‘It was your waterman who made the first foul,’ said Mr. Darnley.
‘Searle said Noulton’s first foul was accidental,’ cried Ned. ‘You heard him yourself. And you heard the fellows shouting in favour of Searle when he gave it no match.’
‘And you heard the fellows shouting against it,’ said Mr. Darnley heatedly, ‘and you cannot deny that Noulton tried to break our rudder, nor that your number 2 laid hold of our boat to try to impede it.’
‘These are indeed weighty trifles,’ said Mr. Vavasour, ‘and quite in the Homeric vein.’
Both the gentlemen cast looks of dislike at him, and I confess I thought the remark ill-timed.
‘You both look quite done up, to use Ned’s expression,’ said I, addressing the rowers.
‘Oh, good Lord, you’d be done up if you’d a head like mine,’ groaned Ned. ‘I’ll never go to a boating supper again, I swear.’
‘Were you then celebrating the race with your friends last night to console them for their defeat?’ asked Emily tenderly.
‘Friends? Oh, Lord, yes, dozens of ’em,’ said Ned. ‘Both the crews and all their friends. We were at the Bells Tavern at Putney, weren’t we, Hal? I can’t remember anything after Stanley, our stroke, gave “Health and Prosperity to the Leander Gentlemen”. What happened to me then?’
‘You were laid out on three chairs,’ said Mr. Darnley gravely, ‘and when the cheering was over, which I thought it never would be, I drove you home in my cab.’
‘Deuced friendly of you,’ said Ned, applying himself afresh to the soda-water. ‘And what a head you have!’ he added admiringly.
Mr. Darnley indeed looked just as usual, and I contrasted him favourably in my mind with my father and Ned, who do become so heated with their wine.
‘I too have in my time looked upon the wine when it is red, after the boat races at Oxford,’ said Mr. Vavasour condescendingly, ‘but I now find that inebriety has few charms, and I daresay the ladies agree.’
‘I daresay, Vavasour, you feel like a young Spartan among Helots,’ said Mr. Darnley coolly.
‘For my part,’ cried Emily, ‘I like a man to show a little spirit.’
‘Good girl,’ said Ned, with a familiarity that only his reduced condition could condone. ‘Hal was as drunk as a lord, only he’s such a cool devil he don’t show it. Oh, Lord! I’ll never do it again!’
‘I think,’ said I, ringing the bell, ‘Ned had better retire. Matthews, take Mr. Edward upstairs and see him into his bed. Mr. Darnley, you had no business to let Ned behave so foolishly. You are older than he, and it was very unkind, and I thought you had more regard for me. At least you might help Matthews with Ned.’
‘Allow me, Miss Harcourt,’ said Mr. Vavasour. ‘I may not be as athletic as Darnley, but I can assure you of my steadiness.’
He sprang forward, but Ned, almost unconscious with the efforts of the previous day and night, said loudly,
‘Oh, Lord! Vavasour! I’d as soon have Cockle’s Anti-bilious Pills!’ and clinging to Matthews, he stumbled upstairs.
Mr. Darnley then bowed to us and took his leave. He looked pale, and I feared I had hurt him by my hasty words. Willingly would I have called him back, but pride forbade, and it was with an aching heart that I heard his cabriolet drive away.
Mr. Vavasour attempted to raise our spirits, but I am afraid he found us but poor company. He observed that Miss Landon had more merit as a poetess than as a novelist, and spoke slightingly of her book Ethel Churchill, or The Two Brides, although it is dedicated to Lady Emmeline Stuart Wortley. He said there were too many historical characters at once in it, such as Pope, Lavinia Fenton, and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, and that the authoress made too free a use of poison to get her characters off the stage. We both answered so at random that he presently withdrew. When my father came in he inquired after Ned and hearing that he was in bed, sleeping off his excesses, roared with laughter, saying that he was just such a one at his age.
