Emperor. To hear Mr. Sedley talk on board ship you
would have supposed that it was not the first time he and
the Corsican had met, and that the civilian had bearded
the French General at Mount St. John. He had a
thousand anecdotes about the famous battles; he knew the
position of every regiment and the loss which each
had incurred. He did not deny that he had been
concerned in those victories--that he had been with the
army and carried despatches for the Duke of Wellington.
And he described what the Duke did and said on
every conceivable moment of the day of Waterloo, with
such an accurate knowledge of his Grace's sentiments
and proceedings that it was clear he must have been by
the conqueror's side throughout the day; though, as a
non-combatant, his name was not mentioned in the
public documents relative to the battle. Perhaps he actually
worked himself up to believe that he had been engaged
with the army; certain it is that he made a prodigious
sensation for some time at Calcutta, and was called
Waterloo Sedley during the whole of his subsequent stay in
Bengal.
The bills which Jos had given for the purchase of those
unlucky horses were paid without question by him and
his agents. He never was heard to allude to the bargain,
and nobody knows for a certainty what became
of the horses, or how he got rid of them, or of Isidor, his
Belgian servant, who sold a grey horse, very like the one
which Jos rode, at Valenciennes sometime during the
autumn of 1815.
Jos's London agents had orders to pay one hundred
and twenty pounds yearly to his parents at Fulham. It
was the chief support of the old couple; for Mr. Sedley's
speculations in life subsequent to his bankruptcy did not
by any means retrieve the broken old gentleman's
fortune. He tried to be a wine-merchant, a coal-merchant,
a commission lottery agent, &c., &c. He sent round
prospectuses to his friends whenever he took a new trade,
and ordered a new brass plate for the door, and talked
pompously about making his fortune still. But Fortune
never came back to the feeble and stricken old man. One
by one his friends dropped off, and were weary of
buying dear coals and bad wine from him; and there
was only his wife in all the world who fancied, when he
tottered off to the City of a morning, that he was still
doing any business there. At evening he crawled slowly
back; and he used to go of nights to a little club at a
tavern, where he disposed of the finances of the nation.
It was wonderful to hear him talk about millions, and
agios, and discounts, and what Rothschild was
doing, and Baring Brothers. He talked of such vast sums
that the gentlemen of the club (the apothecary, the
undertaker, the great carpenter and builder, the parish clerk,
who was allowed to come stealthily, and Mr. Clapp, our
old acquaintance,) respected the old gentleman. "I was
better off once, sir," he did not fail to tell everybody who
"used the room." "My son, sir, is at this minute chief
magistrate of Ramgunge in the Presidency of Bengal, and
touching his four thousand rupees per mensem. My
daughter might be a Colonel's lady if she liked. I might
draw upon my son, the first magistrate, sir, for two
thousand pounds to-morrow, and Alexander would cash my
bill, down sir, down on the counter, sir. But the Sedleys
were always a proud family." You and I, my dear
reader, may drop into this condition one day: for have
not many of our friends attained it? Our luck may fail:
our powers forsake us: our place on the boards be taken
by better and younger mimes--the chance of life roll
away and leave us shattered and stranded. Then men
will walk across the road when they meet you--or, worse
still, hold you out a couple of fingers and patronize you
in a pitying way--then you will know, as soon as your
back is turned, that your friend begins with a "Poor
devil, what imprudences he has committed, what chances
that chap has thrown away!" Well, well--a carriage and
three thousand a year is not the summit of the reward
nor the end of God's judgment of men. If quacks prosper
as often as they go to the wall--if zanies succeed and
knaves arrive at fortune, and, vice versa, sharing ill
luck and prosperity for all the world like the ablest and
most honest amongst us--I say, brother, the gifts and
pleasures of Vanity Fair cannot be held of any great
account, and that it is probable . . . but we are
wandering out of the domain of the story.
