Various
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 342, April, 1844
"But the gentleman said he would show his gratitude"—
"He should have showed his tin fust. There ain't no use of denying it, Snipe; this is a wery low establishment, and I shall cut it as soon as I can. What right has a dowdy like our Sophia to be getting billydoos from fellers as ought to be ashamed of theirselves for getting off their three-legged stools at this time of the day? Give the note to old Pits—and here, I think, he is."
Mr Pitskiver—or old Pits, as he was irreverently called by his domestic—came rapidly up the street. He was a little man, between fifty and sixty years of age, with an exceedingly stout body and very thin legs. He was very red in the face, and very short in the neck. A bright blue coat, lively-coloured waistcoat, and light-green silk handkerchief fastened with two sparkling pins, united to each other by a gold chain, check trowsers, and polished French leather boots, composed his attire. He wore an eyeglass though he was not short-sighted, and a beautifully inlaid riding-whip though he never rode. His white muslin pocket-handkerchief hung very prominently out of the breast pocket of his coat, and his hat was set a little on one side of his head, and rested with a coquettish air on the top of the left whisker. What with his prodigious width, and the flourishing of his whip, and the imposing dignity of his appearance altogether, he seemed to fill the street. Several humble pedestrians stepped off the pavement on to the dirty causeway to give him room. Daggles drew up, Snipe slunk back to hold the door, and Mr Pitskiver retired from the eyes of men, and entered his own hall, followed by his retainers.
"If you please, sir," said Snipe, "I have a letter for Miss Sophiar."
"Then don't you think you had better give it her?" replied Mr Pitskiver.
"A gentleman, sir, gave it to me."
"I'll give it you, too," said the master of the mansion, shaking the whip over the astonished Snipe. "What are you bothering me with the ladies' notes for? Any thing for me, Daggles?"
"A few parcels, sir—books, and a couple of pictures."
"No statue? My friend Bristles has deceived me. It was to have been finished to-day. If he gives the first view to the Whalleys, I'll never speak to him again. Nothing else? Then have the phaeton at the door at half past five. I dine at Miss Hendy's, at Hammersmith."
While Mr Pitskiver stepped up stairs, Snipe was going over in his own mind the different grammatical meanings of the words, "I'll give it you." And concluding at last that, in the mouth of his master, it meant nothing but a horsewhipping, he resolved, with the magnanimity of many other virtuous characters who find treachery unproductive, to be true to Miss Sophia, and give her the mysterious note with the greatest possible secrecy.
"Now, donkey," said Daggles, aiding his benevolent advice with a kick that made it nearly superfluous, "get down them kitchen stairs and learn pitch-and-toss, for you haven't brains enough for any thing else—and recollect, you owes me a sovereign; half from master for telling, and half from the long-backed Ticket for keeping mum. You can keep the other to yourself; for the job was well worth a sovereign a-piece."
A knock at the door interrupted the colloquy, and Snipe once more emerged from the lower regions, and admitted the two fair daughters of his master.
They were stout, bustling, rosy-cheeked girls, two or three and twenty years of age, superbly dressed in flashy silks, and bedizened with ribands like a triumphal arch.
"Miss," said Snipe, "I've got a summut for you." And he looked as knowing as it was possible for a student of pitch-and-toss to do.
"For me? What is it? Make haste, Thomas."
"A gentleman has been here, and left you this," replied the Mercury, holding out the note. "He said something about giving me a guinea; but I wasn't to let any body see."
"It is his hand—I know it!" cried Miss Sophia, and hurried up stairs to her own room.
"You donkey!" growled Mr Daggles, who had overheard Snipe's proceedings; "you've done me out of another ten shillings. Blowed if I don't put you under the pump! She would have given you a guinea for the letter by way of postage. But it all comes of living with red herrings and gooses' eggs." And so saying Mr Daggles resumed his usual seat in the dining-room, and went on with the perusal of the Morning Post.
