The History of Samuel Titmarsh, and The Great Hoggarty Diamond"'Do you come for Mamma, sir?' said Miss Brough, with as much graciousness as her physiognomy could command. 'I am Miss Brough, sir.'
"'I wish, madam, you would let me not breathe a word regarding my business until you have sung another charming strain.'
"She did not sing, but looked pleased, and said, 'La! sir, what is your business?'
"'My business is with a lady, your respected father's guest in this house.'
"'Oh, Mrs. Hoggarty!' says Miss Brough, flouncing towards the bell, and ringing it. 'John, send to Mrs. Hoggarty, in the shrubbery; here is a gentleman who wants to see her.'
"'I know,' continued I, 'Mrs. Hoggarty's peculiarities as well as anyone, madam; and aware that those and her education are not such as to make her a fit companion for you. I know you do not like her: she has written to us in Somersetshire that you do not like her.'
"'What! she has been abusing us to her friends, has she?' cried Miss Brough (it was the very point I wished to insinuate). 'If she does not like us, why does she not leave us?'
"'She _has_ made rather a long visit,' said I; 'and I am sure that her nephew and niece are longing for her return. Pray, madam, do not move, for you may aid me in the object for which I come.'
"The object for which I came, sir, was to establish a regular battle-royal between the two ladies; at the end of which I intended to appeal to Mrs. Hoggarty, and say that she ought really no longer to stay in a house with the members of which she had such unhappy differences.
Well, sir, the battle-royal was fought,--Miss Belinda opening the fire, by saying she understood Mrs. Hoggarty had been calumniating her to her friends. But though at the end of it Miss rushed out of the room in a rage, and vowed she would leave her home unless that odious woman left it, your dear aunt said, 'Ha, ha! I know the minx's vile stratagems; but, thank Heaven! I have a good heart, and my religion enables me to forgive her. I shall not leave her excellent papa's house, or vex by my departure that worthy admirable man.'
"I then tried Mrs. H. on the score of compa.s.sion. 'Your niece,' said I, 'Mrs. t.i.tmarsh, madam, has been of late, Sam says, rather poorly,--qualmish of mornings, madam,--a little nervous, and low in spirits,--symptoms, madam, that are scarcely to be mistaken in a young married person.'
"Mrs. Hoggarty said she had an admirable cordial that she would send Mrs.
Samuel t.i.tmarsh, and she was perfectly certain it would do her good.
"With very great unwillingness I was obliged now to bring my last reserve into the field, and may tell you what that was, Sam my boy, now that the matter is so long pa.s.sed. 'Madam,' said I, 'there's a matter about which I must speak, though indeed I scarcely dare. I dined with your nephew yesterday, and met at his table a young man--a young man of low manners, but evidently one who has blinded your nephew, and I too much fear has succeeded in making an impression upon your niece. His name is Hoskins, madam; and when I state that he who was never in the house during your presence there, has dined with your too confiding nephew sixteen times in three weeks, I may leave you to imagine what I dare not--dare not imagine myself.'
"The shot told. Your aunt bounced up at once, and in ten minutes more was in my carriage, on our way back to London. There, sir, was not that generalship?"
"And you played this pretty trick off at my wife's expense, Mr.
Smithers," said I.
"At your wife's expense, certainly; but for the benefit of both of you."
"It's lucky, sir, that you are an old man," I replied, "and that the affair happened ten years ago; or, by the Lord, Mr. Smithers, I would have given you such a horsewhipping as you never heard of!"
But this was the way in which Mrs. Hoggarty was brought back to her relatives; and this was the reason why we took that house in Bernard Street, the doings at which must now he described.
CHAPTER X
OF SAM'S PRIVATE AFFAIRS AND OF THE FIRM OF BROUGH AND HOFF
We took a genteel house in Bernard Street, Russell Square, and my aunt sent for all her furniture from the country; which would have filled two such houses, but which came pretty cheap to us young housekeepers, as we had only to pay the carriage of the goods from Bristol.
When I brought Mrs. H. her third half-year's dividend, having not for four months touched a shilling of her money, I must say she gave me 50_l_. of the 80_l_., and told me that was ample pay for the board and lodging of a poor old woman like her, who did not eat more than a sparrow.
