nearly the ruin of me. I must go and speak with that young man the most astonishing thing I ever heard in my life. What's his name? Mr. Nadab? Mr. Nadab, sir, you have delighted me. May I make so free as to ask you to come and dine with me to-morrow at six? Colonel Newcome, if you please, Nerot's Hotel, Clifford Street. I am always proud to make the acquaintance of men of genius, and you are one, or my name is not Newcome!" "Sir, you do me h-honor," says Mr, Nadab, pulling up his shirt-collar, "and per'aps the day will come when the world will do me justice. May I put down your h-honored name for my book of poems?" "Of course, my dear sir," says the enthusiastic Colonel, "I'll send them all over India. Put me down for six copies, and do me the favor to bring them to-morrow when you come to dinner." And now Mr. Hoskins asking if any gentleman would volunteer a song, what was our amazement when the simple Colonel offered to sing himself, at which the room applauded vociferously; whilst methought poor Clive Newcome hung down his head, and blushed as red as a peony, I felt for the young lad, and thought what my own sensations would have been if, in that place, my own uncle, Major Pendennis, had suddenly proposed to exert his lyrical powers. The Colonel selected the ditty of "Wapping Old Stairs" (a ballad so sweet and touching that surely any English poet might be proud to be the father of it), and he sang this quaint and charming old song in an exceedingly pleasant voice, with flourishes and roulades in the old Incledon manner, which has pretty nearly passed away. The singer gave his heart and soul to the simple ballad, and delivered Molly's gentle appeal so pathetically that even the professional gentlemen hummed and buzzed a sincere applause; and some wags, who were inclined to jeer at the beginning of the performance, clinked their glasses and rapped their sticks with quite a respectful enthusiasm. When the song was over, Clive held up his head too; after the shock of the first verse, looked round with surprise and pleasure in his eyes; and we, I need not say, backed our friend, delighted to see him come out of his queer scrape so triumphantly. The Colonel bowed and smiled with very pleasant good-nature at our plaudits. It was like Dr. Primrose 1 preaching his sermon in the prison. There was something touching in the naïveté and kindness of the placid and simple gentleman. Great Hoskins, placed on high, amidst the tuneful choir, was pleased to signify his approbation, and gave his guest's health in his usual dignified manner. "I am much obliged to you, sir," says Mr. Hoskins; "the room ought to be much obliged to you: I drink your 'ealth and song, sir"; and he bowed to the Colonel politely over his glass of brandy-andwater, of which he absorbed a little in his customer's honor. "I have not heard that song," he was kind enough to say, "better performed since Mr. Incledon sung it. He was a great singer, sir, and I may say, in the words of our immortal Shakespeare, that, take him for all in all, we shall not look upon his like again." The Colonel blushed in his turn, and turning round to his boy with an arch smile, said, "I learnt it from Incledon. I used to slip out from Grey Friars to hear him Heaven bless me, forty years ago; and I used to be flogged afterwards, and served me right too. Lord! Lord! how the time passes!" He drank off his sherry-and-water, and fell back in his chair; we could see he was thinking about his youth-the golden timethe happy, the bright, the unforgotten. I was myself nearly two-and-twenty years of age at that period, and felt as old as, ay, older than the Colonel. Whilst he was singing his ballad, there had walked, or 1 In Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield. rather reeled, into the room, a gentleman in a military frockcoat and duck trousers of dubious hue, with whose name and person some of my readers are perhaps already acquainted. In fact it was my friend Captain Costigan, in his usual condition at this hour of the night. Holding on by various tables, the Captain had sidled up, without accident to himself or any of the jugs and glasses round about him, to the table where we sat, and had taken his place near the writer, his old acquaintance. He warbied the refrain of the Colonel's song not inharmoniously, and saluted its pathetic conclusion with a subdued hiccough, and a plentiful effusion of tears. "Bedad it is a beautiful song," says he, "and many a time I heard poor Harry Incledon sing it." "He's a great character," whispered that unlucky King of Corpus to his neighbor the Colonel; "was a Captain in the army. We call him the General. Captain Costigan, will you take something to drink?” "Bedad I will," says the Captain, "and I'll sing ye at song tu." And, having procured a glass of whiskey-and-water from the passing waiter, the poor old man, settling his face into a horrid grin, and leering, as he was wont, when he gave what he called one of his prime songs, began his music. The unlucky wretch, who scarcely knew what he was doing or saying, selected one of the most outrageous performances of his répertoire, fired off a tipsy howl by way of overture, and away he went. At the end of the second verse, the Colonel started up, clapping on his hat, seizing his stick, and looking as ferocious as though he had been going to do battle with a Pindaree. "Silence!" he roared out. "Hear, hear!" cried certain wags at a farther table. "Go on, Costigan!" said others. "Go on!" cries the Colonel, in his high voice, trembling with anger. "Does any gentleman say, 'Go on'? Does any man who has a wife and sisters, or children at home, say "Go on' to such disgusting ribaldry as this? Do you dare, sir, to call yourself a gentleman, and to say that you hold the King's commission, and to sit down amongst Christians and men of honor, and defile the cars of young boys with this wicked balderdash?" "Why do you bring young boys here, old boy?" cries a voice of the malcontents. "Why? Because I thought I was coming to a society of gentlemen," cried out the indignant Colonel. "Because I never could have believed that Englishmen could meet together and allow a man, and an old man, so to disgrace himself. For shame, you old wretch! Go home to your bed, you hoary old sinner! And for my part, I'm not sorry that my son should see, for once in his life, to what shame and degradation and dishonor drunkenness and whisky may bring a man. Never mind the change, sir!-Curse the change!” says the Colonel, facing the amazed waiter. "Keep it till you see me in this place again; which will be never-by George, never!" And shouldering his stick, and scowling round at the company of seared bacchanalians, the indignant gentleman stalked away, his boy after him. Clive seemed rather shamefaced, but I fear the rest of the company looked still more foolish. "Aussi que diable venait-il faire dans cette galère?” 1 says King of Corpus to Jones of Trinity; and Jones gave a shrug of his shoulders, which were smarting, perhaps; for that uplifted cane of the Colonel's had somehow fallen on the back of every man in the room. 1 "What the devil was he doing in this galley?". -a proverbial expression from a play by Molière. 79 THE AN EPISODE AT AN INN 1 Laurence Sterne hero, who tells his own story, has just crossed The moment I cast my eyes upon him I was predetermined not to give him a single sou; and accordingly I put my purse into my pocket, buttoned it up, set myself a little more upon my center, and advanced up gravely to him. There was something, I fear, forbidding in my look: I have his figure this moment before my eyes, and think there was that in it which deserved better. The monk, as I judged from the break in his tonsure, a few scattered white hairs upon his temples being all that remained of it, might be about seventy; but from his eyes, and that sort of fire which was in them, which seemed more tempered by courtesy than years, could be no more than sixty: truth might lie between-he was certainly sixty-five; and the general air of his countenance, notwithstanding something seemed to have been planting wrinkles in it before their time, agreed to the account. It was one of those heads which Guido has often painted— mild, pale, penetrating, free from all commonplace ideas of fat contented ignorance looking downwards upon the earth; it looked forwards, but looked at something beyond this world. How one of his order came by it, Heaven above, who let it 1 From A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy. Omissions are not indicated. |