THE LION OF THE STREET.

What people can find in Clarence Bulbul, who has lately taken upon himself the rank and dignity of Lion of our Street, I have always been at a loss to conjecture.

“He has written an Eastern book of considerable merit,” Miss Clapperclaw says; but hang it, has not everybody written an Eastern book? I should like to meet anybody in society now who has not been up to the second cataract. An Eastern book, forsooth! My Lord Castleroyal has done one—an honest one; my Lord Youngent another—an amusing one; my Lord Woolsey another—a pious one; there is “The Cutlet and the Cabob”—a sentimental one; “Timbuctoothen”—a humorous one, all ludicrously overrated, in my opinion, not including my own little book, of which a copy or two is still to be had by the way.

Well, then, Clarence Bulbul, because he has made part of the little tour that all of us know, comes back and gives himself airs, forsooth, and howls as if he were just out of the great Libyan desert.

When we go and see him, that Irish Jew courier, whom Ihave before had the honour to describe, looks up from the novel which he is reading in the ante-room, and says, “Mon maitre est au Divan,” or, “Monsieur trouvera Monsieur dans son serail,” and relapses into the Comte de Montechristo again.

Yes, the impudent wretch has actually a room in his apartments on the ground-floor of his mother’s house, which he calls his harem. When Lady Betty Bulbul (they are of the Nightingale family) or Miss Blanche comes down to visit him, their slippers are placed at the door, and he receives them on an ottoman, and these infatuated women will actually light his pipe for him.

Little Spitfire, the groom, hangs about the drawing-room, outside the harem forsooth! so that he may be ready when Clarence Bulbul claps hands for him to bring the pipes and coffee.

He has coffee and pipes for everybody. I should like you to have seen the face of old Bowly, his college-tutor, called upon to sit cross-legged on a divan, a little cup of bitter black Mocha put into his hand, and a large amber-muzzled pipe stuck into his mouth by Spitfire, before he could so much as say it was a fine day. Bowly almost thought he had compromised his principles by consenting so far to this Turkish manner.

Bulbul’s dinners are, I own, very good; his pilaffs and curries excellent. He tried to make us eat rice with our fingers, it is true;but he scalded his own hands in the business, and invariably bedizened his shirt, so he has left off the Turkish practice, for dinner at least, and uses a fork like a Christian.

But it is in society that he is most remarkable; and here he would, I own, be odious, but he becomes delightful, because all the men hate him so. A perfect chorus of abuse is raised round about him. “Confounded impostor,” says one; “Impudent jackass,” says another; “Miserable puppy,” cries a third; “I’d like to wring his neck,” says Bruff, scowling over his shoulder at him. Clarence meanwhile nods, winks, smiles, and patronises them all with the easiest good-humour. He is a fellow who would poke an archbishop in the apron, or clap a duke on the shoulder, as coolly as he would address you and me.

I saw him the other night, at Mrs. Bumpsher’s grand let off. He flung himself down cross-legged upon a pink satin sofa, so that you could see Mrs. Bumpsher quiver with rage in the distance, Bruff growl with fury from the further room, and Miss Pim, on whose frock Bulbul’s feet rested, look up like a timid fawn.

“Fan me, Miss Pim,” said he of the cushion. “You look like a perfect Peri to-night. You remind me of a girl I once knew in Circassia—Ameena, the sister of Schamyle Bey. Do you know, Miss Pim, that you would fetch twenty thousand piastres in the market at Constantinople?”

“Law, Mr. Bulbul!” is all Miss Pim can ejaculate; and having talked over Miss Pim, Clarence goes off to another houri, whom he fascinates in a similar manner. He charmed Mrs. Waddy by telling her that she was the exact figure of the Pacha of Egypt’s second wife. He gave Miss Tokely a piece of the sack in which Zuleikah was drowned; and he actually persuaded that poor little silly Miss Vain to turn Mahometan, and sent her up to the Turkish Ambassador’s, to look out for a mufti.

THE DOVE OF THE STREET.