I have myself, in the country, seen her eat nine sparrows in a pudding; but she was rich and I could not complain. If she saved 600_l_. a year, at the least, by living with us, why, all the savings would one day come to me; and so Mary and I consoled ourselves, and tried to manage matters as well as we might. It was no easy task to keep a mansion in Bernard Street and save money out of 470_l_. a year, which was my income. But what a lucky fellow I was to have such an income!
As Mrs. Hoggarty left the Rookery in Smithers's carriage, Mr. Brough, with his four greys, was entering the lodge-gate; and I should like to have seen the looks of these two gentlemen, as the one was carrying the other's prey off, out of his own very den, under his very nose.
He came to see her the next day, and protested that he would not leave the house until she left it with him: that he had heard of his daughter's infamous conduct, and had seen her in tears--"in tears, madam, and on her knees, imploring Heaven to pardon her!" But Mr. B. was obliged to leave the house without my aunt, who had a _causa major_ for staying, and hardly allowed poor Mary out of her sight,--opening every one of the letters that came into the house directed to my wife, and suspecting hers to everybody. Mary never told me of all this pain for many many years afterwards; but had always a smiling face for her husband when he came home from his work. As for poor Gus, my aunt had so frightened him, that he never once showed his nose in the place all the time we lived there; but used to be content with news of Mary, of whom he was as fond as he was of me.
Mr. Brough, when my aunt left him, was in a furious ill-humour with me.
He found fault with me ten times a day, and openly, before the gents of the office; but I let him one day know pretty smartly that I was not only a servant, but a considerable shareholder in the company; that I defied him to find fault with my work or my regularity; and that I was not minded to receive any insolent language from him or any man. He said it was always so: that he had never cherished a young man in his bosom, but the ingrate had turned on him; that he was accustomed to wrong and undutifulness from his children, and that he would pray that the sin might be forgiven me. A moment before he had been cursing and swearing at me, and speaking to me as if I had been his s...o...b..ack. But, look you, I was not going to put up with any more of Madam Brough's airs, or of his. With me they might act as they thought fit; but I did not choose that my wife should be pa.s.sed over by them, as she had been in the matter of the visit to Fulham.
Brough ended by warning me of Hodge and Smithers. "Beware of these men,"
said he; "but for my honesty, your aunt's landed property would have been sacrificed by these cormorants: and when, for her benefit--which you, obstinate young man, will not perceive--I wished to dispose of her land, her attorneys actually had the audacity--the unchristian avarice I may say--to ask ten per cent. commission on the sale."
There might be some truth in this, I thought: at any rate, when rogues fall out, honest men come by their own: and now I began to suspect, I am sorry to say, that both the attorney and the Director had a little of the rogue in their composition. It was especially about my wife's fortune that Mr. B. showed _his_ cloven foot: for proposing, as usual, that I should purchase shares with it in our Company, I told him that my wife was a minor, and as such her little fortune was vested out of my control altogether. He flung away in a rage at this; and I soon saw that he did not care for me any more, by Abednego's manner to me. No more holidays, no more advances of money, had I: on the contrary, the private clerkship at 150_l_. was abolished, and I found myself on my 250_l_. a year again.
Well, what then? it was always a good income, and I did my duty, and laughed at the Director.
About this time, in the beginning of 1824, the Jamaica Ginger Beer Company shut up shop--exploded, as Gus said, with a bang! The Patent Pump shares were down to 15_l_. upon a paid-up capital of 65_l_. Still ours were at a high premium; and the Independent West Diddles.e.x held its head up as proudly as any office in London. Roundhand's abuse had had some influence against the Director, certainly; for he hinted at malversation of shares: but the Company still stood as united as the Hand- in-Hand, and as firm as the Rock.
To return to the state of affairs in Bernard Street, Russell Square: my aunt's old furniture crammed our little rooms; and my aunt's enormous old jingling grand piano, with crooked legs and half the strings broken, occupied three-fourths of the little drawing-room. Here used Mrs. H. to sit, and play us, for hours, sonatas that were in fashion in Lord Charleville's time; and sung with a cracked voice, till it was all that we could do to refrain from laughing.
And it was queer to remark the change that had taken place in Mrs.
