Vanity Fair (98 page)

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 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 fashion), while Miss Osborne had accompanied Miss Maria
Todd to the font, and gave her protegee a prayer-book, a collection
of tracts, a volume of very low church poetry, or some such memento
of her goodness every year. Miss O. drove the Todds out in her
carriage now and then; when they were ill, her footman, in large
plush smalls and waistcoat, brought jellies and delicacies from
Russell Square to Coram Street. Coram Street trembled and looked up
to Russell Square indeed, and Mrs. Todd, who had a pretty hand at
cutting out paper trimmings for haunches of mutton, and could make
flowers, ducks, &c., out of turnips and carrots in a very creditable
manner, would go to "the Square," as it was called, and assist in
the preparations incident to a great dinner, without even so much as
thinking of sitting down to the banquet. If any guest failed at the
eleventh hour, Todd was asked to dine. Mrs. Todd and Maria came
across in the evening, slipped in with a muffled knock, and were in
the drawing-room by the time Miss Osborne and the ladies under her
convoy reached that apartment—and ready to fire off duets and sing
until the gentlemen came up. Poor Maria Todd; poor young lady! How
she had to work and thrum at these duets and sonatas in the Street,
before they appeared in public in the Square!

Thus it seemed to be decreed by fate that Georgy was to domineer
over everybody with whom he came in contact, and that friends,
relatives, and domestics were all to bow the knee before the little
fellow. It must be owned that he accommodated himself very
willingly to this arrangement. Most people do so. And Georgy liked
to play the part of master and perhaps had a natural aptitude for
it.

In Russell Square everybody was afraid of Mr. Osborne, and Mr.
Osborne was afraid of Georgy. The boy's dashing manners, and
offhand rattle about books and learning, his likeness to his father
(dead unreconciled in Brussels yonder) awed the old gentleman and
gave the young boy the mastery. The old man would start at some
hereditary feature or tone unconsciously used by the little lad, and
fancy that George's father was again before him. He tried by
indulgence to the grandson to make up for harshness to the elder
George. People were surprised at his gentleness to the boy. He
growled and swore at Miss Osborne as usual, and would smile when
George came down late for breakfast.

Miss Osborne, George's aunt, was a faded old spinster, broken down
by more than forty years of dulness and coarse usage. It was easy
for a lad of spirit to master her. And whenever George wanted
anything from her, from the jam-pots in her cupboards to the cracked
and dry old colours in her paint-box (the old paint-box which she
had had when she was a pupil of Mr. Smee and was still almost young
and blooming), Georgy took possession of the object of his desire,
which obtained, he took no further notice of his aunt.

For his friends and cronies, he had a pompous old schoolmaster, who
flattered him, and a toady, his senior, whom he could thrash. It
was dear Mrs. Todd's delight to leave him with her youngest
daughter, Rosa Jemima, a darling child of eight years old. The
little pair looked so well together, she would say (but not to the
folks in "the Square," we may be sure) "who knows what might happen?
Don't they make a pretty little couple?" the fond mother thought.

The broken-spirited, old, maternal grandfather was likewise subject
to the little tyrant. He could not help respecting a lad who had
such fine clothes and rode with a groom behind him. Georgy, on his
side, was in the constant habit of hearing coarse abuse and vulgar
satire levelled at John Sedley by his pitiless old enemy, Mr.
Osborne. Osborne used to call the other the old pauper, the old
coal-man, the old bankrupt, and by many other such names of brutal
contumely. How was little George to respect a man so prostrate? A
few months after he was with his paternal grandfather, Mrs. Sedley
died. There had been little love between her and the child. He did
not care to show much grief. He came down to visit his mother in a
fine new suit of mourning, and was very angry that he could not go
to a play upon which he had set his heart.

The illness of that old lady had been the occupation and perhaps the
safeguard of Amelia. What do men know about women's martyrdoms? We
should go mad had we to endure the hundredth part of those daily
pains which are meekly borne by many women. Ceaseless slavery
meeting with no reward; constant gentleness and kindness met by
cruelty as constant; love, labour, patience, watchfulness, without
even so much as the acknowledgement of a good word; all this, how
many of them have to bear in quiet, and appear abroad with cheerful
faces as if they felt nothing. Tender slaves that they are, they
must needs be hypocrites and weak.

From her chair Amelia's mother had taken to her bed, which she had
never left, and from which Mrs. Osborne herself was never absent
except when she ran to see George. The old lady grudged her even
those rare visits; she, who had been a kind, smiling, good-natured
mother once, in the days of her prosperity, but whom poverty and
infirmities had broken down. Her illness or estrangement did not
affect Amelia. They rather enabled her to support the other
calamity under which she was suffering, and from the thoughts of
which she was kept by the ceaseless calls of the invalid. Amelia
bore her harshness quite gently; smoothed the uneasy pillow; was
always ready with a soft answer to the watchful, querulous voice;
soothed the sufferer with words of hope, such as her pious simple
heart could best feel and utter, and closed the eyes that had once
looked so tenderly upon her.

Then all her time and tenderness were devoted to the consolation and
comfort of the bereaved old father, who was stunned by the blow
which had befallen him, and stood utterly alone in the world. His
wife, his honour, his fortune, everything he loved best had fallen
away from him. There was only Amelia to stand by and support with
her gentle arms the tottering, heart-broken old man. We are not
going to write the history: it would be too dreary and stupid. I
can see Vanity Fair yawning over it d'avance.

One day as the young gentlemen were assembled in the study at the
Rev. Mr. Veal's, and the domestic chaplain to the Right Honourable
the Earl of Bareacres was spouting away as usual, a smart carriage
drove up to the door decorated with the statue of Athene, and two
gentlemen stepped out. The young Masters Bangles rushed to the
window with a vague notion that their father might have arrived from
Bombay. The great hulking scholar of three-and-twenty, who was
crying secretly over a passage of Eutropius, flattened his neglected
nose against the panes and looked at the drag, as the laquais de
place sprang from the box and let out the persons in the carriage.