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, cut out for screens, frame and glaze, and hang up on the walls. When the rooms were ready they gave a party, inviting the Colonel and Mr. Binnie by note of hand, two gentlemen from Lamb Court, Temple, Mr. Honeyman, and Fred Bayham. We must have Fred Bayham. Fred Bayham frankly asked, “Is Mr. Sherrick, with whom you have become rather intimate lately — and mind you I say nothing, but I recommend strangers in London to be cautious about their friends — is Mr. Sherrick coming to you, young ’un? because if he is, F. B. must respectfully decline.”
Mr. Sherrick was not invited, and accordingly F. B. came. But Sherrick was invited on other days, and a very queer society did our honest Colonel gather together in that queer house, so dreary, so dingy, so comfortless, so pleasant. He, who was one of the most hospitable men alive, loved to have his friends around him; and it must be confessed that the evening parties now occasionally given in Fitzroy Square were of the oddest assemblage of people. The correct East India gentlemen from Hanover Square: the artists, Clive’s friends, gentlemen of all ages with all sorts of beards, in every variety of costume. Now and again a stray schoolfellow from Grey Friars, who stared, as well he might, at the company in which he found himself. Sometimes a few ladies were brought to these entertainments. The immense politeness of the good host compensated some of them for the strangeness of his company. They had never seen such odd-looking hairy men as those young artists, nor such wonderful women as Colonel Newcome assembled together. He was good to all old maids and poor widows. Retired captains with large families of daughters found in him their best friend. He sent carriages to fetch them and bring them back from the suburbs where they dwelt. Gandish, Mrs. Gandish, and the four Miss Gandishes in scarlet robes, were constant attendants at the Colonel’s soirees.
“I delight, sir, in the ‘ospitality of my distinguished military friend,” Mr. Gandish would say. “The harmy has always been my passion. — I served in the Soho Volunteers three years myself, till the conclusion of the war, sir, till the conclusion of the war.”
It was a great sight to see Mr. Frederick Bayham engaged in the waltz or the quadrille with some of the elderly houris at the Colonel’s parties. F. B., like a good-natured F. B. as he was, always chose the plainest women as partners, and entertained them with profound compliments and sumptuous conversation. The Colonel likewise danced quadrilles with the utmost gravity. Waltzing had been invented long since his time: but he practised quadrilles when they first came in, about 1817, in Calcutta. To see him leading up a little old maid, and bowing to her when the dance was ended, and performing cavalier seul with stately simplicity, was a sight indeed to remember. If Clive Newcome had not such a fine sense of humour, he would have blushed for his father’s simplicity. — As it was, the elder’s guileless goodness and childlike trustfulness endeared him immensely to his son. “Look at the old boy, Pendennis,” he would say, “look at him leading up that old Miss Tidswell to the piano. Doesn’t he do it like an old duke? I lay a wager she thinks she is going to be my mother-inlaw; all the women are in love with him, young and old. ‘Should he upbraid?’ There she goes. ‘I’ll own that he’ll prevail, and sing as sweetly as a nigh-tin-gale!’ Oh, you old warbler! Look at father’s old head bobbing up and down! Wouldn’t he do for Sir Roger de Coverley? How do you do, Uncle Charles? — I say, M’Collop, how gets on the Duke of What-d’ye-call-’em starving in the castle? — Gandish says it’s very good.” The lad retires to a group of artists. Mr. Honeyman comes up with a faint smile playing on his features, like moonlight on the facade of Lady Whittlesea’s Chapel.
“These parties are the most singular I have ever seen,” whispers Honeyman. “In entering one of these assemblies, one is struck with the immensity of London: and with the sense of one’s own insignificance. Without, I trust, departing from my clerical character, nay, from my very avocation as incumbent of a London chapel — I have seen a good deal of the world, and here is an assemblage no doubt of most respectable persons, on scarce one of whom I ever set eyes till this evening. Where does my good brother find such characters?”
“That,” says Mr. Honeyman’s interlocutor, “is the celebrated, though neglected artist, Professor Gandish, whom nothing but jealousy has kept out of the Royal Academy. Surely you have heard of the great Gandish?”
“Indeed I am ashamed to confess my ignorance, but a clergyman busy with his duties knows little, perhaps too little, of the fine arts.”
“Gandish, sir, is one of the greatest geniuses on whom our ungrateful country ever trampled; he exhibited his first celebrated picture of ‘Alfred in the Neatherd’s Hut’ (he says he is the first who ever touched that subject) in 180-; but Lord Nelson’s death, and victory of Trafalgar, occupied the public attention at that time, and Gandish’s work went unnoticed. In the year 1816, he painted his great work of ‘Boadicea.’ You see her before you. That lady in yellow, with a light front and a turban. Boadicea became Mrs. Gandish in that year. So late as ‘27, he brought before the world his ‘Non Angli sed Angeli.’ Two of the angels are yonder in sea-green dresses — the Misses Gandish. The youth in Berlin gloves was the little male angelus of that piece.”
“How came you to know all this, you strange man?” says Mr. Honeyman.
“Simply because Gandish has told me twenty times. He tells the story to everybody, every time he sees them. He told it today at dinner. Boadicea and the angels came afterwards.”
“Satire! satire! Mr. Pendennis,” says the divine, holding up a reproving finger of lavender kid, “beware of a wicked wit! — But when a man has that tendency, I know how difficult it is to restrain. My dear Colonel, good evening! You have a great reception to-night. That gentleman’s bass voice is very fine; Mr. Pendennis and I were admiring it. ‘The Wolf’ is a song admirably adapted to show its capabilities.”
Mr. Gandish’s autobiography had occupied the whole time of the retirement of the ladies from Colonel Newcome’s dinner-table. Mr. Hobson Newcome had been asleep during the performance; Sir Curry Baughton and one or two of the Colonel’s professional and military guests, silent and puzzled. Honest Mr. Binnie, with his shrewd good-humoured face, sipping his claret as usual, and delivering a sly joke now and again to the gentlemen at his end of the table. Mrs. Newcome had sat by him in sulky dignity; was it that Lady Baughton’s diamonds offended her? — her ladyship and her daughters being attired in great splendour for a Court ball, which they were to attend that evening. Was she hurt because she was not invited to that Royal Entertainment? As the festivities were to take place at an early hour, the ladies bidden were obliged to quit the Colonel’s house before the evening part commenced, from which Lady Anne declared she was quite vexed to be obliged to run away.
Lady Anne Newcome had been as gracious on this occasion as her sister-inlaw had been out of humour. Everything pleased her in the house. She had no idea that there were such fine houses in that quarter of the town. She thought the dinner so very nice — that Mr Binnie such a good-humoured-looking gentleman. That stout gentleman with his collars turned down like Lord Byron, so exceedingly clever and full of information. A celebrated artist was he? (courtly Mr. Smee had his own opinion upon that point, but did not utter it). All those artists are so eccentric and amusing and clever. Before dinner she insiste............