less unbearable. He has passed through the humiliating ordeal, and has come forth a wiser and a sadder man, with the fragments of broken promises lacerating his heart, and the ignis fatuus of hope deferred, still dancing before him to allure and deceive. He is obliged just now to live entirely upon his wife’s scanty means, and the time which ought to be spent in fresh exertions to earn a living is absorbed in gaining a little health and strength. But their two souls are bound together indissolubly. Love dwells in their home, and though the struggle to live decently is immense, yet the peace which arises from a perfect concord and harmony of being is theirs, and the storms and struggles of life play comparatively in harmless force around the solid base of their affection. But who shall describe the sacrifice of honest pride which poverty and ill-health engender? Who shall dare inquire into the scanty cupboard, or the ingenious means by which appearances are sustained, or who shall more than covertly mark the blush of shame when a tired visitor asks for a glass of sherry and there is none in the house? Oh, gentility! gentility! I fancy you have a heavier burthen to bear than one would wish to dream of, and I should be obliged if some high authority upon ethics would inform me whether that never-ceasing struggle to sustain a position which habits, tastes, feeling, and education, and nature cry out for, is a virtue or a crime. The theme is a very sad one, even though love rays shine over it; so, giving another shake to the kaleidoscope, let us follow that fat charioteer, who, though resembling in face one of the prize porkers at the Baker Street Bazaar, is, in fact, an important specimen of the marine peripatetics, and is sure to afford us some diversion, more especially as he is reputed to have ten thousand a-year. Having amassed a fortune in the manufacture of phosphorus for lucifers, his great desire is to make another match for himself, and he has come to Brighton to display his wealth and gain a wife.
Mr. Confucius Tibbins—for that is our friend’s name—takes enormous pains with his personal appearance, and makes at Brighton what is called a considerable sensation. From eleven till two he walks on the promenade, lisping sweet nothings to his lady friends, and listening with the delighted air of a connoisseur to the band. He disdains the peg-top fashion of nether garments, and stuffs his affluent legs into tight-fitting unwhisperables, strapped over polished boots. His coat is nearly a swallow-tail, buttoned, or rather dragged across his chest, and a gorgeous waistcoat peeps from beneath, with a thick Albert chain dangling therefrom. His courage in wearing such a costume, especially in the morning, is worthy a better cause, and if his bravery required emphasizing, his hat achieves the desideratum. It is large and shining, and the brim turns suddenly up at the sides, displaying a pair of ears as large and as flat as an apple fritter. His piggishh eyes recede into his fat cheeks, and a small nez retroussé, with a large coarse mouth, complete the picture. The men laugh outright at him, the girls titter, and everybody stares.
At two o’clock Mr. Tibbins disappears, to adorn the outward and comfort the inner man. At about three he comes forth in his phaeton, with two servants behind, and he now wears a bright green frock-coat, and a russian skin upon his lap. There is je ne sais quoi about the cut of his grooms which induces young Nobson of the 70th Light Dragoons to exclaim, “Great snob that! those fellows stuck behind are hired by the month;” while there is something infinitely absurd in their jumping down every time Confucius pulls up, and running to the horses’ heads. On the green baize of an organ in the streets I have observed a very close resemblance to those grooms, but on which side the travestie was I forget. His horses, too, are lean, and, though well-bred enough, look as if their poor hoofs had hammered the London streets for many a season past. Mr. Tibbins only drives for an hour or so, and then changing his costume for a cut-away coat and a pair of antigropelos, he appears mounted upon a really fine horse, and his two grooms follow splattering after him up and down the cliff till the drive begins to thin.
At seven Confucius appears in the coffee-room of his hotel, en grande toilette, for the evening. He dines by himself on this occasion, and if his repast be not too refined, at least it is substantial, and the noise he makes while swallowing his soup is so strongly suggestive of the trough, that one feels certain the joint to follow will not, from a respect due to consanguinity, be pork in any form. Mr. Tibbins having at length completed his refection, he calls for a “Quarterly,” and casting his napkin gracefully over his lap, he draws the candle close to his very small eyes, pours out his port in a claret glass, and shutting one visual organ, holds the purple juice in a very knowing manner between the half-closed optic and the light, and then feeling satisfied at the glance, a gurgle and smack follow, which could only be expressed in the Teutonic language. It need scarcely be said that the united effects of soup, fish, flesh, and fowl, Madeira, bitter ale, and a pint of “curious old port,” to say nothing of the “Quarterly’s” article on Salmon Fishing, are of a nature to send Mr. Tibbins to the land of dreams, but he gives such sonorous evidences of his journey thither, that the coffee-room gradually clears, while the glasses on the buffet vibrate with a harmonious jingle at the tremendous diapason of the nasal organ. At about nine he awakes, and adjourns to the smoking-room for a quiet cigar and a glass or two of grog; and after re-arranging his attire, he betakes himself to one of those much maligned entertainments called by the various names of evening parties, at homes, soirées dansantes, &c., of which Brighton is so prolific.
Be it at once known that Confucius Tibbins, from a monetary point of view, is a thorough take-in. His carriages are hired, his grooms are his cousins, and though his fortune is quite ample enough for all the necessaries of life, and many of its luxuries, he no more possesses ten thousand a-year than the writer of these lines, and this comparison would in the estimation of Mr. Green’s friends be conclusive. One of these days it may be mine, perhaps, in a more extended form to explain to the Brighton world how Mr. Tibbins fell in love with the Lady Georgina Iceberger, only daughter of the fourth Earl of Chillyford, and
