Various
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 342, April, 1844
CHAPTER IV
On entering the room they were nearly made fitting inmates of the deaf and dumb institution, by the most portentous sounds that ever endangered a human ear. A large party was assembled, ranged solemnly on chairs and sofas all round the wall, every eye turned with intense interest to the upper end of the apartment, where stood a tall stout man, blowing with incredible effect into a twisted horn, which, to all outward appearance, had not long ceased to ornament the forehead of a Highland bull. A common horn it was—and the skill of the strong-winded performer consisted in extracting a succession of roars and bellowings from its upper end, which would have done honour to the vocal powers of its late possessor. A tune it certainly was, for immense outbreaks of sound came at regular intervals, and the performer kept thumping his foot on the floor as if he were keeping time; but as the intermediate notes were of such a very soft nature as to be altogether inaudible, the company were left to fill up the blanks at their own discretion; and Mr Pitskiver, who was somewhat warlike, perceived at once it was Rule Britannia, while Mr Whalley shook his head in a state of profound loyalty, and thought it was God save the Queen. When the ingenious musician withdrew the bull's horn from his mouth, and paused after his labours in a state of extreme calefaction, murmurs of applause ran all round the room.
"Mr Slingo," said Mr Bristles, "Mr Slingo, you have immortalized yourself, by evoking the soul of Handel from so common an instrument as an ox's horn. I have studied music as a science—I have reviewed an opera—and once met Sir Henry Bishop at the Chinese exhibition; and I will make bold to say, that more genius was never shown by Rossini or Cherubini, than you have displayed on this stupendous and interesting occasion. Allow me, Mr Slingo, to shake your hand."
Mr Bristles gave a warm squeeze to the delighted musician's enormous fingers—and all the company were enchanted with the liberality and condescension of the celebrated author, and the humility and gratitude of the musical phenomenon, who could not find words to express his gratification. Miss Hendy was also profuse in her praises. "Pray, Mr Slingo," she said taking the horn, and examining it very closely, "do you know what animal we are indebted to for this delicious instrument?"
"I took it from the head of a brown cow."
"A cow!—ha!"—exclaimed the lady—"but I could have told you so before. There is a sweetness, a softness, and femininization of tone, in the slower passages, that it struck me at once could only proceed from the milder sex. We shall not have to wait long for the answer to a question which has stirred the heart of mankind to its foundations—can Women etherealize society? I say she can—I say she will—I say she shall!"
Miss Hendy said this with considerable vehemence, and darted a look of the same extraordinary nature as had puzzled Mr Pitskiver at dinner, full in the face of that enraptured gentleman.
"Oh, 'pon my soul, she's a very fine woman!" he said almost audibly; and again the commendations of Mr Bristles recurred to his thoughts—"and has such a fund of eloquence. I wish to heaven somebody would take a fancy to my girls! I will ask a lot of young men to dinner."
In the midst of these cogitations he drew near Miss Hendy—and if you were to judge by the number of elbows which young ladies, in all parts of the room, nudged into other young ladies' sides, and the strange smiles and winks that were exchanged by the more distant members of the society—you might easily perceive that there was something very impressive in the manner of his address. He bowed at every word, while the gold chains across his waistcoat glistened and jingled at every motion. Miss Hendy's head also was bent till the white spangles on her turban seemed affected with St Vitus's dance; and their voices gradually sank lower and lower, till they descended at last to an actual whisper. There were seven female hearts in that assemblage bursting with spite, and one with triumph. Mr Pitskiver had never been known to whisper it any body's ear before.
In the mean time Mr Bristles, as literary master of the ceremonies, had made a call on Mr Sidsby to proceed with his reading of the first act of his play. A tall young gentleman, very good-looking, and very shy, was with difficulty persuaded to seat himself in the middle of the room; and with trembling hands he drew from his pocket a roll of manuscript, though, to judge from his manner, he did not seem quite master of his subject.
"Modesty, always the accompaniment of true genius," observed Mr Bristles, apologetically to the expectant audience. "Go on, my good sir; you will gain courage as you proceed."
All was then silent. Mr Pitskiver at Miss Hendy's side, near the door; Mr Whalley straining his long neck to catch the faintest echo of their conversation; the others casting from time to time enquiring glances towards the illustrious pair; but all endeavouring to appear intensely interested in the drama. Mr Sidsby began:—
It was a play of the passions. A black lady fell in love with a white general. Her language was fit for a dragon. She breathed nothing but fire. It seemed, by a strange coincidence of ideas between Sidsby and Shakspeare, to bear no small resemblance to Othello, with the distinction already stated of the colour of the Desdemona. But breathless attention rewarded the reader's toil; and though he occasionally missed a word, in which he was always set right by Mr Bristles, and did not enter very warmly into the more vigorous parts of the declamation, his efforts were received with overwhelming approbation, and Bristles as usual led the chorus of admiration.