CHAPTER II
Mr Pitskiver's origin, like that of early Greece, is lost in the depths of antiquity. Through an infinite variety of posts and offices, he had risen to his present position, and was perhaps the most multifariously occupied gentleman in her majesty's dominions. He was chairman of three companies, steward of six societies, general agent, and had lately reached the crowning eminence of his hopes by being appointed trustee of unaudited accounts. In the midst of all these labours, he had gone on increasing in breadth and honour till his name was a symbol of every thing respectable and well to do in the world. With each new office his ambition rose, and a list of his residences would be a perfect index to the state of his fortunes. We can trace him from Stepney to Whitechapel; from Whitechapel to Finsbury square; from Finsbury square to Hammersmith; and finally, the last office (which, by the by, was without a salary) had raised him, three months before our account of him begins, to the centre of Harley Street. With his fortune and ambition, we must do him the justice to say, his liberality equally increased. He was a patron, and, would have travelled fifty miles to entertain a poet at his table; he had music-masters (without any other pupils) who were Mozarts and Handels for his daughters—Turners and Landseers (whose names were yet unknown) to teach them drawing—for, by a remarkable property possessed by him, in common with a great majority of mankind, every thing gained a new value when it came into contact with himself. He bought sets of china because they were artistic; changed his silver plate for a more picturesque pattern; employed Stultz for his clothes, and, above all, Bell and Rannie for his wines. His cook was superb; and, thanks to the above-named Bell and Rannie, there were fewer headachs in the morning after a Mæcenatian dinner at Pitskiver's, than could have been expected by Father Matthew himself. With these two exceptions—wine and clothes—his patronage was more indiscriminate than judicious. In fact, he patronized for the sake of patronizing; and as he was always in search of a new miracle, it is no wonder that he was sometimes disappointed—that his Landseers sometimes turned out to have no eyes, and his musicians more fitted to play the Handel to a pump than an organ. But Pitskiver never lost heart. If he failed in one he was sure to succeed in another; he saw his name occasionally in the newspaper, by giving an invitation to one of the literary gentlemen who enliven the public with accounts of fearful accidents and desperate offences; had his picture at the Exhibition in the character of the "Portrait of a gentleman," and his bust in the same place as the semblance of the honorary Secretary to the Poor Man's Pension and Perpetual Annuity Institution. He was a widower, and looked dreadful things at all the widows of his acquaintance. And it was thought that, if he succeeded in marrying off his girls, he should himself become once more a candidate for the holy estate; and by this wise manœuvre—for, in fact, he made no secret of his intention—he enlisted in his daughters' behalf all the elderly ladies who thought they had any claims on the attentions of that charming creature Mr Pitskiver. There were certainly no young ladies I have ever heard of, so well supplied with assistants in the great art of catching husbands as the two plump damsels whom we have already seen enter the house in Harley Street, and one of whom we have perceived placed in possession of the mysterious letter by the skittle-minded Mr Snipe.
Miss Sophia Pitskiver, according to all ordinary ideas of romance and true love, had no right whatever to indulge in such luxuries, being more adapted to make pies than enter into the beauty of sonnets to the moon. She was short, stout—shall we be pardoned for saying the hateful word?—she was dumpy, but a perfect picture of rosy health and hilarious good-nature. And yet, if she had been half a foot taller, and half a yard thinner, and infinitely paler, she could not have been one jot more sentimental. She cultivated sentiment, because it was so pleasant, and her father approved of it because it was genteel. Her enthusiasm was tremendous. Her ideas were all crackers, and exploded at the slightest touch. She had a taste for every thing—poetry, history, fine arts in general, philosophy, glory, puseyism, and, perhaps more than all, for a certain tall young man, with an interesting complexion, whom we have introduced to the courteous reader by the name of the long-backed Ticket. It was this gentleman's note she was now about to read. Sundry palpitations about the robust regions of the heart might, to common eyes, have appeared to arise from her speed in running up stairs. But she knew better. She took but one look of the cheval glass, and broke the seal.