Hoggarty's character now: for whereas she was in the country among the topping persons of the village, and quite content with a tea-party at six and a game of twopenny whist afterwards,--in London she would never dine till seven; would have a fly from the mews to drive in the Park twice a week; cut and uncut, and ripped up and twisted over and over, all her old gowns, flounces, caps, and fallals, and kept my poor Mary from morning till night altering them to the present mode. Mrs. Hoggarty, moreover, appeared in a new wig; and, I am sorry to say, turned out with such a pair of red cheeks as Nature never gave her, and as made all the people in Bernard Street stare, where they are not as yet used to such fashions.
Moreover, she insisted upon our establishing a servant in livery,--a boy, that is, of about sixteen,--who was dressed in one of the old liveries that she had brought with her from Somersetshire, decorated with new cuffs and collars, and new b.u.t.tons: on the latter were represented the united crests of the t.i.tmarshes and Hoggartys, viz., a tomt.i.t rampant and a hog in armour. I thought this livery and crest-b.u.t.ton rather absurd, I must confess; though my family is very ancient. And heavens! what a roar of laughter was raised in the office one day, when the little servant in the big livery, with the immense cane, walked in and brought me a message from Mrs. Hoggarty of Castle Hoggarty! Furthermore, all letters were delivered on a silver tray. If we had had a baby, I believe Aunt would have had it down on the tray: but there was as yet no foundation for Mr.
Smithers's insinuation upon that score, any more than for his other cowardly fabrication before narrated. Aunt and Mary used to walk gravely up and down the New Road, with the boy following with his great gold-headed stick; but though there was all this ceremony and parade, and Aunt still talked of her acquaintances, we did not see a single person from week's end to week's end, and a more dismal house than ours could hardly be found in London town.
On Sundays, Mrs. Hoggarty used to go to St. Pancras Church, then just built, and as handsome as Covent Garden Theatre; and of evenings, to a meeting-house of the Anabaptists: and that day, at least, Mary and I had to ourselves,--for we chose to have seats at the Foundling, and heard the charming music there, and my wife used to look wistfully in the pretty children's faces,--and so, for the matter of that, did I. It was not, however, till a year after our marriage that she spoke in a way which shall be here pa.s.sed over, but which filled both her and me with inexpressible joy.
I remember she had the news to give me on the very day when the m.u.f.f and Tippet Company shut up, after swallowing a capital of 300,000_l_. as some said, and nothing to show for it except a treaty with some Indians, who had afterwards tomahawked the agent of the Company. Some people said there were no Indians, and no agent to be tomahawked at all; but that the whole had been invented in a house in Crutched Friars. Well, I pitied poor Tidd, whose 20,000_l_. were thus gone in a year, and whom I met in the City that day with a most ghastly face. He had 1,000_l_. of debts, he said, and talked of shooting himself; but he was only arrested, and pa.s.sed a long time in the Fleet. Mary's delightful news, however, soon put Tidd and the m.u.f.f and Tippet Company out of my head; as you may fancy.
Other circ.u.mstances now occurred in the City of London which seemed to show that our Director was--what is not to be found in Johnson's Dictionary--rather shaky. Three of his companies had broken; four more were in a notoriously insolvent state; and even at the meetings of the directors of the West Diddles.e.x, some stormy words pa.s.sed, which ended in the retirement of several of the board. Friends of Mr. B.'s filled up their places: Mr. Puppet, Mr. Straw, Mr. Query, and other respectable gents, coming forward and joining the concern. Brough and Hoff dissolved partnership; and Mr. B. said he had quite enough to do to manage the I.
W. D., and intended gradually to retire from the other affairs. Indeed, such an a.s.sociation as ours was enough work for any man, let alone the parliamentary duties which Brough was called on to perform, and the seventy-two lawsuits which burst upon him as princ.i.p.al director of the late companies.
Perhaps I should here describe the desperate attempts made by Mrs.
Hoggarty to introduce herself into genteel life. Strange to say, although we had my Lord Tiptoff's word to the contrary, she insisted upon it that she and Lady Drum were intimately related; and no sooner did she read in the _Morning Post_ of the arrival of her Ladyship and her granddaughters in London, than she ordered the fly before mentioned, and left cards at their respective houses: her card, that is--"MRS. HOGGARTY of CASTLE HOGGARTY," magnificently engraved in Gothic letters and flourishes; and ours, viz., "Mr. and Mrs. S. t.i.tmarsh," which she had printed for the purpose.