"A wonderful play! an astonishing effort! Certainly up to the finest things in Otway, if not of Shakspeare himself—a power, a life, an impetus. I have never met with such a magnificent opening act."
"I wish you would bring him to taste my mutting, Mr Bristles," said Mr Whalley; "as he's a poet he most likely don't touch butcher meat every day, and a good tuck-out of a Sunday won't do him no harm. But I say, Mr Bristles, I must railly make a point of seeing Stickleback's donkey first. Say you'll do it—there's a good fellow."
Mr Pitskiver also extended his hospitable invitation to the successful dramatist; and urged no less warmly his right to the first inspection of the masterpiece of the modern chisel.
"I have had a very particular conversation with Miss Hendy," he said, laying his hand confidentially on the great critic's shoulder.
"An extraordinary woman!" chimed in Bristles, "the glory of the present times."
"I must have an additional treasure to boast of in my house," resumed Mr Pitskiver, whose heart seemed more than ever set on cutting out Mr Whalley in priority of inspection of the unequaled statue. "You'll help me, I know—I may depend on you, Mr Bristles."
"You may indeed, sir—a house such as yours needed only such an addition to make it perfect."
"You'll procure me the pride, the gratification—you'll manage it for me."
"I will indeed," said Mr Bristles, seizing the offered hand of the overjoyed Pitskiver; "since your happiness depends on it, you may trust to me for every exertion."
"And you'll plead my cause—you'll speak in the proper quarter?"
"Certainly, you may consider it all arranged."
"But secretly, quietly, no blabbing—these matters are always best done without noise. I would even keep it from my daughters' knowledge, till we are quite prepared to reveal it in all its charms."
"It is indeed a masterpiece—a chef-d'oeuvre—beauty and expression unequaled."
"I flatter myself I am a bit of a judge; and when I have had it in my possession for a short time, I will let you know the result."
The party were now about to break up.
"Them's uncomming pleasant little meetings, arn't them?" said Mr Whalley to one of the middle-aged spinsters who had been present at dinner; "and I thinks this one is like to have a very favourable conclusion."
"Miss Hendy?" enquired the spinster in breathless anticipation.
"Jist so," responded the other—"there can't be no mystery no longer, and they'll be off for France in a few days."
"For France?—gracious! how do you know?"
"I hear'd Mr Bristles, which is their confidant, say something about a chay and Dover. In cooss they will go that way to Boulogne."
Oh, Mæcenas! is there no difference between the chef-d'oeuvre of the great Stickleback, and the town of Dover and a post-chaise.
CHAPTER V
In a week after these events, six or seven gentlemen were gathered round a table in a room very near the skylight in the Minerva chambers. Our former acquaintance, Mr Bristles, whose name shone in white paint above the entrance door, was evidently strongly impressed with the dignity of his position; and as in the pauses of conversation he placed the pen he was using transversely in his mouth, and turned over the pages of various books on the table before him, it will be seen that he presided not at a feast of substantial meat and drink, but at one of those regular "feasts and flows" which the great Mr Pitskiver was in the habit of alluding to, in describing the intellectual treats of which he was so prodigious a glutton.
"What success, Sidsby?" enquired Bristles with a vast appearance of interest.
"None at all," replied the successful dramatist, or, in other words, the long-backed Ticket to whom we were introduced at the commencement of the story. "I have no invitation to dinner yet, and Sophy thinks he has forgotten me."
"That's odd—very odd," mused Mr Bristles, "for I don't know that I ever praised any one half so highly before, not even Stickleback; and the first act was really superb. It took me a whole week to write it."
"But I did not understand some parts of it, and I am afraid I spoiled it in the reading. But Sophy was enchanted with the poem you made me copy."
"A sensible girl; but how to get at the father is the thing. I have mentioned a few of the perfections of our friend Miss Hendy to him in a way that I think will stick. If we could get her good word."
"Oh, she's very good!" replied Sidsby, "she says I'm far above Lord Byron and Thomas Moore."
"Why not? haven't I told you to say, wherever you go, that she is above Corinne?"
"Ah," said Sidsby, "but what's the use of all this to me? I am a wine-merchant, not a poet; my uncle will soon take me into partnership, and when they find out that I know no more about literature than a pig, what an impostor they'll think me!"
