CHAPTER XLII

Which Treats of the Osborne Family

Considerable time has elapsed since we have seen our respectable

friend, old Mr. Osborne of Russell Square. He has not been the

happiest of mortals since last we met him. Events have occurred which

have not improved his temper, and in more instances than one he has

not been allowed to have his own way. To be thwarted in this

reasonable desire was always very injurious to the old gentleman; and

resistance became doubly exasperating when gout, age, loneliness, and

the force of many disappointments combined to weigh him down. His

stiff black hair began to grow quite white soon after his son's death;

his face grew redder; his hands trembled more and more as he poured out

his glass of port wine. He led his clerks a dire life in the City:

his family at home were not much happier. I doubt if Rebecca, whom we

have seen piously praying for Consols, would have exchanged her poverty

and the dare-devil excitement and chances of her life for Osborne's

money and the humdrum gloom which enveloped him. He had proposed for

Miss Swartz, but had been rejected scornfully by the partisans of that

lady, who married her to a young sprig of Scotch nobility. He was a

man to have married a woman out of low life and bullied her dreadfully

afterwards; but no person presented herself suitable to his taste, and,

instead, he tyrannized over his unmarried daughter, at home. She had a

fine carriage and fine horses and sat at the head of a table loaded

with the grandest plate. She had a cheque-book, a prize footman to

follow her when she walked, unlimited credit, and bows and compliments

from all the tradesmen, and all the appurtenances of an heiress; but

she spent a woeful time. The little charity-girls at the Foundling, the

sweeperess at the crossing, the poorest under-kitchen-maid in the

servants' hall, was happy compared to that unfortunate and now

middle-aged young lady.

Frederick Bullock, Esq., of the house of Bullock, Hulker, and Bullock,

had married Maria Osborne, not without a great deal of difficulty and

grumbling on Mr. Bullock's part. George being dead and cut out of his

father's will, Frederick insisted that the half of the old gentleman's

property should be settled upon his Maria, and indeed, for a long time,

refused, "to come to the scratch" (it was Mr. Frederick's own

expression) on any other terms. Osborne said Fred had agreed to take

his daughter with twenty thousand, and he should bind himself to no

more. "Fred might take it, and welcome, or leave it, and go and be

hanged." Fred, whose hopes had been raised when George had been

disinherited, thought himself infamously swindled by the old merchant,

and for some time made as if he would break off the match altogether.

Osborne withdrew his account from Bullock and Hulker's, went on 'Change

with a horsewhip which he swore he would lay across the back of a

certain scoundrel that should be nameless, and demeaned himself in his

usual violent manner. Jane Osborne condoled with her sister Maria

during this family feud. "I always told you, Maria, that it was your

money he loved and not you," she said, soothingly.

"He selected me and my money at any rate; he didn't choose you and

yours," replied Maria, tossing up her head.

The rapture was, however, only temporary. Fred's father and senior

partners counselled him to take Maria, even with the twenty thousand

settled, half down, and half at the death of Mr. Osborne, with the

chances of the further division of the property. So he "knuckled

down," again to use his own phrase, and sent old Hulker with peaceable

overtures to Osborne. It was his father, he said, who would not hear

of the match, and had made the difficulties; he was most anxious to

keep the engagement. The excuse was sulkily accepted by Mr. Osborne.

Hulker and Bullock were a high family of the City aristocracy, and

connected with the "nobs" at the West End. It was something for the old

man to be able to say, "My son, sir, of the house of Hulker, Bullock,

and Co., sir; my daughter's cousin, Lady Mary Mango, sir, daughter of

the Right Hon. The Earl of Castlemouldy." In his imagination he saw

his house peopled by the "nobs." So he forgave young Bullock and

consented that the marriage should take place.

