"The Adventures of Philip on His Way Through the World"

Introduction

Thackeray, William Makepeace. “The Adventures of Philip on His Way Through the World, Chapter IV: A Genteel Family.” The Cornhill Magazine. 3,14 (1861): 166-176. Print.

The Adventures of Philip on His Way Through the World by William Makepeace Thackeray was a novel published serially in the Cornhill Magazine between 1861 and 1862. The novel tells the story of Philip Firmin, a young man who is “not terribly brilliant, not terribly industrious, not terribly sensitive,” as he struggles to overcome the negative reputation of his father, build a successful career, and find love. The novel is intricately tied with Cornhill’s success, for not only was Thackeray one of the first editors of the journal, but he was also “more highly regarded than Dickens” for many critics in his time. Because of this reputation, having novels like Philip serialized in Cornhill brought both popularity and credibility to the magazine—the first issue of the magazine had “astonishing success” and authors “flocked” to be published in the journal.

The Adventures of Philip is an interesting novel to study for two main reasons. The first is that Philip’s struggles and progression are strikingly similar to Thackeray’s own life, for Thackeray’s father had an affair that resulted in a child, just like Philip’s father did; Thackeray also struggled to establish a career as a writer and maintain a good relationship with his wife and her family, just like Philip. The novel is also interesting because of its narrator, Arthur Pendennis (a character from one of Thackeray’s earlier novels). Pendennis is a somewhat unreliable narrator who frequently gives social commentary on issues such as class relations and maintaining appearances. This commentary was written in a deliberately “insensitive” way, meant to shock readers contemporary to Thackeray. With our modern viewpoint, this deliberately inflammatory commentary provides insight into the intricacy of social norms in Victorian England.

Transcription

The Adventures of Philip on His Way Through the World, Chapter IV: A Genteel Family

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Have you made up your mind on the question of seeming and being in the world? I mean, suppose you are poor, is it right for you to seem to be well off? Have people an honest right to keep up appearances? Are you justified in starving your dinner table in order to keep a carriage; to have such an expensive house that you can’t by any possibility help a poor relation; to array your daughters in costly milliners’ wares because they live with girls whose parents are twice as rich? Sometimes it is hard to say where honest pride ends and hypocrisy begins. To obtrude your poverty is mean and slavish ; as it is odious for a beggar to ask compassion by showing his sores. But to simulate prosperity—to be wealthy and lavish thrice a year when you ask your friends, and for the rest of the time to munch a crust and sit by one candle—are the folks who practice this deceit worthy of applause or a whipping? Sometimes it is noble pride, sometimes shabby swindling. When I see Eugenia with her dear children exquisitely neat and cheerful; not showing the slightest semblance of poverty, or uttering the smallest complaint; persisting that Squanderfield, her husband, treats her well, and is good at heart; and denying that he leaves her and her young ones in want; I admire and reverence that noble falsehood—that beautiful constancy and endurance which disdains to ask compassion. When I sit at poor Jezebella’s table, and am treated to her sham bounties and shabby splendor, I only feel anger for the hospitality, and that dinner, and guest, and host, are humbugs together.