"Not more of an impostor than half the other literary men of the day, who have got praised into fame as you have, by judicious and disinterested friends. No: you must still go on. I shall have the second act ready for you next week, and you can make it six dozen of sherry instead of three. You must please the girl first, and get at the father afterwards. She's of a decidedly intellectual turn, and has four thousand pounds in her own right."
"I don't believe she is more intellectual than myself; but that silly old noodle, her father"—
"Stop!" exclaimed Bristles in great agitation, "this is against all rule. Mr Pitskiver is our friend—a man of the profoundest judgment and most capacious understanding. I doubt whether a greater judge of merit ever existed than Mr Pitskiver."
"Hear, hear!" resounded in various degrees of intensity all round the table.
"Well, all I can say is this—that if I don't get on by shamming cleverness, I'll try what open honesty will do, and follow Bill Whalley's advice."
"Bill Whalley! who is he?" asked Bristles with a sneer.
"Son of the old Tom Noddy you make such a precious fool of."
"Mr Whalley of the Boro' is our friend, Mr Sidsby—a man of the profoundest judgment and most capacious understanding. I doubt whether a greater judge of merit ever existed than Mr Whalley of the Boro'."
"Hear hear!" again resounded; and Mr Sidsby, shaking his head, said no more, but looked as sulky as his naturally good-tempered features would let him.
"And now, Stickleback," said Mr Bristles—"I am happy to tell you your fortune is made; your fame will rise higher and higher."
A little dark-complexioned man with very large mouth and very flat nose, looked a little disdainful at this speech, which to any one else would have sounded like a compliment.
"I always knew that merit such as I felt I possessed, would force its way, in spite of envy and detraction," he said.
"We have an uphill fight of it, I assure you," rejoined Mr Bristles; "but by dint of throwing it on pretty thick, we are in hopes some of it will stick."
"Now, Mr Bristles," resumed the artist, "I don't at all like the style you talk in to me. You always speak as if my reputation had been made by your praises. Now, talents such as mine"—
"Are very high, my good sir; no one who reads the Universal doubts that fact for a moment."
"Talents, I say, such as mine," pursued Mr Stickleback, "were sure to raise me to the highest honours; and it is too bad for you to claim all the merit of my success."
"Not I; but all our friends here," said Bristles. "For two years we have done nothing but praise you wherever we went. Haven't we sneered at Bailey, and laughed at the ancient statues? Who wrote the epigram on Thorwaldsen—was it not our friend now present, Mr Banks? a gentleman, I must say, perfectly unequaled in the radiance of his wit and the delicious pungency of his satire. Without us, what would you have been?"
"Exactly what I am. The only sculptor worth a sixpence since the fine arts were invented," replied the self-satisfied Mr Stickleback.
"No," said Mr Bristles; "since you force us to tell you what we have done for you, I will mention it. We have persuaded all our friends, we have even persuaded yourself, that you have some knowledge of sculpture; whereas every one who follows his own judgment, and is not led astray by our puffs, must see that you could not carve an old woman's face out of a radish; that you are fit for nothing with the chisel but to smooth gravestones, and cut crying cherubs over a churchyard door; that your donkey"—
"Well, what of my donkey, as you call it?" cried the enraged sculptor, "I have heard you praise it a thousand times."
"Of course you have; but do you think I meant it?"
"As much as I meant what I said, when I praised some of your ridiculous rubbish in the Universal."
"Oh, indeed! Then you think my writings ridiculous rubbish?"
"Yes—I do—very ridiculous rubbish."
"Then let me tell you, Mr Stickleback, you are about as good a critic as a sculptor. My writings, sir, are universally appreciated. To find fault with them shows you are unfit for our acquaintance; and with regard to Mr Pitskiver's recommendation to the city building committee, and your donkey to adorn the pediment of the Mansion-house—you have of course given up all hopes of any interest I may possess."
"Gentlemen," said a young man with small piercing eyes and a rather dirty complexion, with long hair rolling over the collar of his coat—"are you not a little premature in shivering the friendship by a blow of temper which had been consolidated by several years of mutual reciprocity?"
"Silence, Snooksby!—I have been insulted. I was ever a foe to ingratitude, and grievous shall the expiation be," replied Bristles.
"I now address myself to you, sir," continued Snooksby, turning to the wrathful sculptor, whose wrath, however, had begun to evaporate in reflecting on the diminished chance of the promotion so repeatedly promised by Mr Bristles for his donkey; "and I feel on this momintous occasion, that it is my impiritive duty to endeavour to reinimite the expiring imbers of amity, and re-knit the relaxed cords of unanimity. Mr Stickleback, you were wrong—decidedly, powerfully, undeniably wrong—in denominiting the splindid lucibritions of our illustrious friend by the name of ridiculous rubbish. Apoligise, apoligise, apoligise; and I know too well the glowing sympithies of that philinthripic heart to doubt for a moment that its vibrations will instantly beat in unisin with yours."