"Stanzas!" she said; and, taking one other glance at the mirror, she exclaimed to the agitated young lady represented there, "only think!" and devoured the following lines:—
"There is a tear that will not fall
To cool the burning heart and brain;
Oh, I would give my life, my all,
To feel once more that blessed rain!
"There is a grief—I feel, in sooth,
It rends my soul, it quells my tongue;
It dims the sunshine of my youth,
But, oh, it will not dim it long!
"There is a place where life is o'er,
And sorrow's blasts innocuous rave;
A place where sadness comes no more.
Know'st thou the place? It is the grave.
"Yes, if within that gentle breast
Mild pity ever held her sway,
Thou'lt weep for one who finds no rest—
The reason he can never say.
"P.S.—Miss Hendy is an angel upon earth. My friend Mr Bristles, of the Universal Surveyor, one of the most distinguished literary men of the age, has got me an invitation to go to her house to-night, to read the first act of my tragedy. Shall I have the happiness of seeing thee? Would to my stars my fate were so fortunate! I enclose you the above lines, which Bristles says are better than any of Lord Byron's, and will publish next week in the Universal. Mayest thou like them, sweetest, for they are dedicated to thee, Thine ever—ALMANSOR." What she might have done beyond reading the lines and letter six times over, and crying "beautiful, beautiful!" as fast as she could, it is impossible to say, for at that moment she was called by her venerable sire. She crumpled the note up after the manner of all other heroines, and hid it in her bosom; and hurried to the drawing-room, where she found her father in full dress, pulling on a pair of new kid gloves.
"Well, Soph, I'm off for Miss Hendy's—don't give me any nonsense now about her being low, and all that sort of thing; she don't move in the same circle of society, certainly, as we do, but she has always distinguished people about her."
"Oh, papa!" interrupted the young lady. "I don't object to Miss Hendy in the least. I love her of all things, and would give worlds to be going with you!"
"That's right! You've heard of the new poet then? Tremendous they say; equal to Shakspeare—quite a great man."
"Indeed! Oh, how I long to see him!"
"Well, perhaps you may one of these days. Bristles—my friend Bristles of the Universal-says he's a perfect—what do they call that pretty street in Southampton?—Paragon—a perfect paragon, Bristles says: I'll ask him to dinner some day."
"What day?—Oh, let it be soon, dear papa!"
"There's a dear delightful enthusiastic girl! We ought to encourage people of genius. Curious we never heard of him before, for he was our neighbour, I hear, in Finsbury; but poor, I suppose, and did not mix with our set even then."
Mr Pitskiver looked at the opposite side of the street while he spoke, as if to assure himself that he was in a still higher altitude above the poet now than some few years before. But, as if feeling called on to show his increased superiority by greater condescension, he said, as he walked out of the room, "I shall certainly have him to dinner, and Bristles, and some more men of talent to meet him—
'The feast of reason, and the flow of soul!'"
the only quotation, by the way, in which Mr Pitskiver was ever known to indulge.
CHAPTER III
Miss Hendy had formerly kept a school, and her portrait would have done very well for a frontispiece to Mrs Trimmer. She was what is called prim in her manner, and as delicate as an American. She always called the legs of a table its props—for the word legs was highly unfeminine. She admired talent, and gave it vast quantities of tea and toast. Her drawing-room was a temple of the Muses, and only open to those who were bountifully endowed with the gifts of nature or of fortune; for she considered it a great part of her duty to act as a kind of link between Plutus and Minerva. In the effort to discover objects worthy of her recommendation, she was mainly aided by the celebrated Mr Bristles. Every month whole troops of Herschels and Wordsworths, and Humes and Gibbons, were presented to her by the great critic; and with a devout faith in all he told her, she listened enraptured to the praises of those astonishing geniuses, till she had begun to enter into Mr Bristles's own feelings of contempt for every body except the favoured few. And to-night was the grand debut of a more remarkable phenomenon than any of the others. A youth of twenty-three, tall, modest, intellectual, and long-haired—in short, the "Ticket"—was to read the opening of a tragedy; and sculptors, painters, mechanicians, and city Croesuses, were invited to be present at the display. Among these last shone our friend Mr Pitskiver, radiant in white waistcoat and gold chains, two rings on each finger, and a cameo the size of a cheese-cake on his neckcloth. The other critic, in right of his account at the bank, was a tall silent gentleman, a wood-merchant from the Boro', who nodded his head in an oracular manner when any thing was said above his comprehension; and who was a patron of rising talent, on the same enlightened principles as his friend Mr Pitskiver. Mr Whalley also showed his patronage in the same economical manner as the other, and expected immortality at the expense of a few roasts of beef and bottles of new wine.
