Vanity Fair (74 page)

"So Russell Square is not good enough for Mrs. Maria, hay?" said the
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 stead fast 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.

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
division of our Indian empire, where our gallant old friends of the
—th regiment are quartered under the command of the brave Colonel,
Sir Michael O'Dowd. Time has dealt kindly with that stout officer,
as it does ordinarily with men who have good stomachs and good
tempers and are not perplexed over much by fatigue of the brain.
The Colonel plays a good knife and fork at tiffin and resumes those
weapons with great success at dinner. He smokes his hookah after
both meals and puffs as quietly while his wife scolds him as he did
under the fire of the French at Waterloo. Age and heat have not
diminished the activity or the eloquence of the descendant of the
Malonys and the Molloys. Her Ladyship, our old acquaintance, is as
much at home at Madras as at Brussels in the cantonment as under the
tents. On the march you saw her at the head of the regiment seated
on a royal elephant, a noble sight. Mounted on that beast, she has
been into action with tigers in the jungle, she has been received by
native princes, who have welcomed her and Glorvina into the recesses
of their zenanas and offered her shawls and jewels which it went to
her heart to refuse. The sentries of all arms salute her wherever
she makes her appearance, and she touches her hat gravely to their
salutation. Lady O'Dowd is one of the greatest ladies in the
Presidency of Madras—her quarrel with Lady Smith, wife of Sir Minos
Smith the puisne judge, is still remembered by some at Madras, when
the Colonel's lady snapped her fingers in the Judge's lady's face
and said SHE'D never walk behind ever a beggarly civilian. Even
now, though it is five-and-twenty years ago, people remember Lady
O'Dowd performing a jig at Government House, where she danced down
two Aides-de-Camp, a Major of Madras cavalry, and two gentlemen of
the Civil Service; and, persuaded by Major Dobbin, C.B., second in
command of the —th, to retire to the supper-room, lassata nondum
satiata recessit.

Peggy O'Dowd is indeed the same as ever, kind in act and thought;
impetuous in temper; eager to command; a tyrant over her Michael; a
dragon amongst all the ladies of the regiment; a mother to all the
young men, whom she tends in their sickness, defends in all their
scrapes, and with whom Lady Peggy is immensely popular. But the
Subalterns' and Captains' ladies (the Major is unmarried) cabal
against her a good deal. They say that Glorvina gives herself airs
and that Peggy herself is ill tolerably domineering. She interfered
with a little congregation which Mrs. Kirk had got up and laughed
the young men away from her sermons, stating that a soldier's wife
had no business to be a parson—that Mrs. Kirk would be much better
mending her husband's clothes; and, if the regiment wanted sermons,
that she had the finest in the world, those of her uncle, the Dean.
She abruptly put a termination to a flirtation which Lieutenant
Stubble of the regiment had commenced with the Surgeon's wife,
threatening to come down upon Stubble for the money which he had
borrowed from her (for the young fellow was still of an extravagant
turn) unless he broke off at once and went to the Cape on sick
leave. On the other hand, she housed and sheltered Mrs. Posky, who
fled from her bungalow one night, pursued by her infuriate husband,
wielding his second brandy bottle, and actually carried Posky
through the delirium tremens and broke him of the habit of drinking,
which had grown upon that officer, as all evil habits will grow upon
men. In a word, in adversity she was the best of comforters, in
good fortune the most troublesome of friends, having a perfectly
good opinion of herself always and an indomitable resolution to have
her own way.