We may be pretty certain that Mr.Rowson profited in his turn by his young master's liberality and gratitude for the pleasures to which the footman inducted him.
A famous tailor from the West End of the town--Mr.Osborne would have none of your City or Holborn bunglers, he said, for the boy (though a City tailor was good enough for HIM)--was summoned to ornament little George's person, and was told to spare no expense in so doing.So, Mr.Woolsey, of Conduit Street, gave a loose to his imagination and sent the child home fancy trousers, fancy waistcoats, and fancy jackets enough to furnish a school of little dandies.Georgy had little white waistcoats for evening parties, and little cut velvet waistcoats for dinners, and a dear little darling shawl dressing-gown, for all the world like a little man.He dressed for dinner every day, "like a regular West End swell," as his grandfather remarked; one of the domestics was affected to his special service, attended him at his toilette, answered his bell, and brought him his letters always on a silver tray.
Georgy, after breakfast, would sit in the arm-chair in the dining-room and read the Morning Post, just like a grown-up man."How he DU dam and swear," the servants would cry, delighted at his precocity.Those who remembered the Captain his father, declared Master George was his Pa, every inch of him.He made the house lively by his activity, his imperiousness, his scolding, and his good-nature.
George's education was confided to a neighbouring scholar and private pedagogue who "prepared young noblemen and gentlemen for the Universities, the senate, and the learned professions: whose system did not embrace the degrading corporal severities still practised at the ancient places of education, and in whose family the pupils would find the elegances of refined society and the confidence and affection of a home." It was in this way that the Reverend Lawrence Veal of Hart Street, Bloomsbury, and domestic Chaplain to the Earl of Bareacres, strove with Mrs.Veal his wife to entice pupils.
By thus advertising and pushing sedulously, the domestic Chaplain and his Lady generally succeeded in having one or two scholars by them--who paid a high figure and were thought to be in uncommonly comfortable quarters.There was a large West Indian, whom nobody came to see, with a mahogany complexion, a woolly head, and an exceedingly dandyfied appearance; there was another hulking boy of three-and-twenty whose education had been neglected and whom Mr.and Mrs.Veal were to introduce into the polite world; there were two sons of Colonel Bangles of the East India Company's Service: these four sat down to dinner at Mrs.Veal's genteel board, when Georgy was introduced to her establishment.
Georgy was, like some dozen other pupils, only a day boy; he arrived in the morning under the guardianship of his friend Mr.Rowson, and if it was fine, would ride away in the afternoon on his pony, followed by the groom.The wealth of his grandfather was reported in the school to be prodigious.The Rev.Mr.Veal used to compliment Georgy upon it personally, warning him that he was destined for a high station; that it became him to prepare, by sedulity and docility in youth, for the lofty duties to which he would be called in mature age;that obedience in the child was the best preparation for command in the man; and that he therefore begged George would not bring toffee into the school and ruin the health of the Masters Bangles, who had everything they wanted at the elegant and abundant table of Mrs.Veal.
With respect to learning, "the Curriculum," as Mr.
Veal loved to call it, was of prodigious extent, and the young gentlemen in Hart Street might learn a something of every known science.The Rev.Mr.Veal had an orrery, an electrifying machine, a turning lathe, a theatre (in the wash-house), a chemical apparatus, and what he called a select library of all the works of the best authors of ancient and modern times and languages.
He took the boys to the British Museum and descanted upon the antiquities and the specimens of natural history there, so that audiences would gather round him as he spoke, and all Bloomsbury highly admired him as a prodigiously well-informed man.And whenever he spoke (which he did almost always), he took care to produce the very finest and longest words of which the vocabulary gave him the use, rightly judging that it was as cheap to employ a handsome, large, and sonorous epithet, as to use a little stingy one.
Thus he would say to George in school, "I observed on my return home from taking the indulgence of an evening's scientific conversation with my excellent friend Doctor Bulders--a true archaeologian, gentlemen, a true archaeologian--that the windows of your venerated grandfather's almost princely mansion in Russell Square were illuminated as if for the purposes of festivity.Am I right in my conjecture that Mr.Osborne entertained a society of chosen spirits round his sumptuous board last night?"Little Georgy, who had considerable humour, and used to mimic Mr.Veal to his face with great spirit and dexterity, would reply that Mr.V.was quite correct in his surmise.
