Chapter M: A. Titmarsh (1)

January 5, 1851.

THE KICKLEBURYS ON THE RHINE.

The cabman, when he brought us to the wharf, and made his usual charge of six times his legal fare, before the settlement of which he pretended to refuse the privilege of an exeat regno to our luggage, glared like a disappointed fiend when Lankin, calling up the faithful Hutchison, his clerk, who was in attendance, said to him, "Hutchison, you will pay this man. My name is Serjeant Lankin, my chambers are in Pump Court. My clerk will settle with you, sir." The cabman trembled; we stepped on board; our lightsome luggage was speedily whisked away by the crew; our berths had been secured by the previous agency of Hutchison; and a couple of tickets, on which were written, "Mr. Serjeant Lankin," "Mr. Titmarsh," (Lankin's, by the way, incomparably the best and comfortablest sleeping place,) were pinned on to two of the curtains of the beds in a side cabin when we descended.

Who was on board? There were Jews, with Sunday papers and fruit; there were couriers and servants straggling about; there were those bearded foreign visitors of England, who always seem to decline to shave or wash themselves on the day of a voyage, and, on the eve of quitting our country, appear inclined to carry away as much as possible of its soil on their hands and linen: there were parties already cozily established on deck under the awning; and steady-going travellers for'ard, smoking already the pleasant morning cigar, and watching the phenomena of departure.

The bell rings: they leave off bawling, "Anybody else for the shore?" The last grape and Bell's Life merchant has scuffled over the plank: the Johns of the departing nobility and gentry line the brink of the quay, and touch their hats: Hutchison touches his hat to me--to ME, heaven bless him! I turn round inexpressibly affected and delighted, and whom do I see but Captain Hicks!

"Hallo! YOU here?" says Hicks, in a tone which seems to mean, "Confound you, you are everywhere."

Hicks is one of those young men who seem to be everywhere a great deal too often.

How are they always getting leave from their regiments? If they are not wanted in this country, (as wanted they cannot be, for you see them sprawling over the railing in Rotten Row all day, and shaking their heels at every ball in town,)--if they are not wanted in this country, I say, why the deuce are they not sent off to India, or to Demerara, or to Sierra Leone, by Jove?--the farther the better; and I should wish a good unwholesome climate to try 'em, and make 'em hardy. Here is this Hicks, then--Captain Launcelot Hicks, if you please--whose life is nothing but breakfast, smoking, riding-school, billiards, mess, polking, billiards, and smoking again, and da capo--pulling down his moustaches, and going to take a tour after the immense labors of the season.

"How do you do, Captain Hicks?" I say. "Where are you going?"

"Oh, I am going to the Whine," says Hicks; "evewybody goes to the Whine." The WHINE indeed! I dare say he can no more spell properly than he can speak.

"Who is on board--anybody?" I ask, with the air of a man of fashion. "To whom does that immense pile of luggage belong--under charge of the lady's-maid, the courier, and the British footman? A large white K is painted on all the boxes."

"How the deuce should I know?" says Hicks, looking, as I fancy, both red and angry, and strutting off with his great cavalry lurch and swagger: whilst my friend the Serjeant looks at him lost in admiration, and surveys his shining little boots, his chains and breloques, his whiskers and ambrosial moustaches, his gloves and other dandifications, with a pleased wonder; as the ladies of the Sultan's harem surveyed the great Lady from Park Lane who paid them a visit; or the simple subjects of Montezuma looked at one of Cortes's heavy dragoons.

"That must be a marquis at least," whispers Lankin, who consults me on points of society, and is pleased to have a great opinion of my experience.

I burst out in a scornful laugh. "THAT!" I say; "he is a captain of dragoons, and his father an attorney in Bedford Row. The whiskers of a roturier, my good Lankin, grow as long as the beard of a Plantagenet. It don't require much noble blood to learn the polka. If you were younger, Lankin, we might go for a shilling a night, and dance every evening at M. Laurent's Casino, and skip about in a little time as well as that fellow. Only we despise the kind of thing you know,--only we're too grave, and too steady."

"And too fat," whispers Lankin, with a laugh.

"Speak for yourself, you maypole," says I. "If you can't dance yourself, people can dance round you--put a wreath of flowers upon your old poll, stick you up in a village green, and so make use of you."

"I should gladly be turned into anything so pleasant," Lankin answers; "and so, at least, get a chance of seeing a pretty girl now and then. They don't show in Pump Court, or at the University Club, where I dine. You are a lucky fellow, Titmarsh, and go about in the world. As for me, I never--"

"And the judges' wives, you rogue?" I say. "Well, no man is satisfied; and the only reason I have to be angry with the captain yonder is, that, the other night, at Mrs. Perkins's, being in conversation with a charming young creature--who knows all my favorite passages in Tennyson, and takes a most delightful little line of opposition in the Church controversy--just as we were in the very closest, dearest, pleasantest part of the talk, comes up young Hotspur yonder, and whisks her away in a polka. What have you and I to do with polkas, Lankin? He took her down to supper--what have you and I to do with suppers?"

"Our duty is to leave them alone," said the philosophical Serjeant. "And now about breakfast--shall we have some?" And as he spoke, a savory little procession of stewards and stewards' boys, with drab tin dish-covers, passed from the caboose, and descended the stairs to the cabin. The vessel had passed Greenwich by this time, and had worked its way out of the mast-forest which guards the approaches of our city.

The owners of those innumerable boxes, bags, oil-skins, guitar-cases, whereon the letter K was engraven, appeared to be three ladies, with a slim gentleman of two or three and thirty, who was probably the husband of one of them. He had numberless shawls under his arm and guardianship. He had a strap full of Murray's Handbooks and Continental Guides in his keeping; and a little collection of parasols and umbrellas, bound together, and to be carried in state before the chief of the party, like the lictor's fasces before the consul.

