JACK BRAG.

VOL. I.

[Pg 2]

LONDON: PRINTED BY SAMUEL BENTLEY, Dorset Street, Fleet Street.

[Pg 3]

JACK BRAG.

BY THE AUTHOR OF

“SAYINGS AND DOINGS,”—“MAXWELL,” &c.

IN THREE VOLUMES.

VOL. I.

LONDON:

RICHARD BENTLEY,

NEW BURLINGTON STREET.

1837.

[Pg 5]

JACK BRAG.

CHAPTER I.

“My dear Johnny,” said the respectable widow Brag to her son, “what is the good of your going on in this way? Here, instead of minding the business, you are day after day galloping and gallivanting, steeple-chasing, fox-hunting, lord-hunting, a wasting your time and your substance, the shop going to old Nick, and you getting dipped instead of your candles.”

“Mother,” said Jack, “don’t talk so foolishly! You are of the old school,—excellent in your way, but a long way behindhand: the business is safe enough. You cannot suppose, with the education I have had, I can meddle with moulds, or look after sixes, tens, fours to the pound, or farthing rushlights;—no, thanks [Pg 6]to my enlightenment, I flatter myself I soar a little higher than that.”

“No nonsense, Johnny!” said Mrs. Brag. “All you have now, and all you have spent since your poor father’s death, was gained by your father’s enlightenment of his customers: and how do you suppose I can carry on the trade if you will not now and then attend to it?”

“Take my advice, my dear mother,” said Jack, “and marry. I’m old enough now not to care a fig for a father-in-law;—marriage is the plan, as I say to my friend Lord Tom—straight up, right down, and no mistake. Get a sensible, stir-about husband, who does not mind grubbing, and hasn’t a nose——”

“Hasn’t a nose?” interrupted Mrs. Brag.

“I don’t mean literally,” said Jack, “but sportingly;—does not mind the particular scent of tallow—you understand. Let him into the tricks of the trade: you will still be queen-bee of the hive,—make him look after the drones while you watch the wax.”

“And while you, Johnny, lap up the honey,” said the queen-bee.

[Pg 7]

“Do what you like,” said her son, “only marry—‘marry come up,’ as somebody says in a play.”

“But, John,” said Mrs. Brag, “I have no desire to change my condition.”

“Nor I that you should,” said Jack; “but I wish you would change your name. As long as ‘Brag, wax and tallow-chandler,’ sticks up on the front of the house, with three dozen and four dangling dips swinging along the shop-front, like so many malefactors expiating their crimes, I live in a perpetual fever lest my numerous friends should inquire whether I am one of the firm or the family.”

“Johnny,” said Mrs. Brag, “you are a silly fellow. What is there to be ashamed of in honest industry? If all the fine folks whom you go a-hunting with, and all the rest of it, like you, and are really glad to see you, it is for yourself alone: and if they, who must know by your name and nature that you can never be one of themselves, care a button for you, your trade, so as you do not carry it about with you, will do you no harm. What [Pg 8]difference is it to them how you get your thorough-bred horses, your smart scarlet coat, neat tops, and white cords, so as you have them?—they won’t give you any new ones when they are gone.”

“It is all very well talking,” said Johnny, “but I never should show my face amongst them if I once thought they guessed at my real trade. I live in a regular worry as it is. If ever a fellow asks me if I was at Melton last year, that moment I think of the shop—‘pretty mould of a horse’ tingles in my ears—‘sweet dip of the country’ sets me doubting; and, only last week, a proposal to go ‘cross country and meet Lord Hurricane’s harriers at Hampton Wick nearly extinguished me.”

“And what now, Johnny,” said Mrs. Brag, “do you think these lords take you for, if not for a tallow-chandler?”

“An independent gentleman,” said Jack.

“That is to say,” replied his mother, “a gentleman who has nothing to depend upon.”

“They look upon me as an agreeable rattle,” said John.

[Pg 9]

“One that has often been in the watchman’s hands too,” said the old lady.

“I talk big and ride small,” said Jack, “I am always up with the hounds—never flinch at anything,—am the pride of the field wherever I go,—and in steeple-chases of infinite value.”

“And very little weight, my dear Johnny,” interrupted his mother.

“One of my dearest friends,” continued Brag, “Lord Tom Towzle, a deuce of a fellow amongst the females, is going to put me up as a candidate at the Travellers.”

