Vanity Fair
old gentleman, rattling up the carriage windows as he and his daughter
drove away one night from Mrs. Frederick Bullock's, after dinner. "So
she invites her father and sister to a second day's dinner (if those
sides, or ontrys, as she calls 'em, weren't served yesterday, I'm
d--d), and to meet City folks and littery men, and keeps the Earls and
the Ladies, and the Honourables to herself. Honourables? Damn
Honourables. I am a plain British merchant I am, and could buy the
beggarly hounds over and over. Lords, indeed!--why, at one of her
swarreys I saw one of 'em speak to a dam fiddler--a fellar I despise.
And they won't come to Russell Square, won't they? Why, I'll lay my
life I've got a better glass of wine, and pay a better figure for it,
and can show a handsomer service of silver, and can lay a better dinner
on my mahogany, than ever they see on theirs--the cringing, sneaking,
stuck-up fools. Drive on quick, James: I want to get back to Russell
Square--ha, ha!" and he sank back into the corner with a furious laugh.
With such reflections on his own superior merit, it was the custom of
the old gentleman not unfrequently to console himself.
Jane Osborne could not but concur in these opinions respecting her
sister's conduct; and when Mrs. Frederick's first-born, Frederick
Augustus Howard Stanley Devereux Bullock, was born, old Osborne, who
was invited to the christening and to be godfather, contented himself
with sending the child a gold cup, with twenty guineas inside it for
the nurse. "That's more than any of your Lords will give, I'LL
warrant," he said and refused to attend at the ceremony.
The splendour of the gift, however, caused great satisfaction to the
house of Bullock. Maria thought that her father was very much pleased
with her, and Frederick augured the best for his little son and heir.
One can fancy the pangs with which Miss Osborne in her solitude in
Russell Square read the Morning Post, where her sister's name occurred
every now and then, in the articles headed "Fashionable Reunions," and
where she had an opportunity of reading a description of Mrs. F.
Bullock's costume, when presented at the drawing room by Lady Frederica
Bullock. Jane's own life, as we have said, admitted of no such
grandeur. It was an awful existence. She had to get up of black
winter's mornings to make breakfast for her scowling old father, who
would have turned the whole house out of doors if his tea had not been
ready at half-past eight. She remained silent opposite to him,
listening to the urn hissing, and sitting in tremor while the parent
read his paper and consumed his accustomed portion of muffins and tea.
At half-past nine he rose and went to the City, and she was almost free
till dinner-time, to make visitations in the kitchen and to scold the
servants; to drive abroad and descend upon the tradesmen, who were
prodigiously respectful; to leave her cards and her papa's at the great
glum respectable houses of their City friends; or to sit alone in the
large drawing-room, expecting visitors; and working at a huge piece of
worsted by the fire, on the sofa, hard by the great Iphigenia clock,
which ticked and tolled with mournful loudness in the dreary room. The
great glass over the mantelpiece, faced by the other great console
glass at the opposite end of the room, increased and multiplied between
them the brown Holland bag in which the chandelier hung, until you saw
these brown Holland bags fading away in endless perspectives, and this
apartment of Miss Osborne's seemed the centre of a system of
drawing-rooms. When she removed the cordovan leather from the grand
piano and ventured to play a few notes on it, it sounded with a
mournful sadness, startling the dismal echoes of the house. George's
picture was gone, and laid upstairs in a lumber-room in the garret; and
though there was a consciousness of him, and father and daughter often
instinctively knew that they were thinking of him, no mention was ever
made of the brave and once darling son.
At five o'clock Mr. Osborne came back to his dinner, which he and his
daughter took in silence (seldom broken, except when he swore and was
savage, if the cooking was not to his liking), or which they shared
twice in a month with a party of dismal friends of Osborne's rank and
age. Old Dr. Gulp and his lady from Bloomsbury Square; old Mr.
Frowser, the attorney, from Bedford Row, a very great man, and from his
business, hand-in-glove with the "nobs at the West End"; old Colonel
Livermore, of the Bombay Army, and Mrs. Livermore, from Upper Bedford
Place; old Sergeant Toffy and Mrs. Toffy; and sometimes old Sir Thomas
Coffin and Lady Coffin, from Bedford Square. Sir Thomas was celebrated
as a hanging judge, and the particular tawny port was produced when he
dined with Mr. Osborne.
These people and their like gave the pompous Russell Square merchant
pompous dinners back again. They had solemn rubbers of whist, when
they went upstairs after drinking, and their carriages were called at
half past ten. Many rich people, whom we poor devils are in the habit
of envying, lead contentedly an existence like that above described.
Jane Osborne scarcely ever met a man under sixty, and almost the only
bachelor who appeared in their society was Mr. Smirk, the celebrated
ladies' doctor.
I can't say that nothing had occurred to disturb the monotony of this
awful existence: the fact is, there had been a secret in poor Jane's
life which had made her father more savage and morose than even nature,
pride, and over-feeding had made him. This secret was connected with
Miss Wirt, who had a cousin an artist, Mr. Smee, very celebrated since
as a portrait-painter and R.A., but who once was glad enough to give
drawing lessons to ladies of fashion. Mr. Smee has forgotten where
Russell Square is now, but he was glad enough to visit it in the year
1818, when Miss Osborne had instruction from him.