The chief of the party was evidently the stout lady. One parasol being left free, she waved it about, and commanded the luggage and the menials to and fro. "Horace, we will sit there," she exclaimed, pointing to a comfortable place on the deck. Horace went and placed the shawls and the Guidebooks. "Hirsch, avy vou conty les bagages? tront sett morso ong too?" The German courier said, "Oui, miladi," and bowed a rather sulky assent. "Bowman, you will see that Finch is comfortable, and send her to me." The gigantic Bowman, a gentleman in an undress uniform, with very large and splendid armorial buttons, and with traces of the powder of the season still lingering in his hair, bows, and speeds upon my lady's errand.

I recognize Hirsch, a well-known face upon the European high-road, where he has travelled with many acquaintances. With whom is he making the tour now?--Mr. Hirsch is acting as courier to Mr. and Mrs. Horace Milliken. They have not been married many months, and they are travelling, Hirsch says, with a contraction of his bushy eyebrows, with miladi, Mrs. Milliken's mamma. "And who is her ladyship?" Hirsch's brow contracts into deeper furrows. "It is Miladi Gigglebury," he says, "Mr. Didmarsh. Berhabs you know her." He scowls round at her, as she calls out loudly, "Hirsch, Hirsch!" and obeys that summons.

It is the great Lady Kicklebury of Pocklington Square, about whom I remember Mrs. Perkins made so much ado at her last ball; and whom old Perkins conducted to supper. When Sir Thomas Kicklebury died (he was one of the first tenants of the Square), who does not remember the scutcheon with the coronet with two balls, that flamed over No. 36? Her son was at Eton then, and has subsequently taken an honorary degree at Oxford, and been an ornament of Platt's and the "Oswestry Club." He fled into St. James's from the great house in Pocklington Square, and from St. James's to Italy and the Mediterranean, where he has been for some time in a wholesome exile. Her eldest daughter's marriage with Lord Roughhead was talked about last year; but Lord Roughhead, it is known, married Miss Brent; and Horace Milliken, very much to his surprise, found himself the affianced husband of Miss Lavinia Kicklebury, after an agitating evening at Lady Polkimore's, when Miss Lavinia, feeling herself faint, went out on to the leads (the terrace, Lady Polkimore WILL call it), on the arm of Mr. Milliken. They were married in January: it's not a bad match for Miss K. Lady Kicklebury goes and stops for six months of the year at Pigeoncot with her daughter and son-in-law; and now that they are come abroad, she comes too. She must be with Lavinia, under the present circumstances.

When I am arm-in-arm, I tell this story glibly off to Lankin, who is astonished at my knowledge of the world, and says, "Why, Titmarsh, you know everything."

"I DO know a few things, Lankin my boy," is my answer. "A man don't live in society, and PRETTY GOOD society, let me tell you, for nothing."

The fact is, that all the above details are known to almost any man in our neighborhood. Lady Kicklebury does not meet with US much, and has greater folks than we can pretend to be at her parties. But we know about THEM. She'll condescend to come to Perkins's, WITH WHOSE FIRM SHE BANKS; and she MAY overdraw HER ACCOUNT: but of that, of course, I know nothing.

When Lankin and I go down stairs to breakfast, we find, if not the best, at least the most conspicuous places in occupation of Lady Kicklebury's party, and the hulking London footman making a darkness in the cabin, as he stoops through it bearing cups and plates to his employers.

[Why do they always put mud into coffee on board steamers? Why does the tea generally taste of boiled boots? Why is the milk scarce and thin? And why do they have those bleeding legs of boiled mutton for dinner? I ask why? In the steamers of other nations you are well fed. Is it impossible that Britannia, who confessedly rules the waves, should attend to the victuals a little, and that meat should be well cooked under a Union Jack? I just put in this question, this most interesting question, in a momentous parenthesis, and resume the tale.]

When Lankin and I descend to the cabin, then, the tables are full of gobbling people; and, though there DO seem to be a couple of places near Lady Kicklebury, immediately she sees our eyes directed to the inviting gap, she slides out, and with her ample robe covers even more than that large space to which by art and nature she is entitled, and calling out, "Horace, Horace!" and nodding, and winking, and pointing, she causes her son-in-law to extend the wing on his side. We are cut of THAT chance of a breakfast. We shall have the tea at its third water, and those two damp black mutton-chops, which nobody else will take, will fall to our cold share.

At this minute a voice, clear and sweet, from a tall lady in a black veil, says, "Mr. Titmarsh," and I start and murmur an ejaculation of respectful surprise, as I recognize no less a person than the Right Honorable the Countess of Knightsbridge, taking her tea, breaking up little bits of toast with her slim fingers, and sitting between a Belgian horse-dealer and a German violoncello-player who has a conge after the opera--like any other mortal.

I whisper her ladyship's name to Lankin. The Serjeant looks towards her with curiosity and awe. Even he, in his Pump Court solitudes, has heard of that star of fashion--that admired amongst men, and even women--that Diana severe yet simple, the accomplished Aurelia of Knightsbridge. Her husband has but a small share of HER qualities. How should he? The turf and the fox-chase are his delights--the smoking-room at the "Travellers'"--nay, shall we say it?--the illuminated arcades of "Vauxhall," and the gambols of the dishevelled Terpsichore. Knightsbridge has his faults--ah! even the peerage of England is not exempt from them. With Diana for his wife, he flies the halls where she sits severe and serene, and is to be found (shrouded in smoke, 'tis true,) in those caves where the contrite chimney-sweep sings his terrible death chant, or the Bacchanalian judge administers a satiric law. Lord Knightsbridge has his faults, then; but he has the gout at Rougetnoirbourg, near the Rhine, and thither his wife is hastening to minister to him.