Mr Bristles was also of the dinner party—an arrangement made by the provident Miss Hendy, that the two millionaires might receive a little preliminary information on the merits of the rest of the company, who were only invited to tea. Four maiden ladies (who had pulled on blue stockings in order to hide the increasing thickness of their ankles, and considered Miss Hendy the legitimate successor of Madame de Staël, and Mr Pitskiver in Harley Street the beau-ideal of love in a cottage) relieved the monotony of a gentleman party by as profuse a display of female charms as low gowns and short sleeves would allow. And about six o'clock there was a highly interesting and superior party of eight, to whom Miss Hendy administered cod's-head and shoulders, aphorisms and oyster sauce, in almost equal proportion; while Mr Pitskiver, like a "sweet seducer, blandly smiling," made polite enquiries whether he should not relieve her of the trouble.—"Oh no!—it degrades woman from the lofty sphere of equal usefulness with the rougher sex. Why shouldn't a lady help fish?—Why should she confess her inferiority? The post assigned to her by nature—though usurped by man—is to elevate by her example, to enlighten by her precepts, and to add to the great aggregate of human felicity by a manifestation of all the virtues;" saying this, she inserted her knife with astonishing dexterity just under the gills—and looked round for approbation.
Mr Pitskiver had recourse to his usual expedient, and said something about the feast of reason; Mr Whalley shook his head in a way that would have made his fortune in a grocer's window in the character of Howqua; and Mr Bristles prepared himself to reply—while the four literary maidens turned their eyes on Aristarchus in expectation of hearing something fine. "I decidedly am of opinion," said that great man, "that woman's sphere is greatly misunderstood, and that you maintain the dignity of your glorious sex by carving the fish.—Yet on being further interrogated, I should be inclined to proceed with my statement, and assert that you deprive us of pleasure, in debarring us from giving you our assistance."
"Then, why don't you help us with our samplers? why don't you aid us in our knitting? why don't you assist us in hemming garments?"—exclaimed Miss Hendy, digging her spoon into the oyster-boat.
"This is what I call the feast and flow," said Mr Pitskiver; while Mr Whalley nearly shook his head off his shoulders on to the table-cloth. The young ladies looked slyly at Mr Pitskiver, and laughed.
"It would be rather undignified," said Mr Bristles, "to see the Lord Chancellor darning a stocking."
"Dignity! the very thing I complain of. Why more undignified in a Lord Chancellor, or a Bishop, than in his wife? Oh, will the time never come when society will be so regenerated, that man will know his own position, and woman—noble, elevating, surprising woman—will assume the rank to which her powers and virtues entitle her!"
Mr Bristles was very hungry, and at that moment received his plate.—"Really, Miss Hendy," he said, with his mouth prodigiously distended with codfish—"there's no arguing against such eloquence. I must give in." But Miss Hendy, who had probably lunched, determined to accept no surrender.—"No," she cried—"you shall not give in, till I have overwhelmed you with reasons for your submission. A great move is in progress—woman's rights and duties are becoming every day more widely appreciated. The old-fashioned scale must be re-adjusted, and woman—noble, elevating, surprising woman—ascend to the loftiest eminence, and sit superior on the topmost branch of the social tree."
Mr Whalley, whose professional ear was caught by the last word, broke through his usual rule of only nodding his remarks, and ventured to say—"Uncommon bad climbers, for the most part in general, is women. Their clothes isn't adapted for it.—I minds once I see a woman climb a pole after a leg of mutting."