I become rather confused as to all we did for the next ten days. We were engaged almost every hour and every day for some party of pleasure or instruction with the Vavasours, the Ingoldsbys, or other of our acquaintance, and my letters to my dear mother are very short and generally contain the promise, not alas! always fulfilled, to write more in my next. Emily and I were low. Emily had had a private conversation with Ned before he went back to Cambridge. I daresay I should not have allowed it, but then I would not have been able to overhear what they said, the door being just ajar and I being occupied in putting my father’s linen in order in the next room. Emily had scolded Ned for having drunk so much at his boating supper, and Ned had accused Emily of preferring Mr. Darnley. On this Emily had burst into tears, and Ned had gone down on his knees, and kissed her hand, calling himself a blackguard and her an angel. At this point I really thought things had gone far enough, so I tiptoed upstairs and then came down humming a careless tune, only to find Ned and Emily at opposite ends of the sitting-room. Ned gave me a little of his confidence as he said good-bye, telling me that Emily was the dearest girl in the world and he was quite unworthy of her. He also, which did not please me so much, begged me not to encourage Mr. Vavasour.
‘He’s not on the straight, Fan,’ he said. ‘He may be a dandy and very literary and all that, but Hal is worth twenty of him.’
‘Your friend Mr. Darnley is doubtless an estimable young man,’ said I coldly, ‘but as I have seen nothing of him for two days, he is to me as if he had never existed.’
To this Ned replied, ‘Gammon,’ adding that Mr. Darnley had been obliged to return to his country seat on business, and had charged him with messages of apology to me for not having taken a formal leave.
‘But cheer up, Fan,’ said Ned, ‘Hal will be back before the Coronation, and then we will have famous fun. I shall be down then for good, and ready for anything.’
I think it was this week that Upton very inconsiderately had the toothache, and spilt a bottle of Bond’s Marking Ink over one of my father’s new shirts, which had to be given to Matthews. Upton went to a dentist in Newman Street and had to have one tooth extracted and one filled with mineral succedaneum, and was quite useless for two days, indeed worse than useless, for she had quarrelled with Mrs. Bellows, and Emily, who is used to visiting the poor, had to look after her, my nerves being too much affected. We also went to see the meeting of the Four-in-Hand Club in Hyde Park, where Emily and I were thrilled to see the famous Count D’Orsay again. My father was in ecstasies over the fine horses, and laid several wagers with other gentlemen on their speed.
‘It may interest you, sir,’ said Mr. Tom Ingoldsby who was with us, ‘to see the celebrated Count D’Orsay on that second coach.’
‘Eh?’ said my father. ‘Damned Jacobinical rascal. Thought he had been shot or guillotined years ago.’
‘I do not quite take your meaning, sir,’ said Mr. Tom. ‘Count D’Orsay is quite a young man, barely thirty-five, and could not have been involved in the Revolution.’
‘Oh, Count D’Orsay,’ said my father, ‘why couldn’t you say so then? Thought you said Condorcet. He was a damned smuggling Frenchman if you like. I daresay this one is too. All foreigners are alike.’
Mr. Tom and Ned spent far too much time at the Marylebone Cricket Club, a game which has few attractions for me. They really became so wearisome with their talk about a match against Hampshire that Emily and I were glad to avail ourselves of Mrs. Vavasour’s invitation to drive with her to Hampton Court and Kew Gardens, where the pleasure of sauntering under leafy trees and on velvet lawns with Mr. Vavasour was only slightly damped by the presence of Lady Almeria Norbourne, for her ladyship, under pretence of fatigue, but really, as Emily discovered, because her shoes were too tight, preferred to remain in the carriage. All shams are abhorrent to me, and if I have a small foot and a small waist it is no merit of mine, and I would not dream of trying to improve on nature. As Madame Jupon said, by judiciously sewing whalebone into the corsage of my new dress she had redu
ced my waist to eighteen inches, which was not only becoming, but an inch less than Emily.
Chapter Eight — Westminster Hall and The Opera
My father was anxious to show me Westminster Hall. Mr. Vavasour, who is reading for the Bar and is therefore familiar with legal matters, volunteered to be our cicerone, and we had an instructive and exhausting tour.
‘I must beg you,’ said I to Mr. Vavasour, who had come to fetch us, ‘not to notice Papa. You know his weakness for the past, and how he is quite put out at any changes. I fear that the sight of the proposed new Houses of Parliament may make him fly into one of his rages.’
‘Do not fear on my account, Miss Harcourt,’ said Mr. Vavasour.
