CHAPTER LVI

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.

Georgy, after breakfast, would sit in the arm-chair in the dining-room

and read the Morning Post, just like a grown-up man. "How he DU dam

and swear," the servants would cry, delighted at his precocity. Those

who remembered the Captain his father, declared Master George was his

Pa, every inch of him. He made the house lively by his activity, his

imperiousness, his scolding, and his good-nature.

George's education was confided to a neighbouring scholar and private

pedagogue who "prepared young noblemen and gentlemen for the

Universities, the senate, and the learned professions: whose system

did not embrace the degrading corporal severities still practised at

the ancient places of education, and in whose family the pupils would

find the elegances of refined society and the confidence and affection

of a home." It was in this way that the Reverend Lawrence Veal of Hart

Street, Bloomsbury, and domestic Chaplain to the Earl of Bareacres,

strove with Mrs. Veal his wife to entice pupils.

By thus advertising and pushing sedulously, the domestic Chaplain and

his Lady generally succeeded in having one or two scholars by them--who

paid a high figure and were thought to be in uncommonly comfortable

quarters. There was a large West Indian, whom nobody came to see, with

a mahogany complexion, a woolly head, and an exceedingly dandyfied

appearance; there was another hulking boy of three-and-twenty whose

education had been neglected and whom Mr. and Mrs. Veal were to

introduce into the polite world; there were two sons of Colonel Bangles

of the East India Company's Service: these four sat down to dinner at

Mrs. Veal's genteel board, when Georgy was introduced to her

establishment.

Georgy was, like some dozen other pupils, only a day boy; he arrived in

the morning under the guardianship of his friend Mr. Rowson, and if it

was fine, would ride away in the afternoon on his pony, followed by the

groom. The wealth of his grandfather was reported in the school to be

prodigious. The Rev. Mr. Veal used to compliment Georgy upon it

personally, warning him that he was destined for a high station; that

it became him to prepare, by sedulity and docility in youth, for the

lofty duties to which he would be called in mature age; that obedience

in the child was the best preparation for command in the man; and that

he therefore begged George would not bring toffee into the school and

ruin the health of the Masters Bangles, who had everything they wanted

at the elegant and abundant table of Mrs. Veal.

With respect to learning, "the Curriculum," as Mr. Veal loved to call

it, was of prodigious extent, and the young gentlemen in Hart Street

might learn a something of every known science. The Rev. Mr. Veal had

an orrery, an electrifying machine, a turning lathe, a theatre (in the

wash-house), a chemical apparatus, and what he called a select library

of all the works of the best authors of ancient and modern times and

languages. He took the boys to the British Museum and descanted upon

the antiquities and the specimens of natural history there, so that

audiences would gather round him as he spoke, and all Bloomsbury highly

admired him as a prodigiously well-informed man. And whenever he spoke

(which he did almost always), he took care to produce the very finest

and longest words of which the vocabulary gave him the use, rightly

judging that it was as cheap to employ a handsome, large, and sonorous

epithet, as to use a little stingy one.

Thus he would say to George in school, "I observed on my return home

from taking the indulgence of an evening's scientific conversation with

my excellent friend Doctor Bulders--a true archaeologian, gentlemen, a

true archaeologian--that the windows of your venerated grandfather's

almost princely mansion in Russell Square were illuminated as if for

the purposes of festivity. Am I right in my conjecture that Mr.

Osborne entertained a society of chosen spirits round his sumptuous

board last night?"

Little Georgy, who had considerable humour, and used to mimic Mr. Veal

to his face with great spirit and dexterity, would reply that Mr. V.

was quite correct in his surmise.

"Then those friends who had the honour of partaking of Mr. Osborne's

hospitality, gentlemen, had no reason, I will lay any wager, to

complain of their repast. I myself have been more than once so

favoured. (By the way, Master Osborne, you came a little late this

morning, and have been a defaulter in this respect more than once.) I

myself, I say, gentlemen, humble as I am, have been found not unworthy

to share Mr. Osborne's elegant hospitality. And though I have feasted

with the great and noble of the world--for I presume that I may call my

excellent friend and patron, the Right Honourable George Earl of

Bareacres, one of the number--yet I assure you that the board of the

British merchant was to the full as richly served, and his reception as

gratifying and noble. Mr. Bluck, sir, we will resume, if you please,

that passage of Eutropis, which was interrupted by the late arrival of

Master Osborne."

To this great man George's education was for some time entrusted.