"I have done," says Lady Knightsbridge, with a gentle bow, as she rises; "you may have this place, Mr. Titmarsh; and I am sorry my breakfast is over: I should have prolonged it had I thought that YOU were coming to sit by me. Thank you--my glove." (Such an absurd little glove, by the way). "We shall meet on the deck when you have done."

And she moves away with an august curtsy. I can't tell how it is, or what it is, in that lady; but she says, "How do you do?" as nobody else knows how to say it. In all her actions, motions, thoughts, I would wager there is the same calm grace and harmony. She is not very handsome, being very thin, and rather sad-looking. She is not very witty, being only up to the conversation, whatever it may be; and yet, if she were in black serge, I think one could not help seeing that she was a Princess, and Serene Highness; and if she were a hundred years old, she could not be but beautiful. I saw her performing her devotions in Antwerp Cathedral, and forgot to look at anything else there;--so calm and pure, such a sainted figure hers seemed.

When this great lady did the present writer the honor to shake his hand (I had the honor to teach writing and the rudiments of Latin to the young and intelligent Lord Viscount Pimlico), there seemed to be a commotion in the Kicklebury party--heads were nodded together, and turned towards Lady Knightsbridge: in whose honor, when Lady Kicklebury had sufficiently reconnoitred her with her eye-glass, the baronet's lady rose and swept a reverential curtsy, backing until she fell up against the cushions at the stern of the boat. Lady Knightsbridge did not see this salute, for she did not acknowledge it, but walked away slimly (she seems to glide in and out of the room), and disappeared up the stair to the deck.

Lankin and I took our places, the horse-dealer making room for us; and I could not help looking, with a little air of triumph, over to the Kicklebury faction, as much as to say, "You fine folks, with your large footman and supercilious airs, see what WE can do."

As I looked--smiling, and nodding, and laughing at me, in a knowing, pretty way, and then leaning to mamma as if in explanation, what face should I see but that of the young lady at Mrs. Perkins's, with whom I had had that pleasant conversation which had been interrupted by the demand of Captain Hicks for a dance? So, then, that was Miss Kicklebury, about whom Miss Perkins, my young friend, has so often spoken to me: the young ladies were in conversation when I had the happiness of joining them; and Miss P. went away presently, to look to her guests--that is Miss Fanny Kicklebury.

A sudden pang shot athwart my bosom--Lankin might have perceived it, but the honest Serjeant was so awe-stricken by his late interview with the Countess of Knightsbridge, that his mind was unfit to grapple with other subjects--a pang of feeling (which I concealed under the grin and graceful bow wherewith Miss Fanny's salutations were acknowledged) tore my heart-strings--as I thought of--I need not say--of HICKS.

He had danced with her, he had supped with her--he was here, on board the boat. Where was that dragoon? I looked round for him. In quite a far corner,--but so that he could command the Kicklebury party, I thought,--he was eating his breakfast, the great healthy oaf, and consuming one broiled egg after another.

In the course of the afternoon, all parties, as it may be supposed, emerged upon deck again, and Miss Fanny and her mamma began walking the quarter-deck with a quick pace, like a couple of post-captains. When Miss Fanny saw me, she stopped and smiled, and recognized the gentleman who had amused her so at Mrs. Perkins's. What a dear sweet creature Eliza Perkins was! They had been at school together. She was going to write to Eliza everything that happened on the voyage.

"EVERYTHING?" I said, in my particularly sarcastic manner.

"Well, everything that was worth telling. There was a great number of things that were very stupid, and of people that were very stupid. Everything that YOU say, Mr. Titmarsh, I am sure I may put down. You have seen Mr. Titmarsh's funny books, mamma?"

Mamma said she had heard--she had no doubt they were very amusing. "Was not that--ahem--Lady Knightsbridge, to whom I saw you speaking, sir?"

"Yes; she is going to nurse Lord Knightsbridge, who has the gout at Rougetnoirbourg."

"Indeed! how very fortunate! what an extraordinary coincidence! We are going too," said Lady Kicklebury.

I remarked "that everybody was going to Rougetnoirbourg this year; and I heard of two gentlemen--Count Carambole and Colonel Cannon--who had been obliged to sleep there on a billiard-table for want of a bed."

"My son Kicklebury--are you acquainted with Sir Thomas Kicklebury?" her ladyship said, with great stateliness--"is at Noirbourg, and will take lodgings for us. The springs are particularly recommended for my daughter, Mrs. Milliken and, at great personal sacrifice, I am going thither myself: but what will not a mother do, Mr. Titmarsh? Did I understand you to say that you have the--the entree at Knightsbridge House? The parties are not what they used to be, I am told. Not that I have any knowledge. I am but a poor country baronet's widow, Mr. Titmarsh; though the Kickleburys date from Henry III., and MY family is not of the most modern in the country. You have heard of General Guff, my father, perhaps? aide-de-camp to the Duke of York, and wounded by his Royal Highness's side at the bombardment of Valenciennes. WE move IN OUR OWN SPHERE."

"Mrs. Perkins is a very kind creature," I said, "and it was a very pleasant ball. Did you not think so, Miss Kicklebury?"

"I thought it odious," said Miss Fanny. "I mean, it WAS pleasant until that--that stupid man--what was his name?--came and took me away to dance with him."

"What! don't you care for a red coat and moustaches?" I asked.

"I adore genius, Mr. Titmarsh," said the young lady, with a most killing look of her beautiful blue eyes, "and I have every one of your works by heart--all, except the last, which I can't endure. I think it's wicked, positively wicked--My darling Scott--how can you? And are you going to make a Christmas-book this year?"