‘Indeed I do not,’ said I, ‘it is entirely on my own account and Emily’s that I am anxious. You can afford to put up with Papa’s ways; you do not have to live with him.’
‘I cannot think,’ said Mr. Vavasour, ‘that Miss Harcourt will remain so long an inmate of her father’s house as to have to feel any anxiety for her future peace of mind.’
‘Lassy me!’ cried Emily, ‘whatever do you mean?’
Mr. Vavasour smiled but made no reply, while Emily gave me a significant look which provoked me very much. My father was then heard roaring for us below stairs, so we went down and took a hackney coach to the bottom of Parliament Street. Here we alighted, and at a hint from Emily Mr. Vavasour paid the coachman, so that my father should not cause the usual mortifying scene over the fare.
It was one of June’s most torrid days, and as we walked towards the New Palace Yard the sun beat upon us with more than tropical ferocity. In front of us lay the object of our visit, to our right was an enclosure planted with trees, beyond which could be seen the tasteful church of St. Margaret’s, while the Abbey soared in Gothic splendour above all. Mr. Vavasour insisted that we should step aside a little from our route to observe the fine Gothic building of the New Westminster Hospital, and this was where Emily was splashed by the watering cart. This was in itself annoying, for we were not sure whether her silk would spot or not, but Emily need not have talked of nothing else all morning as she did. The man was odiously rude, making remarks about ‘snobs’, and Mr. Vavasour hurried us away. I could not help secretly contrasting his behaviour with that of Mr. Darnley at the Surrey Zoological Gardens. He would have laid the impertinent fellow senseless on the road.
‘Let me direct your attention, sir,’ said Mr. Vavasour, as we approached Westminster’s massive pile, ‘to the improvements that have taken place within the last twenty years. The unsightly inns and coffee houses which used to cluster round the entrance to Westminster Hall have been swept away, and the Law Courts, designed by Sir John Soane, architect of the Bank of England, now balance admirably with the more Gothic taste of Rufus’s noble building.’
‘Improvements, sir!’ shouted my father. ‘What d’ye mean? Many’s the frolic I’ve had in one of those coffee houses you choose to sneer at, when you were eating pap in the nursery, yes, pap, sir. And as for lawyers and Law Courts, what’s the country coming to? When I was a young man in London the Lord Chancellor sat in Westminster Hall, and many’s the time I’ve seen him there in his wig. There was no talk of Law Courts then, I can tell you. What was good enough for Lord Eldon isn’t good enough for this Brougham, I dare say, damned Frenchified Radical I call him.’
‘You can hardly blame Brougham for the new Law Courts, sir,’ said Mr. Vavasour laughing, ‘for he is hardly Chancellor except in name, the Great Seal being now in commission. He occupies himself with writing, and with schemes for the advancement of popular education.’
This was of course another of my dear father’s favourite bugbears, and he inveighed so loudly against education, the London University, the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, and the new Law Courts, that I was glad when we passed under the portals of Westminster Hall, where even my father was silenced. Truly the sight of that great hall, its roof supported on Cobwebless beams conceived of Irish oak which had seen so many stirring scenes of English history, could not but make one pensive. Emily and I stood in silent ecstasy, hoping to conceal our ignorance, while Mr. Vavasour imparted a great amount of useful information to us. I did not thoroughly grasp all he said, for Emily was still anxious about the spots on her dress, and I was endeavouring to persuade her that they were already less unsightly and would shortly disappear altogether, but it was highly instructive. It is so pleasant to have things told to one, for one need not listen, and yet feels the benefit of the information. I shall now never forget that George IV’s coronation took place here, whereas our Queen, with truly religious sentiment, is to be crowned in a sacred fane. But then there would have been far more impropriety, as Emily so justly remarked, if Queen Caroline had tried to get into the Abbey than into a secular building.
I need hardly say that my father was thoroughly put out by finding that the stalls and bookshops of which he had often told me were almost a thing of the past. Emily said she could not understand how lawyers and judges and booksellers could all carry on their business in the same place, and my father took this so much amiss that I began to consider fainting. Turning to see if Mr. Vavasour was at hand, I almost collided with a little sharp-featured shabbily-dressed woman carrying a large reticule. She stopped and looked at me with so piercing a glance that I felt quite confused and asked her pardon.
