CHAPTER IV.

HUNKS.

HAVING inquired the whereabout of Peele's coffee-house, Mrs. Pemble proceeded thither, not a little nervous at going to a place of the sort, and troubled moreover with sundry misgivings, that perhaps after all, from the signature of "Hunks," the advertisement might be a hoax; yet, no, the wording was too genuine, honest and straightforward for that; an original the writer might be, but she liked originals, they were generally sterling characters and had kind hearts; a case in point was that Mr. Phippen she had just left, an evident oddity; but what a kind good nature, for had he not promised to interest himself about Harcourt? For her part she hated those characters of and for the million, who, like the misfitting coats for the poor soldiers during the Peninsular War, seemed all cut out by wholesale from the same model, without reference to the diversity of dimensions for which they were intended. And with these and similar reflections, she reached the place of rendezvous. Not liking to risk the ridicule of a hoax, or incur a jest with a waiter by asking for " Hunks," she had copied the conclusion of the advertisement in order to place it in the hands of whoever she might see; merely saying that she had come about that advertisement. Accordingly, there stood a waiter already in the door-way, to receive her or any one else's communications. There is no use in describing him, for all waiters have the same likeness of genus that all terriers, or mastiffs, or monkeys have, only differing in degree; save that with the quadrupeds the chief characteristic is in the tail, whereas with bipeds it is in the head, and there is an elaborate making the most of it about the heads of all waiters, however lank and limp the rest of their bodies may be, that bears a striking analogy to the dilations of soda-water and champagne corks, which rise above the iron restraints the tyranny of custom has imposed upon them, and swelling with the effervescing aspirings of the pent-up spirit within, nobly make head against the pressure from without; consequently the head and the napkin constitute the idiosyncrasies of the waiter; the latter being invariably worn where the inhabitants of the moon are said to carry their heads, viz.: under their arm. Next to the waiter's head come his feet; there may indeed be, and most probably is

"Some short intermediate degree

'Tween the head and the heels, some small space

Like that between dinner and tea."

But next to the head, the feet are the most remarkable points

about the waiter, not so much in themselves as on account of the extraordinary kind of leather or prunella nondescript chausseurs into which they are always inducted, which seem only half a shoe, and yet not quite a slipper; and though they have all the abandon and laisser aller of the latter, they sometimes miraculously contrive to achieve all the creaking clamour of the former. Now, to the head and feet standing at the door of the coffee-house, Mrs. Pemble presented her paper, adding—

"I have come in answer to this advertisement; is the gentleman here ?"

Whereupon removing the napkin from under his arm and glancing over the paper, he bowed very civilly, saying

"He is, ma'am; be so good as to walk this way,-and you will avoid the coffee-room, as the gentleman is in a private room."

And with a beating heart she followed her conductor down a passage, at the end of which he threw open the door of a small room, merely saying

"A lady, sir-about the advertisement in The Times."

"Oh! beg of her to walk in ?" said an exceedingly benevolent looking man of about seventy, with a sort of loose, rather than slovenly, military dandyism about him, such as distinguished the heroes of the Wellington campaigns, for he wore a loose black silk cravat, over which his shirt collar fell limply, and still retained the old broad shirt frill, not however worn ostentatiously, but peeping out like a bunch of white lilies from between a sort of military under white kerseymere waistcoat; the lapels of his dark blue surtout coat thrown back, his only ornaments being the exceedingly fine texture and dazzling whiteness of his linen and the solid gold of his waistcoat and shirt buttons; his hair, though now perfectly white and giving the effect of powder, judging from his eyes and eye-brows, must originally have been dark; his tall, erect figure and military air, coupled with his shrewd keen eye, open countenance, and peculiarly benevolent smile, gave him the air not so much of one used to command as of one accustomed to be obeyed. The very first glance of this unmistakeable GENTLEMAN, coupled with his deep mellow and particularly sweet voice, quite re-assured Mrs. Pemble, at whose entrance he had risen from the easy chair in which he had been reading the paper, and himself handing her a seat after bowing to her with as much respect as if she had been a princess, said, with a quiet smile and his slow quiet voice, which he never either raised or hurried even when uttering the keenest sarcasms:

"Madam,-for want of a better master of the ceremonies, I must introduce myself as the Hunks of The Times, though I hope not a Hunks of the present times, the one great characteristic of which is meanness-beginning with pecuniary meanness, and branching off into every other sort. I owe you not only an apology, but also an explanation for having brought a lady to a

coffee-house; but I am only a bird of passage in London, and could not very well appoint you to meet me at the United Service Club. I might certainly have done so at Mivart's Hotel, where I am stopping, but I thought if I made that the place of rendezvous I should be inundated with Misses, or parties,' as they would most probably call themselves, in reply to my advertisement; whereas I was perfectly convinced that to an advertisement signed 'Hunks,' and dated Peele's Coffee-house, none but a really sensible woman would have the courage (which always includes conscience) to reply. You will pardon me, I hope Madam, for putting you through a little verbal exercise, as the young people for whom I wish to enlist your services are orphans, and my grandchildren; and I grieve to say they have had a succession of governesses who, having taken high degrees in the current vulgarisms of the day, have infected them; and as I am determined to disinfect them before it is too late, I have resolved not to engage any one who has graduated in this school; and it is for this reason that I require a lady not only to know Latin, but who has learnt English classically, as I prefer Dryden's English to Mr. Dickens's; and I wish her moreover to be thoroughly acquainted with the standard literature of her country, by which I don't mean the puffular authors of the present day, though my tariff includes some of the deservedly popular, who will live long after the puffs are blown out."

As he spoke he took a pencil and some tablets from his waistcoat pocket, and then added—

"I hope I have not been the means of bringing you from a very great distance?"

