Complete Works of R S Surtees

by R S Surtees

  When Facey and the Watkinses came to the knowledge of the doo they had practised on each other some sharp passages were exchanged, and a family war was on the point of commencing, when the name of Willy Watkins made its appearance in the Gazette. Facey was not the man, he said, to kick a foe when he was down; so it was agreed that all matters of difference between them should be buried in oblivion, and that Romford and wife should start forthwith to the Antipodes, and look after the old convict and the wreck of Willy’s property. This resolution was forthwith acted upon and, strange to say, almost the first person our hero met in the streets of Melbourne, just opposite Bright, Brothers, & Co.’s store, at the corner of Flinder’s Lane and Bond Street, was our estimable friend Mr Sponge, the runaway husband of the all-accomplished Mrs Somerville, who has played so conspicuous a part in our story. Soapey — looking as brisk and spruce as a man who has lit on his legs and can hold up his head before anybody — very different to the Mr Sponge who bolted by the backway from the cigar-shop in Jermyn Street; and though that “sivin-pun-ten” was still standing against him, it did not prevent Mr Sponge hailing his creditor with unfeigned cordiality.

  And indeed he had good cause for looking brisk, for he too had been to the diggings, and, not far from where friend Willy Watkins feathered his nest, had pitched upon some uncommonly good nuggets, which he had now come to Melbourne to sell. People who will pass each other on the grand street of life — the Parks or Pall Mall, for instance — will fraternise uncommonly on a Swiss mountain, or at the Antipodes. So it was with our distinguished heroes.

  Of course Facey knew nothing about Lucy, and, upon the principle that where ignorance is bliss ‘twere folly to be wise, Soapey was not extra-inquisitive about her. To the credit of Betsey Shannon, who had gained such an ascendency over her sapient husband as a spirited young woman like her ought to acquire, Mrs Somerville had a capital billet at Flush House, where she was treated with the greatest respect by the old buff-vested Lord and his Lady. They thought Lucy was second only to Betsey in beauty and breeding. But dependence is irksome, and Lucy presently longed for a crust of bread and a crib of her own.

  The attainment of these desiderata shortly afterwards presented itself in the following letter from Betsey Lonnergan, who had gone up to town for a few days, leaving Lucy in possession of Flush Hall: —

  Mawley’s Hotel,

  Wednesday.

  “Dear Lucy. — I write to say we shant come home till after the turn of the week, as Lovetin and me am going for a couple of days to Fokestone to see a cousen of his.

  You mustnt be dull, but keep your spirits up like a little brick as you are.

  Now for some news, which will make your back hair stand out like a Chinese man’s pigtail. I were setting in our carrige at Caning’s the sighgur shop’s door in Regent Street, whiles Lovey had gone in to get some weeds, when who should I clap my eyes on but Bellville as ‘used to was’ with us you know afore he went to Orstralia — (is that right? — well, if isn’t, you know what it means).

  Bellville went to lead in tragedy, you know, up at the diggins’, and a pretty tidy pike he has made on it. He was dressed quite like a swell — blue frock coat, with brade and frogs and a poodle collar, and his trowseys were tite, à la Charley Mathews, only they had brade down ’em too. Mustash, of course, and all that. Well, he stares at me and me at him, till he sees me smile, and then he offs with his tile and makes up to the carrige-door. After a short scene of surprise, he asks, ‘Commy foe?’ — Quite correct, eh?

  ‘Of course,’ says I, with a frown; and then we both laughed, as you may fancy.

  Well, B. told me what ‘tremendous success’ he had had — thought him Macready in disguise — gave him half share of the house, and a clear ‘Ben’ every month — and he has made mopusses enuff to come back quite indiapendent.

  ‘What’s that to me?’ says you, ‘or to Betsey Shannon’ now she’s the bride of another?’

  This is what it is. In course of conversashun he asked after you, and why you and Soapey had parted. I told him the truth — how Soapey had bolted and left you to shift for yourself. ‘Then,’ says B., ‘I can give her the cue to find him again, if she wishes it. He’s doing furst rate at Melburn; and if she’s short of rowdy to pay her passige out, Im ready, for “Awl Lang Sign,” to lend it her.’

  There, my dear, that’s something for you to think about till me and Lovey come home again — and here he is, ready to take me to the Canterbury, where I have teased him to go this evening.

  Bless you, dear, and please see that fires are kep in our bedroom and my bodore. Good-by.