Talbot Twysden’s dinner table is large, and the guests most respectable. There is always a bigwig or two present, and a dining dowager who frequents the greatest houses. There is a butler who offers you wine; there’s a menu du diner before Mrs. Twysden; and to read it you would fancy you were at a good dinner. It tastes of chopped straw. Oh, the dreary sparkle of that feeble champagne; the audacity of that public-house sherry; the swindle of that acrid claret ; the fiery twang of that clammy port! I have tried them all, I tell you! It is a sham wine, a sham dinner, a sham welcome, a sham cheerfulness, among the guests assembled. I feel that that woman eyes and counts the cutlets as they are carried off the tables; perhaps watches that one which you try to swallow. She has counted and grudged each candle by which the cook prepares the meal. Does her big coachman fatten himself on purloined oats and beans, and Thorley’s food for cattle? Of the rinsings of those wretched bottles the butler will have to give a reckoning in the morning. Unless you are of the very great monde, Twysden and his wife think themselves better than you are, and seriously patronize you. They consider it is a privilege to be invited to those horrible meals to which they gravely ask the greatest folks in the country. I actually met Winton there—the famous Winton—the best dinner-giver in the world (ah, what a position for a man!). I watched him, and marked the sort of wonder which came over him as he tasted and sent away dish after dish, glass after glass. “Try that Château Margaux, Winton!” calls out the host. “It is some that Bottleby and I imported.” Imported! I see Winton’s face as he tastes the wine, and puts it down. He does not like to talk about that dinner. He has lost a day. Twysden will continue to ask him every year; will continue to expect to be asked in return, with Mrs. Twysden and one of his daughters; and will express his surprise loudly in the club, saying, “Hang Winton! Deuce take the fellow! He has sent me no game this year!” When foreign dukes and princes arrive, Twysden straightaway collars them, and invites them to his house. And sometimes they go once—and then ask, “Qui done est ce Monsieur Yvisden, qui est si drúle?” And he elbows his way up to them at the Minister’s assemblies, and frankly gives them his hand. And calm Mrs. Twysden wriggles, and works, and slides, and pushes, and tramples if need be, her girls following behind her, until she too has come up under the eyes of the great man, and bestowed on him a smile and a curtsey. Twysden grasps prosperity cordially by the hand. He says to success, “Bravo!” On the contrary, I never saw a man more resolute in not knowing unfortunate people, or more daringly forgetful of those whom he does not care to remember. If this Levite met a wayfarer, going down from Jerusalem, who had fallen among thieves, do you think he would stop to rescue the fallen man? He would neither give wine, nor oil, nor money. He would pass on perfectly satisfied with his own virtue, and leave the other to go, as best he might, to Jericho.

What is this? Am I angry because Twysden has left off asking me to his vinegar and chopped hay? No. I think not. Am I hurt because Mrs. Twysden sometimes patronizes my wife, and sometimes cuts her? Perhaps. Only women thoroughly know the insolence of women towards one another in the world. That is a very stale remark. They receive and deliver stabs, smiling politely. Tom Sayers could not take punishment more gaily than they do. If you could but see under the skin, you would find their little hearts scarred all over with little lancet digs. I protest I have seen my own wife enduring the impertinence of this woman, with a face as calm and placid as she wears when old Twysden himself is talking to her, and pouring out one of his maddening long stories. Oh, no! I am not angry at all. I can see that by the way in which I am writing of these folks. By the way, whilst I am giving this candid opinion of the Twysdens, do I sometimes pause to consider what they think of me? What do I care? Think what you like. Meanwhile we bow to one another at parties. We smile at each other in a sickly way. And as for the dinners in Beaunash Street, I hope those who eat them enjoy their food.

Twysden is one of the chiefs now of the Powder and Pomatum Office (the Pigtail branch was finally abolished in 1833, after the Reform Bill, with a compensation to the retiring under-secretary ), and his son is a clerk in the same office. When they came out, the daughters were very pretty—even my wife allows that. One of them used to ride in the Park with her father or brother daily; and knowing what his salary and wife’s fortune were, and what the rent of his house in Beaunash Street, everybody wondered how the Twysdens could make both ends meet. They had horses, carriages, and a great house fit for at least five thousand a year; they had not half as much, as everybody knew; and it was supposed that old Ringwood must make his niece an allowance. She certainly worked hard to get it. I spoke of stabs anon, and poor little breasts and sides scarred all over. No nuns, no monks, no fakirs take whippings more kindly than some devotees of the world; and, as the punishment is one for edification, let us hope the world lays smartly on to back and shoulders, and uses the thong well.

When old Ringwood, at the close of his lifetime, used to come to visit his dear niece and her husband and children, he always brought a cat-of-nine-tails in his pocket, and administered it to the whole household. He grinned at the poverty, the pretense, the meanness of the people, as they knelt before him and did him homage. The father and mother trembling brought the girls up for punishment, and, piteously smiling, received their own boxes on the ear in presence of their children. “Ah!” the little French governess used to say, grinding her white teeth, “I like milor to come. All day you vip me. When milor come, he vip you, kneel down and kiss de rod.”

