That's my place too – I'm a relative; and Newcome asks me, if he has got a place to spare. He met me in the City to-day, and says, ›Tom,‹ says he, ›there's some dinner in the square at half-past seven; I wish you would go and fetch Louisa, whom we haven't seen this ever so long.‹ Louisa is my wife, sir – Maria's sister – Newcome married that gal from my house. ›No, no,‹ says I, ›Hobson; Louisa's engaged nursing number eight‹ – that's our number, sir: the truth is, between you and me, sir, my missis won't come any more at no price. She can't stand it; Mrs. Newcome's dam patronizing airs is enough, to choke off anybody. ›Well, Hobson, my boy,‹ says I, ›a good dinner's a good dinner; and I'll come, though Louisa, won't – that is, can't.‹«

While Mr. Giles, who was considerably enlivened by claret, was discoursing thus candidly, his companion was thinking how he, Mr. Arthur Pendennis, had been met that very afternoon on the steps of the Megatherium Club by Mr. Newcome, and had accepted that dinner, which Mrs. Giles, with more spirit, had declined. Giles continued talking; »I'm an old stager, I am. I don't mind the rows between the women. I believe Mrs. Newcome and Lady Newcome's just as bad too. I know Maria is always driving at her one way or the other, and calling her proud and aristocratic, and that; and yet my wife says Maria, who pretends to be such a radical, never asks us to meet the Baronet and his lady. ›And why should she, Loo, my dear?‹ says I. ›I don't want to meet Lady Newcome, nor Lord Kew, nor any of 'em.‹ Lord Kew, ain't it an odd name? Tearing young swell, that Lord Kew – tremendous wild fellow.

I was a clerk in that house, sir, as a young man; I was there in the old woman's time, and Mr. Newcome's, the father of these young men – as good a man as ever stood on 'Change.« And then Mr. Giles, warming with his subject, enters at large into the history of the house. »You see, sir,« says he, »the banking house of Hobson Brothers, or Newcome Brothers, as the partners of the firm really are, is not one of the leading banking firms of the City of London, but a most respectable house of many years' standing, and doing a most respectable business, especially in the Dissenting connection.« After the business came into the hands of the Newcome Brothers, Hobson Newcome, Esq., and Sir Brian Newcome, Bart., M.P., Mr. Giles shows how a considerable West-end connection was likewise established, chiefly through the aristocratic friends and connections of the above-named Bart.

But the best man of business, according to Mr. Giles, whom the firm of Hobson Brothers ever knew, better than her father and uncle, better than her husband, Mr. T. Newcome, better than her sons and successors above-mentioned, was the famous Sophia Alethea Hobson, afterwards Newcome – of whom might be said what Frederick the Great said of his sister, that she was sexu fæmina, vir ingenio – in sex a woman, and in mind a man. Nor was she, my informant told me, without even manly personal characteristics. She had a very deep and gruff voice, and in her old age a beard which many a young man might envy; and as she came in to the bank out of her carriage from Clapham, in her dark green pelisse with fur trimmings, in her grey beaver hat, beaver gloves, and great gold spectacles, not a clerk in that house did not tremble before her, and it was said she only wanted a pipe in her mouth considerably to resemble the late Field Marshal Prince Blucher.

Her funeral was one of the most imposing sights ever witnessed in Clapham. There was such a crowd you might have thought it was a Derby day. The carriages of some of the greatest City firms and the wealthiest Dissenting houses; several coaches full of ministers of all denominations, including the Established Church; the carriage of the Right Honourable the Earl of Kew, and that of his daughter, Lady Ann Newcome, attended that revered lady's remains to their final resting-place. No less than nine sermons were preached at various places of public worship regarding her end. She fell upstairs at a very advanced age, going from the library to the bedroom, after all the household was gone to rest, and was found by the maids in the morning, inarticulate, but still alive, her head being cut frightfully with the bedroom candle with which she was retiring to her apartment.