"I never meant to call his writings rubbish," said the subdued sculptor. "I know he's the greatest writer in England."
"And you, my dear Stickleback, the greatest sculptor the world has ever seen!" exclaimed the easily propitiated critic. "Why will you doubt my respect, my admiration of your surpassing talent? Let us understand each other better—we shall both be ever indebted to the eloquent Mr Snooksby—(may he soon get on the vestry, the object of his inadequate ambition;) for a speech more refulgent in simple pathos, varied metaphor, and conclusive reasoning, it has not been my good fortune to hear. When our other friends leave me, Stickleback, I hope you will stay for half an hour. I have a most important secret to confide to you, and a favour to ask."
The hint seemed to be sufficient. The rest of the party soon retired; and Bristles and Stickleback began their confidential conclave.
CHAPTER VI
But another confidential conclave, of rather a more interesting nature to the parties concerned, took place three days after these occurrences in the shady walk in St James's Park. Under the trees sauntered four people—equally divided—a lady and a gentleman; the ladies brilliantly dressed, stout, and handsome—the gentlemen also in the most fashionable costume: one tall and thin, the long-backed Ticket; and the other short and amazingly comfortable-looking, Mr William Whalley—for shortness called Bill. Whether, while he admired the trunks of the old elms, he calculated what would be their value in deals, this narrative disdains to mention; but it feels by no means bound to retain the same cautious reserve with regard to his sentiments while he gazed into the eyes of Emily Pitskiver. He thought them beautiful eyes; and if they had been turned upon you with the same loving, trusting expression, ten to one you would have thought them beautiful too. The other pair seemed equally happy.
"So you don't like me the worse," said Mr Sidsby, "now that you know I am not a poet?"
"I don't know how it is, but I don't think I care for poetry now at all," replied the lady. "In fact, I suppose my passion for it was never real, and I only fancied I was enchanted with it from hearing papa and Mr Bristles perpetually raving about strength and genius. Is Miss Hendy a really clever woman?"
"A genuine humbug, I should say—gooseberry champagne at two shillings a bottle," was the somewhat professional verdict on Miss Hendy's claims.
"Oh! you shouldn't talk that way of Miss Hendy—who knows but she may be my mamma soon?"
"He can never be such a confounded jackass!" said Mr Sidsby, without giving a local habitation or a name to the personal pronoun he.
"He loses his daughters, I can tell him," said Miss Sophy with a toss of her head, that set all the flowers on the top of her bonnet shaking—"Emily and I are quite resolved on that."
"But what can you do?" enquired the gentleman, who did not appear to be very nearly akin to Œdipus.
"Do? Why, don't we get possession of mamma's fortune if he marries; and can't we—oh, you've squeezed my ring into my finger!"
"My dear Sophy, I was only trying to show you how much I admired your spirit. I hope he'll marry Miss Hendy with all my heart."
When a conversation has got to this point, a chronicle of any pretensions to respectability will maintain a rigid silence; and we will therefore only observe, that by the time Mr William Whalley and Emily had come to Marlborough House, their conversation had arrived at a point where discretion becomes as indispensably a chronicler's duty as in the case of the other couple.
"We must get home," said Sophy.
"Why should you go yet? There is no chance of your father being back from the city for hours to come."
"Oh! but we must get home. We have been out a long time." And so saying, she led the way up the steps by the Duke of York's column, followed by her sister and her swain—and attended at a respectful distance by a tall gentleman with an immense gold-headed walking-stick, displaying nether integuments of the brightest red, and white silk stockings of unexampled purity. The reader, if he had heard the various whispered allusions to different dishes, such as "sheep's head," "calf's foot jelly," "rhubarb tart," and "toasted cheese," would have been at no loss to recognise the indignant Daggles, whose culinary vocabulary it seemed impossible to exhaust. He followed, watching every motion of the happy couples. "Well, if this ain't too bad!—I've a great mind to tell old Pits how them disgusting saussingers runs after his mince-pies—meets 'em in the Park; gallivants with them under the trees as if they was ortolans and beccaficas; bills and coos with 'em as if they was real turtles and punch à la Romaine. How the old cucumber would flare up! Up Regent Street, along Oxford Street, through the square, up to our own door. Well, blowed if that ain't a good one! Into the very house they goes; up stairs to the drawing-room. O Lord! that there should be such impudence in beefsteaks and ingans! They couldn't be more audacious if they was Perigord pies."