"Shall I tell you about it?"

"Oh, do tell us about it," said the lively, charming creature, clapping her hands: and we began to talk, being near Lavinia (Mrs. Milliken) and her husband, who was ceaselessly occupied in fetching and carrying books, biscuits, pillows and cloaks, scent-bottles, the Italian greyhound, and the thousand and one necessities of the pale and interesting bride. Oh, how she did fidget! how she did grumble! how she altered and twisted her position! and how she did make poor Milliken trot!

After Miss Fanny and I had talked, and I had told her my plan, which she pronounced to be delightful, she continued:--"I never was so provoked in my life, Mr. Titmarsh, as when that odious man came and interrupted that dear delightful conversation."

"On your word? The odious man is on board the boat: I see him smoking just by the funnel yonder, look! and looking at us."

"He is very stupid," said Fanny; "and all that I adore is intellect, dear Mr. Titmarsh."

"But why is he on board?" said I, with a fin sourire.

"Why is he on board? Why is everybody on board? How do we meet? (and oh, how glad I am to meet you again!) You don't suppose that I know how the horrid man came here?"

"Eh! he may be fascinated by a pair of blue eyes, Miss Fanny! Others have been so," I said.

"Don't be cruel to a poor girl, you wicked, satirical creature," she said. "I think Captain Hicks odious--there! and I was quite angry when I saw him on the boat. Mamma does not know him, and she was so angry with me for dancing with him that night: though there was nobody of any particular mark at poor dear Mrs. Perkins's--that is, except YOU, Mr. Titmarsh."

"And I am not a dancing man," I said, with a sigh.

"I hate dancing men; they can do nothing but dance."

"O yes, they can. Some of them can smoke, and some can ride, and some of them can even spell very well."

"You wicked, satirical person. I'm quite afraid of you!"

"And some of them call the Rhine the 'Whine,'" I said, giving an admirable imitation of poor Hicks's drawling manner.

Fanny looked hard at me, with a peculiar expression on her face. At last she laughed. "Oh, you wicked, wicked man," she said, "what a capital mimic you are, and so full of cleverness! Do bring up Captain Hicks--isn't that his name?--and trot him out for us. Bring him up, and introduce him to mamma: do now, go!"

Mamma, in the meanwhile, had waited her time, and was just going to step down the cabin stairs as Lady Knightsbridge ascended from them. To draw back, to make a most profound curtsy, to exclaim, "Lady Knightsbridge! I have had the honor of seeing your ladyship at--hum--hum--hum" (this word I could not catch)--"House,"--all these feats were performed by Lady Kicklebury in one instant, and acknowledged with the usual calmness by the younger lady.

"And may I hope," continues Lady Kicklebury, "that that most beautiful of all children--a mother may say so--that Lord Pimlico has recovered his hooping-cough? We were so anxious about him. Our medical attendant is Mr. Topham, and he used to come from Knightsbridge House to Pocklington Square, often and often. I am interested about the hooping-cough. My own dear boy had it most severely; that dear girl, my eldest daughter, whom you see stretched on the bench--she is in a very delicate state, and only lately married--not such a match as I could have wished: but Mr. Milliken is of a good family, distantly related to your ladyship's. A Milliken, in George the Third's reign, married a Boltimore, and the Boltimores, I think, are your first-cousins. They married this year, and Lavinia is so fond of me, that she can't part with me, and I have come abroad just to please her. We are going to Noirbourg. I think I heard from my son that Lord Knightsbridge was at Noirbourg."

"I believe I have had the pleasure of seeing Sir Thomas Kicklebury at Knightsbridge House," Lady Knightsbridge said, with something of sadness.

"Indeed!" and Kicklebury had never told her! He laughed at her when she talked about great people: he told her all sorts of ridiculous stories when upon this theme. But, at any rate, the acquaintance was made: Lady Kicklebury would not leave Lady Knightsbridge; and, even in the throes of sea-sickness, and the secret recesses of the cabin, WOULD talk to her about the world, Lord Pimlico, and her father, General Guff, late aide-de-camp to the Duke of York.

That those throes of sickness ensued, I need not say. A short time after passing Ramsgate, Serjeant Lankin, who had been exceedingly gay and satirical--(in his calm way; he quotes Horace, my favorite bits as an author, to myself, and has a quiet snigger, and, so to speak, amontillado flavor, exceedingly pleasant)--Lankin, with a rueful and livid countenance, descended into his berth, in the which that six foot of serjeant packed himself I don't know how.

When Lady Knightsbridge went down, down went Kicklebury. Milliken and his wife stayed, and were ill together on deck. A palm of glory ought to be awarded to that man for his angelic patience, energy, and suffering. It was he who went for Mrs. Milliken's maid, who wouldn't come to her mistress; it was he, the shyest of men, who stormed the ladies' cabin--that maritime harem--in order to get her mother's bottle of salts; it was he who went for the brandy-and-water, and begged, and prayed, and besought his adored Lavinia to taste a leetle drop. Lavinia's reply was, "Don't--go away--don't tease, Horace," and so forth. And, when not wanted, the gentle creature subsided on the bench, by his wife's feet, and was sick in silence.

[Mem--In married life, it seems to me, that it is almost always Milliken and wife, or just the contrary. The angels minister to the tyrants; or the gentle, hen-pecked husband cowers before the superior partlet. If ever I marry, I know the sort of woman I will choose; and I won't try her temper by over-indulgence, and destroy her fine qualities by a ruinous subserviency to her wishes.]