“What, riders for respectable houses?” said Mrs. Brag: “and a very proper club too.”

“Respectable houses!” said Jack. “Poh! not a bit of it! What! bagmen in buggies with boxes of buttons in the boots? No, no! the Travellers—par excellence.”

“Par what?” said Mrs. Brag. “What, d’ye mean the fine Club-house in Pall Mall which you showed me the out side of, last King’s birth night?”

“The same,” said Brag. “Now, if I had [Pg 10]stuck to the naked, as Lord Tom says—told the plain unvarnished—I never could have qualified. Lord Tom asked me if I should like to belong to the Travellers;—in course I said yes—straight up, right down, and no mistake. Well, then he asks me if I could qualify;—so not quite understanding him, he says, ‘Have you ever been in Greece?’—‘Yes,’ said I:—I might have added ‘up to the elbows often;’ didn’t though. Had him dead. Down he whips my name, and calls in Sir Somebody Something out of the street to second me.”

“If you should get in there Johnny,” said Mrs. Brag, “do get ’em to give up gas and take to oil on illumination nights. But what I think is, somebody is sure to find you out, Johnny.”

“Time enough,” said Jack. “I’m going it now smooth and soft across the country, increasing my acquaintance; falling into the society of elegant females—women of fashion, with beautiful faces and liberal hearts;—introduced to three last week—proud as peacocks to everybody else, delighted with me;—met them at [Pg 11]Ascot—cold collation in the carriage—champaign iced from London;—got on capital—never was so happy in my life—hottest weather I ever felt; spirits mounted—I was the delight of the party—told them half a dozen stories of myself, and made them laugh like cockatoos, but I was bundled all of a heap by the Marquis of Middlesdale, who had been at luncheon with the King, who, in passing the barouche, gave me a smack on the back you might have heard to Egham, and cried out, ‘Jack, this is a melting day, isn’t it?’”

“He meant it, Johnny, depend upon it,” said Mrs. Brag.

“I’ve no doubt he did,” said Brag, “for it was as hot as ever I felt it——”

“—In the back shop,” interrupted his mother. “But pray, Johnny, where do these people think you live?”

“At a great house in Grosvenor-street,” said Jack, “next door to What-d’ye-call-’em’s Hotel: my name is on the door, and my address on my card.”

“But you don’t live there,” said Mrs. Brag.

[Pg 12]

“Not I,” replied the son: “I only rent the door.”

“How d’ye mean?” said his mother.

“Why, I went to the man,” said Brag, “who keeps the house. ‘Now, sir,’ said I, ‘I want to rent four square inches of your panels’. He was puzzled for the moment; but I was down upon him in no time, and no mistake.—Out I pulls from my pocket a brass plate of those precise dimensions, whereon is engraven ‘Mr. Brag.’—‘What will you take per annum,’ said I, ‘to let this be screwed on to your door, and let your servant take in my cards and letters?’ Startled him a little at first: however, he entered himself for the plate, acceded to my proposition,—and so for the trifling consideration of four guineas per annum, and a tip to the slavey, I get the credit of five windows in front, three stories high, in one of the best streets in London.”

“But do none of your friends ever expect to be let in?” said Mrs. Brag.

“Yes,” said Brag, “for a good thing now and then,—and so they are, pretty often. Long [Pg 13]head, mother—have it here”—tapping his forehead with his fore finger—“look simple with my fresh colour and curly hair, but as deep as Garrick—cannot write your X’s, Z’s with me,—else, in course, they might expect admission. ‘Not at home,’ is always the answer. ‘Out of town?’ is the next question;—‘Yes,’ is the next answer.—‘Where?’ comes next.—‘Down at his little place in Surrey.’ That finishes it. They lodge their pasteboard and away they go.”

“Little place in Surrey!” said Mrs. Brag;—“why, what d’ye mean?—have you a country-house too?”

“Country-house!” said Brag. “Lord bless your dear heart, not I! Nothing but my old lodging, on the second floor, No. 37, at the carpenter’s, corner of Caterpillar-row, Kennington.”

“And that you call your little place in Surrey, do you?” said Mrs. Brag.

“Yes, mother, and no fib neither,” said Brag. “It is almost the littlest place I ever saw in my life; and as for Caterpillar-row, if [Pg 14]it isn’t in Surrey I know nothing of going ’cross a country.”

