Vanity Fair (97 page)

The bailiffs and brokers seized upon poor Raggles in Curzon Street,
and the late fair tenant of that poor little mansion was in the
meanwhile—where? Who cared! Who asked after a day or two? Was she
guilty or not? We all know how charitable the world is, and how the
verdict of Vanity Fair goes when there is a doubt. Some people said
she had gone to Naples in pursuit of Lord Steyne, whilst others
averred that his Lordship quitted that city and fled to Palermo on
hearing of Becky's arrival; some said she was living in Bierstadt,
and had become a dame d'honneur to the Queen of Bulgaria; some that
she was at Boulogne; and others, at a boarding-house at Cheltenham.

Rawdon made her a tolerable annuity, and we may be sure that she was
a woman who could make a little money go a great way, as the saying
is. He would have paid his debts on leaving England, could he have
got any Insurance Office to take his life, but the climate of
Coventry Island was so bad that he could borrow no money on the
strength of his salary. He remitted, however, to his brother
punctually, and wrote to his little boy regularly every mail. He
kept Macmurdo in cigars and sent over quantities of shells, cayenne
pepper, hot pickles, guava jelly, and colonial produce to Lady Jane.
He sent his brother home the Swamp Town Gazette, in which the new
Governor was praised with immense enthusiasm; whereas the Swamp Town
Sentinel, whose wife was not asked to Government House, declared
that his Excellency was a tyrant, compared to whom Nero was an
enlightened philanthropist. Little Rawdon used to like to get the
papers and read about his Excellency.

His mother never made any movement to see the child. He went home to
his aunt for Sundays and holidays; he soon knew every bird's nest
about Queen's Crawley, and rode out with Sir Huddlestone's hounds,
which he admired so on his first well-remembered visit to Hampshire.

Georgy is Made a Gentleman

Georgy Osborne was now fairly established in his grandfather's
mansion in Russell Square, occupant of his father's room in the
house and heir apparent of all the splendours there. The good
looks, gallant bearing, and gentlemanlike appearance of the boy won
the grandsire's heart for him. Mr. Osborne was as proud of him as
ever he had been of the elder George.

The child had many more luxuries and indulgences than had been
awarded his father. Osborne's commerce had prospered greatly of
late years. His wealth and importance in the City had very much
increased. He had been glad enough in former days to put the elder
George to a good private school; and a commission in the army for
his son had been a source of no small pride to him; for little
George and his future prospects the old man looked much higher. He
would make a gentleman of the little chap, was Mr. Osborne's
constant saying regarding little Georgy. He saw him in his mind's
eye, a collegian, a Parliament man, a Baronet, perhaps. The old man
thought he would die contented if he could see his grandson in a
fair way to such honours. He would have none but a tip-top college
man to educate him—none of your quacks and pretenders—no, no. A
few years before, he used to be savage, and inveigh against all
parsons, scholars, and the like declaring that they were a pack of
humbugs, and quacks that weren't fit to get their living but by
grinding Latin and Greek, and a set of supercilious dogs that
pretended to look down upon British merchants and gentlemen, who
could buy up half a hundred of 'em. He would mourn now, in a very
solemn manner, that his own education had been neglected, and
repeatedly point out, in pompous orations to Georgy, the necessity
and excellence of classical acquirements.

When they met at dinner the grandsire used to ask the lad what he
had been reading during the day, and was greatly interested at the
report the boy gave of his own studies, pretending to understand
little George when he spoke regarding them. He made a hundred
blunders and showed his ignorance many a time. It did not increase
the respect which the child had for his senior. A quick brain and a
better education elsewhere showed the boy very soon that his
grandsire was a dullard, and he began accordingly to command him and
to look down upon him; for his previous education, humble and
contracted as it had been, had made a much better gentleman of
Georgy than any plans of his grandfather could make him. He had
been brought up by a kind, weak, and tender woman, who had no pride
about anything but about him, and whose heart was so pure and whose
bearing was so meek and humble that she could not but needs be a
true lady. She busied herself in gentle offices and quiet duties;
if she never said brilliant things, she never spoke or thought
unkind ones; guileless and artless, loving and pure, indeed how
could our poor little Amelia be other than a real gentlewoman!