They certainly knelt and took their whipping with the most exemplary fortitude. Sometimes the lash fell on papa’s back, sometimes on mamma’s: now it stung Agnes, and now it lighted on Blanche’s pretty shoulders. But I think it was on the heir of the house, young Ringwood Twysden, that my lord loved best to operate. Ring’s vanity was very thin-skinned, his selfishness easily wounded, and his contortions under punishment amused the old tormentor.

As my lord’s brougham drives up—the modest little brown brougham, with the noble horse, the lord chancellor of a coachman, and the ineffable footman—the ladies, who know the whirr of the wheels, and may be quarrelling in the drawing-room, call a truce to the fight, and smooth down their ruffled tempers and raiment. Mamma is writing at her table, in that beautiful, clear hand which we all admire; Blanche is at her book; Agnes is rising from the piano quite naturally. A quarrel between those gentle, smiling, delicate creatures! Impossible! About your most common piece of hypocrisy how men will blush and bungle: how easily, how gracefully, how consummately, women will perform it!

“Well,” growls my lord, “you are all in such pretty attitudes, I make no doubt that you have been sparring. I suspect, Maria, the men must know what devilish bad tempers the girls have got. Who can have seen you fighting? You’re quiet enough here, you little monkeys. I tell you what it is. Ladies’-maids get about and talk to the valets in the housekeeper’s room, and the men tell their masters. Upon my word I believe it was that business last year at Whipham which frightened Greenwood off. Famous match. Good house in town and country. No mother alive. Agnes might have had it her own way, but for that—”

“We are not all angels in our family, uncle!” cries Miss Agnes, reddening.

“And your mother is too sharp. The men are afraid of you, Maria. I’ve heard several young men say so. At White’s they talk about it quite freely. Pity for the girls. Great pity. Fellows come and tell me. Jack Hall, and fellows who go about everywhere.”

“I’m sure I don’t care what Captain Hall says about me—odious little wretch!” cries Blanche.

“There you go off in a tantrum! Hall never has any opinion of his own. He only fetches and carries what other people say. And he says, fellows say they are frightened of your mother. La bless you! Hall has no opinion. A fellow might commit murder, and Hall would wait at the door. Quite a discreet man. But I told him to ask about you. And that’s what I hear. And he says that Agnes is making eyes at the doctor’s boy.”

“It’s a shame,” cries Agnes, shedding tears under her martyrdom.

“Older than he is; but that’s no obstacle. Good-looking boy, I suppose you don’t object to that? Has his poor mother’s money, and his father’s: must be well to do. A vulgar fellow, but a clever fellow, and a determined fellow, the doctor—a fellow who, I suspect, is capable of anything. Shouldn’t wonder at that fellow marrying some rich dowager. Those doctors get an immense influence over women; and unless I’m mistaken in my man, Maria, your poor sister got hold of a—”

“Uncle!” cries Mrs. Tywsden, pointing to her daughters, “before these—”

“Before those innocent lambs! Hem! Well, I think Firmin is of the wolf sort:” and the old noble laughed, and showed his own fierce fangs as he spoke.

“I grieve to say, my lord, I agree with you,” remarks Mr. Twysden. “I don’t think Firmin a man of high principle. A clever man? Yes. An accomplished man? Yes. A good physician? Yes. A prosperous man? Yes. But what’s a man without principle?”

“You ought to have been a parson, Twysden.”

“Others have said so, my lord. My poor mother often regretted that I didn’t choose the Church. When I was at Cambridge, I used to speak constantly at the Union. I practiced. I do not disguise from you that my aim was public life. I am free to confess I think the House of Commons would have been my sphere; and, had my means permitted, should certainly have come forward.”