“Ah, Johnny, Johnny,” said his respected parent with a mingled look of sorrow and admiration, “you never will mend till it is too late!”

“Mother,” said Jack, “now you say that, I think I shall be too late for Lord Tom Towzle. We are going off for Wigglesford to mark out a line. All ready for a run: we have got no mercy in us,—none of your bowling-green, daisy-cutting work for us—no, we’ll try to pick out rasping fences, bottomless brooks, and ditches as wide as rivers;—a steeple-chase without killing a horse or two, cracking a collar-bone, slipping a shoulder, or pitching an out-and-outer on the top of his conk, is no fun in the world.”

“Ah! well, well,” said Mrs. Brag, “I wish you would give a little time to the books and the business: some day you’ll repent this.”

“Not I, mother,” said Jack; “I can pull up any day and marry. I never yet saw the woman I could not win—they are all ready to [Pg 15]eat me up: in course, as the book says, I am the more wary—hang back a bit. Don’t you see, as I get on in the world, I get up; and if I can marry a Lady Sally or a Lady Susan—eh! won’t that be nice!—’specially if there happens to be an odd thirty or forty thousand pounds tacked to the title.”

“Don’t flatter yourself Johnny,” replied Mrs. Brag, shaking her head: “that scheme will never answer.”

“You’ll see,” said Jack;—“I say nothing, but you’ll see. If I were to sit down and write an account of my adventures with the females, I should be run after like a sight. The females of fashion that I meet at the races call me ‘dear Johnny’ as it is.”

“I wonder you are not afraid of seeing the ghost of your poor father,” said the widow.

“What! the Governor?” cried Jack; “never mind ghosts nor Governors, here is my Leporello. So I’m off. Good-b’ye, dear mother!—you’ll see me soon again,—I shall be back by Saturday, and so keep snug Sunday.”

“Where? at your town-house in Grosvenor-street,” [Pg 16]said the old lady, “or your little place in Surrey?”

“Neither, I take it,” said Jack, looking as wise as a very foolish person could. “I devote Sunday afternoon to a very select society—eh!—females of fashion, delightful creatures, and all that. So adieu!”

Kissing the matron’s cheek, away went our hero in order to revel in all the luxuries of sport, and in the society which, he admitted, kept him in a fever while he was in it: not that the true circle of his aristocratic acquaintance was particularly large, however much he nominally increased it by dubbing every man his friend with whom he had happened to hunt in the same field or dine in a public company of three hundred and fifty; and every well-dressed woman a lady of fashion whom he happened to see with the tigers in whose set he mingled.

Mrs. Brag, who felt extremely anxious about her son and herself, saw that the business was rapidly “burning down.” The introduction of oil had superseded wax; and since that, the [Pg 17]adoption of gas had superseded oil. No efforts were made to improve the concern, and all she heard, was of considerable drafts from the account at the banker’s, and very small payments into it; and Mrs. Brag, a comely, hearty-looking body of her time of life, began to ponder the words which her dutiful son had with little apparent earnestness let drop, as to changing her condition, with a view to increase the reputation of the house and extend its sphere of action, while the name at sight of which her son trembled, might be withdrawn. She did not clearly see her way in this proceeding: nor had she either fixed her affections upon any particular object, nor was she conscious that she had attracted the regards of any suitable partner. However, the notion was entertained—the idea had been started; and how the exemplary matron set her means to work, in order to effect

the grand object, we may, if we live long enough, yet discover.

The reader perhaps, in the few pages which he has yet either been doomed to, or condescended to read, has already discovered what sort of [Pg 18]man Mr. John Brag is, or was. It seemed best to give a short domestic scene in the candle-manufactory by way of prelude to the genteel comedy in which the gay deceiver is destined to perform; and it will be only necessary to keep in mind the sage yet ineffective lesson of the dear old body to whom her affectionate son recommended matrimony, in order duly to appreciate the performance of her “pretty boy,” who, spite of his colour and his curls, was verging upon what may be called the “shady side” of thirty.

Old Mrs. Brag had, as Miss Scropps, married at seventeen; and although, as far as my own experience goes, I admit I never saw such a thing, she was said to be a lady of nearly fifty-five years of age, somewhere about the period at which this glimpse at the history of her yet unrecorded family begins.

