Vanity Fair
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
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
[_Transcriber's Note: The name of the Greek goddess Athene; the "O"
represents a capital theta._] 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