if for the purposes of festivity. Am I right
in my conjecture that Mr. Osborne entertained a society
of chosen spirits round his sumptuous board last night?"
Little Georgy, who had considerable humour, and used
to mimic Mr. Veal to his face with great spirit and
dexterity, would reply that Mr. V. was quite correct
in his surmise.
"Then those friends who had the honour of partaking
of Mr. Osborne's hospitality, gentlemen, had no reason,
I will lay any wager, to complain of their repast. I
myself have been more than once so favoured. (By the way,
Master Osborne, you came a little late this morning, and
have been a defaulter in this respect more than once.)
I myself, I say, gentlemen, humble as I am, have been
found not unworthy to share Mr. Osborne's elegant
hospitality. And though I have feasted with the great and
noble of the world--for I presume that I may call my
excellent friend and patron, the Right Honourable George
Earl of Bareacres, one of the number--yet I assure you
that the board of the British merchant was to the full
as richly served, and his reception as gratifying and
noble. Mr. Bluck, sir, we will resume, if you please,
that passage of Eutropis, which was interrupted by the
late arrival of Master Osborne."
To this great man George's education was for some
time entrusted. Amelia was bewildered by his phrases,
but thought him a prodigy of learning. That poor widow
made friends of Mrs. Veal, for reasons of her own. She
liked to be in the house and see Georgy coming to school
there. She liked to be asked to Mrs. Veal's conversazioni,
which took place once a month (as you were informed on
pink cards, with AOHNH engraved on them), and where
the professor welcomed his pupils and their friends to weak
tea and scientific conversation. Poor little Amelia never
missed one of these entertainments and thought them
delicious so long as she might have Georgy sitting by her.
And she would walk from Brompton in any weather,
and embrace Mrs. Veal with tearful gratitude for the
delightful evening she had passed, when, the company
having retired and Georgy gone off with Mr. Rowson, his
attendant, poor Mrs. Osborne put on her cloaks and
her shawls preparatory to walking home.
As for the learning which Georgy imbibed under this
valuable master of a hundred sciences, to judge from
the weekly reports which the lad took home to his
grandfather, his progress was remarkable. The names of a
score or more of desirable branches of knowledge were
printed in a table, and the pupil's progress in each was
marked by the professor. In Greek Georgy was
pronounced aristos, in Latin optimus, in French tres bien,
and so forth; and everybody had prizes for everything
at the end of the year. Even Mr. Swartz, the wooly-
headed young gentleman, and half-brother to the
Honourable Mrs. Mac Mull, and Mr. Bluck, the neglected
young pupil of three-and-twenty from the agricultural
district, and that idle young scapegrace of a Master Todd
before mentioned, received little eighteen-penny books,
with "Athene" engraved on them, and a pompous Latin
inscription from the professor to his young friends.
The family of this Master Todd were hangers-on of
the house of Osborne. The old gentleman had advanced
Todd from being a clerk to be a junior partner in his
establishment.
Mr. Osborne was the godfather of young Master Todd
(who in subsequent life wrote Mr. Osborne Todd on his
cards and became a man of decided fashion), while Miss
Osborne had accompanied Miss Maria Todd to the font,
and gave her protegee a prayer-book, a collection of
tracts, a volume of very low church poetry, or some
such memento of her goodness every year. Miss O. drove
the Todds out in her carriage now and then; when they
were ill, her footman, in large plush smalls and
waistcoat, brought jellies and delicacies from Russell Square to
Coram Street. Coram Street trembled and looked up to
Russell Square indeed, and Mrs. Todd, who had a pretty
hand at cutting out paper trimmings for haunches of
mutton, and could make flowers, ducks, &c., out of turnips
and carrots in a very creditable manner, would go to "the
Square," as it was called, and assist in the preparations
incident to a great dinner, without even so much as
thinking of sitting down to the banquet. If any guest failed at
the eleventh hour, Todd was asked to dine. Mrs. Todd and
Maria came across in the evening, slipped in with a muffled
knock, and were in the drawing-room by the time Miss
Osborne and the ladies under her convoy reached that
apartment--and ready to fire off duets and sing until
the gentlemen came up. Poor Maria Todd; poor young
lady! How she had to work and thrum at these duets
and sonatas in the Street, before they appeared in public
in the Square!
Thus it seemed to be decreed by fate that Georgy
was to domineer over everybody with whom he came in
contact, and that friends, relatives, and domestics were
all to bow the knee before the little fellow. It must
be owned that he accommodated himself very willingly
to this arrangement. Most people do so. And Georgy
liked to play the part of master and perhaps had a
natural aptitude for it.
In Russell Square everybody was afraid of Mr. Osborne,
and Mr. Osborne was afraid of Georgy. The boy's
dashing manners, and offhand rattle about books and
learning, his likeness to his father (dead unreconciled in
Brussels yonder) awed the old gentleman and gave the
young boy the mastery. The old man would start at
some hereditary feature or tone unconsciously used by
the little lad, and fancy that George's father was again
before him. He tried by indulgence to the grandson to
make up for harshness to the elder George. People were
surprised at his gentleness to the boy. He growled and
swore at Miss Osborne as usual, and would smile when
George came down late for breakfast.