It was a grand affair--the bridegroom's relatives giving the breakfast,

their habitations being near St. George's, Hanover Square, where the

business took place. The "nobs of the West End" were invited, and many

of them signed the book. Mr. Mango and Lady Mary Mango were there,

with the dear young Gwendoline and Guinever Mango as bridesmaids;

Colonel Bludyer of the Dragoon Guards (eldest son of the house of

Bludyer Brothers, Mincing Lane), another cousin of the bridegroom, and

the Honourable Mrs. Bludyer; the Honourable George Boulter, Lord

Levant's son, and his lady, Miss Mango that was; Lord Viscount

Castletoddy; Honourable James McMull and Mrs. McMull (formerly Miss

Swartz); and a host of fashionables, who have all married into Lombard

Street and done a great deal to ennoble Cornhill.

The young couple had a house near Berkeley Square and a small villa at

Roehampton, among the banking colony there. Fred was considered to

have made rather a mesalliance by the ladies of his family, whose

grandfather had been in a Charity School, and who were allied through

the husbands with some of the best blood in England. And Maria was

bound, by superior pride and great care in the composition of her

visiting-book, to make up for the defects of birth, and felt it her

duty to see her father and sister as little as possible.

That she should utterly break with the old man, who had still so many

scores of thousand pounds to give away, is absurd to suppose. Fred

Bullock would never allow her to do that. But she was still young and

incapable of hiding her feelings; and by inviting her papa and sister

to her third-rate parties, and behaving very coldly to them when they

came, and by avoiding Russell Square, and indiscreetly begging her

father to quit that odious vulgar place, she did more harm than all

Frederick's diplomacy could repair, and perilled her chance of her

inheritance like a giddy heedless creature as she was.

"So Russell Square is not good enough for Mrs. Maria, hay?" said the

old gentleman, rattling up the carriage windows as he and his daughter

drove away one night from Mrs. Frederick Bullock's, after dinner. "So

she invites her father and sister to a second day's dinner (if those

sides, or ontrys, as she calls 'em, weren't served yesterday, I'm

d--d), and to meet City folks and littery men, and keeps the Earls and

the Ladies, and the Honourables to herself. Honourables? Damn

Honourables. I am a plain British merchant I am, and could buy the

beggarly hounds over and over. Lords, indeed!--why, at one of her

swarreys I saw one of 'em speak to a dam fiddler--a fellar I despise.

And they won't come to Russell Square, won't they? Why, I'll lay my

life I've got a better glass of wine, and pay a better figure for it,

and can show a handsomer service of silver, and can lay a better dinner

on my mahogany, than ever they see on theirs--the cringing, sneaking,

stuck-up fools. Drive on quick, James: I want to get back to Russell

Square--ha, ha!" and he sank back into the corner with a furious laugh.

With such reflections on his own superior merit, it was the custom of

the old gentleman not unfrequently to console himself.

Jane Osborne could not but concur in these opinions respecting her

sister's conduct; and when Mrs. Frederick's first-born, Frederick

Augustus Howard Stanley Devereux Bullock, was born, old Osborne, who

was invited to the christening and to be godfather, contented himself

with sending the child a gold cup, with twenty guineas inside it for

the nurse. "That's more than any of your Lords will give, I'LL

warrant," he said and refused to attend at the ceremony.

The splendour of the gift, however, caused great satisfaction to the

house of Bullock. Maria thought that her father was very much pleased

with her, and Frederick augured the best for his little son and heir.

One can fancy the pangs with which Miss Osborne in her solitude in

Russell Square read the Morning Post, where her sister's name occurred

every now and then, in the articles headed "Fashionable Reunions," and

where she had an opportunity of reading a description of Mrs. F.

Bullock's costume, when presented at the drawing room by Lady Frederica

Bullock. Jane's own life, as we have said, admitted of no such

grandeur. It was an awful existence. She had to get up of black

winter's mornings to make breakfast for her scowling old father, who

would have turned the whole house out of doors if his tea had not been

ready at half-past eight. She remained silent opposite to him,

listening to the urn hissing, and sitting in tremor while the parent

read his paper and consumed his accustomed portion of muffins and tea.

