The Newcomes

by William Makepeace Thackeray

'Laocoon' which he was copying. The Scotchman's superior weight and age

  might have given the combat a different conclusion, had it endured long

  after Clive's brilliant opening attack with his right and left; but

  Professor Gandish came out of his painting-room at the sound of battle,

  and could scarcely credit his own eyes when he saw those of poor M'Collop

  so darkened. To do the Scotchman justice, he bore Clive no rancour. They

  became friends there, and afterwards at Rome, whither they subsequently

  went to pursue their studies. The fame of Mr. M'Collop as an artist has

  long since been established. His pictures of 'Lord Lovat in Prison,' and

  'Hogarth painting him,' of the 'Blowing up of the Kirk of Field' (painted

  for M'Collop of M'Collop), of the 'Torture of the Covenanters,' the

  'Murder of the Regent,' the 'Murder of Rizzio,' and other historical

  pieces, all of course from Scotch history, have established his

  reputation in South as well as in North Britain. No one would suppose

  from the gloomy character of his works that Sandy M'Collop is one of the

  most jovial souls alive. Within six months after their little difference,

  Clive and he were the greatest of friends, and it was by the former's

  suggestion that Mr. James Binnie gave Sandy his first commission, who

  selected the cheerful subject of 'The Young Duke of Rothsay starving in

  Prison.'

  During this period, Mr. Clive assumed the toga virilis, and beheld with

  inexpressible satisfaction the first growth of those mustachios which

  have since given him such a marked appearance.

  Being at Gandish's, and so near the dancing academy, what must he do but

  take lessons in the terpsichorean art too?--making himself as popular

  with the dancing folks as with the drawing folks, and the jolly king of

  his company everywhere. He gave entertainments to his fellow-students in

  the upper chambers in Fitzroy Square, which were devoted to his use,

  inviting his father and Mr. Binnie to those parties now and then. And

  songs were sung, and pipes were smoked, and many a pleasant supper eaten.

  There was no stint: but no excess. No young man was ever seen to quit

  those apartments the worse, as it is called, for liquor. Fred Bayham's

  uncle the Bishop could not be more decorous than F. B. as he left the

  Colonel's house, for the Colonel made that one of the conditions of his

  son's hospitality, that nothing like intoxication should ensue from it.

  The good gentleman did not frequent the parties of the juniors. He saw

  that his presence rather silenced the young men; and left them to

  themselves, confiding in Clive's parole, and went away to play his honest

  rubber of whist at the Club. And many a time he heard the young fellows'

  steps tramping by his bedchamber door, as he lay wakeful within, happy to

  think his son was happy.

  CHAPTER XVIII

  New Companions

  Clive used to give droll accounts of the young disciples at Gandish's,

  who were of various ages and conditions, and in whose company the young

  fellow took his place with that good temper and gaiety which have seldom

  deserted him in life, and have put him at ease wherever his fate has led

  him. He is, in truth, as much at home in a fine drawing-room as in a

  public-house parlour; and can talk as pleasantly to the polite mistress

  of the mansion, as to the jolly landlady dispensing her drinks from her

  bar. Not one of the Gandishites but was after a while well inclined to

  the young fellow; from Mr. Chivers, the senior pupil, down to the little

  imp Harry Hooker, who knew as much mischief at twelve years old, and

  could draw as cleverly as many a student of five-and-twenty; and Bob

  Trotter, the diminutive fag of the studio, who ran on all the young men's

  errands, and fetched them in apples, oranges, and walnuts. Clive opened

  his eyes with wonder when he first beheld these simple feasts, and the

  pleasure with which some of the young men partook of them. They were

  addicted to polonies; they did not disguise their love for Banbury cakes;