It may be supposed that I should apologise for bringing the eyes, or perhaps the noses, of my readers in contact with all the arcana of Mr. John’s shop; but I have a reason for doing so. I propose not merely to show by illustration how [Pg 19]very ridiculous a pretender must always be, but to exhibit a striking instance of the retributive justice which seems somehow to keep the world in an equipoise, by exhibiting the wonderful utility of which the meanest and stupidest animal extant may prove; as vide (to quote the words of James the First, about Dæmonology) the fable of the Lion, the Mouse, and the Meshes.

Soar we then for a moment from the gloom of the tallow-chandler to a more charming region, and to people of a different mould,—and yet who, as the reader will see, may in the course of events become connected, and intimately too, with our sprightly gentleman in the scarlet jacket and white cords. Let us, therefore, betake ourselves to the boudoir of one of the most charming young widows in England, where she is sitting tête-à-tête with her unmarried sister, talking over two absent gentlemen, whose tempers and dispositions are the immediate subject of their conversation.

Mrs. Dallington, the elder of the two ladies so engaged, had been married at nineteen, [Pg 20]merely to oblige her father, (who died six months afterwards,) to a gentleman of the name which she still bore; who, to all the other merits which distinguished his character, emulated in a high degree the fox-hunting propensities of the tallow-man in the white cords of whom we have just spoken. He was, however, rich, and a gentleman, and had a right to make as great a fool of himself as he pleased,—and so he did: and the foolery began in his leaving a beautiful wife, with a pair of eyes as black as sloes and as bright as diamonds, alone and moping, while he was amusing himself by following his dogs, which dogs were following something certainly not sweeter than themselves across the country.

Mr. Dallington, who rode about nine stone four, one fine morning, when the scent lay “uncommon strong,” the dogs in full cry, the field in a state of the highest excitement, the fox going away right on-end across a heavy country, which would probably break the hearts of some of the horses and the necks of some of the riders, met with a slight accident, which in [Pg 21]fox-hunting goes for very little, but which in its proverbial or rather convivial parallel, matrimony, goes for something more. In switching a rasper, the exemplary and high-spirited gentleman missed his tip and pitched right upon his head in the middle of a ditch, where he remained exactly long enough to make the lovely wife he had left at home a very delightful widow.

Dallington, or at least what had been Dallington in the early part of the day, was put upon a hurdle and taken to a farmhouse; whence the melancholy intelligence was conveyed to his lady, who, with all the respect she felt for her late father’s judgment in selecting him for her partner for life, considered the event which had just taken place as philosophically as any woman of strong feelings and a tender disposition might be supposed to endure any sudden shock which results from the death of a fellow-creature.

True, most true it is, she never had felt that sort of love for the husband forced upon her, as a “fine match,” which a woman ought to feel for the being who is destined (if he be fortunate [Pg 22]enough) to share her hopes, her wishes, and her happiness. Mrs. Dallington was a creature all intellect, all vivacity, all fire; full of arch playfulness and gaiety of heart, and as completely the reverse of her quiet, timid, and sensitive sister, as light of darkness, fire of water, or any other two unmeetable opposites.

There are many adages connected with love and matrimony which it must be admitted are, however forcible in themselves, extremely contradictory of each other. But, in the course of considerable experience in such matters, I am apt to imagine that the real truth is—supposing always exceptions to general rules—that women are most apt to prefer men the least like themselves; and men, vice versâ. It is the pride of a little man to have a large wife; it is the taste of a tall man to possess a short one: a fair woman admires a dark Lothario; while a bright-eyed brunette delights in blazing away upon a fair Romeo. A learned man eschews a blue partner; he relaxes into ease in the company of his ordinarily-educated better-half, and reposes from his graver studies in the agreeable [Pg 23]common-places of an intelligent but not abstruse associate; while the learned lady prefers the plodding spouse, and never desires that he should meddle with her arts and sciences, but merely wishes him to exert his energies in the comfortable arrangement of their establishment,

and the acquirement of the supplies necessary to set off her own attractions in their most alluring form before the visitors whom she chooses to invite.

The assimilation of tempers and dispositions by which happiness grows between married couples is, in fact, a habit most amiable and advantageous: the handwritings of men and their wives become like each other in the course of time. But whether the love of contraries in the abstract, be or be not so general as some observers would have it to be, certain it is that in the particular individual case before us it did exist.