If Bulbul is our Lion, Young Oriel may be described as The Dove of our Colony. He is almost as great a pasha among the ladies as Bulbul. They crowd in flocks to see him at Saint Waltheof’s, where the immense height of his forehead, the rigid asceticism of his surplice, the twang with which he intones the service, and the namby-pamby mysticism of his sermons, has turned all the dear girls’ heads for some time past. While we were having a rubber at Mrs. Chauntry’s, whose daughters are following the new mode, I heard the following talk (which made me revoke by the way) going on, in what was formerly called the young lady’s room, but is now styled the Oratory.

Miss Chauntry(sighing).—Is it wrong to be in the Guards, dear Mr. Oriel?

Miss Pyx.—She will make Frank de Boots sell out when he marries.

Mr. Oriel.—To be in the Guards, dear sister? The church has always encouraged the army. Saint Martin of Tours was in the army; Saint Louis was in the army; Saint Waltheof, our patron, Saint Witikind of Aldermanbury, Saint Wamba, and Saint Walloff were in the army. Saint Wapshot was captain of the guard of Queen Boadicea; and Saint Werewolf was a major in the Danish cavalry. The holy Saint Ignatius of Loyola carried a pike, as we know; and——

Miss de l’Aisle.—Will you take some tea, dear Mr. Oriel?

Oriel.—This is not one ofmyfeast days, Sister Emma. It is the feast of Saint Wagstaff of Walthamstow.

The Young Ladies.—And we must not even take tea!

Oriel.—Dear sisters, I said not so.Youmay do as you list; but I am strong (with a heart-broken sigh); don’t ply me (he reels). I took a little water and a parched pea after matins. To-morrow is a flesh day, and—and I shall be better then.

Rev. O. Slocum(from within).—Madam, I take your heart with my small trump.

Oriel.—Yes, better! dear sister; it is only a passing—a—weakness.

Miss I. Chauntry.—He’s dying of fever.

Miss Chauntry.—I’m so glad De Boots need not leave the Blues.

Miss Pyx.—He wears sackcloth and cinders inside his waistcoat.

Miss De l’Aisle.—He’s told me to-night he is going to—to—Ro-o-ome. [Miss De l’Aisle bursts into tears.]

Rev. O. Slocum.—My lord, I have the highest club, which gives the trick and two by honours.

Thus, you see, we have a variety of clergymen in Our Street. Mr. Oriel is of the pointed Gothic school, while old Slocum is of the good old tawny port-wine school; and it must be confessed that Mr. Gronow, at Ebenezer, has a hearty abhorrence for both.

As for Gronow, I pity him, if his future lot should fall where Mr Oriel supposes that it will.

And as for Oriel, he has not even the benefit of purgatory, which he would accord to his neighbour Ebenezer; while old Slocum pronounces both to be a couple of humbugs; and Mr. Mole, the demure little beetle-browed chaplain of the little church of Avemary Lane, keeps his sly eyes down to the ground when he passes any one of his black-coated brethren.

There is only one point on which, my friends, they seem agreed. Slocum likes port, but who ever heard that he neglected his poor? Gronow, if he comminates his neighbour’s congregation, is the affectionate father of his own. Oriel, if he loves pointed Gothic and parched peas for breakfast, has a prodigious soup-kitchen for his poor; and as for little Father Mole, who never lifts his eyes from the ground, ask our doctor at what bedsides he finds him, and how he soothes poverty and braves misery and infection.

No. 6 Pocklington Gardens (the house with the quantity of flowers in the windows, and the awning over the entrance), George Bumpsher, Esquire, M.P. for Humborough (and the Beaustalks, Kent).

For some time after this gorgeous family came into our quarter, I mistook a bald-headed stout person, whom I used to see looking through the flowers on the upper windows, for Bumpsher himself or for the butler of the family; whereas it was no other than Mrs. Bumpsher, without her chesnut wig; and who is at least three times the size of her husband.

The Bumpshers and the house of Mango at the Pineries vie together in their desire to dominate over the neighbourhood; and each votes the other a vulgar and purse-proud family. The fact is, both are City people. Bumpsher, in his mercantile capacity, is a wholesale stationer in Thames Street; and his wife was daughter of an eminent bill-broking firm, not a thousand miles from Lombard Street.