  they made bets in ginger-beer, and gave and took the odds in that

  frothing liquor. There was a young Hebrew amongst the pupils, upon whom

  his brother-students used playfully to press ham sandwiches, pork

  sausages, and the like. This young man (who has risen to great wealth

  subsequently, and was bankrupt only three months since) actually bought

  cocoa-nuts, and sold them at a profit amongst the lads. His pockets were

  never without pencil-cases, French chalk, garnet brooches, for which he

  was willing to bargain. He behaved very rudely to Gandish, who seemed to

  be afraid before him. It was whispered that the Professor was not

  altogether easy in his circumstances, and that the elder Moss had some

  mysterious hold over him. Honeyman and Bayham, who once came to see Clive

  at the studio, seemed each disturbed at beholding young Moss seated there

  (making a copy of the Marsyas). "Pa knows both those gents," he informed

  Clive afterwards, with a wicked twinkle of his Oriental eyes. "Step in,

  Mr. Newcome, any day you are passing down Wardour Street, and see if you

  don't want anything in our way." (He pronounced the words in his own way,

  saying: "Step id, Bister Doocob, ady day idto Vordor Street," etc.) This

  young gentleman could get tickets for almost all the theatres, which he

  gave or sold, and gave splendid accounts at Cavendish's of the brilliant

  masquerades. Clive was greatly diverted at beholding Mr. Moss at one of

  these entertainments, dressed in a scarlet coat and top-boots, and

  calling out, "Yoicks! Hark forward!" fitfully to another Orientalist, his

  younger brother, attired like a midshipman. Once Clive bought a

  half-dozen of theatre tickets from Mr. Moss, which he distributed to the

  young fellows of the studio. But, when this nice young man tried further

  to tempt him on the next day, "Mr. Moss," Clive said to him with much

  dignity, "I am very much obliged to you for your offer, but when I go to

  the play, I prefer paying at the doors."

  Mr. Chivers used to sit in one corner of the room, occupied over a

  lithographic stone. He was an uncouth and peevish young man; for ever

  finding fault with the younger pupils, whose butt he was. Next in rank

  and age was M'Collop, before named: and these two were at first more than

  usually harsh and captious with Clive, whose prosperity offended them,

  and whose dandified manners, free-and-easy ways, and evident influence

  over the younger scholars, gave umbrage to these elderly apprentices.

  Clive at first returned Mr. Chivers war for war, controlment for

  controlment; but when he found Chivers was the son of a helpless widow;

  that be maintained her by his lithographic vignettes for the

  music-sellers, and by the scanty remuneration of some lessons which he

  gave at a school at Highgate;--when Clive saw, or fancied he saw, the

  lonely senior eyeing with hungry eyes the luncheons of cheese and bread,

  and sweetstuff, which the young lads of the studio enjoyed, I promise you

  Mr. Clive's wrath against Chivers was speedily turned into compassion and

  kindness, and he sought, and no doubt found, means of feeding Chivers

>   without offending his testy independence.

  Nigh to Gandish's was, and perhaps is, another establishment for teaching

  the art of design--Barker's, which had the additional dignity of a life

  academy and costume; frequented by a class of students more advanced than

  those of Gandish's. Between these and the Barkerites there was a constant

  rivalry and emulation, in and out of doors. Gandish sent more pupils to

  the Royal Academy; Gandish had brought up three medallists; and the last

  R.A. student sent to Rome was a Gandishite. Barker, on the contrary,

  scorned and loathed Trafalgar Square, and laughed at its art. Barker

  exhibited in Pall Mall and Suffolk Street: he laughed at old Gandish and

  his pictures, made mincemeat of his "Angli and Angeli," and tore "King

  Alfred" and his muffins to pieces. The young men of the respective

  schools used to meet at Lundy's coffee-house and billiard-room, and smoke

  there, and do battle. Before Clive and his friend J. J. came to

  Gandish's, the Barkerites were having the best of that constant match

  which the two academies were playing. Fred Bayham, who knew every

  coffee-house in town, and whose initials were scored on a thousand tavern

  doors, was for a while a constant visitor at Lundy's, played pool with

  the young men, and did not disdain to dip his beard into their

  porter-pots, when invited to partake of their drink; treated them

  handsomely when he was in cash himself; and was an honorary member of

  Barker's academy. Nay, when the guardsman was not forthcoming, who was

  standing for one of Barker's heroic pictures, Bayham bared his immense

  arms and brawny shoulders, and stood as Prince Edward, with Philippa

  sucking the poisoned wound. He would take his friends up to the picture

  in the Exhibition, and proudly point to it. "Look at that biceps, sir,

  and now look at this--that's Barker's masterpiece, sir, and that's the

  muscle of F. B., sir." In no company was F. B. greater than in the

  society of the artists, in whose smoky haunts and airy parlours he might

  often be found. It was from F. B. that Clive heard of Mr. Chivers'

  struggles and honest industry. A great deal of shrewd advice could F. B.

  give on occasion, and many a kind action and gentle office of charity was

  this jolly outlaw known to do and cause to be done. His advice to Clive

  was most edifying at this time of our young gentleman's life, and he owns

  that he was kept from much mischief by this queer counsellor.