Miss Osborne, George's aunt, was a faded old spinster,
broken down by more than forty years of dulness and
coarse usage. It was easy for a lad of spirit to master her.
And whenever George wanted anything from her, from the
jam-pots in her cupboards to the cracked and dry old
colours in her paint-box (the old paint-box which she
had had when she was a pupil of Mr. Smee and was
still almost young and blooming), Georgy took possession
of the object of his desire, which obtained, he took no
further notice of his aunt.
For his friends and cronies, he had a pompous old
schoolmaster, who flattered him, and a toady, his senior,
whom he could thrash. It was dear Mrs. Todd's delight to
leave him with her youngest daughter, Rosa Jemima, a
darling child of eight years old. The little pair looked so
well together, she would say (but not to the folks in "the
Square," we may be sure) "who knows what might
happen? Don't they make a pretty little couple?" the
fond mother thought.
The broken-spirited, old, maternal grandfather was
likewise subject to the little tyrant. He could not help
respecting a lad who had such fine clothes and rode with
a groom behind him. Georgy, on his side, was in the
constant habit of hearing coarse abuse and vulgar satire
levelled at John Sedley by his pitiless old enemy, Mr.
Osborne. Osborne used to call the other the old pauper,
the old coal-man, the old bankrupt, and by many other
such names of brutal contumely. How was little George
to respect a man so prostrate? A few months after he
was with his paternal grandfather, Mrs. Sedley died.
There had been little love between her and the child.
He did not care to show much grief. He came down to
visit his mother in a fine new suit of mourning, and was
very angry that he could not go to a play upon which
he had set his heart.
The illness of that old lady had been the occupation
and perhaps the safeguard of Amelia. What do men know
about women's martyrdoms? We should go mad had
we to endure the hundredth part of those daily pains
which are meekly borne by many women. Ceaseless
slavery meeting with no reward; constant gentleness and
kindness met by cruelty as constant; love, labour, patience,
watchfulness, without even so much as the acknowledgement
of a good word; all this, how many of them have
to bear in quiet, and appear abroad with cheerful faces
as if they felt nothing. Tender slaves that they are, they
must needs be hypocrites and weak.
From her chair Amelia's mother had taken to her bed,
which she had never left, and from which Mrs. Osborne
herself was never absent except when she ran to see
George. The old lady grudged her even those rare visits;
she, who had been a kind, smiling, good-natured mother
once, in the days of her prosperity, but whom poverty
and infirmities had broken down. Her illness or estrangement
did not affect Amelia. They rather enabled her to
support the other calamity under which she was suffering,
and from the thoughts of which she was kept by the
ceaseless calls of the invalid. Amelia bore her harshness
quite gently; smoothed the uneasy pillow; was always
ready with a soft answer to the watchful, querulous
voice; soothed the sufferer with words of hope, such as
her pious simple heart could best feel and utter, and
closed the eyes that had once looked so tenderly upon
her.
Then all her time and tenderness were devoted to the
consolation and comfort of the bereaved old father, who
was stunned by the blow which had befallen him, and
stood utterly alone in the world. His wife, his honour,
his fortune, everything he loved best had fallen away
from him. There was only Amelia to stand by and support
with her gentle arms the tottering, heart-broken old man.
We are not going to write the history: it would be too
dreary and stupid. I can see Vanity Fair yawning over it
d'avance.
One day as the young gentlemen were assembled
in the study at the Rev. Mr. Veal's, and the domestic
chaplain to the Right Honourable the Earl of Bareacres
was spouting away as usual, a smart carriage drove up
to the door decorated with the statue of Athene, and two
gentlemen stepped out. The young Masters Bangles rushed
to the window with a vague notion that their father
might have arrived from Bombay. The great hulking
scholar of three-and-twenty, who was crying secretly over a
passage of Eutropius, flattened his neglected nose against
the panes and looked at the drag, as the laquais de place
sprang from the box and let out the persons in the carriage.
"It's a fat one and a thin one," Mr. Bluck said as a
thundering knock came to the door.
Everybody was interested, from the domestic chaplain
himself, who hoped he saw the fathers of some future
pupils, down to Master Georgy, glad of any pretext for
laying his book down.
The boy in the shabby livery with the faded copper
buttons, who always thrust himself into the tight coat
to open the door, came into the study and said, "Two
gentlemen want to see Master Osborne." The professor
had had a trifling altercation in the morning with that
young gentleman, owing to a difference about the
introduction of crackers in school-time; but his face
resumed its habitual expression of bland courtesy as he
said, "Master Osborne, I give you full permission to go
and see your carriage friends--to whom I beg you to
convey the respectful compliments of myself and Mrs.
Veal."