Little Miss Fanny stayed on deck, as well as her sister, and looked at the stars of heaven, as they began to shine there, and at the Foreland lights as we passed them. I would have talked with her; I would have suggested images of poesy, and thoughts of beauty; I would have whispered the word of sentiment--the delicate allusion--the breathing of the soul that longs to find a congenial heart--the sorrows and aspirations of the wounded spirit, stricken and sad, yet not QUITE despairing; still knowing that the hope-plant lurked in its crushed ruins--still able to gaze on the stars and the ocean, and love their blazing sheen, their boundless azure. I would, I say, have taken the opportunity of that stilly night to lay bare to her the treasures of a heart that, I am happy to say, is young still; but circumstances forbade the frank outpouring of my poet soul: in a word, I was obliged to go and lie down on the flat of my back, and endeavor to control OTHER emotions which struggled in my breast.

Once, in the night-watches, I arose, and came on deck; the vessel was not, methought, pitching much; and yet--and yet Neptune was inexorable. The placid stars looked down, but they gave me no peace. Lavinia Milliken seemed asleep, and her Horace, in a death-like torpor, was huddled at her feet. Miss Fanny had quitted the larboard side of the ship, and had gone to starboard; and I thought that there was a gentleman beside her; but I could not see very clearly, and returned to the horrid crib, where Lankin was asleep, and the German fiddler underneath him was snoring like his own violoncello.

In the morning we were all as brisk as bees. We were in the smooth waters of the lazy Scheldt. The stewards began preparing breakfast with that matutinal eagerness which they always show. The sleepers in the cabin were roused from their horse-hair couches by the stewards' boys nudging, and pushing, and flapping table-cloths over them. I shaved and made a neat toilette, and came upon deck just as we lay off that little Dutch fort, which is, I dare say, described in "Murray's Guide-book," and about which I had some rare banter with poor Hicks and Lady Kicklebury, whose sense of humor is certainly not very keen. He had, somehow, joined her ladyship's party, and they were looking at the fort, and its tri-colored flag--that floats familiar in Vandevelde's pictures--and at the lazy shipping, and the tall roofs, and dumpy church towers, and flat pastures, lying before us in a Cuyplike haze.

I am sorry to say, I told them the most awful fibs about that fort. How it had been defended by the Dutch patriot, Van Swammerdam, against the united forces of the Duke of Alva and Marshal Turenne, whose leg was shot off as he was leading the last unsuccessful assault, and who turned round to his aide-de-camp and said, "Allez dire an Premier Consul, que je meurs avec regret de ne pas avoir assez fait pour la France!" which gave Lady Kicklebury an opportunity to placer her story of the Duke of York, and the bombardment of Valenciennes; and caused young Hicks to look at me in a puzzled and appealing manner and hint that I was "chaffing."

"Chaffing indeed!" says I, with a particularly arch eye-twinkle at Miss Fanny. "I wouldn't make fun of you, Captain Hicks! If you doubt my historical accuracy, look at the 'Biographie Universelle.' I say--look at the 'Biographie Universelle.'"

He said, "O--ah--the 'Biogwaphie Universelle' may be all vewy well, and that; but I never can make out whether you are joking or not, somehow; and I always fancy you are going to CAWICKACHAW me. Ha, ha!" And he laughed, the good-natured dragoon laughed, and fancied he had made a joke.

I entreated him not to be so severe upon me; and again he said, "Haw haw!" and told me, "I mustn't expect to have it all MY OWN WAY, and if I gave a hit, I must expect a Punch in return. Haw haw!" Oh, you honest young Hicks!

Everybody, indeed, was in high spirits. The fog cleared off, the sun shone, the ladies chatted and laughed, even Mrs. Milliken was in good humor ("My wife is all intellect," Milliken says, looking at her with admiration), and talked with us freely and gayly. She was kind enough to say that it was a great pleasure to meet with a literary and well-informed person--that one often lived with people that did not comprehend one. She asked if my companion, that tall gentleman--Mr. Serjeant Lankin, was he?--was literary. And when I said that Lankin knew more Greek, and more Latin, and more law, and more history, and more everything, than all the passengers put together, she vouchsafed to look at him with interest, and enter into a conversation with my modest friend the Serjeant. Then it was that her adoring husband said "his Lavinia was all intellect;"--Lady Kicklebury saying that SHE was not a literary woman: that in HER day few acquirements were requisite for the British female; but that she knew THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE, and her DUTY AS A MOTHER, and that "Lavinia and Fanny had had the best masters and the best education which money and constant maternal solicitude could impart." If our matrons are virtuous, as they are, and it is Britain's boast, permit me to say that they certainly know it.

The conversation growing powerfully intellectual under Mrs. Milliken, poor Hicks naturally became uneasy, and put an end to literature by admiring the ladies' head-dresses. "Cab-heads, hoods, what do you call 'em?" he asked of Miss Kicklebury. Indeed, she and her sister wore a couple of those blue silk over-bonnets, which have lately become the fashion, and which I never should have mentioned but for the young lady's reply.

"Those hoods!" she said--"WE CALL THOSE HOODS UGLIES! Captain Hicks."

Oh, how pretty she looked as she said it! The blue eyes looked up under the blue hood, so archly and gayly; ever so many dimples began playing about her face; her little voice rang so fresh and sweet, that a heart which has never loved a tree or flower but the vegetable in question was sure to perish--a heart worn down and sickened by repeated disappointment, mockery, faithlessness--a heart whereof despair is an accustomed tenant, and in whose desolate and lonely depths dwells an abiding gloom, began to throb once more--began to beckon Hope from the window--began to admit sunshine--began to--O Folly, Folly! O Fanny! O Miss K., how lovely you looked as you said, "We call those hoods Uglies!" Ugly indeed!