‘Granted, my dear young lady, granted,’ said she. ‘I see you are a stranger here and mean no harm. I thought at first you were trying to obstruct my passage. They are always trying to deprive me of my rights, you know. In fact I am on my way to lay a complaint, but the Great Seal is in Commission, so I hardly know where to go at present.’
Smiling and waving her hand she passed rapidly on, and disappeared in the direction of the Law Courts.
‘Who is that lady?’ said I to Mr. Vavasour.
‘A very well-known figure here,’ was his answer. ‘Her name is Miss R., and she has a delusion about her imaginary rights. She always carries that bag, as big as a coalsack, and has been more than once kind enough to show me the contents, which are of a very miscellaneous nature, including papers, mouldy crusts, bottles of discoloured water, and scraps of rubbish of all kinds. No one knows where or how she lives, but as she is remarkably shrewd except on this one point, she must be able to look after herself.’
‘Poor creature,’ said Emily, ‘does no one ever listen to her?’
‘No less a person than the Lord Chancellor himself has listened to her more than once,’ said Mr. Vavasour. ‘A few years ago I happened to be strolling about the Courts and came into the Court of Chancery, just as the Chancellor was about to deliver judgement in an important case. A hubbub at the door attracted my attention. It was Miss R., who having eluded the officials at the door, came in crying, “Justice, justice, in the name of the King of England.” The Chancellor, seized with a sudden fit of benevolence very uncommon in him, leant over his desk, and using the blandest accents asked her, amid the titters of the court, to bring her papers to his private room.
‘“I knew I should get justice at last, I knew it,” she said triumphantly, “or I wouldn’t have done for you as much as I did last night.”
‘“And what was that?” asked the Chancellor, humouring her.
‘“I was obliged to keep Scorpio’s tail in Aquarius’s bucket all night,” said she confidentially, “or he would have set fire to your wig.”
‘Even the Chancellor’s gravity could not resist this, and he laughed heartily. Miss R. no whit disconcerted, curtsied to him and left the court, apparently satisfied.’
‘Poor thing,’ said my father, who had been listening to the end of this story. ‘I’d like to give her a guinea.’
Mr. Vavasour offered to convey it to her as delicately as possible, an act which raised him in my favour, though I daresay Mr. Darnley would have done just the same, and added something from his own pocket.
We now left the Hall and walked towards the river, passing on our way th
e ruins of the old Houses and the beginnings of the new. It appeared that the first step was to construct a river wall, a very costly business. Mr. Vavasour told us that it had been found necessary to dredge out the river and make a coffer dam, so that the foundations of the new embankment might be safely laid on concrete.
‘There,’ said Mr. Vavasour, pointing to various pieces of machinery, barges, and piles which were in picturesque confusion on the banks and in the river, ‘there you may see the celebrated coffer dam which caused the no less celebrated eddy, source of much of the very childish wrangling in the match between Cambridge and Leander. As the dam has now been almost a year in the making, it is idle to deny that every waterman on these reaches knows every current at high and low tide, so the talk of a foul was mere folly.’
Emily and I were coldly silent. Neither Mr. Darnley nor Ned would have mentioned the coffer dam unless it were of some real importance in the race, and Mr. Vavasour had no right to speak so slightingly of clubs to which he does not belong. Not that I know in the least what a coffer dam is, but if Mr. Darnley does, surely that is enough.
‘Well, I dare say,’ said my father, ‘they’ll have run up these new buildings by next year and then perhaps the Tories will come in again. The Radicals burnt the old Houses, so Melbourne must find the money to build the new ones, and then Peel can take possession of ’em.’
‘I fail to follow your argument, sir,’ said Mr. Vavasour, with that hauteur of which Oxonians possess the secret to a high degree, ‘but I fear it will be many years before Mr. Barry can finish the rebuilding. Possibly Sir Robert may be dead before he can enter into his inheritance.’
My father stared and muttered something about young puppies, but did not pursue the subject.
‘I may tell you,’ added Mr. Vavasour to my father, ‘that all the attacks that have been made upon Barry, the architect of this proposed buildings, have come through Mr. Hume, so doubtless you will agree that Barry is the best choice that could have been made.’
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