Lord Ringwood smiled, and winked to his niece—

“He means, my dear, that he would like to wag his jaws at any expense, and that I should put him in for Whipham.”

“There are, I think, worse members of Parliament,” remarked Mr. Twysden.

“If there was a box of ‘em like you, what a cage it would be!” roared my lord. “By George, I’m sick of jaw. And I would like to see a king of spirit in this country, who would shut up the talking shops, and gag the whole chattering crew!”

“I am a partisan of order—but a lover of freedom,” continues Twysden. “I hold that the balance of our constitution—”

I think my lord would have indulged in a few of those oaths with which his old-fashioned conversation was liberally garnished; but the servant, entering at this moment, announces Mr. Philip Firmin; and ever so faint a blush flutters up in Agnes’ cheek, who feels that the old lord’s eye is upon her.

“So, sir, I saw you at the Opera last night,” says Lord Ringwood.

“I saw you, too,” says downright Phil.

The women looked terrified, and Twysden scared. The Twysdens had Lord Ringwood’s box sometimes. But there were boxes in which the old man sat, and in which they never could see him.

“Why don’t you look at the stage, sir, when you go to the Opera, and not at me? When you go to church you ought to look at the parson, oughtn’t you?” growled the old man. “I’m about as good to look at as the fellow who dances first in the ballet—and very nearly as old. But if I were you, I should think looking at the Ellsler better fun.”

And now you may fancy of what old, old times we are writing—times in which those horrible old male dancers yet existed—hideous old creatures, with low dresses and short sleeves, and wreaths of flowers, or hats and features round their absurd old wigs—who skipped at the head of the ballet. Let us be thankful that those old apes have almost vanished off the stage, and left it in possession of the beauteous bounders of the other sex. Ah, my dear young friends, time will be when these too will cease to appear more than mortally beautiful! To Philip, at his age, they yet looked as lovely as houris. At this time the simple young fellow, surveying the ballet from his stall at the Opera, mistook carmine for blushes, pearl-powder for native snows, and cotton-wool for natural symmetry; and I dare say when he went into the world was not more clear-sighted about its rouged innocence, its padded pretensions, and its painted candour.

Old Lord Ringwood had a humorous pleasure in petting and coaxing Philip Firmin before Philip’s relatives of Beaunash Street. Even the girls felt a little plaintive envy at the partiality which uncle Ringwood exhibited for Phil; but the elder Twysdens and Ringwood Twysden, their son, writhed with agony at the preference which the old man sometimes showed for the doctor’s boy. Phil was much taller, much handsomer, much stronger, much better tempered, and much richer, than young Twysden. He would be the sole inheritor of his father’s fortune, and had his mother’s thirty thousand pounds. Even when they told him his father would marry again, Phil laughed, and did not seem to care—“I wish him joy of his new wife,” was all he could be got to say: “when he gets one, I suppose I shall go into chambers. Old Parr Street is not as gay as Pall Mall.” I am not angry with Mrs. Twysden for having a little jealousy of her nephew. Her boys and girls were the fruit of a dutiful marriage; and Phil was the son of a disobedient child. Her children were always on the best behavior before their great uncle; and Phil cared for him no more than for any other man; and he liked Phil the best. Her boy was as humble and eager to please as any of his lordship’s humblest henchman; and Lord Ringwood snapped at him, browbeat him, and trampled on the poor darling’s tenderest feelings, and treated him scarcely better than a lackey. As for poor Mr. Twysden, my lord not only yawned unreservedly in his face—that could not be helped; poor Talbot’s talk set many of his acquaintance asleep—but laughed at him, interrupted him, and told him to hold his tongue. On this day as the family sat together, at the pleasant hour—the before dinner hour—the fireside and tea-table hour—Lord Ringwood said to Phil—

“Dine with me today, sir?”

“Why does he not ask me, with my powers of conversation?” thought old Twysden to himself.

“Hang him, he always asks that beggar,” writhed young Twysden, in his corner.

“Very sorry, sir, can’t come. Have asked some fellows to dine at the Blue Posts,” says Phil.