Young Georgy lorded over this soft and yielding nature; and the
contrast of its simplicity and delicacy with the coarse pomposity of
the dull old man with whom he next came in contact made him lord
over the latter too. If he had been a Prince Royal he could not
have been better brought up to think well of himself.

Whilst his mother was yearning after him at home, and I do believe
every hour of the day, and during most hours of the sad lonely
nights, thinking of him, this young gentleman had a number of
pleasures and consolations administered to him, which made him for
his part bear the separation from Amelia very easily. Little boys
who cry when they are going to school cry because they are going to
a very uncomfortable place. It is only a few who weep from sheer
affection. When you think that the eyes of your childhood dried at
the sight of a piece of gingerbread, and that a plum cake was a
compensation for the agony of parting with your mamma and sisters,
oh my friend and brother, you need not be too confident of your own
fine feelings.

Well, then, Master George Osborne had every comfort and luxury that
a wealthy and lavish old grandfather thought fit to provide. The
coachman was instructed to purchase for him the handsomest pony
which could be bought for money, and on this George was taught to
ride, first at a riding-school, whence, after having performed
satisfactorily without stirrups, and over the leaping-bar, he was
conducted through the New Road to Regent's Park, and then to Hyde
Park, where he rode in state with Martin the coachman behind him.
Old Osborne, who took matters more easily in the City now, where he
left his affairs to his junior partners, would often ride out with
Miss O. in the same fashionable direction. As little Georgy came
cantering up with his dandified air and his heels down, his
grandfather would nudge the lad's aunt and say, "Look, Miss O." And
he would laugh, and his face would grow red with pleasure, as he
nodded out of the window to the boy, as the groom saluted the
carriage, and the footman saluted Master George. Here too his aunt,
Mrs. Frederick Bullock (whose chariot might daily be seen in the
Ring, with bullocks or emblazoned on the panels and harness, and
three pasty-faced little Bullocks, covered with cockades and
feathers, staring from the windows) Mrs. Frederick Bullock, I say,
flung glances of the bitterest hatred at the little upstart as he
rode by with his hand on his side and his hat on one ear, as proud
as a lord.

Though he was scarcely eleven years of age, Master George wore
straps and the most beautiful little boots like a man. He had gilt
spurs, and a gold-headed whip, and a fine pin in his handkerchief,
and the neatest little kid gloves which Lamb's Conduit Street could
furnish. His mother had given him a couple of neckcloths, and
carefully hemmed and made some little shirts for him; but when her
Eli came to see the widow, they were replaced by much finer linen.
He had little jewelled buttons in the lawn shirt fronts. Her humble
presents had been put aside—I believe Miss Osborne had given them
to the coachman's boy. Amelia tried to think she was pleased at the
change. Indeed, she was happy and charmed to see the boy looking so
beautiful.

She had had a little black profile of him done for a shilling, and
this was hung up by the side of another portrait over her bed. One
day the boy came on his accustomed visit, galloping down the little
street at Brompton, and bringing, as usual, all the inhabitants to
the windows to admire his splendour, and with great eagerness and a
look of triumph in his face, he pulled a case out of his great-coat
—it was a natty white great-coat, with a cape and a velvet collar—
pulled out a red morocco case, which he gave her.

"I bought it with my own money, Mamma," he said. "I thought you'd
like it."

Amelia opened the case, and giving a little cry of delighted
affection, seized the boy and embraced him a hundred times. It was
a miniature-of himself, very prettily done (though not half handsome
enough, we may be sure, the widow thought). His grandfather had
wished to have a picture of him by an artist whose works, exhibited
in a shop-window, in Southampton Row, had caught the old gentleman's
eye; and George, who had plenty of money, bethought him of asking
the painter how much a copy of the little portrait would cost,
saying that he would pay for it out of his own money and that he
wanted to give it to his mother. The pleased painter executed it
for a small price, and old Osborne himself, when he heard of the
incident, growled out his satisfaction and gave the boy twice as
many sovereigns as he paid for the miniature.

But what was the grandfather's pleasure compared to Amelia's
ecstacy? That proof of the boy's affection charmed her so that she
thought no child in the world was like hers for goodness. For long
weeks after, the thought of his love made her happy. She slept
better with the picture under her pillow, and how many many times
did she kiss it and weep and pray over it! A small kindness from
those she loved made that timid heart grateful. Since her parting
with George she had had no such joy and consolation.