"I am staying at Chelsea; but the distance was nothing to me, as I came in an omnibus."

"You?" and here her interlocutor turned his right ear slightly towards her, as if he had not quite caught the conclusion of her reply.

"I came in an omnibus," she repeated.

Right!" said her companion, and noting something on his tablets, then added:

:

"I suppose you do not happen to have any of your sketches with you that I could see?"

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No, I have not, but if it were not detaining you too long, I could return and get them or bring them to-morrow.'

Right!" again. "Now do you know why I have twice said right to your answers, to the only two questions I have yet asked you?"

No, I really do not."

"Well, I'll tell you; because you said you came in an omnibus; had you said you had ridden in one, I should have got up, opened the door, and begged you to ride back whenever you pleased; and when I asked you if you had sketches

any

of your

B

with you, which I only did as another decoy, you did not say, as a housemaid or any modern literary lion might have done, that you could fetch' them, but that you could bring or get them."

“Oh! sir,” said Mrs. Pemble, "it is a great pleasure to me to hear that you have as strong an objection to all these kitchen exotics made patent by modern literature as I have, and perhaps it will save you both time and trouble, if I give you a short catalogue raissonné of all my favourite aversions in this way."

"The very thing I should like, Madam."

·

"Well, such like,' the like,' 'be grudge!' 'please,' for if you please; a deal,' for a great deal; 'a many,' for many; some 'parties' object, for some persons object; and worse still, a party' called, instead of a person called; ride, for drive; 'fetch' for get, go for, or bring; except when used in reference to poodles and pointers, who do fetch and carry;' 'I'm not going to! and I don't intend to!' or 'I shan't be able to,' for I don't intend to do so, &c., &c. 'Sewing' applied indiscriminately to all kinds, or any sort of needlework; "whatever is the matter?" for what is the matter? or what on earth is the matter? just like I did,' for that's exactly what I did; or if asked which of those two ladies was Mrs. B.? to reply as so many young ladies elegantly do- Well, I expect it was the one in blue.' Now, expectation being strictly the property of the future, it is really dishonest to drive it back into the service of the past; then come very pleased,' for 'very much pleased;' with legions more slip-slop and endless mispronunciations, which I cannot now enumerate. It is true that Aristotle has laid it down-that one should think like the wise, but speak like the common people; but with the usual parsimonious retrenchments of the present day, people seem to have decapitated this axiom, and gone wild in carrying out the latter portion of it only."

"Hear! hear!" said her very attentive listener, knocking his pencil gently on the table, his eyes sparkling with sympathetic approbation; "I see we agree perfectly as to our wishing, if possible, to check the horrible St. Bartholomew that is going on with regard to our mother tongue: and now, madam, as your pupils will be left entirely under your control-a trust which, from the little I have seen of you, I think you appear to be quite worthy of,-I should like to have an outline of your plan of education."

This Mrs. Pemble gave him, entering into the minutest details, which she prefaced by telling him how much such homely notions had shocked the haristocratic" susceptibilities of Mrs. FitzSmugsby and the other ladies of her calibre.

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"Excellent! admirable!" said her auditor, when she had ceased speaking; "nothing can be better, and I see my own dreams about to be realized." "And now may I ask," added he, with the same low, harmonious voice and quiet smile, as the Yankees say -where were you raised, Madam? for you appear to have literally been raised so much above par, that one is naturally anxious to

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know; for I can safely say that it is not every day that one meets with so distinguished a person.'

"Ah! Sir," said Mrs Pemble, with a very becoming because a very genuine blush, “ 'your praises would, I fear, make me very vain if the truth of an old French maxim did not come to my assistance, and by raising my pride put down my vanity—' si vous prenez le soin, et la peine, de valoir quelque chose; vous ne vous distinguerez jamais,' says some old French author, whose name I forget."

You, at all events, will never convince any one of the truth of that assertion, Madam, being such a palpable refutation of it in your own person; but generally speaking, I believe it to be perfectly true; indeed everything now-a-days confirms its truth, when we have so many scoundrels in politics, and so many blackguards in literature, all playing into each other's hands, and having made of letters, which is nominally a republic, an oligarchy represented by a set of not only close but fearfully rotten boroughs, whose holders pass to the extensive ignorance of the novel-reading public, as profound and original geniuses, by being burglars to living authors, and resurrectionists to dead ones."

"Do you not think this degeneracy in literature, and above all in literary men, was most prophetically accounted for by Vicesimus Knox, when he said 'the depraved taste of readers is another cause of the degeneracy of writers. They who write for the public must gratify the taste of the public. In vain would be their compositions formed on the model of the best writers and regulated by the precepts of the most judicious critics, if they conform not to the popular caprice, and the mistaken judgment of the vulgar. In an age when the the taste for reading is universal, many works contemptible both in design and execution, will be received by a certain class of readers with distinguished applause. The want of the merits of just reasoning and pure language is to the greater part, the halflearned and the ignorant, no objection. In truth, unconnected thought and superficial declamation are congenial to minds unaccustomed to accurate thinking, and insensible to the charms of finished excellence. Hence the writers of acknowledged abilities and learning have been known, when they aimed at popularity, to relinquish real excellence and adopt a false taste in opposition to their own judgment.'

"True, Madam; and nothing can be more apposite than your quotation is to the present race of writers of fiction, and their Thames-water imitators; but how do you account for this false taste and mistaken judgment in the self-sufficing-not to say selfsufficient-Tritons of the literary fry, who do not court popularity because they think they can command it, and neither adopt nor invent a style, but excavate one? Look at Carlyle, for instance, who, barring his pantheistic spiritualism, whiffed through Göthe's left off meerschaums, might pass for an original thinker, especially