She would have stormed Lady Jane Preston's door and forced her way upstairs, in spite of Mary's entreaties to the contrary, had the footman who received her card given her the least encouragement; but that functionary, no doubt struck by the oddity of her appearance, placed himself in the front of the door, and declared that he had positive orders not to admit any strangers to his lady. On which Mrs. Hoggarty clenched her fist out of the coach-window, and promised that she would have him turned away.
Yellowplush only burst out laughing at this; and though Aunt wrote a most indignant letter to Mr. Edmund Preston, complaining of the insolence of the servants of that right honourable gent, Mr. Preston did not take any notice of her letter, further than to return it, with a desire that he might not be troubled with such impertinent visits for the future. A pretty day we had of it when this letter arrived, owing to my aunt's disappointment and rage in reading the contents; for when Solomon brought up the note on the silver tea-tray as usual, my aunt, seeing Mr.
Preston's seal and name at the corner of the letter (which is the common way of writing adopted by those official gents)--my aunt, I say, seeing his name and seal, cried, "_Now_, Mary, who is right?" and betted my wife a sixpence that the envelope contained an invitation to dinner. She never paid the sixpence, though she lost, but contented herself by abusing Mary all day, and said I was a poor-spirited sneak for not instantly horsewhipping Mr. P. A pretty joke, indeed! They would have hanged me in those days, as they did the man who shot Mr. Perceval.
And now I should be glad to enlarge upon that experience in genteel life which I obtained through the perseverance of Mrs. Hoggarty; but it must be owned that my opportunities were but few, lasting only for the brief period of six months: and also, genteel society has been fully described already by various authors of novels, whose names need not here be set down, but who, being themselves connected with the aristocracy, viz., as members of n.o.ble families, or as footmen or hangers-on thereof, naturally understand their subject a great deal better than a poor young fellow from a fire-office can.
There was our celebrated adventure in the Opera House, whither Mrs. H.
would insist upon conducting us; and where, in a room of the establishment called the crush-room, where the ladies and gents after the music and dancing await the arrival of their carriages (a pretty figure did our little Solomon cut, by the way, with his big cane, among the gentlemen of the shoulder-knot a.s.sembled in the lobby!)--where, I say, in the crush-room, Mrs. H. rushed up to old Lady Drum, whom I pointed out to her, and insisted upon claiming relationship with her Ladyship. But my Lady Drum had only a memory when she chose, as I may say, and had entirely on this occasion thought fit to forget her connection with the t.i.tmarshes and Hoggarties. Far from recognising us, indeed, she called Mrs. Hoggarty an "ojus 'oman," and screamed out as loud as possible for a police-officer.
This and other rebuffs made my aunt perceive the vanities of this wicked world, as she said, and threw her more and more into really serious society. She formed several very valuable acquaintances, she said, at the Independent Chapel; and among others, lighted upon her friend of the Rookery, Mr. Grimes Wapshot. We did not know then the interview which he had had with Mr. Smithers, nor did Grimes think proper to acquaint us with the particulars of it; but though I did acquaint Mrs. H. with the fact that her favourite preacher had been tried for forgery, _she_ replied that she considered the story an atrocious calumny; and _he_ answered by saying that Mary and I were in lamentable darkness, and that we should infallibly find the way to a certain bottomless pit, of which he seemed to know a great deal. Under the reverend gentleman's guidance and advice, she, after a time, separated from St. Pancras altogether--"_sat under him_," as the phrase is, regularly thrice a week--began to labour in the conversion of the poor of Bloomsbury and St.
Giles's, and made a deal of baby-linen for distribution among those benighted people. She did not make any, however, for Mrs. Sam t.i.tmarsh, who now showed signs that such would be speedily necessary, but let Mary (and my mother and sisters in Somersetshire) provide what was requisite for the coming event. I am not, indeed, sure that she did not say it was wrong on our parts to make any such provision, and that we ought to let the morrow provide for itself. At any rate, the Reverend Grimes Wapshot drank a deal of brandy-and-water at our house, and dined there even oftener than poor Gus used to do.
But I had little leisure to attend to him and his doings; for I must confess at this time I was growing very embarra.s.sed in my circ.u.mstances, and was much hara.s.sed both as a private and public character.