At his new home Master George ruled like a lord; at dinner he
invited the ladies to drink wine with the utmost coolness, and took
off his champagne in a way which charmed his old grandfather. "Look
at him," the old man would say, nudging his neighbour with a
delighted purple face, "did you ever see such a chap? Lord, Lord!
he'll be ordering a dressing-case next, and razors to shave with;
I'm blessed if he won't."

The antics of the lad did not, however, delight Mr. Osborne's
friends so much as they pleased the old gentleman. It gave Mr.
Justice Coffin no pleasure to hear Georgy cut into the conversation
and spoil his stories. Colonel Fogey was not interested in seeing
the little boy half tipsy. Mr. Sergeant Toffy's lady felt no
particular gratitude, when, with a twist of his elbow, he tilted a
glass of port-wine over her yellow satin and laughed at the
disaster; nor was she better pleased, although old Osborne was
highly delighted, when Georgy "whopped" her third boy (a young
gentleman a year older than Georgy, and by chance home for the
holidays from Dr. Tickleus's at Ealing School) in Russell Square.
George's grandfather gave the boy a couple of sovereigns for that
feat and promised to reward him further for every boy above his own
size and age whom he whopped in a similar manner. It is difficult
to say what good the old man saw in these combats; he had a vague
notion that quarrelling made boys hardy, and that tyranny was a
useful accomplishment for them to learn. English youth have been so
educated time out of mind, and we have hundreds of thousands of
apologists and admirers of injustice, misery, and brutality, as
perpetrated among children. Flushed with praise and victory over
Master Toffy, George wished naturally to pursue his conquests
further, and one day as he was strutting about in prodigiously
dandified new clothes, near St. Pancras, and a young baker's boy
made sarcastic comments upon his appearance, the youthful patrician
pulled off his dandy jacket with great spirit, and giving it in
charge to the friend who accompanied him (Master Todd, of Great
Coram Street, Russell Square, son of the junior partner of the house
of Osborne and Co.), George tried to whop the little baker. But the
chances of war were unfavourable this time, and the little baker
whopped Georgy, who came home with a rueful black eye and all his
fine shirt frill dabbled with the claret drawn from his own little
nose. He told his grandfather that he had been in combat with a
giant, and frightened his poor mother at Brompton with long, and by
no means authentic, accounts of the battle.

This young Todd, of Coram Street, Russell Square, was Master
George's great friend and admirer. They both had a taste for
painting theatrical characters; for hardbake and raspberry tarts;
for sliding and skating in the Regent's Park and the Serpentine,
when the weather permitted; for going to the play, whither they were
often conducted, by Mr. Osborne's orders, by Rowson, Master George's
appointed body-servant, with whom they sat in great comfort in the
pit.

In the company of this gentleman they visited all the principal
theatres of the metropolis; knew the names of all the actors from
Drury Lane to Sadler's Wells; and performed, indeed, many of the
plays to the Todd family and their youthful friends, with West's
famous characters, on their pasteboard theatre. Rowson, the
footman, who was of a generous disposition, would not unfrequently,
when in cash, treat his young master to oysters after the play, and
to a glass of rum-shrub for a night-cap. We may be pretty certain
that Mr. Rowson profited in his turn by his young master's
liberality and gratitude for the pleasures to which the footman
inducted him.

A famous tailor from the West End of the town—Mr. Osborne would
have none of your City or Holborn bunglers, he said, for the boy
(though a City tailor was good enough for HIM)—was summoned to
ornament little George's person, and was told to spare no expense in
so doing. So, Mr. Woolsey, of Conduit Street, gave a loose to his
imagination and sent the child home fancy trousers, fancy
waistcoats, and fancy jackets enough to furnish a school of little
dandies. Georgy had little white waistcoats for evening parties,
and little cut velvet waistcoats for dinners, and a dear little
darling shawl dressing-gown, for all the world like a little man.
He dressed for dinner every day, "like a regular West End swell," as
his grandfather remarked; one of the domestics was affected to his
special service, attended him at his toilette, answered his bell,
and brought him his letters always on a silver tray.