Amelia was bewildered by his phrases, but thought him a prodigy of

learning. That poor widow made friends of Mrs. Veal, for reasons of

her own. She liked to be in the house and see Georgy coming to school

there. She liked to be asked to Mrs. Veal's conversazioni, which took

place once a month (as you were informed on pink cards, with AOHNH

[_Transcriber's Note: The name of the Greek goddess Athene; the "O"

represents a capital theta._] engraved on them), and where the professor

welcomed his pupils and their friends to weak tea and scientific

conversation. Poor little Amelia never missed one of these

entertainments and thought them delicious so long as she might have

Georgy sitting by her. And she would walk from Brompton in any weather,

and embrace Mrs. Veal with tearful gratitude for the delightful evening

she had passed, when, the company having retired and Georgy gone off

with Mr. Rowson, his attendant, poor Mrs. Osborne put on her cloaks and

her shawls preparatory to walking home.

As for the learning which Georgy imbibed under this valuable master of

a hundred sciences, to judge from the weekly reports which the lad took

home to his grandfather, his progress was remarkable. The names of a

score or more of desirable branches of knowledge were printed in a

table, and the pupil's progress in each was marked by the professor.

In Greek Georgy was pronounced aristos, in Latin optimus, in French

tres bien, and so forth; and everybody had prizes for everything at the

end of the year. Even Mr. Swartz, the wooly-headed young gentleman,

and half-brother to the Honourable Mrs. Mac Mull, and Mr. Bluck, the

neglected young pupil of three-and-twenty from the agricultural

district, and that idle young scapegrace of a Master Todd before

mentioned, received little eighteen-penny books, with "Athene" engraved

on them, and a pompous Latin inscription from the professor to his

young friends.

The family of this Master Todd were hangers-on of the house of Osborne.

The old gentleman had advanced Todd from being a clerk to be a junior

partner in his establishment.

Mr. Osborne was the godfather of young Master Todd (who in subsequent

life wrote Mr. Osborne Todd on his cards and became a man of decided

fashion), while Miss Osborne had accompanied Miss Maria Todd to the

font, and gave her protegee a prayer-book, a collection of tracts, a

volume of very low church poetry, or some such memento of her goodness

every year. Miss O. drove the Todds out in her carriage now and then;

when they were ill, her footman, in large plush smalls and waistcoat,

brought jellies and delicacies from Russell Square to Coram Street.

Coram Street trembled and looked up to Russell Square indeed, and Mrs.

Todd, who had a pretty hand at cutting out paper trimmings for haunches

of mutton, and could make flowers, ducks, &c., out of turnips and

carrots in a very creditable manner, would go to "the Square," as it

was called, and assist in the preparations incident to a great dinner,

without even so much as thinking of sitting down to the banquet. If

any guest failed at the eleventh hour, Todd was asked to dine. Mrs.

Todd and Maria came across in the evening, slipped in with a muffled

knock, and were in the drawing-room by the time Miss Osborne and the

ladies under her convoy reached that apartment--and ready to fire off

duets and sing until the gentlemen came up. Poor Maria Todd; poor

young lady! How she had to work and thrum at these duets and sonatas

in the Street, before they appeared in public in the Square!

Thus it seemed to be decreed by fate that Georgy was to domineer over

everybody with whom he came in contact, and that friends, relatives,

and domestics were all to bow the knee before the little fellow. It

must be owned that he accommodated himself very willingly to this

arrangement. Most people do so. And Georgy liked to play the part of

master and perhaps had a natural aptitude for it.

In Russell Square everybody was afraid of Mr. Osborne, and Mr. Osborne

was afraid of Georgy. The boy's dashing manners, and offhand rattle

about books and learning, his likeness to his father (dead unreconciled

in Brussels yonder) awed the old gentleman and gave the young boy the

mastery. The old man would start at some hereditary feature or tone

unconsciously used by the little lad, and fancy that George's father

was again before him. He tried by indulgence to the grandson to make

up for harshness to the elder George. People were surprised at his

gentleness to the boy. He growled and swore at Miss Osborne as usual,

and would smile when George came down late for breakfast.

Miss Osborne, George's aunt, was a faded old spinster, broken down by

more than forty years of dulness and coarse usage. It was easy for a

lad of spirit to master her. And whenever George wanted anything from

her, from the jam-pots in her cupboards to the cracked and dry old

colours in her paint-box (the old paint-box which she had had when she

was a pupil of Mr. Smee and was still almost young and blooming),

Georgy took possession of the object of his desire, which obtained, he

took no further notice of his aunt.

For his friends and cronies, he had a pompous old schoolmaster, who

flattered him, and a toady, his senior, whom he could thrash. It was

dear Mrs. Todd's delight to leave him with her youngest daughter, Rosa

Jemima, a darling child of eight years old. The little pair looked so

well together, she would say (but not to the folks in "the Square," we

may be sure) "who knows what might happen? Don't they make a pretty

little couple?" the fond mother thought.

