Paul Clifford — Complete
sang him a little song of his own composing. He then, taking up the
driving-whip, flanked a fly from the opposite wall, and throwing himself
(naturally fatigued with his numerous exertions) on his sofa, observed,
in a careless tone, that he and his friend Lord Dunshunner were
universally esteemed the best whips in the metropolis. “I,” quoth Mr.
Augustus, “am the best on the road; but my lord is a devil at turning a
corner.”
Paul, who had hitherto lived too unsophisticated a life to be aware of
the importance of which a lord would naturally be in the eyes of Mr.
Augustus Tomlinson, was not so much struck with the grandeur of the
connection as the murderer of the journals had expected. He merely
observed, by way of compliment, that Mr. Augustus and his companion
seemed to be “rolling kiddies.”
A little displeased with this metaphorical remark,--for it may be
observed that “rolling kiddy” is, among the learned in such lore, the
customary expression for “a smart thief,”--the universal Augustus took
that liberty to which by his age and station, so much superior to those
of Paul, he imagined himself entitled, and gently reproved our hero for
his indiscriminate use of flash phrases.
“A lad of your parts,” said he,--“for I see you are clever, by your
eye,--ought to be ashamed of using such vulgar expressions. Have a
nobler spirit, a loftier emulation, Paul, than that which distinguishes
the little ragamuffins of the street. Know that in this country genius
and learning carry everything before them; and if you behave yourself
properly, you may, one day or another, be as high in the world as
myself.”
At this speech Paul looked wistfully round the spruce parlour, and
thought what a fine thing it would be to be lord of such a domain,
together with the appliances of flageolet and cremona, boxing-gloves,
books, fly-flanking flagellum, three guineas, with the little mountain
of silver, and the reputation--shared only with Lord Dunshunner--of
being the best whip in London.
“Yes,” continued Tomlinson, with conscious pride, “I owe my rise to
myself. Learning is better than house and land. 'Doctrina sed vim,' etc.
You know what old Horace says? Why, sir, you would not believe it; but
I was the man who killed his Majesty the King of Sardinia in our
yesterday's paper. Nothing is too arduous for genius. Fag hard, my
boy, and you may rival (for the thing, though difficult, may not be
impossible) Augustus Tomlinson!”
At the conclusion of this harangue, a knock at the door being heard,
Paul took his departure, and met in the hall a fine-looking person
dressed in the height of the fashion, and wearing a pair of prodigiously
large buckles in his shoes. Paul looked, and his heart swelled. “I may
rival,” thought he,--“those were his very words,--I may rival (for
the thing, though difficult, is not impossible) Augustus Tomlinson!”
Absorbed in meditation, he went silently home. The next day the memoirs
of the great Turpin were committed to the flames, and it was noticeable
that henceforth Paul observed a choicer propriety of words, that he
assumed a more refined air of dignity, and that he paid considerably
more attention than heretofore to the lessons of Mr. Peter MacGrawler.
Although it must be allowed that our young hero's progress in the
learned languages was not astonishing, yet an early passion for reading,
growing stronger and stronger by application, repaid him at last with a
tolerable knowledge of the mother-tongue. We must, however, add that his
more favourite and cherished studies were scarcely of that nature which
a prudent preceptor would have greatly commended. They lay chiefly among
novels, plays, and poetry,--which last he affected to that degree
that he became somewhat of a poet himself. Nevertheless these literary
avocations, profitless as they seemed, gave a certain refinement to his
tastes which they were not likely otherwise to have acquired at the Mug;
and while they aroused his ambition to see something of the gay life
they depicted, they imparted to his temper a tone of enterprise and of
thoughtless generosity which perhaps contributed greatly to counteract
those evil influences towards petty vice to which the examples
around him must have exposed his tender youth. But, alas! a great
disappointment to Paul's hope of assistance and companionship in his
literary labours befell him. Mr. Augustus Tomlinson, one bright morning,
disappeared, leaving word with his numerous friends that he was going
to accept a lucrative situation in the North of England. Notwithstanding
the shock this occasioned to the affectionate heart and aspiring temper
of our friend Paul, it abated not his ardour in that field of science
which it seemed that the distinguished absentee had so successfully
cultivated. By little and little, he possessed himself (in addition to
the literary stores we have alluded to) of all it was in the power of
the wise and profound Peter MacGrawler to impart unto him; and at the
age of sixteen he began (oh the presumption of youth!) to fancy himself
more learned than his master.
CHAPTER IV.
He had now become a young man of extreme fashion, and as much repandu in
society as the utmost and most exigent coveter of London celebrity could
desire. He was, of course, a member of the clubs, etc. He was, in
short, of that oft-described set before whom all minor beaux sink into
insignificance, or among whom they eventually obtain a subaltern grade,
by a sacrifice of a due portion of their fortune.--Almack's Revisited.