He does not sport a coronet and supporters upon his London plate and carriages; but his country-house is emblazoned all over with those heraldic decorations. He puts on an order when he goes abroad, and is Count Bumpsher of the Roman States—which title he purchased from the late Pope (through Prince Polonia the banker) for a couple of thousand scudi.

It is as good as a coronation to see him and Mrs. Bumpsher go to Court. I wonder the carriage can hold them both. On those days Mrs. Bumpsher holds her own drawing-room before her Majesty’s; and we are invited to come and see her sitting in state, upon the largest sofa in her rooms. She has need of a stout one, I promise you. Her very feathers must weigh something considerable. The diamonds on her stomacher would embroider a full-sized carpet-bag. She has rubies, ribbons, cameos, emeralds, gold serpents, opals, and Valenciennes lace, as if she were an immense sample out of Howell and James’s shop.

She took up with little Pinkney at Rome, where he made a charming picture of her, representing her as about eighteen, with a cherub in her lap, who has some liking to Bryanstone Bumpsher, her enormous, vulgar son; now a Cornet in the Blues, and anything but a cherub, as those would say who saw him in his uniform jacket.

I remember Pinkney when he was painting the picture, Bryanstone being then a youth in what they call a skeleton suit

VENUS AND CUPID.

(as if such a pig of a child could ever have been dressed in anything resembling a skeleton)—I remember, I say, Mrs. B. sitting to Pinkney in a sort of Egerian costume, her boy by her side, whose head the artist turned round and directed it towards a piece of gingerbread, which he was to have at the end of the sitting.

Pinkney, indeed, a painter!—a contemptible little humbug, and parasite of the great! He has painted Mrs. Bumpsher younger every year for these last ten years—and you see in the advertisements of all her parties his odious little name stuck in at the end of the list. I’m sure, for my part, I’d scorn to enter her doors, or be the toady of any woman.

How different it is with the Newboys, now, where I have an entrée—(having indeed had the honour in former days to give lessons to both the ladies)—and where such a quack as Pinkney would never be allowed to enter! A merrier house the whole quarter cannot furnish. It is there you meet people of all ranks and degrees, not only from our quarter but from the rest of the town. It is there that our great man, the Right Honourable Lord Comandine, came up and spoke to me in so encouraging a manner that I hope to be invited to one of his lordship’s excellent dinners (of which I shall not fail to give a very flattering description) before the season is over. It is there you find yourself talking to statesmen, poets, and artists—not sham poets like Bulbul, or quack artists like that Pinkney—but to the best members of all society. It is there I made the sketch in the frontispiece while Miss Chesterforth was singing a deep-toned tragic ballad, and her mother scowling behind her. What a buzz and clack andchatter there was in the room to be sure! When Miss Chesterforth sings everybody begins to talk. Hicks and old Fogy were on Ireland; Bass was roaring into old Pump’s ears (or into his horn rather) about the Navigation Laws; I was engaged talking to the charming Mrs. Short; while Charley Bonham (a mere prig, in whom I am surprised that the women can see anything) was pouring out his fulsome rhapsodies in the ears of Diana White. Lovely, lovely Diana White! were it not for three or four other engagements, I know a heart that would suit you to a T.

Newboy’s I pronounce to be the jolliest house in the street. He has only of late had a rush of prosperity, and turned Parliament man; for his distant cousin, of the ancient house of Newboy of ——shire dying, Fred—then making believe to practice at the bar, and living with the utmost modesty in Gray’s Inn Road—found himself master of a fortune, and a great house in the country, of which getting tired, as in the course of nature he should, he came up to London, and took that fine mansion in our Gardens. He represents Mumborough in Parliament, a seat which has been time out of mind occupied by a Newboy.

Though he does not speak, being a great deal too rich, sensible, and lazy, he somehow occupies himself with reading blue books, and indeed talks a great deal too much good senseof late over his dinner-table, where there is always a cover for the present writer.