At half-past nine he rose and went to the City, and she was almost free

till dinner-time, to make visitations in the kitchen and to scold the

servants; to drive abroad and descend upon the tradesmen, who were

prodigiously respectful; to leave her cards and her papa's at the great

glum respectable houses of their City friends; or to sit alone in the

large drawing-room, expecting visitors; and working at a huge piece of

worsted by the fire, on the sofa, hard by the great Iphigenia clock,

which ticked and tolled with mournful loudness in the dreary room. The

great glass over the mantelpiece, faced by the other great console

glass at the opposite end of the room, increased and multiplied between

them the brown Holland bag in which the chandelier hung, until you saw

these brown Holland bags fading away in endless perspectives, and this

apartment of Miss Osborne's seemed the centre of a system of

drawing-rooms. When she removed the cordovan leather from the grand

piano and ventured to play a few notes on it, it sounded with a

mournful sadness, startling the dismal echoes of the house. George's

picture was gone, and laid upstairs in a lumber-room in the garret; and

though there was a consciousness of him, and father and daughter often

instinctively knew that they were thinking of him, no mention was ever

made of the brave and once darling son.

At five o'clock Mr. Osborne came back to his dinner, which he and his

daughter took in silence (seldom broken, except when he swore and was

savage, if the cooking was not to his liking), or which they shared

twice in a month with a party of dismal friends of Osborne's rank and

age. Old Dr. Gulp and his lady from Bloomsbury Square; old Mr.

Frowser, the attorney, from Bedford Row, a very great man, and from his

business, hand-in-glove with the "nobs at the West End"; old Colonel

Livermore, of the Bombay Army, and Mrs. Livermore, from Upper Bedford

Place; old Sergeant Toffy and Mrs. Toffy; and sometimes old Sir Thomas

Coffin and Lady Coffin, from Bedford Square. Sir Thomas was celebrated

as a hanging judge, and the particular tawny port was produced when he

dined with Mr. Osborne.

These people and their like gave the pompous Russell Square merchant

pompous dinners back again. They had solemn rubbers of whist, when

they went upstairs after drinking, and their carriages were called at

half past ten. Many rich people, whom we poor devils are in the habit

of envying, lead contentedly an existence like that above described.

Jane Osborne scarcely ever met a man under sixty, and almost the only

bachelor who appeared in their society was Mr. Smirk, the celebrated

ladies' doctor.

I can't say that nothing had occurred to disturb the monotony of this

awful existence: the fact is, there had been a secret in poor Jane's

life which had made her father more savage and morose than even nature,

pride, and over-feeding had made him. This secret was connected with

Miss Wirt, who had a cousin an artist, Mr. Smee, very celebrated since

as a portrait-painter and R.A., but who once was glad enough to give

drawing lessons to ladies of fashion. Mr. Smee has forgotten where

Russell Square is now, but he was glad enough to visit it in the year

1818, when Miss Osborne had instruction from him.

Smee (formerly a pupil of Sharpe of Frith Street, a dissolute,

irregular, and unsuccessful man, but a man with great knowledge of his

art) being the cousin of Miss Wirt, we say, and introduced by her to

Miss Osborne, whose hand and heart were still free after various

incomplete love affairs, felt a great attachment for this lady, and it

is believed inspired one in her bosom. Miss Wirt was the confidante of

this intrigue. I know not whether she used to leave the room where the

master and his pupil were painting, in order to give them an

opportunity for exchanging those vows and sentiments which cannot be

uttered advantageously in the presence of a third party; I know not

whether she hoped that should her cousin succeed in carrying off the

rich merchant's daughter, he would give Miss Wirt a portion of the

wealth which she had enabled him to win--all that is certain is that

Mr. Osborne got some hint of the transaction, came back from the City

abruptly, and entered the drawing-room with his bamboo cane; found the

painter, the pupil, and the companion all looking exceedingly pale

there; turned the former out of doors with menaces that he would break

every bone in his skin, and half an hour afterwards dismissed Miss Wirt

likewise, kicking her trunks down the stairs, trampling on her

bandboxes, and shaking his fist at her hackney coach as it bore her

away.