  Your affectionate friend,

  Betsey Lonnergan.

  Lucy did not long deliberate over the contents of her friend’s letter before she decided to share the success of her Sponge. She resolved to discard the assumed name of Somerville, and set out for the Antipodes in search of him; so, following in the wake of the Romfords, she presently found him, and both Facey and Soapey gave her a most cordial greeting.

  The voyage out had agreed with her, and she was looking, if possible, handsomer than ever. Soapey took to her without hesitation, on the sensible principle of letting “bygones be bygones.” And Facey, who was a capital manager, so long as he hadn’t the old lady to contend with, had, with the aid of twins, got the lisper into such subjection and good order that Beldon Hall was all ignored — never mentioned.

  Indeed, Mr. Romford didn’t see why, saving the elegance of the name, Lucy shouldn’t have called herself Mrs Sponge instead of Mrs Somerville.

  And we are happy to say that old Granby Fitzgerald’s defalcations were not so utterly ruinous as were at first expected. There is something saved out of the fire for Willy, while Facey, with his natural aptitude for taking care of himself, has secured a trifle also; which, with what he took out with him, makes him up quite a purse. The last account heard of Soapey and him was that they were going to set up a bank in Collins Street East, under the firm of

  Romford and Sponge.

  Good luck attend their exertions, say we! We expect to hear of their setting up a pack of hounds together next.

  Young Tom Hall’s Heart-aches and Horses

  AN UNFINISHED NOVEL

  Surtees also left an unfinished novel, Young Tom Hall, focusing on the adventures of the eponymous naïve young hero. However, the novel’s unfinished status was not due to the author’s death. Surtees published his books anonymously and took great care to conceal his true identity as the creator of Jorrocks and Mr Sponge. The only book that he allowed to carry his name was the non-fictional Horseman’s Manual (1830). As Young Tom Hall was being serialised in the New Monthly Magazine in 1853, the editor, W. H. Ainsworth, revealed Surtees’ identity as the author. In a fit of pique, Surtees angrily refused to finish the serial, leaving Tom Hall’s eventual fate unresolved.

  How the novel opened in its serial publication

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER I.

  CHAPTER II.

  CHAPTER III.

  CHAPTER IV.

  CHAPTER V.

  CHAPTER VI.

  CHAPTER VII.

  CHAPTER VIII.

  CHAPTER IX.

  CHAPTER X.

  CHAPTER XI.

  CHAPTER XII.

  CHAPTER XIII.

  CHAPTER XIV.

  CHAPTER XV.

  CHAPTER XVI.

  CHAPTER XVII.

  CHAPTER XVIII.

  CHAPTER XIX.

  CHAPTER XX.

  CHAPTER XXI.

  CHAPTER XXII.

  CHAPTER XXIII.

  CHAPTER XXIV.

  CHAPTER XXV.

  CHAPTER XXVI.

  CHAPTER XXVII.

  CHAPTER XXVIII.

  CHAPTER XXIX.

  CHAPTER XXX.

  CHAPTER XXXI.

  CHAPTER XXXII.

  CHAPTER XXXIII.

  CHAPTER XXXIV.

  CHAPTER XXXV.

  CHAPTER XXXVI.

  CHAPTER XXXVII.

>   CHAPTER XXXVIII.

  CHAPTER XXXIX.

  CHAPTER XL.

  CHAPTER XLI.

  CHAPTER XLII.

  CHAPTER XLIII.

  CHAPTER XLIV.

  CHAPTER XLV.

  CHAPTER XLVI.

  CHAPTER XLVII.

  CHAPTER XLVIII.

  CHAPTER XLIX.

  CHAPTER L.

  Cover of Young Tom Hall, Surtees’ unfinished novel, which was not published in book form until 1926.

  The original frontispiece

  CHAPTER I.

  MR HALL AND OUR TOM.