Smee (formerly a pupil of Sharpe of Frith Street, a dissolute,
irregular, and unsuccessful man, but a man with great knowledge of his
art) being the cousin of Miss Wirt, we say, and introduced by her to
Miss Osborne, whose hand and heart were still free after various
incomplete love affairs, felt a great attachment for this lady, and it
is believed inspired one in her bosom. Miss Wirt was the confidante of
this intrigue. I know not whether she used to leave the room where the
master and his pupil were painting, in order to give them an
opportunity for exchanging those vows and sentiments which cannot be
uttered advantageously in the presence of a third party; I know not
whether she hoped that should her cousin succeed in carrying off the
rich merchant's daughter, he would give Miss Wirt a portion of the
wealth which she had enabled him to win--all that is certain is that
Mr. Osborne got some hint of the transaction, came back from the City
abruptly, and entered the drawing-room with his bamboo cane; found the
painter, the pupil, and the companion all looking exceedingly pale
there; turned the former out of doors with menaces that he would break
every bone in his skin, and half an hour afterwards dismissed Miss Wirt
likewise, kicking her trunks down the stairs, trampling on her
bandboxes, and shaking his fist at her hackney coach as it bore her
away.
Jane Osborne kept her bedroom for many days. She was not allowed to
have a companion afterwards. Her father swore to her that she should
not have a shilling of his money if she made any match without his
concurrence; and as he wanted a woman to keep his house, he did not
choose that she should marry, so that she was obliged to give up all
projects with which Cupid had any share. During her papa's life, then,
she resigned herself to the manner of existence here described, and was
content to be an old maid. Her sister, meanwhile, was having children
with finer names every year and the intercourse between the two grew
fainter continually. "Jane and I do not move in the same sphere of
life," Mrs. Bullock said. "I regard her as a sister, of course"--which
means--what does it mean when a lady says that she regards Jane as a
sister?
It has been described how the Misses Dobbin lived with their father at
a fine villa at Denmark Hill, where there were beautiful graperies and
peach-trees which delighted little Georgy Osborne. The Misses Dobbin,
who drove often to Brompton to see our dear Amelia, came sometimes to
Russell Square too, to pay a visit to their old acquaintance Miss
Osborne. I believe it was in consequence of the commands of their
brother the Major in India (for whom their papa had a prodigious
respect), that they paid attention to Mrs. George; for the Major, the
godfather and guardian of Amelia's little boy, still hoped that the
child's grandfather might be induced to relent towards him and
acknowledge him for the sake of his son. The Misses Dobbin kept Miss
Osborne acquainted with the state of Amelia's affairs; how she was
living with her father and mother; how poor they were; how they
wondered what men, and such men as their brother and dear Captain
Osborne, could find in such an insignificant little chit; how she was
still, as heretofore, a namby-pamby milk-and-water affected
creature--but how the boy was really the noblest little boy ever
seen--for the hearts of all women warm towards young children, and the
sourest spinster is kind to them.
One day, after great entreaties on the part of the Misses Dobbin,
Amelia allowed little George to go and pass a day with them at Denmark
Hill--a part of which day she spent herself in writing to the Major in
India. She congratulated him on the happy news which his sisters had
just conveyed to her. She prayed for his prosperity and that of the
bride he had chosen. She thanked him for a thousand thousand kind
offices and proofs of steadfast friendship to her in her affliction.
She told him the last news about little Georgy, and how he was gone to
spend that very day with his sisters in the country. She underlined
the letter a great deal, and she signed herself affectionately his
friend, Amelia Osborne. She forgot to send any message of kindness to
Lady O'Dowd, as her wont was--and did not mention Glorvina by name, and
only in italics, as the Major's BRIDE, for whom she begged blessings.
But the news of the marriage removed the reserve which she had kept up
towards him. She was glad to be able to own and feel how warmly and
gratefully she regarded him--and as for the idea of being jealous of
Glorvina (Glorvina, indeed!), Amelia would have scouted it, if an angel
from heaven had hinted it to her. That night, when Georgy came back in
the pony-carriage in which he rejoiced, and in which he was driven by
Sir Wm. Dobbin's old coachman, he had round his neck a fine gold chain
and watch. He said an old lady, not pretty, had given it him, who
cried and kissed him a great deal. But he didn't like her. He liked
grapes very much. And he only liked his mamma. Amelia shrank and
started; the timid soul felt a presentiment of terror when she heard
that the relations of the child's father had seen him.
Miss Osborne came back to give her father his dinner. He had made a
good speculation in the City, and was rather in a good humour that day,
and chanced to remark the agitation under which she laboured. "What's
the matter, Miss Osborne?" he deigned to say.
The woman burst into tears. "Oh, sir," she said, "I've seen little
George. He is as beautiful as an angel--and so like him!" The old man
opposite to her did not say a word, but flushed up and began to tremble
in every limb.
CHAPTER XLIII
In Which the Reader Has to Double the Cape
The astonished reader must be called upon to transport himself ten
thousand miles to the military station of Bundlegunge, in the Madras