“Confound you, sir, why don’t you put ‘em off?” cries the old lord. “You’d put ‘em off, Twysden, wouldn’t you?”

“Oh, sir!” the heart of father and son both beat.

“You know you would; and you quarrel with this boy for not throwing his friends over. Good night, Firmin, since you won’t come.”

And with this my lord was gone.

The two gentlemen of the house glumly looked from the window, and saw my lord’s brougham drive swiftly away in the rain.

“I hate your dining at those horrid taverns,” whispered a young lady to Philip.

“It is better fun than dining at home,” Philip remarks.

“You smoke and drink too much. You come home late, and you don’t live in a proper monde, sir!” continues the young lady.

“What would you have me do?”

“Oh, nothing. You must dine with those horrible men,” cries Agnes; “else you might have gone to Lady Pendleton’s tonight.”

“I can throw over the men easily enough, if you wish,” answered the young man.

“I? I have no wish of the sort. Have you not already refused uncle Ringwood?”

“You are not Lord Ringwood,” says Phil, with a tremor in his voice. “I don’t know there is much I would refuse you.”

“You silly boy! What do I ever ask you to do that you ought to refuse? I want you to live in our world, and not with your dreadful wild Oxford and Temple bachelors. I don’t want you to smoke. I want you to go into the world of which you have the entrée —and you refuse your uncle on account of some horrid engagement at a tavern!”

“Shall I stop here? Aunt, will you give me some dinner—here?” asks the young man.

“We have dined: my husband and son dine out,” said gentle Mrs. Twysden.

There was cold mutton and tea for the ladies; and Mrs. Twysden did not like to seat her nephew, who was accustomed to good fare and high living, to that meager meal.

“You see I must console myself at the tavern,” Philip said. “We shall have a pleasant party there.”

“And pray who makes it?” asks the lady.

“There is Ridley the painter.”

“My dear Philip! Do you know that his father was actually—”

“In the service of Lord Todmorden? He often tells us so. He is a queer character, the old man.”

“Mr. Ridley is a man of genius, certainly. His pictures are delicious, and he goes everywhere—but—but you provoke me, Philip, by your carelessness; indeed you do. Why should you be dining with the sons of footmen, when the first houses in the country might be open to you? You pain me, you foolish boy.”

“For dining in the company of a man of genius? Come, Agnes!” And the young man’s brow grew dark. “Besides,” he added, with a tone of sarcasm in his voice, which Miss Agnes did not like at all— “besides, my dear, you know he dines at Lord Pendleton’s.”

“What is that you are talking of Lady Pendleton, children?” asked watchful mamma from her corner.

“Ridley dines there. He is going to dine with me at a tavern today. And Lord Halden is coming—and Mr. Winton is coming—having heard of the famous beefsteaks.”

“Winton! Lord Halden! Beefsteaks! Where? By George! I have a mind to go, too! Where do you fellows dine? au cabaret? Hang me, I’ll be one,” shrieked little Twysden, to the terror of Philip, who knew his uncle’s awful powers of conversation. But Twysden remembered himself in good time, and to the intense relief of young Firmin. “Hang me. I forgot! Your aunt and I dine with the Bladeses. Stupid old fellow, the admiral, and bad wine—which is unpardonable; but we must go—on n’a que sa parole, hey? Tell Winton that I had meditated joining him, and that I have still some of that Chateâu Margaux he liked. Halden’s father I know well. Tell him so. Bring him here. Maria, send a Thursday card to Lord Halden! You must bring him here to dinner, Philip. That’s the best way to make acquaintance, my boy!” And the little man swaggers off, waving a bed-candle, as if he was going to quaff a bumper of sparkling spermaceti.

The mention of such great personages as Lord Halden and Mr. Winton silenced the reproofs of the pensive Agnes.

“You won’t care for our quiet fireside whilst you live with those fine people, Philip,” she sighed. There was no talk now of his throwing himself away on bad company.

