»Silence!« he roared out.

»Hear, hear!« cried certain wags at a farther table. »Go on, Costigan!« said others.

»Go on!« cries the Colonel, in his high voice, trembling with anger. »Does any gentleman say ›Go on‹? Does any man who has a wife and sisters, or children at home, say ›Go on‹ to such disgusting ribaldry as this? Do you dare, sir, to call yourself a gentleman, and to say that you hold the king's commission, and to sit down amongst Christians and men of honour, and defile the ears of young boys with this wicked balderdash?«

»Why do you bring young boys here, old boy?« cries a voice of the malcontents.

»Why? Because I thought I was coming to a society of gentlemen,« cried out the indignant Colonel. »Because I never could have believed that Englishmen could meet together and allow a man, and an old man, so to disgrace himself. For shame, you old wretch! Go home to your bed, you hoary old sinner! And for my part, I'm not sorry that my son should see, for once in his life, to what shame and degradation and dishonour drunkenness and whisky may bring a man. Never mind the change, sir! Curse the change!« says the Colonel, facing the amazed waiter. »Keep it till you see me in this place again, which will be never – by George, never!« And shouldering his stick, and scowling round at the company of scared bacchanalians, the indignant gentleman stalked away, his boy after him.

Clive seemed rather shamefaced, but I fear the rest of the company looked still more foolish.

»Aussi que diable venait-il faire dans cette galère?« says King of Corpus to Jones of Trinity; and Jones gave a shrug of his shoulders, which were smarting, perhaps, for that uplifted cane of the Colonel's had somehow fallen on the back of every man in the room.

 

 

Chapter II

Colonel Newcome's Wild Oats.

As the young gentleman who has just gone to bed is to be the hero of the following pages, we had best begin our account of him with his family history, which luckily is not very long.

When pig-tails still grew on the backs of the British gentry, and their wives wore cushions on their heads, over which they tied their own hair, and disguised it with powder and pomatum; when ministers went in their stars and orders to the House of Commons, and the orators of the Opposition attacked nightly the noble lord in the blue ribbon; when Mr. Washington was heading the American rebels with a courage, it must be confessed, worthy of a better cause – there came up to London out of a Northern county, Mr. Thomas Newcome, afterwards Thomas Newcome, Esq., and sheriff of London, afterwards Mr. Alderman Newcome, the founder of the family whose name has given the title to this history. It was but in the reign of George the Third that Mr. Newcome first made his appearance in Cheapside, having made his entry into London on a wagon, which landed him and some bales of cloth, all his fortune, in Bishopsgate Street; though if it could be proved that the Normans wore pig-tails under William the Conqueror, and Mr. Washington fought against the English under King Richard in Palestine, I am sure some of the present Newcomes would pay the Heralds' office handsomely, living, as they do, amongst the noblest of the land, and giving entertainments to none but the very highest nobility and élite of the fashionable and diplomatic world, as you may read any day in the newspapers. For though these Newcomes have got a pedigree from the College, which is printed in Budge's »Landed Aristocracy of Great Britain,« and which proves that the Newcome of Cromwell's army, the Newcome who was among the last six who were hanged by Queen Mary for Protestantism, were ancestors of this house; of which a member distinguished himself at Bosworth Field; and the founder slain by King Harold's side at Hastings had been surgeon-barber to King Edward the Confessor; yet, between ourselves, I think that Sir Brian Newcome, of Newcome, could not believe a word of the story, any more than the rest of the world does, although a number of his children bear names out of the Saxon Calendar.

Was Thomas Newcome a foundling – a workhouse child out of that village, which has now become a great manufacturing town, and which bears his name? Such was the report set about at the last election, when Sir Brian, in the Conservative interest, contested the borough; and Mr. Yapp, the out-and-out Liberal candidate, had a picture of the old workhouse placarded over the town as the birthplace of the Newcomes, with placards ironically exciting freemen to vote for Newcome and union – Newcome and the parish interests, etc. Who cares for these local scandals? It matters, very little to those who have the good fortune to be invited to Lady Ann Newcome's parties whether her beautiful daughters can trace their pedigrees no higher than to the alderman their grandfather; or whether, through the mythic ancestral barber-surgeon, they hang on to the chin of Edward Confessor and King.

Thomas Newcome, who had been a weaver in his native village, brought the very best character for honesty, thrift, and ingenuity with him to London, where he was taken into the house of Hobson Brothers, cloth-factors; afterwards Hobson & Newcome. This fact may suffice to indicate Thomas Newcome's story. Like Whittington and many other London apprentices, he began poor, and ended by marrying his master's daughter, and becoming sheriff and alderman of the City of London.

But it was only en secondes noces that he espoused the wealthy, and religious, and eminent (such was the word applied to certain professing Christians in those days) Sophia Alethea Hobson – a woman who, considerably older than Mr. Newcome, had the advantage of surviving him many years. Her mansion at Clapham was long the resort of the most favoured amongst the religious world. The most eloquent expounders, the most gifted missionaries, the most interesting converts from foreign islands, were to be found at her sumptuous table, spread with the produce of her magnificent gardens. Heaven indeed blessed those gardens with plenty, as many reverend gentlemen remarked; there were no finer grapes, peaches, or pine-apples, in all England. Mr. Whitfield himself christened her; and it was said generally in the City, and by her friends, that Miss Hobson's two Christian names, Sophia and Alethea, were two Greek words, which, being interpreted, meant wisdom and truth. She, her villa and gardens, are now no more; but Sophia Terrace, Upper and Lower Alethea Road, and Hobson's Buildings, Square, etc., show, every quarter-day, that the ground sacred to her (and freehold) still bears plenteous fruit for the descendants of this eminent woman.

We are, however, advancing matters. When Thomas Newcome had been some time in London, he quitted the house of Hobson, finding an opening, though in a much smaller way, for himself. And no sooner did his business prosper than he went down into the north, like a man, to a pretty girl whom he had left there, and whom he had promised to marry. What seemed an imprudent match (for his wife had nothing but a pale face, that had grown older and paler with long waiting), turned out a very lucky one for Newcome. The whole country-side was pleased to think of the prosperous London tradesman returning to keep his promise to the penniless girl whom he had loved in the days of his own poverty; the great country clothiers, who knew his prudence and honesty, gave him much of their business when he went back to London. Susan Newcome would have lived to be a rich woman had not fate ended her career, within a year after her marriage, when she died giving birth to a son.

Newcome had a nurse for the child, and a cottage at Clapham, hard by Mr.