Long, long ago, when Our Street was the country—a stagecoach between us and London passing four times a-day—I do not care to own that it was a sight of Flora Cammysole’s face, under the card of her mamma’s “Lodgings to Let,” which first caused me to become a tenant of Our Street. A fine good-humoured lass she was then; and I gave her lessons (part out of the rent) in French and flower-painting. She has made a fine rich marriage since, although her eyes have often seemed to me to say, “Ah, Mr. T., why didn’t you, when there was yet time, and we both of us were free, propose—you know what?” “Psha! Where was the money, my dear madam?” Captain Bragg, then occupied in building Bungalow Lodge—Bragg, I say, living on the first floor, and entertaining sea-captains, merchants, and East Indian friends with his grand ship’s plate, being disappointed in a project of marrying a director’s daughter, who was also a second-cousin once removed of a peer, sent in a fury for Mrs. Cammysole, his landlady, and proposed to marry Flora off-hand, and settle four hundred a-year You see her portrait, and that of the brute, her husband, on the opposite side of the page. Bragg to this day wears anchor-buttons, and has a dress-coat with a gold strap for epaulets, in case he should have a fancy to sport them. His house is covered with portraits, busts, and miniatures of himself. His wife is made to wear one of the latter. On his sideboard are pieces of plate, presented by the passengers of the Ram Chunder to Captain Bragg. “The Ram Chunder East Indiaman, in a gale, off Table Bay;” “The Outward-bound Fleet, under convoy of Her Majesty’s frigate Loblollyboy, Captain Gutch, beating off the French squadron, under Commodore Leloup (the Ram Chunder, S.E. by E., is represented engaged with the Mirliton corvette);” “The Ram Chunder standing into the Hooghly, with Captain Bragg, his telescope, and speaking-trumpet, on the poop;” “Captain Bragg presenting the Officers of the Ram Chunder to General Bonaparte at St. Helena”—Titmarsh (this fine piece was painted by me when I was in favour with Bragg); in a word, Bragg and the Ram Chunder are all over the house. Although I have eaten scores of dinners at Captain Bragg’s charge, yet his hospitality is so insolent that none of us who frequent his mahogany, feel any obligation to our braggart entertainer. After he has given one of his great heavy dinners he always takes an opportunity to tell you, in the most public way, how many bottles of wine were drunk. His pleasure is to make his guests tipsy, and to tell everybody how and when the period of inebriation arose. And Miss Clapperclaw tells me that he often comes over laughing and giggling to her, and pretending that he has brought me into this condition—a calumny which I fling contemptuously in his face. He scarcely gives any but men’s parties, and invites the whole club home to dinner. What is the compliment of being asked, when the whole club is asked too, I should like to know? Men’s parties are only good for boys. I hate a dinner where there are no women. Bragg sits at the head of his table, and bullies the solitary Mrs. Bragg. He entertains us with stories of storms which he, Bragg, encountered—of dinners which he, Bragg, has received from the Governor-General of India—of jokes which he, Bragg, has heard; and however stale or odious they may be, poor Mrs. B. is always expected to laugh. Woe be to her if she doesn’t, or if she laughs at anybody “I never knew a woman who was constantly bullied by her husband who did not like him the better for it,” Miss Clapperclaw says. And though this speech has some of Clapp’s usual sardonic humour in it, I can’t but think there is some truth in the remark. |