  “OUR TOM SHALL be a gent! Our Tom shall be a gent! “exclaimed old father Hall to himself, with a hearty slap of his fat leg, as, after a careful casting-up of the sum “tottles” of many columns of many books, he at length faced the nervous total, and found he was worth — we don’t know how much. The observation escaped the worthy man in the partitioned-off nook of a dingy counting-house, through a four-square window of which he could contemplate the clerks, ranged on either side of the banking and wool-stapling departments. For five-and-forty years old Hall had laboured assiduously in the two callings, having commenced as an office-sweeping-out errand boy, with twopence in his pocket; thence, passing up the sliding scale of clerkships into the heaven of junior partnership, he at length loomed out into Hall & Co. — the Hall being our friend, and the “Co.” himself also. Young Tom — the youth that was to be a gent — was to old Tom pretty much what a new keepsake or annual is to a faded one. The bald turnipy-shaped head of the father was reproduced in the round, light, hyperion-locked one of the son; the still keen but now watery grey eye again shone forth in cerulean blue; the very dimples in his grizzly cheeks reappeared in the downy ones of his son, whose gaudy-coloured, exaggerated Joinvilles gave ample scope and latitude to a fine double chin, which the old gent kept a good deal within the folds of a puddingy white cravat. Their figures, too, were the same — round, fat, humming-top-shaped men, upon whose plump limbs the flesh wobbled and trembled as they walked.

  Figures, figures, figures! Old Hall’s head ran upon nothing but figures. His mind seemed to be formed of three red-ink columns, up and down which his thoughts circulated in the shape of pounds, shillings, and pence. He was wary, cautious, and watchful. He always seemed to be thinking that the party he was speaking to was setting a trap to do him out of money, perhaps to get him to discount a bad bill, or buy some damaged wool. He could not answer a common observation about the weather without doing a little mental arithmetic while he thought the thing over.

  “Fine day, Mr Hall,” farmer Barleymow would say as he stumped along to the market.

  “Sivin and four’s elivin, and eighteen is twenty-nine. Yes, sir, it is a fine day,” the banker would reply.

  Sivin and four must have stood Hall in good stead at some season or other of his life, for, to whatever length his calculations ran, he invariably commenced with “Sivin and four’s elivin,” and built up his column on that superstructure.

  But to the “gent” department, as they say at the Crystal Palace.

  The emphatic slap with which we opened the chapter startled the clerks and astonished “our Tom,” who happened to be engaged on the wool-stapling side of the counting-house, arranging an ingenious piece of mechanism, by means of which he fished off old Mr Trueboy the cashier’s scratch-wig, suspending it in the air, like the top of a Dioropha carriage. Tom, who was only half educated, was just of an age and calibre to be ready for anything — anything except business. His father had had to take him from a private tutor’s, to prevent his marrying Miss Jane Daiseyfield, ninth daughter of Mr Mark Daiseyfield, of Butterlaw Farm — a most amiable and elegant young lady, but who, like her sisters, was a “treasure in herself.” Miss Jane, however, was not Tom’s first heart-ache; he had been desperately in love with Miss Sowerby, daughter of his respected tutor, who had completely wheedled and talked herself into his good graces, notwithstanding she was quite as fair and almost as fat as himself. He was desperate for her, and the lady, though a trifle older, was equally enamoured of him. How this, his premier heart-ache — of which, we are concerned to say, he has since had many — might have ended, is immaterial, for Jane Daiseyfield’s slim angelic figure, raven locks, and bright Italian complexion, once seen, completely turned the cream of his affection for Miss Sowerby, and made him wonder how he could ever take up with her. Then Mrs Sowerby, with the honest outraged feelings of maternal pride, unable to see a “mere boy” so put upon (though it was as good as forty pounds a year out of their pockets, notwithstanding our Tom had a good appetite), wrote to old Hall, cautioning him against the designing Daiseyfields; and Hall forthwith removed his son, and shortly afterwards complimented the Sowerby candour with a “T. Cox Savory” teapot with a silver handle. And Miss Sowerby returned our Tom the heartsease and forget-me-not entwined white cornelian brooch with a dignified but not altogether despairing note; and our Tom passed the brooch on to “dearest Jane,” with a schoolboy scrawl of very infirm English, vowing that nothing but death should prevent his making her Mrs Thomas Hall. And all these things being accomplished, he presently took a second-class fare home, falling desperately in love with his fellow-passenger, Lady Bedington’s pretty maid, who he was only prevented offering to by the station-master at Fleecyborough refusing to book him on by the train she was travelling in. So Tom was left, cursing his luck and kissing his hand to her from the platform.

  CHAPTER II.

  INTRODUCES MAJOR FIBS.