Had Mrs. Sedley been a woman of energy, she would
have exerted it after her husband's ruin and, occupying
a large house, would have taken in boarders. The broken
Sedley would have acted well as the boarding-house
landlady's husband; the Munoz of private life; the titular lord
and master: the carver, house-steward, and humble
husband of the occupier of the dingy throne. I have seen
men of good brains and breeding, and of good hopes and
vigour once, who feasted squires and kept hunters in
their youth, meekly cutting up legs of mutton for
rancorous old harridans and pretending to preside over their
dreary tables--but Mrs. Sedley, we say, had not spirit
enough to bustle about for "a few select inmates to join
a cheerful musical family," such as one reads of in the
Times. She was content to lie on the shore where
fortune had stranded her--and you could see that the
career of this old couple was over.
I don't think they were unhappy. Perhaps they were
a little prouder in their downfall than in their prosperity.
Mrs. Sedley was always a great person for her landlady,
Mrs. Clapp, when she descended and passed many hours
with her in the basement or ornamented kitchen. The
Irish maid Betty Flanagan's bonnets and ribbons, her
sauciness, her idleness, her reckless prodigality of kitchen
candles, her consumption of tea and sugar, and so forth
occupied and amused the old lady almost as much as the
doings of her former household, when she had Sambo and
the coachman, and a groom, and a footboy, and a
housekeeper with a regiment of female domestics--her former
household, about which the good lady talked a hundred
times a day. And besides Betty Flanagan, Mrs. Sedley
had all the maids-of-all-work in the street to superintend.
She knew how each tenant of the cottages paid or
owed his little rent. She stepped aside when Mrs.
Rougemont the actress passed with her dubious family. She
flung up her head when Mrs. Pestler, the apothecary's
lady, drove by in her husband's professional one-horse
chaise. She had colloquies with the greengrocer about
the pennorth of turnips which Mr. Sedley loved; she kept
an eye upon the milkman and the baker's boy; and
made visitations to the butcher, who sold hundreds of
oxen very likely with less ado than was made about
Mrs. Sedley's loin of mutton: and she counted the
potatoes under the joint on Sundays, on which days, dressed
in her best, she went to church twice and read Blair's
Sermons in the evening.
On that day, for "business" prevented him on weekdays
from taking such a pleasure, it was old Sedley's
delight to take out his little grandson Georgy to the
neighbouring parks or Kensington Gardens, to see the soldiers
or to feed the ducks. Georgy loved the redcoats, and his
grandpapa told him how his father had been a famous
soldier, and introduced him to many sergeants and others
with Waterloo medals on their breasts, to whom the
old grandfather pompously presented the child as the
son of Captain Osborne of the --th, who died gloriously
on the glorious eighteenth. He has been known to treat
some of these non-commissioned gentlemen to a glass of
porter, and, indeed, in their first Sunday walks was
disposed to spoil little Georgy, sadly gorging the boy with
apples and parliament, to the detriment of his health--
until Amelia declared that George should never go out
with his grandpapa unless the latter promised solemnly,
and on his honour, not to give the child any cakes,
lollipops, or stall produce whatever.
Between Mrs. Sedley and her daughter there was a sort
of coolness about this boy, and a secret jealousy--for
one evening in George's very early days, Amelia, who
had been seated at work in their little parlour scarcely
remarking that the old lady had quitted the room, ran
upstairs instinctively to the nursery at the cries of the
child, who had been asleep until that moment--and
there found Mrs. Sedley in the act of surreptitiously
administering Daffy's Elixir to the infant. Amelia, the
gentlest and sweetest of everyday mortals, when she
found this meddling with her maternal authority, thrilled
and trembled all over with anger. Her cheeks, ordinarily
pale, now flushed up, until they were as red as they used
to be when she was a child of twelve years old. She
seized the baby out of her mother's arms and then
grasped at the bottle, leaving the old lady gaping at her,
furious, and holding the guilty tea-spoon.
Amelia flung the bottle crashing into the fire-place.