If looks could have killed Mr Whalley, Mr Pitskiver's eyes would certainly have been tried for murder; but that matter-of-fact individual was impervious to the most impassioned glances. Miss Hendy sank her face in horror over her plate, and celestial rosy red overspread her countenance; while a look of the most extraordinary nature rewarded Mr Pitskiver for all his efforts in her behalf. A look!—it went quite through his waistcoat, and if it had gone straight on, must have reached his heart. Mr Pitskiver was amazed at the expression of the look; for he little knew that his labours under the table, in attempting to check Mr Whalley's oratory by pressing his toes, had unfortunately been bestowed on the delicate foot of his hostess; and what less could she do than respond to the gentle courtesy by a glance of gratitude for what she considered a movement of sympathy and condolence under the atrocious reminiscences of the wood-merchant? Mr Whalley, however, was struck with the mournful silence that followed his observation.
"That was a thing as happing'd on a pole," he said. "In cooss it would be wery different on a tree—because of the branches, as I think you was a-saying, Miss Hendy?"
Mr Pitskiver grew desperate. "Bristles," he cried, "any thing new in sculpture? By the by, you haven't sent me Stickleback's jack-ass as you promised. Is it a fine work?"
"I have no hesitation," replied the critic, "with a perfect recollection of Canova's Venus, and even Moggs's Pandean Piper, which I reviewed in last number of the Universal, in declaring that Stickleback's work (it is a female, not a jack-ass) is the noblest effort of the English chisel; there is life about it—a power—a feeling—a sentiment—it is overwhelming! I shall express these ideas in print. Stickleback's fame is secured by a stupendous ass, at once so simple and so grand."
"A female, I think you said?" enquired Miss Hendy.
"A jeanie—miraculously soft, yet full of graceful dignity," replied Bristles bowing to the enquirer, as if the description applied to her.
"I honour the sculptor for breaking through the prejudices of sex in this splendid instance!" exclaimed the lady. "The feminine star is in the ascendant. How much more illustrious the triumph! How greater the difficulty to express in visible types, the soft, subduing, humanizing graces of the female disposition, than to imprint the coarse outline of masculine strength! How rough the contour of an Irish hodman to the sweet flexibilities of the Venus of Canova!"
"Canova was by no means equal to Stickleback," said Mr Bristles magisterially. "I have devoted much time to the study of the fine arts—I have seen many statues—I have frequently been in sculptors' studios; I prefer Stickleback to Canova."
"I honour his moral elevation," observed Miss Hendy, "in stamping on eternal marble the femininity of the subject of his chisel."
"I must really have the first view," whispered Mr Pitskiver. "Can't you remind him, Bristles? Don't send it to Whalley on my account."
But Mr Whalley, who was a rival Mæcenas, put in a word for himself, "Mr Bristles," he said, "this must be a uncomming statty of a she-ass. I oncet was recommended to drink a she-ass's milk myself, and liked it uncomming. I must have the private sight you promised; and, if you'll fix a day, I vill ask you and the artist to dine."
"Certainly, my dear sir—but Mr Pitskiver and Stickleback, they are friends, you know, Mr Whalley, and perhaps Mr P.'s interest may be useful in getting the great artist an order to ornament some of the new buildings. I have some thoughts of recommending him to offer the very statue we talk of for the front of the Mansion-house. A hint on the subject has already appeared in the Universal."
"Miss Hendy," said Mr Pitskiver for the tenth time, "this is the regular feast and flow; and nothing pleases me so much in my good friend Bristles as his candid praise of other men's talents. You seldom find clever people allowing each other's merits."
"Or stupid ones either"—replied Mr Bristles before the lady had time to answer; "the fact is, we are much improved since former days. Our great men don't quarrel as they used to do—conscious of one's own dignity, why refuse a just appreciation of others? Stickleback has often told me, that Chantrey was not altogether without merit—I myself pronounce Macauley far from stupid; and my intellectual friend, young Sidsby, who will read us the first act of his tragedy to-night, allows a very respectable degree of dramatic power to Lord Byron. Surely this is a far better state of things than the perpetual carpings of Popes and Addisons, Smiths and Johnsons, Foxes and Pitts."