  FLEECYBOROUGH, THE NEW scene of our hero’s exploits, though more of an agricultural than a manufacturing town, was large enough to have many of the attributes of a manufacturing one: fairs, assizes, races, and so on; also a theatre and assembly rooms, where town and county met in scornful defiance. In this not unfertile field old Hall had amassed money in a quiet, unobserved, unobtrusive sort of way, until Young Hopeful looming on the scene caused people to be suddenly struck with the fact that Old Hall must be very rich. Nor did “Tummus,” as his father called him, keep his candle under a bushel; on the contrary, he was continually polishing the flags of Lark-street along with Mr Padder, Mr Capias’s swell clerk, or Mr Yawney, Mr Drugmore, the doctor’s young man, or standing with them at the corner of Spooneypope Street, sucking his cane-handle, gazing at the passing vehicles, or criticising as much of the ladies’ ankles as could be seen for their draggling dresses. He was always arrayed in the brightest, most glaring colours, the gaudiest shirts, with the most inexhaustible wrist-bands, the most varied and glittering studs, the most bepocketed Baden-towel waistcoats, the queerest, scrimpiest, little jackets, and the widest, boldest-patterned trousers, with the tiniest lacquer-toed boots peeping out below that ever were seen. So our Tom stood “a gent” — a character that in old Hall’s estimation simply meant a man with plenty of money and nothing to do.

  The worst feature of Fleecyborough for a gent was that there were no gents to keep him company — at least, not till the afternoon. All the other gents were only gents from three or four o’clock or so; consequently our Tom’s time hung rather heavily on his hands. He had fished off old Trueboy’s wig until the operation had ceased to create a laugh, and his practical jokes upon the other clerks had exhausted themselves by repetition. ‘Bell’s Life,’ though a pleasing paper and full of varied information, would not last him a whole week; and even Miss Isinglass the pretty confectioner’s vapid simper oftener set him yawning than she inflamed him by the regularity and beauty of her features. Fortune, however, soon after his arrival came to our friend’s assistance. So marked a young man could not but attract attention, and one afternoon, as he was disporting himself on three chairs in the bay-windowed coffee-room of the Salutation Inn, after the manner of St James’s-street club swells, as his friend Padder assured him, the well-known Major Fibs of the Heavysteed Dragoons, then quartered at Fleecyborough, entered the room. The major was a tall gaunt man, with full, wide-extending, sandy moustachios, that curled out into points like antelope’s horns.
The major was about fifty years of age, nearly five-and-thirty of which he had spent in the army, and he had long taken an M.A. degree in all that relates to the ways of the world. What a mentor for a man of our Tom’s inexperience! Let us get him introduced as quickly as possible.

  The military being to a country town pretty much what the nobility are to London town, Tom’s first impulse was to get up and offer the major the chair; but recollecting that he was a gent, and well qualified, as his mother often assured him, to “hold up his head,” hinting, womanlike, that he might even aspire to one of the lord-lieutenant’s daughters, he just rolled a fat leg off a chair, and gave it a sort of outward twist towards the man of war. The major’s strapping figure relaxed into a pokerified sort of bow, while a sardonic smile played over his hirsute features as he scanned the young greenhorn with his greenish-grey eyes. ‘Bell’s Life’ being a far better ice-breaker than the weather, or even the Crystal Palace itself, the major at once proceeded to ask Tom if he would have the “Goodneth,” for he lithped a good deal, “to tell him if Charley Brick’s little dog had won the great rat match at Edgebathton.”

  Now Tom had just been reading the column “Canine,” and knew all about it; so he detailed to the major, with remarkable accuracy, how the little animal had won, and expatiated on the beauties and delicacies of the affair. The old major listened with marked attention, and, having discussed that point, he asked Tom if he thought he could pick him out the winner of the Rascal Stakes at Chippenham. Tom could not, but referred the major to the very promising column of prophets in ‘Bell’s Life,’ to one of whom — viz., the genius who advertises “that his tongue is not for falsehood framed,” though we should think it was framed for nothing else — he thought of applying for racing information. The major then assumed the office of mentor, cautioning Tom against these impostors, who, he assured him, were the veriest scum of the earth, who knew nothing at all about “horthes,” and would infallibly bolt if they got any money into their hands. The major was warm and energetic on the point, feeling morally certain that he was equal to easing Tom of any superfluous cash he might happen to have, as he had eased many a youngster both in his regiment and out of it. And after a little more such agreeable and instructive conversation, the major tendered his hand, saying that he was glad to have had the pleasure of making Mr Hall’s acquaintance, and so departed.