The broken-spirited, old, maternal grandfather was likewise subject to

the little tyrant. He could not help respecting a lad who had such

fine clothes and rode with a groom behind him. Georgy, on his side,

was in the constant habit of hearing coarse abuse and vulgar satire

levelled at John Sedley by his pitiless old enemy, Mr. Osborne.

Osborne used to call the other the old pauper, the old coal-man, the

old bankrupt, and by many other such names of brutal contumely. How

was little George to respect a man so prostrate? A few months after he

was with his paternal grandfather, Mrs. Sedley died. There had been

little love between her and the child. He did not care to show much

grief. He came down to visit his mother in a fine new suit of

mourning, and was very angry that he could not go to a play upon which

he had set his heart.

The illness of that old lady had been the occupation and perhaps the

safeguard of Amelia. What do men know about women's martyrdoms? We

should go mad had we to endure the hundredth part of those daily pains

which are meekly borne by many women. Ceaseless slavery meeting with

no reward; constant gentleness and kindness met by cruelty as constant;

love, labour, patience, watchfulness, without even so much as the

acknowledgement of a good word; all this, how many of them have to bear

in quiet, and appear abroad with cheerful faces as if they felt

nothing. Tender slaves that they are, they must needs be hypocrites

and weak.

From her chair Amelia's mother had taken to her bed, which she had

never left, and from which Mrs. Osborne herself was never absent except

when she ran to see George. The old lady grudged her even those rare

visits; she, who had been a kind, smiling, good-natured mother once, in

the days of her prosperity, but whom poverty and infirmities had broken

down. Her illness or estrangement did not affect Amelia. They rather

enabled her to support the other calamity under which she was

suffering, and from the thoughts of which she was kept by the ceaseless

calls of the invalid. Amelia bore her harshness quite gently; smoothed

the uneasy pillow; was always ready with a soft answer to the watchful,

querulous voice; soothed the sufferer with words of hope, such as her

pious simple heart could best feel and utter, and closed the eyes that

had once looked so tenderly upon her.

Then all her time and tenderness were devoted to the consolation and

comfort of the bereaved old father, who was stunned by the blow which

had befallen him, and stood utterly alone in the world. His wife, his

honour, his fortune, everything he loved best had fallen away from him.

There was only Amelia to stand by and support with her gentle arms the

tottering, heart-broken old man. We are not going to write the history:

it would be too dreary and stupid. I can see Vanity Fair yawning over

it d'avance.

One day as the young gentlemen were assembled in the study at the Rev.

Mr. Veal's, and the domestic chaplain to the Right Honourable the Earl

of Bareacres was spouting away as usual, a smart carriage drove up to

the door decorated with the statue of Athene, and two gentlemen stepped

out. The young Masters Bangles rushed to the window with a vague

notion that their father might have arrived from Bombay. The great

hulking scholar of three-and-twenty, who was crying secretly over a

passage of Eutropius, flattened his neglected nose against the panes

and looked at the drag, as the laquais de place sprang from the box and

let out the persons in the carriage.

"It's a fat one and a thin one," Mr. Bluck said as a thundering knock

came to the door.

Everybody was interested, from the domestic chaplain himself, who hoped

he saw the fathers of some future pupils, down to Master Georgy, glad

of any pretext for laying his book down.

The boy in the shabby livery with the faded copper buttons, who always

thrust himself into the tight coat to open the door, came into the

study and said, "Two gentlemen want to see Master Osborne." The

professor had had a trifling altercation in the morning with that young

gentleman, owing to a difference about the introduction of crackers in

school-time; but his face resumed its habitual expression of bland

courtesy as he said, "Master Osborne, I give you full permission to go

and see your carriage friends--to whom I beg you to convey the

respectful compliments of myself and Mrs. Veal."

Georgy went into the reception-room and saw two strangers, whom he

looked at with his head up, in his usual haughty manner. One was fat,

with mustachios, and the other was lean and long, in a blue frock-coat,

with a brown face and a grizzled head.

"My God, how like he is!" said the long gentleman with a start. "Can

you guess who we are, George?"

The boy's face flushed up, as it did usually when he was moved, and his

eyes brightened. "I don't know the other," he said, "but I should

think you must be Major Dobbin."

Indeed it was our old friend. His voice trembled with pleasure as he

greeted the boy, and taking both the other's hands in his own, drew the

lad to him.

"Your mother has talked to you about me--has she?" he said.

"That she has," Georgy answered, "hundreds and hundreds of times."