He falls asleep pretty assiduously too after that meal—a practice which I can well pardon in him—for, between ourselves, his wife, Maria Newboy, and his sister, Clarissa, are the loveliest and kindest of their sex, and I would rather hear their innocent prattle, and lively talk about their neighbours, than the best wisdom from the wisest man that ever wore a beard.

Like a wise and good man he leaves the question of his household entirely to the woman. They like going to the play. They like going to Greenwich. They like coming to a party at bachelor’s hall. They are up to all sorts of fun, in a word; in which taste the good-natured Newboy acquiesces, provided he is left to follow his own.

It was only on the 17th of the month that, having had the honour to dine at the house, when, after dinner, which took place at eight, we left Newboy to his blue books, and went up stairs and sang a little to the guitar afterwards—it was only on the 17th December, the night of Lady Sowerby’s party, that the following dialogue took place in the boudoir, whither Newboy, blue books in hand, had ascended.

He was curled up with his House of Commons boots on his wife’s arm-chair, reading his eternal blue books, when Mrs. N. entered from her apartment, dressed for the evening.

THE STREET DOOR KEY.

Mrs. N.—Frederic, wont you come?

Mr. N.—Where?

Mrs. N.—To Lady Sowerby’s.

Mr. N.—I’d rather go to the black hole in Calcutta. Besides, this Sanitary Report is really the most interesting—[he begins to read.]

Mrs. N.(piqued)—Well; Mr. Titmarsh will go with us.

Mr. N.—Will he? I wish him joy!

At this puncture Miss Clarissa Newboy enters in a pink paletôt, trimmed with swansdown—looking like an angel—and we exchange glances of—what shall I say?—of sympathy on both parts, and consummate rapture on mine. But this is by-play.

Mrs. N.—Good night, Frederic. I think we shall be late.

Mr. N.—You won’t wake me, I daresay; and you don’t expect a public man to sit up.

Mrs. N.—It’s not you, it’s the servants. Cocker sleeps very heavily. The maids are best in bed, and are all ill with the influenza. I say, Frederic dear, don’t you think you had better give meYOUR CHUBB KEY?

This astonishing proposal, which violates every recognised law of society—this demand which alters all the existing state of things—this fact of a woman asking for a door-key, struck me with a terror which I cannot describe, and impressed mewith the fact of the vast progress of Our Street. The door-key! What would our grandmother, who dwelt in this place when it was a rustic suburb, think of its condition now, when husbands stay at home, and wives go abroad with the latch-key?

The evening at Lady Sowerby’s was the most delicious we have spent for long, long days.

Thus it will be seen that everybody of any consideration in Our Street takes a line. Mrs. Minimy (34) takes the homœopathic line, and hassoiréesof doctors of that faith. Lady Pocklington takes the capitalist line; and those stupid and splendid dinners of hers are devoured by loan-contractors, and railroad princes. Mrs. Trimmer (38) comes out in the scientific line, and indulges us in rational evenings, where history is the lightest subject admitted, and geology and the sanitary condition of the metropolis form the general themes of conversation. Mrs. Brumby plays finely on the bassoon, and has evenings dedicated to Sebastian Bach, and enlivened with Handel. At Mrs. Maskleyn’s they are mad for charades and theatricals.

They performed last Christmas in a French piece, by Alexandre Dumas, I believe—“La Duchesse de Montefiasco,” of which I forget the plot, but everybody was in love with everybody else’s wife, except the hero, Don Alonzo, who was ardently attached to the Duchess, who turned out to be his grandmother. The piece was translated by Lord Fiddle-faddle, Tom Bulbul

A SCENE OF PASSION.

being the Don Alonzo; and Mrs. Roland Calidore (who never misses an opportunity of acting in a piece in which she can let down her hair) was the Duchess.

Alonzo.You know how well he loves you, and you wonderTo see Alonzo suffer, Cunegunda?—Ask if the chamois suffer when they feelPlunged in their panting sides the hunter’s steel?Or when the soaring heron or eagle proud,Pierced by my shaft, comes tumbling from the cloud,Ask if the royal birds no anguish know,The victims of Alonzo’s twanging bow?Then ask him if he suffers—him who dies,Pierced by the poisoned glance that glitters from your eyes![He staggers from the effect of the poison.The Duchess.Alonzo loves—Alonzo loves! and whom?His grandmother! O hide me gracious tomb![Her Grace faints away.