  A few months after Clive and J. J. had entered at Gandish's, that academy

  began to hold its own against its rival. The silent young disciple was

  pronounced to be a genius. His copies were beautiful in delicacy and

  finish. His designs were for exquisite grace and richness of fancy. Mr.

  Gandish took to himself the credit for J. J.'s genius; Clive ever and

  fondly acknowledged the benefit he got from his friend's taste and bright

  enthusiasm and sure skill. As for Clive, if he was successful in the

  academy he was doubly victorious out of it. His person was handsome, his

  courage high, his gaiety and frankness delightful and winning. His money

  was plenty and he spent it like a young king. He could speedily beat all

  the club at Lundy's at billiards, and give points to the redoubted F. B.

  himself. He sang a famous song at their jolly supper-parties: and J. J.

  had no greater delight than to listen to his fresh voice, and watch the

  young conqueror at the billiard-table, where the balls seemed to obey

  him.

  Clive was not the most docile of Mr. Gandish's pupils. If he had not come

  to the studio on horseback, several of the young students averred,

  Gandish would not always have been praising him and quoting him as that

  professor certainly did. It must be confessed that the young ladies read

  the history of Clive's uncle in the Book of Baronets, and that Gandish

  jun., probably with an eye to business, made a design of a picture, in

  which, according to that veracious volume, one of the Newcomes was

  represented as going cheerfully to the stake at Smithfield, surrounded by

  some very ill-favoured Dominicans, whose arguments did not appear to make

  the least impression upon the martyr of the Newcome family. Sandy

  M'Collop devised a counter picture, wherein the barber-surgeon of King

  Edward the Confessor was drawn, operating upon the beard of that monarch.

  To which piece of satire Clive gallantly replied by a design,

  representing Sawney Bean M'Collop, chief of the clan of that name,

  descending from his mountains into Edinburgh, and his astonishment at

  beholding a pair of breeches for the first time. These playful jokes

  passed constantly amongst the young men of Gandish's studio. There was no

  one there who was not caricatured in one way or another. He whose eyes

  looked not very straight was depicted with a most awful squint. The youth

  whom nature had endowed with somewhat lengthy nose was drawn by the

  caricaturists with a prodigious proboscis. Little Bobby Moss, the young

  Hebrew artist from Wardour Street, was delineated with three hats and an

  old-clothes bag. Nor were poor J. J.'s round shoulders spared, until

  Clive indignantly remonstrated at the hideous hunchback pictures which

  the boys made of his friend, and vowed it was a shame to make jokes at

  such a deformity.

  Our friend, if the truth must be told regarding him, though one of the

  most frank, generous, and kind-hearted persons, is of a nature somewhat

  haughty and imperious, and very likely the course of life which he now

  led and the society which he was compelled to keep, served to increase

  some original defects in his character, and to fortify a certain

  disposition to think well of himself, with which his enemies not unjustly

  reproach him. He has been known very pathetically to lament that he was

  withdrawn from school too early, where a couple of years' further course

  of thrashings from his tyrant, old Hodge, he avers, would have done him

  good. He laments that he was not sent to college, where if a young man

  receives no other discipline, at least he acquires that of meeting with

  his equals in society and of assuredly finding his betters: whereas in

  poor Mr. Gandish's studio of art, our young gentleman scarcely found a

  comrade that was not in one way or other his flatterer, his inferior, his

  honest or dishonest admirer. The influence of his family's rank and

  wealth acted more or less on all those simple folks, who would run on his

  errands and vied with each other in winning the young nabob's favour. His

  very goodness of heart rendered him a more easy prey to their flattery,

  and his kind and jovial disposition led him into company from which he

  had been much better away. I am afraid that artful young Moss, whose

  parents dealt in pictures, furniture, gimcracks, and jewellery,

  victimised Clive sadly with rings and chains, shirt-studs and flaming

  shirt-pins, and such vanities, which the poor young rogue locked up in

  his desk generally, only venturing to wear them when he was out of his

  father's sight or of Mr. Binnie's, whose shrewd eyes watched him very

  keenly.