This is a chronicle of feelings and characters, not of events and places, so much. All this time our vessel was making rapid way up the river, and we saw before us the slim towers of the noble cathedral of Antwerp soaring in the rosy sunshine. Lankin and I had agreed to go to the "Grand Laboureur," or the Place de Meir. They give you a particular kind of jam-tarts there--called Nun's tarts, I think--that I remember, these twenty years, as the very best tarts--as good as the tarts which we ate when we were boys. The "Laboureur" is a dear old quiet comfortable hotel; and there is no man in England who likes a good dinner better than Lankin.

"What hotel do you go to?" I asked of Lady Kicklebury.

"We go to the 'Saint Antoine' of course. Everybody goes to the 'Saint Antoine,'" her ladyship said. "We propose to rest here; to do the Rubens's; and to proceed to Cologne to-morrow. Horace, call Finch and Bowman; and your courier, if he will have the condescension to wait upon ME, will perhaps look to the baggage."

"I think, Lankin," said I, "as everybody seems going to the 'Saint Antoine,' we may as well go, and not spoil the party."

"I think I'll go too," says Hicks; as if HE belonged to the party.

And oh, it was a great sight when we landed, and at every place at which we paused afterwards, to see Hirsch over the Kicklebury baggage, and hear his polyglot maledictions at the porters! If a man sometimes feels sad and lonely at his bachelor condition, if SOME feelings of envy pervade his heart, at seeing beauty on another's arm, and kind eyes directed towards a happier mug than his own--at least there are some consolations in travelling, when a fellow has but one little portmanteau or bag which he can easily shoulder, and thinks of the innumerable bags and trunks which the married man and the father drags after him. The married Briton on a tour is but a luggage overseer: his luggage is his morning thought, and his nightly terror. When he floats along the Rhine he has one eye on a ruin, and the other on his luggage. When he is in the railroad he is always thinking, or ordered by his wife to think, "is the luggage safe?" It clings round him. It never leaves him (except when it DOES leave him, as a trunk or two will, and make him doubly miserable). His carpet-bags lie on his chest at night, and his wife's forgotten bandbox haunts his turbid dreams.

I think it was after she found that Lady Kicklebury proposed to go to the "Grand Saint Antoine" that Lady Knightsbridge put herself with her maid into a carriage and went to the other inn. We saw her at the cathedral, where she kept aloof from our party. Milliken went up the tower, and so did Miss Fanny. I am too old a traveller to mount up those immeasurable stairs, for the purpose of making myself dizzy by gazing upon a vast map of low countries stretched beneath me, and waited with Mrs. Milliken and her mother below.

When the tower-climbers descended, we asked Miss Fanny and her brother what they had seen.

"We saw Captain Hicks up there," remarked Milliken. "And I am very glad you didn't come, Lavinia my love. The excitement would have been too much for you, quite too much."

All this while Lady Kicklebury was looking at Fanny, and Fanny was holding her eyes down; and I knew that between her and this poor Hicks there could be nothing serious, for she had laughed at him and mimicked him to me half a dozen times in the course of the day.

We "do the Rubens's," as Lady Kicklebury says; we trudge from cathedral to picture-gallery, from church to church. We see the calm old city, with its towers and gables, the bourse, and the vast town-hall; and I have the honor to give Lady Kicklebury my arm during these peregrinations, and to hear a hundred particulars regarding her ladyship's life and family. How Milliken has been recently building at Pigeoncot; how he will have two thousand a year more when his uncle dies; how she had peremptorily to put a stop to the assiduities of that unprincipled young man, Lord Roughhead, whom Lavinia always detested, and who married Miss Brent out of sheer pique. It was a great escape for her darling Lavinia. Roughhead is a most wild and dissipated young man, one of Kicklebury's Christchurch friends, of whom her son has too many, alas! and she enters into many particulars respecting the conduct of Kicklebury--the unhappy boy's smoking, his love of billiards, his fondness for the turf: she fears he has already injured his income, she fears he is even now playing at Noirbourg; she is going thither to wean him, if possible, from his companions and his gayeties--what may not a mother effect? She only wrote to him the day before they left London to announce that she was marching on him with her family. He is in many respects like his poor father--the same openness and frankness, the same easy disposition: alas! the same love of pleasure. But she had reformed the father, and will do her utmost to call back her dear misguided boy. She had an advantageous match for him in view--a lady not beautiful in person, it is true, but possessed of every good principle, and a very, very handsome fortune. It was under pretence of flying from this lady that Kicklebury left town. But she knew better.

I say young men will be young men, and sow their wild oats; and think to myself that the invasion of his mamma will be perhaps more surprising than pleasant to young Sir Thomas Kicklebury, and that she possibly talks about herself and her family, and her virtues and her daughters, a little too much: but she WILL make a confidant of me, and all the time we are doing the Rubens's she is talking of the pictures at Kicklebury, of her portrait by Lawrence, pronounced to be his finest work, of Lavinia's talent for drawing, and the expense of Fanny's music-masters; of her house in town (where she hopes to see me); of her parties which were stopped by the illness of her butler. She talks Kicklebury until I am sick. And oh, Miss Fanny, all of this I endure, like an old fool, for an occasional sight of your bright eyes and rosy face!

[Another parenthesis.--"We hope to see you in town, Mr. Titmarsh." Foolish mockery! If all the people whom one has met abroad, and who have said, "We hope to meet you often in town," had but made any the slightest efforts to realize their hopes by sending a simple line of invitation through the penny post, what an enormous dinner acquaintance one would have had! But I mistrust people who say, "We hope to see you in town."]