Alonzo.

You know how well he loves you, and you wonderTo see Alonzo suffer, Cunegunda?—Ask if the chamois suffer when they feelPlunged in their panting sides the hunter’s steel?Or when the soaring heron or eagle proud,Pierced by my shaft, comes tumbling from the cloud,Ask if the royal birds no anguish know,The victims of Alonzo’s twanging bow?Then ask him if he suffers—him who dies,Pierced by the poisoned glance that glitters from your eyes![He staggers from the effect of the poison.

The Duchess.

Alonzo loves—Alonzo loves! and whom?His grandmother! O hide me gracious tomb![Her Grace faints away.

Such acting as Tom Bulbul’s I never saw. Tom lisps atrociously, and uttered the passage, “You athk me if I thuffer,” in the most absurd way. Miss Clapperclaw says he acted pretty well, and that I only joke about him because I am envious, and wanted to act a part myself.—I envious indeed!

But of all the assemblies, feastings, junkettings, déjeunes, soirées, conversaziones, dinner-parties, in Our Street, I know of none pleasanter than the banquets at Tom Fairfax’s; one ofwhich this enormous provision-consumer gives seven times a-week. He lives in one of the little houses of the old Waddilove Street quarter, built long before Pocklington Square and Pocklington Gardens and the Pocklington family itself had made their appearance in this world.

Tom, though he has a small income, and lives in a small house, yet sits down one of a party of twelve to dinner every day of his life; these twelve consisting of Mrs. Fairfax, the nine Misses Fairfax, and Master Thomas Fairfax—the son and heir to twopence-halfpenny a-year.

It is awkward just now to go and beg pot-luck from such a family as this; because, though a guest is always welcome, we are thirteen at table—an unlucky number, it is said. This evil is only temporary, and will be remedied presently, when the family will be thirteenwithoutthe occasional guest, to judge from all appearances.

Early in the morning Mrs. Fairfax rises, and cuts bread and butter from six o’clock till eight; during which time the nursery operations upon the nine little graces are going on. We only see a half dozen of them at this present moment, and in the present authentic picture, the remainder dwindling off upon little chairs by their mamma.

The two on either side of Fairfax are twins—awarded to him by singular good fortune; and he only knows Nancy from Fanny

THE HAPPY FAMILY.

by having a piece of tape round the former’s arm. There is no need to give you the catalogue of the others. She, in the pinafore in front, is Elizabeth, goddaughter to Miss Clapperclaw, who has been very kind to the whole family; that young lady with the ringlets is engaged by the most solemn ties to the present writer, and it is agreed that we are to be married as soon as she is as tall as my stick.

If his wife has to rise early to cut the bread and butter, I warrant Fairfax must be up betimes to earn it. He is a clerk in a Government Office; to which duty he trudges daily, refusing even twopenny omnibuses. Every time he goes to the shoemaker’s he has to order eleven pairs of shoes, and so can’t afford to spare his own. He teaches the children Latin every morning, and is already thinking when Tom shall he inducted into that language. He works in his garden for an hour before breakfast. His work over by three o’clock, he tramps home at four, and exchanges his dapper coat for that dressing-gown in which he appears before you,—a ragged but honourable garment in which he stood (unconsciously) to the present designer.

Which is the best, his old coat or Sir John’s bran new one? Which is the most comfortable and becoming, Mrs. Fairfax’s black velvet gown, (which she has worn at the Pocklington Square parties these twelve years, and in which I protest she looks like a queen), or that new robe which the milliner hashas just brought home to Mrs. Bumpsher’s, and into which she will squeeze herself on Christmas day?

Miss Clapperclaw says that we are all so charmingly contented with ourselves that not one of us would change with his neighbour; and so, rich and poor, high and low, one person is about as happy as another in Our Street.

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