So Philip did not dine with his relatives: but Talbot Twysden took good care to let Lord Ringwood know how young Firmin had offered to dine with his aunt that day after refusing his lordship. And everything to Phil’s discredit, and every act of extravagance or wildness which the young man committed, did Phil’s uncle, and Phil’s cousin Ringwood Twysden, convey to the old nobleman. Had not these been the informers, Lord Ringwood would have been angry; for he exacted obedience and servility from all round about him. But it was pleasanter to vex the Twysdens than to scold and browbeat Philip, and so his lordship chose to laugh and be amused at Phil’s insubordination. He saw, too, other things of which he did not speak. He was a wily old man, who could afford to be blind upon occasion.

What do you judge from the fact that Philip was ready to make or break engagements at a young lady’s instigation? When you were twenty years old, had no young ladies an influence over you? Were they not commonly older than yourself? Did your youthful passion lead to anything, and are you very sorry now that it did not? Suppose you had had your soul’s wish and married her, of what age would she be now? And now when you go into the world and see her, do you on your conscience very much regret that the little affair came to an end? Is it that (lean, or fat, or stumpy, or tall) woman with all those children whom you once chose to break your heart about; and do you still envy Jones? Philip was in love with his cousin, no doubt, but at the university had he not been previously in love with the Tomkinsian professor’s daughter Miss Budd; and had he not already written verses to Miss Flower, his neighbor’s daughter in Old Parr Street? And don’t young men always begin by falling in love with ladies older than themselves? Agnes certainly was Philip’s senior, as her sister constantly took care to inform him.

And Agnes might have told stories about Blanche, if she chose—as you may about me, and I about you. Not quite true stories, but stories with enough alloy of lies to make them serviceable coin; stories such as we hear daily in the world; stories such as we read in the most learned and conscientious history books, which are told by the most respectable persons, and perfectly authentic until contradicted. It is only our histories that can’t be contradicted (unless, to be sure, novelists contradict themselves, as sometimes they will). What we say about people’s virtues, failings, characters, you may be sure is all true. And I defy any man to assert that my opinion of the Twysden family is malicious, or unkind, or unfounded in any particular. Agnes wrote verses, and set her own and other writers’ poems to music. Blanche was scientific, and attended the Albemarle Street lectures sedulously. They are both clever women as times go; well-educated and accomplished, and very well-mannered when they choose to be pleasant. If you were a bachelor, say, with a good fortune, or a widower who wanted consolation, or a lady giving very good parties and belonging to the monde, you would find them agreeable people. If you were a little Treasury clerk, or a young barrister with no practice, or a lady old or young, not quite of the monde, your opinion of them would not be so favorable. I have seen them cut, and scorn, and avoid, and caress, and kneel down and worship the same person. When Mrs. Lovel first gave parties, don’t I remember the shocked countenances of the Twysden family? Were ever shoulders colder than yours, dear girls? Now they love her; they fondle her step-children; they praise her to her face and behind her handsome back; they take her hand in public; they call her by her Christian name; they fall into ecstasies over her toilettes, and would fetch coals for her dressing-room fire if she but gave them the word. She is not changed. She is the same lady who once was a governess, and no colder and no warmer since then. But you see her prosperity has brought virtues into evidence, which people did not perceive when she was poor. Could people see Cinderella’s beauty when she was in rags by the fire, or until she stepped out of her fairy coach in her diamonds? How are you to recognize a diamond in a dusthole? Only very clever eyes can do that. Whereas a lady, in a fairy coach and eight, naturally creates a sensation; and enraptured princes come and beg to have the honor of dancing with her.