Jane Osborne kept her bedroom for many days. She was not allowed to

have a companion afterwards. Her father swore to her that she should

not have a shilling of his money if she made any match without his

concurrence; and as he wanted a woman to keep his house, he did not

choose that she should marry, so that she was obliged to give up all

projects with which Cupid had any share. During her papa's life, then,

she resigned herself to the manner of existence here described, and was

content to be an old maid. Her sister, meanwhile, was having children

with finer names every year and the intercourse between the two grew

fainter continually. "Jane and I do not move in the same sphere of

life," Mrs. Bullock said. "I regard her as a sister, of course"--which

means--what does it mean when a lady says that she regards Jane as a

sister?

It has been described how the Misses Dobbin lived with their father at

a fine villa at Denmark Hill, where there were beautiful graperies and

peach-trees which delighted little Georgy Osborne. The Misses Dobbin,

who drove often to Brompton to see our dear Amelia, came sometimes to

Russell Square too, to pay a visit to their old acquaintance Miss

Osborne. I believe it was in consequence of the commands of their

brother the Major in India (for whom their papa had a prodigious

respect), that they paid attention to Mrs. George; for the Major, the

godfather and guardian of Amelia's little boy, still hoped that the

child's grandfather might be induced to relent towards him and

acknowledge him for the sake of his son. The Misses Dobbin kept Miss

Osborne acquainted with the state of Amelia's affairs; how she was

living with her father and mother; how poor they were; how they

wondered what men, and such men as their brother and dear Captain

Osborne, could find in such an insignificant little chit; how she was

still, as heretofore, a namby-pamby milk-and-water affected

creature--but how the boy was really the noblest little boy ever

seen--for the hearts of all women warm towards young children, and the

sourest spinster is kind to them.

One day, after great entreaties on the part of the Misses Dobbin,

Amelia allowed little George to go and pass a day with them at Denmark

Hill--a part of which day she spent herself in writing to the Major in

India. She congratulated him on the happy news which his sisters had

just conveyed to her. She prayed for his prosperity and that of the

bride he had chosen. She thanked him for a thousand thousand kind

offices and proofs of steadfast friendship to her in her affliction.

She told him the last news about little Georgy, and how he was gone to

spend that very day with his sisters in the country. She underlined

the letter a great deal, and she signed herself affectionately his

friend, Amelia Osborne. She forgot to send any message of kindness to

Lady O'Dowd, as her wont was--and did not mention Glorvina by name, and

only in italics, as the Major's BRIDE, for whom she begged blessings.

But the news of the marriage removed the reserve which she had kept up

towards him. She was glad to be able to own and feel how warmly and

gratefully she regarded him--and as for the idea of being jealous of

Glorvina (Glorvina, indeed!), Amelia would have scouted it, if an angel

from heaven had hinted it to her. That night, when Georgy came back in

the pony-carriage in which he rejoiced, and in which he was driven by

Sir Wm. Dobbin's old coachman, he had round his neck a fine gold chain

and watch. He said an old lady, not pretty, had given it him, who

cried and kissed him a great deal. But he didn't like her. He liked

grapes very much. And he only liked his mamma. Amelia shrank and

started; the timid soul felt a presentiment of terror when she heard

that the relations of the child's father had seen him.

Miss Osborne came back to give her father his dinner. He had made a

good speculation in the City, and was rather in a good humour that day,

and chanced to remark the agitation under which she laboured. "What's

the matter, Miss Osborne?" he deigned to say.

The woman burst into tears. "Oh, sir," she said, "I've seen little

George. He is as beautiful as an angel--and so like him!" The old man

opposite to her did not say a word, but flushed up and began to tremble

in every limb.