  Mr. Clive used to leave home every day shor
tly after noon, when he was

  supposed to betake himself to Gandish's studio. But was the young

  gentleman always at the drawing-board copying from the antique when his

  father supposed him to be so devotedly engaged? I fear his place was

  sometimes vacant. His friend J. J. worked every day and all day. Many a

  time the steady little student remarked his patron's absence, and no

  doubt gently remonstrated with him, but when Clive did come to his work

  he executed it with remarkable skill and rapidity; and Ridley was too

  fond of him to say a word at home regarding the shortcomings of the

  youthful scapegrace. Candid readers may sometimes have heard their friend

  Jones's mother lament that her darling was working too hard at college:

  or Harry's sisters express their anxiety lest his too rigorous attendance

  in chambers (after which he will persist in sitting up all night reading

  those dreary law books which cost such an immense sum of money) should

  undermine dear Henry's health; and to such acute persons a word is

  sufficient to indicate young Mr. Clive Newcome's proceedings. Meanwhile

  his father, who knew no more of the world than Harry's simple sisters or

  Jones's fond mother, never doubted that all Clive's doings were right,

  and that his boy was the best of boys.

  "If that young man goes on as charmingly as he has begun," Clive's

  cousin, Barnes Newcome, said of his kinsman, "he will be a paragon. I saw

  him last night at Vauxhall in company with young Moss, whose father does

  bills and keeps the bric-a-brac shop in Wardour Street. Two or three

  other gentlemen, probably young old-clothes-men, who had concluded for

  the day the labours of the bag, joined Mr. Newcome and his friend, and

  they partook of rack-punch in an arbour. He is a delightful youth, cousin

  Clive, and I feel sure he is about to be an honour to our family."

  CHAPTER XIX

  The Colonel at Home

  Our good Colonel's house had received a coat of paint, which, like Madame

  Latour's rouge in her latter days, only served to make her careworn face

  look more ghastly. The kitchens were gloomy. The stables were gloomy.

  Great black passages; cracked conservatory; dilapidated bathroom, with

  melancholy waters moaning and fizzing from the cistern; the great large

  blank stone staircase--were all so many melancholy features in the

  general countenance of the house; but the Colonel thought it perfectly,

  cheerful and pleasant, and furnished it in his rough-and-ready way. One

  day a cartload of chairs; the next a waggonful of fenders, fire-irons,

  and glass and crockery--a quantity of supplies, in a word, he poured into

  the place. There were a yellow curtain in the back drawing-room, and

  green curtains in the front. The carpet was an immense bargain, bought

  dirt cheap, sir, at a sale in Euston Square. He was against the purchase

  of a carpet for the stairs. What was the good of it? What did men want

  with stair-carpets? His own apartment contained a wonderful assortment of

  lumber. Shelves which he nailed himself, old Indian garments, camphor

  trunks. What did he want with gewgaws? anything was good enough for an

  old soldier. But the spare bedroom was endowed with all sorts of

  splendour: a bed as big as a general's tent, a cheval glass--whereas the

  Colonel shaved in a little cracked mirror, which cost him no more than

  King Stephen's breeches--and a handsome new carpet; while the boards of

  the Colonel's bedchamber were as bare--as bare as old Miss Scragg's

  shoulders, which would be so much more comfortable were they covered up.

  Mr. Binnie's bedchamber was neat, snug, and appropriate. And Clive had a

  study and bedroom at the top of the house, which he was allowed to

  furnish entirely according to his own taste. How he and Ridley revelled

  in Wardour Street! What delightful coloured prints of hunting, racing,

  and beautiful ladies, did they not purchase, mount with their own hands,