In the character of infallible historian, then, I declare that if Miss Twysden at three-and-twenty feels ever so much or little attachment for her cousin who is not yet of age, there is no reason to be angry with her. A brave, handsome, blundering, downright young fellow, with broad shoulders, high spirits, and quite fresh blushes on his face, with very good talents (though he has been woefully idle, and requested to absent himself temporarily from his university), the possessor of a competent fortune and the heir of another, may naturally make some impression on a lady’s heart with whom kinsmanship and circumstance bring him into daily communion. When had any sound so hearty as Phil’s laugh been heard in Beaunash Street? His jolly frankness touched his aunt, a clever woman. She would smile and say, “My dear Philip, it is not only what you say, but what you are going to say next, which keeps me in such a perpetual tremor.” There may have been a time once when she was frank and cordial herself: ever so long ago, when she and her sister were two blooming girls, lovingly clinging together, and just stepping forth into the world. But if you succeed in keeping a fine house on a small income; in showing a cheerful face to the world though oppressed with ever so much care; in bearing with dutiful reverence an intolerable old bore of a husband (and I vow it is this quality in Mrs. Twysden for which I most admire her); in submitting to defeats patiently; to humiliations with smiles, so as to hold your own in your darling monde; you may succeed, but you must give up being frank and cordial. The marriage of her sister to the doctor gave Maria Ringwood a great panic, for Lord Ringwood was furious when the news came. Then, perhaps, she sacrificed a little private passion of her own: then she set her cap at a noble young neighbor of my lord’s who jilted her: then she took up with Talbot Twysden, Esquire, of the Power and Pomatum Office, and made a very faithful wife to him, and was a very careful mother to his children. But as for frankness and cordiality, my good friend, accept from a lady what she can give you—good manners, pleasant talk, and decent attention. If you go to her breakfast table, don’t ask for a roc’s egg, but eat that moderately fresh hen’s egg which John brings you. When Mrs. Twysden is in her open carriage in the Park, how prosperous, handsome, and jolly she looks—the girls how smiling and young (that is, you know, considering all things); the horses look fat, the coachman and footman wealthy and sleek; they exchange bows with the tenants of other carriages—well-known aristocrats. Jones and Brown, leaning over the railings, and seeing Twysden equipage pass, have not the slightest doubt that it contains people of the highest wealth and fashion. “I say, Jones, my boy, what noble family has the motto, Well done Twys done? and what clipping girls there were in that barouche!” B. remarks to J., “and what a handsome young swell that is riding the bay mare, and leaning over and talking to the yellow-haired girl!” And it is evident to one of those gentlemen, at least, that he has been looking at your regular first-rate tiptop people.

As for Phil Firmin on his bay mare with his geranium in his button-hole, there is no doubt that Philippus looks as handsome, and as rich, and as brave as any lord. And I think Jones must have felt a little pang when his friend told him, “That a lord! Bless you, it’s only a swell doctor’s son.” But while J. and B. fancy all the little party very happy, they do not hear Phil whisper to his cousin, “I hope you liked your partner last night?” and they do not see how anxious Mrs. Twysden is under her smiles, how she perceives Colonel Shafto’s cab coming up (the dancer in question), and how she would rather have Phil anywhere than by that particular wheel of her carriage; how Lady Braglands has just passed them by without noticing them—Lady Braglands, who has a ball, and is determined not to ask that woman and her two endless girls; and how, though Lady Braglands won’t see Mrs. Twysden in her great staring equipage, and the three faces which have been beaming smiles at her, she instantly perceives Lady Lovel, who is passing ensconced in her little brougham, and kisses her fingers twenty times over. How should poor J. and B., who are not, vous comprenez, du monde, understand these mysteries?

“That’s young Firmin, is it, that handsome young fellow?” says Brown to Jones.

“Doctor married the Earl of Ringwood’s niece—ran away with her, you know.”

“Good practice?”

“Capital. First-rate. All the tiptop people. Great ladies’ doctor. Can’t do without him. Makes a fortune, besides what he had with his wife.”

“We’ve seen his name—the old man’s—on some very queer paper,” says B. with a wink to J. By which I conclude they are city gentlemen. And they look very hard at friend Philip, as he comes to talk and shake hands with some pedestrians who are gazing over the railings at the busy and pleasant Park scene.

Notes

Edited by: Harlow, Abigail: section 1, Fall 2014

From: Volume 3, Issue 14 (The Cornhill Magazine)