Lankin comes in at the end of the day, just before dinnertime. He has paced the whole town by himself--church, tower, and fortifications, and Rubens, and all. He is full of Egmont and Alva. He is up to all the history of the siege, when Chassee defended, and the French attacked the place. After dinner we stroll along the quays; and over the quiet cigar in the hotel court, Monsieur Lankin discourses about the Rubens pictures, in a way which shows that the learned Serjeant has an eye for pictorial beauty as well as other beauties in this world, and can rightly admire the vast energy, the prodigal genius, the royal splendor of the King of Antwerp. In the most modest way in the world he has remarked a student making clever sketches at the Museum, and has ordered a couple of copies from him of the famous Vandyke and the wondrous adoration of the Magi, "a greater picture," says he, "than even the cathedral picture; in which opinion those may agree who like." He says he thinks Miss Kicklebury is a pretty little thing; that all my swans are geese; and that as for that old woman, with her airs and graces, she is the most intolerable old nuisance in the world. There is much good judgment, but there is too much sardonic humor about Lankin. He cannot appreciate women properly. He is spoiled by being an old bachelor, and living in that dingy old Pump Court; where, by the way, he has a cellar fit for a Pontiff. We go to rest; they have given us humble lodgings high up in the building, which we accept like philosophers who travel with but a portmanteau apiece. The Kickleburys have the grand suite, as becomes their dignity. Which, which of those twinkling lights illumines the chamber of Miss Fanny?

Hicks is sitting in the court too, smoking his cigar. He and Lankin met in the fortifications. Lankin says he is a sensible fellow, and seems to know his profession. "Every man can talk well about something," the Serjeant says. "And one man can about everything," says I; at which Lankin blushes; and we take our flaring tallow candles and go to bed. He has us up an hour before the starting time, and we have that period to admire Herr Oberkellner, who swaggers as becomes the Oberkellner of a house frequented by ambassadors; who contradicts us to our faces, and whose own countenance is ornamented with yesterday's beard, of which, or of any part of his clothing, the graceful youth does not appear to have divested himself since last we left him. We recognize, somewhat dingy and faded, the elaborate shirt-front which appeared at yesterday's banquet. Farewell, Herr Oberkellner! May we never see your handsome countenance, washed or unwashed, shaven or unshorn, again!

Here come the ladies: "Good morning, Miss Fanny. I hope you slept well, Lady Kicklebury?" "A tremendous bill?" "No wonder; how can you expect otherwise, when you have such a bad dinner?" Hearken to Hirsch's comminations over the luggage! Look at the honest Belgian soldiers, and that fat Freyschutz on guard, his rifle in one hand, and the other hand in his pocket. Captain Hicks bursts into a laugh at the sight of the fat Freyschutz, and says, "By Jove, Titmarsh, you must cawickachaw him." And we take our seats at length and at leisure, and the railway trumpets blow, and (save for a brief halt) we never stop till night, trumpeting by green flats and pastures, by broad canals and old towns, through Liege and Verviers, through Aix and Cologne, till we are landed at Bonn at nightfall.

We all have supper, or tea--we have become pretty intimate--we look at the strangers' book, as a matter of course, in the great room of the "Star Hotel." Why, everybody is on the Rhine! Here are the names of half one's acquaintance.

"I see Lord and Lady Exborough are gone on," says Lady Kicklebury, whose eye fastens naturally on her kindred aristocracy. "Lord and Lady Wyebridge and suite, Lady Zedland and her family."

"Hallo! here's Cutler of the Onety-oneth, and MacMull of the Greens, en route to Noirbourg," says Hicks, confidentially. "Know MacMull? Devilish good fellow--such a fellow to smoke."

Lankin, too, reads and grins. "Why, are they going the Rhenish circuit?" he says, and reads:

Sir Thomas Minos, Lady Minos, nebst Begleitung, aus England.

Sir John AEacus, mit Familie und Dienerschaft, aus England.

Sir Roger Raadamanthus.

Thomas Smith, Serjeant.

Serjeant Brown and Mrs. Brown, aus England.

Serjeant Tomkins, Anglais. Madame Tomkins, Mesdemoiselles Tomkins.

Monsieur Kewsy, Conseiller de S. M. la Reine d'Angleterre. Mrs. Kewsy, three Miss Kewsys.

And to this list Lankin, laughing, had put down his own name, and that of the reader's obedient servant, under the august autograph of Lady Kicklebury, who signed for herself, her son-in-law, and her suite.

Yes, we all flock the one after the other, we faithful English folks. We can buy Harvey Sauce, and Cayenne Pepper, and Morison's Pills, in every city in the world. We carry our nation everywhere with us; and are in our island, wherever we go. Toto divisos orbe--always separated from the people in the midst of whom we are.

When we came to the steamer next morning, "the castled crag of Drachenfels" rose up in the sunrise before, and looked as pink as the cheeks of Master Jacky, when they have been just washed in the morning. How that rosy light, too, did become Miss Fanny's pretty dimples, to be sure! How good a cigar is at the early dawn! I maintain that it has a flavor which it does not possess at later hours, and that it partakes of the freshness of all Nature. And wine, too: wine is never so good as at breakfast; only one can't drink it, for tipsiness's sake.

See! there is a young fellow drinking soda-water and brandy already. He puts down his glass with a gasp of satisfaction. It is evident that he had need of that fortifier and refresher. He puts down the beaker and says, "How are you, Titmarsh? I was SO cut last night. My eyes, wasn't I! Not in the least: that's all."