"And all owing to the rising influence of the female sex," interposed Miss Hendy. "But woman has not yet received her full development. The time will come when her influence is universal; when, softened, subdued, purified, and elevated, the animal now called Man will be unknown. You will be all women—can the world look for higher destiny?"
"In cooss," observed Mr Whalley—"if we are all turned into woming, the world will come to a end. For 'spose a case;—'spose it had been my sister as married Mrs Whalley instead of me—it's probable there wouldn't have been no great fambly; wich in cooss, if there was no poppleation"—
But what the fearful result of this supposed case would have been, has never been discovered; for Miss Hendy, making a signal to the four representatives of the female sex started out of the room as if she had heard Mr Whalley had the plague, and left the gentlemen to themselves.
"De Staël was no match for that wonderful woman," said Mr Bristles, resuming his chair. "I don't believe so noble an intellect was ever enshrined in so beautiful a form before."
"Do you think her pretty?" enquired Mr Pitskiver.
"Pretty? no, sir—beautiful! Here is the finest sort of loveliness—the light blazing from within, that years cannot extinguish. I consider Miss Hendy the finest woman in England; and decidedly the most intellectual."
The fact of Miss Hendy's beauty had never struck Mr Pitskiver before. But he knew that Bristles was a judge, and took it at once for granted. The finest woman in England had looked in a most marvellous manner into his face, and the small incident of the foot under the table was not forgotten.
Mr Pitskiver was inspired by the subject of his contemplations, and proposed her health in a strain of eloquence which produced a wonderful amount of head-shaking from Mr Whalley, and frequent exclamations of "Demosthenes," "Cicero," "Burke all over!" from the more enraptured Mr Bristles.
"I'm horrible afear'd," observed the elder gentleman putting down his empty glass, "as my son Bill Whalley is a reg'lar fool."
"Oh, pardon me!" exclaimed Bristles—"I haven't the, honour of his intimacy, but—"
"Only think the liberties he allows himself in regard to this here intellectual lady, Miss Hendy. He never hears her name without a putting of his thumb on the top of his nose, and a shaking of his fingers in my face, and a crying out for a friend of his'n of the name of Walker. Its uncomming provoking—and sich a steady good business hand there ain't in the Boro'. I can't fadom it."
"Some people have positively no souls," chimed in Mr Pitskiver, looking complacently down his beautiful waistcoat, as if he felt that souls were in some sort of proportion to the tenements they inhabited, and that his was of gigantic size; "but I did not think that your son William was so totally void of ideas. I shall talk to him next Sunday's dinner."
"If you talks to him about Memel and Dantzic, you'll find there ain't such a judge of timber in London," said the father, who was evidently proud of his son's mercantile qualifications; "but with regard to this here pottery, and scupshire, and other things as I myself delights in, he don't care nothin about 'em. He wouldn't give twopence to see Stickleback's statty."
"Then he had better not have the honour," said Pitskiver. "Bristles, you'll send it to Harley Street. First view is every thing."
"Really, gentlemen, you are both such exquisite judges of the arts, and such discriminating patrons of artists, that I find it difficult to determine between you. Shall we let Stickleback settle the point himself?"
Both the Mæcenases consented, each at the same time making resolutions in his own mind to make the unhappy artist suffer, if by any chance his rival should get the preference. After another glass or two of the dark-coloured liquid which wore the label of port, and which Bristles maintained was the richest wine he had ever tasted, as it was furnished by a particular friend of his, who, in addition to being a wine merchant, was one of the most talented men in Europe, and a regular contributor to the Universal under the signature "Squirk,"—after another glass or two of this bepraised beverage, which, at the same time, did not seem altogether to suit the taste of the two patrons of the arts and sciences, the gentlemen adjourned to the drawing-room, from which music had been sounding for a considerable time.