By the soul of the great Malebranche, who made “A Search after Truth,”
and discovered everything beautiful except that which he searched
for,--by the soul of the great Malebranche, whom Bishop Berkeley found
suffering under an inflammation in the lungs, and very obligingly
talked to death (an instance of conversational powers worthy the envious
emulation of all great metaphysicians and arguers),--by the soul of that
illustrious man, it is amazing to us what a number of truths there are
broken up into little fragments, and scattered here and there through
the world. What a magnificent museum a man might make of the precious
minerals, if he would but go out with his basket under his arm, and his
eyes about him! We ourselves picked up this very day a certain small
piece of truth, with which we propose to explain to thee, fair reader, a
sinister turn in the fortunes of Paul.
“Wherever,” says a living sage, “you see dignity, you may be sure
there is expense requisite to support it.” So was it with Paul. A
young gentleman who was heir-presumptive to the Mug, and who enjoyed
a handsome person with a cultivated mind, was necessarily of a certain
station of society, and an object of respect in the eyes of the
manoeuvring mammas of the vicinity of Thames Court. Many were the
parties of pleasure to Deptford and Greenwich which Paul found himself
compelled to attend; and we need not refer our readers to novels upon
fashionable life to inform them that in good society the gentlemen
always pay for the ladies! Nor was this all the expense to which his
expectations exposed him. A gentleman could scarcely attend these
elegant festivities without devoting some little attention to his dress;
and a fashionable tailor plays the deuce with one's yearly allowance.
We who reside, be it known to you, reader, in Little Brittany are not
very well acquainted with the manners of the better classes in St.
James's. But there was one great vice among the fine people about Thames
Court which we make no doubt does not exist anywhere else,--namely,
these fine people were always in an agony to seem finer than they were;
and the more airs a gentleman or a lady gave him or her self, the more
important they became. Joe, the dog's-meat man, had indeed got into
society entirely from a knack of saying impertinent things to everybody;
and the smartest exclusives of the place, who seldom visited any one
where there was not a silver teapot, used to think Joe had a great deal
in him because he trundled his cart with his head in the air, and one
day gave the very beadle of the parish “the cut direct.”
Now this desire to be so exceedingly fine not only made the society
about Thames Court unpleasant, but expensive. Every one vied with
his neighbour; and as the spirit of rivalry is particularly strong
in youthful bosoms, we can scarcely wonder that it led Paul into many
extravagances. The evil of all circles that profess to be select is high
play; and the reason is obvious: persons who have the power to bestow
on another an advantage he covets would rather sell it than give it;
and Paul, gradually increasing in popularity and ton, found himself, in
spite of his classical education, no match for the finished, or,
rather, finishing gentlemen with whom he began to associate. His first
admittance into the select coterie of these men of the world was formed
at the house of Bachelor Bill, a person of great notoriety among
that portion of the elite which emphatically entitles itself “Flash.”
However, as it is our rigid intention in this work to portray at length
no episodical characters whatsoever, we can afford our readers but a
slight and rapid sketch of Bachelor Bill.
This personage was of Devonshire extraction. His mother had kept the
pleasantest public-house in town, and at her death Bill succeeded to her
property and popularity. All the young ladies in the neighbourhood of
Fiddler's Row, where he resided, set their caps at him: all the most
fashionable prigs, or tobymen, sought to get him into their set; and the
most crack blowen in London would have given her ears at any time for
a loving word from Bachelor Bill. But Bill was a longheaded, prudent
fellow, and of a remarkably cautious temperament. He avoided marriage
and friendship; namely, he was neither plundered nor cornuted. He was a
tall, aristocratic cove, of a devilish neat address, and very gallant,
in an honest way, to the blowens. Like most single men, being very much
the gentleman so far as money was concerned, he gave them plenty of
“feeds,” and from time to time a very agreeable hop. His bingo [Brandy]
was unexceptionable; and as for his stark-naked [Gin], it was voted the
most brilliant thing in nature. In a very short time, by his blows-out
and his bachelorship,--for single men always arrive at the apex of haut
ton more easily than married,--he became the very glass of fashion; and
many were the tight apprentices, even at the west end of the town,
who used to turn back in admiration of Bachelor Bill, when of a Sunday
afternoon he drove down his varment gig to his snug little box on the
borders of Turnham Green. Bill's happiness was not, however, wholly
without alloy. The ladies of pleasure are always so excessively angry
when a man does not make love to them, that there is nothing they will
not say against him; and the fair matrons in the vicinity of Fiddler's
Row spread all manner of unfounded reports against poor Bachelor
Bill. By degrees, however,--for, as Tacitus has said, doubtless with
a prophetic eye to Bachelor Bill, “the truth gains by delay,”--these
reports began to die insensibly away; and Bill now waxing near to the
confines of middle age, his friends comfortably settled for him that he
would be Bachelor Bill all his life. For the rest, he was an excellent
fellow,--gave his broken victuals to the poor, professed a liberal
turn of thinking, and in all the quarrels among the blowens (your crack
blowens are a quarrelsome set!) always took part with the weakest.
Although Bill affected to be very select in his company, he was never
forgetful of his old friends; and Mrs. Margery Lobkins having been very
good to him when he was a little boy in a skeleton jacket, he invariably
sent her a card to his soirees. The good lady, however, had not of late