Part 31

He grew to be a quite notorious young man about town; and, most unfortunately for him, Lord (and even Lady) Archibald Rohan were so fond of him, and so proud, and so amiably non-moral themselves, that he was left to go as he might.

He also developed some very rowdy tastes indeed--and so did I!

It was the fashion for our golden youth in the fifties to do so. Every night in the Haymarket there was a kind of noisy saturnalia, in which golden youths joined hands with youths who were by no means golden, to give much trouble to the police, and fill the pockets of the keepers of night-houses--"Bob Croft's," "Kate Hamilton's," "the Piccadilly Saloon," and other haunts equally well pulled down and forgotten. It was good, in these regions, to be young and big and strong like Barty and me, and well versed in the "handling of one's daddles." I suppose London was the only great city in the world where such things could be. I am afraid that many strange people of both sexes called us Bob and Barty; people the mere sight or hearing of whom would have given my poor dear father fits!

Then there was a little public-house in St. Martin's Lane, kept by big Ben the prize-fighter. In a room at the top of the house there used to be much sparring. We both of us took a high degree in the noble art--especially I, if it be not bragging to say so; mostly on account of my weight, which was considerable for my age. It was in fencing that he beat me hollow: he was quite the best fencer I ever met; the lessons at school of Bonnet's prévôt had borne good fruit in his case.

Then there were squalid dens frequented by touts and betting-men and medical students, where people sang and fought and laid the odds and got very drunk--and where Barty's performances as a vocalist, comic and sentimental (especially the latter), raised enthusiasm that seems almost incredible among such a brutalized and hardened crew.

One night he and I and a medical student called Ticklets, who had a fine bass voice, disguised ourselves as paupers, and went singing for money about Camden Town and Mornington Crescent and Regent's Park. It took us about an hour to make eighteen pence. Barty played the guitar, Ticklets the tambourine, and I the bones. Then we went to the Haymarket, and Barty made five pounds in no time; most of it in silver donations from unfortunate women--English, of course--who are among the softest-hearted and most generous creatures in the world.

"O lachrymarum fons!"

I forget what use we made of the money--a good one, I feel sure.

I am sorry to reveal all this, but Barty wished it. Forty years ago such things did not seem so horrible as they would now, and the word "bounder" had not been invented.

* * * * *

My sister Ida, when about fourteen (1853), became a pupil at the junior school in the Ladies' College, 48 Bedford Square. She soon made friends--nice young girls, who came to our house, and it was much the livelier. I used to hear much of them, and knew them well before I ever saw them--especially Leah Gibson, who lived in Tavistock Square, and was Ida's special friend; at last I was quite anxious to see this paragon.

One morning, as I carried Ida's books on her way to school, she pointed out to me three girls of her own age, or less, who stood talking together at the gates of the Foundling Hospital. They were all three very pretty children--quite singularly so--and became great beauties; one golden-haired, one chestnut-brown, one blue-black. The black-haired one was the youngest and the tallest--a fine, straight, bony child of twelve, with a flat back and square shoulders; she was very well dressed, and had nice brown boots with brown elastic sides on arched and straight-heeled slender feet, and white stockings on her long legs--a fashion in hose that has long gone out. She also wore a thick plait of black hair all down her back--another departed mode, and one not to be regretted, I think; and she swung her books round her as she talked, with easy movements, like a strong boy.

"That's Leah Gibson," says my sister; "the tall one, with the long black plait."

Leah Gibson turned round and nodded to my sister and smiled--showing a delicate narrow face, a clear pale complexion, very beautiful white pearly teeth between very red lips, and an extraordinary pair of large black eyes--rather close together--the blackest I ever saw, but with an expression so quick and penetrating and keen, and yet so good and frank and friendly, that they positively sent a little warm thrill through me--though she was only twelve years old, and not a bit older than her age, and I a fast youth nearly twenty!

And finding her very much to my taste, I said to my sister, just for fun, "Oh--that's Leah Gibson, is it? then some day Leah Gibson shall be Mrs. Robert Maurice!"

From which it may be inferred that I looked on Leah Gibson, at the first sight of her, as likely to become some day an extremely desirable person.

She did.

The Gibsons lived in a very good house in Tavistock Square. They seemed very well off. Mrs. Gibson had a nice carriage, which she kept entirely with her own money. Her father, who was dead, had been a wealthy solicitor. He had left a large family, and to each of them property worth £300 a year, and a very liberal allowance of good looks.

Mr. Gibson was in business in the City.

Leah, their only child, was the darling of their hearts and the apple of their eyes. To dress her beautifully, to give her all the best masters money could procure, and treat her to every amusement in London--theatres, the opera, all the concerts and shows there were, and give endless young parties for her pleasure--all this seemed the principal interest of their lives.

Soon after my first introduction to Leah, Ida and I received an invitation to a kind of juvenile festivity at the Gibsons', and went, and spent a delightful evening. We were received by Mrs. Gibson most cordially. She was such an extremely pretty person, and so charmingly dressed, and had such winning, natural, genial manners, that I fell in love with her at first sight; she was also very playful and fond of romping; for she was young still, having married at seventeen.

Her mother, Mrs. Bletchley (who was present), was a Spanish Jewess--a most magnificent and beautiful old person in splendid attire, tall and straight, with white hair and thick black eyebrows, and large eyes as black as night.

In Leah the high Sephardic Jewish type was more marked than in Mrs. Gibson (who was not Jewish at all in aspect, and took after her father, the late Mr. Bletchley).

It is a type that sometimes, just now and again, can be so pathetically noble and beautiful in a woman, so suggestive of chastity and the most passionate love combined--love conjugal and filial and maternal--love that implies all the big practical obligations and responsibilities of human life, that the mere term "Jewess" (and especially its French equivalent) brings to my mind some vague, mysterious, exotically poetic image of all I love best in woman. I find myself dreaming of Rebecca of York, as I used to dream of her in the English class at Brossard's, where I so pitied poor Ivanhoe for his misplaced constancy.

If Rebecca at fifty-five, was at all like Mrs. Bletchley, poor old Sir Wilfred's regrets must have been all that Thackeray made them out to be in his immortal story of Rebecca and Rowena.

Mr. Gibson was a good-looking man, some twelve or fifteen years older than his wife; his real vocation was to be a low comedian; this showed itself on my first introduction to him. He informally winked at me and said:

"Esker voo ker jer dwaw lah vee? Ah! kel Bonnure!"

This idiotic speech (all the French he knew) was delivered in so droll and natural a manner that I took to him at once. Barty himself couldn't have been funnier!