"I will NOT have baby poisoned, Mamma," cried Emmy,
rocking the infant about violently with both her arms
round him and turning with flashing eyes at her mother.
"Poisoned, Amelia!" said the old lady; "this language
to me?"
"He shall not have any medicine but that which Mr.
Pestler sends for hi n. He told me that Daffy's Elixir was
poison."
"Very good: you think I'm a murderess then," replied
Mrs. Sedley. "This is the language you use to your mother.
I have met with misfortunes: I have sunk low in life: I
have kept my carriage, and now walk on foot: but I did
not know I was a murderess before, and thank you for the
NEWS."
"Mamma," said the poor girl, who was always ready for
tears--"you shouldn't be hard upon me. I--I didn't mean
--I mean, I did not wish to say you would to any
wrong to this dear child, only--"
"Oh, no, my love,--only that I was a murderess; in
which case I had better go to the Old Bailey. Though I
didn't poison YOU, when you were a child, but gave you
the best of education and the most expensive masters
money could procure. Yes; I've nursed five children and
buried three; and the one I loved the best of all, and
tended through croup, and teething, and measles, and
hooping-cough, and brought up with foreign masters,
regardless of expense, and with accomplishments at Minerva
House--which I never had when I was a girl--when I was
too glad to honour my father and mother, that I might
live long in the land, and to be useful, and not to mope
all day in my room and act the fine lady--says I'm a
murderess. Ah, Mrs. Osborne! may YOU never nourish a
viper in your bosom, that's MY prayer."
"Mamma, Mamma!" cried the bewildered girl; and the
child in her arms set up a frantic chorus of shouts.
"A murderess, indeed! Go down on your knees and
pray to God to cleanse your wicked ungrateful heart,
Amelia, and may He forgive you as I do." And Mrs.
Sedley tossed out of the room, hissing out the word
poison once more, and so ending her charitable
benediction.
Till the termination of her natural life, this breach
between Mrs. Sedley and her daughter was never thoroughly
mended. The quarrel gave the elder lady numberless
advantages which she did not fail to turn to account with
female ingenuity and perseverance. For instance, she
scarcely spoke to Amelia for many weeks afterwards.
She warned the domestics not to touch the child, as Mrs.
Osborne might be offended. She asked her daughter to
see and satisfy herself that there was no poison prepared
in the little daily messes that were concocted for Georgy.
When neighbours asked after the boy's health, she
referred them pointedly to Mrs. Osborne. SHE never
ventured to ask whether the baby was well or not. SHE
would not touch the child although he was her grandson,
and own precious darling, for she was not USED to
children, and might kill it. And whenever Mr. Pestler came
upon his healing inquisition, she received the doctor with
such a sarcastic and scornful demeanour, as made the
surgeon declare that not Lady Thistlewood herself, whom
he had the honour of attending professionally, could
give herself greater airs than old Mrs. Sedley, from whom
he never took a fee. And very likely Emmy was jealous
too, upon her own part, as what mother is not, of those
who would manage her children for her, or become
candidates for the first place in their affections. It is certain
that when anybody nursed the child, she was uneasy, and
that she would no more allow Mrs. Clapp or the
domestic to dress or tend him than she would have let them
wash her husband's miniature which hung up over her
little bed--the same little bed from which the poor girl
had gone to his; and to which she retired now for many
long, silent, tearful, but happy years.
In this room was all Amelia's heart and treasure. Here
it was that she tended her boy and watched him through
the many ills of childhood, with a constant passion of
love. The elder George returned in him somehow, only
improved, and as if come back from heaven. In a
hundred little tones, looks, and movements, the child was
so like his father that the widow's heart thrilled as she
held him to it; and he would often ask the cause of her
tears. It was because of his likeness to his father, she
did not scruple to tell him. She talked constantly to him
about this dead father, and spoke of her love for George
to the innocent and wondering child; much more than she
ever had done to George himself, or to any confidante of
her youth. To her parents she never talked about this
matter, shrinking from baring her heart to them. Little