It is the youthful descendant and heir of an ancient line: the noble Earl of Grimsby's son, Viscount Talboys. He is travelling with the Rev. Baring Leader, his tutor; who, having a great natural turn and liking towards the aristocracy, and having inspected Lady Kicklebury's cards on her trunks, has introduced himself to her ladyship already, and has inquired after Sir Thomas Kicklebury, whom he remembers perfectly, and whom he had often the happiness of meeting when Sir Thomas was an undergraduate at Oxford. There are few characters more amiable, and delightful to watch and contemplate, than some of those middle-aged Oxford bucks who hang about the university and live with the young tufts. Leader can talk racing and boating with the fastest young Christchurch gentleman. Leader occasionally rides to cover with Lord Talboys; is a good shot, and seldom walks out without a setter or a spaniel at his heels. Leader knows the "Peerage" and the "Racing Calendar" as well as the Oxford cram-books. Leader comes up to town and dines with Lord Grimsby. Leader goes to Court every two years. He is the greatest swell in his common-room. He drinks claret, and can't stand port-wine any longer; and the old fellows of his college admire him, and pet him, and get all their knowledge of the world and the aristocracy from him. I admire those kind old dons when they appear affable and jaunty, men of the world, members of the "Camford and Oxbridge Club," upon the London pavement. I like to see them over the Morning Post in the common-room; with a "Ha, I see Lady Rackstraw has another daughter." "Poppleton there has been at another party at X---- House, and YOU weren't asked, my boy."--"Lord Coverdale has got a large party staying at Coverdale. Did you know him at Christchurch? He was a very handsome man before he broke his nose fighting the bargeman at Iffly: a light weight, but a beautiful sparrer," &c. Let me add that Leader, although he does love a tuft, has a kind heart: as his mother and sisters in Yorkshire know; as all the village knows too--which is proud of his position in the great world, and welcomes him very kindly when he comes down and takes the duty at Christmas, and preaches to them one or two of "the very sermons which Lord Grimsby was good enough to like, when I delivered them at Talboys."

"You are not acquainted with Lord Talboys?" Leader asks, with a degage air. "I shall have much pleasure in introducing you to him. Talboys, let me introduce you to Lady Kicklebury. Sir Thomas Kicklebury was not at Christchurch in your time; but you have heard of him, I dare say. Your son has left a reputation at Oxford."

"I should think I have, too. He walked a hundred miles in a hundred hours. They said he bet that he'd drink a hundred pints of beer in a hundred hours: but I don't think he could do it--not strong beer; don't think any man could. The beer here isn't worth a--"

"My dear Talboys," says Leader, with a winning smile, "I suppose Lady Kicklebury is not a judge of beer--and what an unromantic subject of conversation here, under the castled crag immortalized by Byron."

"What the deuce does it mean about peasant-girls with dark blue eyes, and hands that offer corn and wine?" asks Talboys. "I'VE never seen any peasant-girls, except the--ugliest set of women I ever looked at."

"The poet's license. I see, Miliken, you are making a charming sketch. You used to draw when you were at Brasenose, Milliken; and play--yes, you played the violoncello."

Mr. Milliken still possessed these accomplishments. He was taken up that very evening by a soldier at Coblentz, for making a sketch of Ehrenbreitstein. Mrs. Milliken sketches immensely too, and writes poetry: such dreary pictures, such dreary poems! but professional people are proverbially jealous; and I doubt whether our fellow-passenger, the German, would even allow that Milliken could play the violoncello.

Lady Kicklebury gives Miss Fanny a nudge when Lord Talboys appears, and orders her to exert all her fascinations. How the old lady coaxes, and she wheedles! She pours out the Talboys' pedigree upon him; and asks after his aunt, and his mother's family. Is he going to Noirbourg? How delightful! There is nothing like British spirits; and to see an English matron well set upon a young man of large fortune and high rank, is a great and curious sight.

And yet, somehow, the British doggedness does not always answer. "Do you know that old woman in the drab jacket, Titmarsh?" my hereditary legislator asks of me. "What the devil is she bothering ME for, about my aunts, and setting her daughter at me? I ain't such a fool as that. I ain't clever, Titmarsh; I never said I was. I never pretend to be clever, and that--but why does that old fool bother ME, hay? Heigho! I'm devilish thirsty. I was devilish cut last night. I think I must have another go-off. Hallo you! Kellner! Garsong! Ody soda, Oter petty vare do dyvee de Conac. That's your sort; isn't it, Leader?"

"You will speak French well enough, if you practise," says Leader with a tender voice; "practice is everything. Shall we dine at the table-d'hote? Waiter! put down the name of Viscount Talboys and Mr. Leader, if you please."

The boat is full of all sorts and conditions of men. For'ard, there are peasants and soldiers: stumpy, placid-looking little warriors for the most part, smoking feeble cigars and looking quite harmless under their enormous helmets. A poor stunted dull-looking boy of sixteen, staggering before a black-striped sentry-box, with an enormous musket on his shoulder, does not seem to me a martial or awe-inspiring object. Has it not been said that we carry our prejudices everywhere, and only admire what we are accustomed to admire in our own country?

Yonder walks a handsome young soldier who has just been marrying a wife. How happy they seem! and how pleased that everybody should remark their happiness. It is a fact that in the full sunshine, and before a couple of hundred people on board the Joseph Miller steamer, the soldier absolutely kissed Mrs. Soldier; at which the sweet Fanny Kicklebury was made to blush.

We were standing together looking at the various groups: the pretty peasant-woman (really pretty for once,) with the red head-dress and fluttering ribbons, and the child in her arms; the jolly fat old gentleman, who was drinking Rhine-wine before noon, and turning his back upon all the castles, towers, and ruins, which reflected their crumbling peaks in the water; upon the handsome young students who came with us from Bonn, with their national colors in their caps, with their picturesque looks, their yellow ringlets, their budding moustaches, and with cuts upon almost every one of their noses, obtained in duels at the university: most picturesque are these young fellows, indeed--but ah, why need they have such black hands?