SKETCHES AT BRIGHTON.
By the Author of “Heliondè,” “The Memoirs of a Stomach,” &c.
NO. II.—THE JONESES OF MONTPELIER.
My most intimate friend, for many years, has been Nathaniel Dowling; and for the sake of the petite comédie which follows, I must especially introduce the reader to that individual. A more mooning, desultory, smoking, indolent fellow it would be impossible to find, but withal a more powerful man, when his intellectual faculties were thoroughly awakened, I never in my life came across. It is true his powers were somewhat spasmodic, and, like the Rhea torpedo, after he had expended his energies in one great shock, he would remain torpid and dull till the brain's electric powers were restored. No one since he left college knew positively what were his reading hours, but there were certain dark hints abroad as to his habit of sitting up all night, or, at all events, of lying awake all night, making up the day's fallow time by reading, smoking, and perhaps eating opium. His degree at the university was not particularly brilliant, and few of even his most intimate friends imagined the latent energies which lay like gnarled oak-roots beneath the surface of Nat Bowling's lazy and eccentric nature.
At Brighton, where I first met him, and where family considerations held him in impatient thraldom, his time was passed in fishing, shooting sea-birds, lolling in a boat smoking "Cavendish," or taking desperate long walks over the downs; for Nat growled when I proposed a promenade on the esplanade, declaring he should feel like an animal in the Zoological Gardens prowling up and down his cage. Nat was eminently a gauche fellow, and yet his success in pleasing the gentler sex was wonderful. The truth was, however, his manliness of character exhibiting itself in every possible way was the real attraction, for this sort of attribute has more effect upon women's minds and hearts than all the fine airs and graces and fopperies in the world. A thoroughly manly fellow, too, generally marries a genuine woman, and this feat Nat accomplished after his wild oats were sown.
Mrs. Nat—as her friends delighted to call her—possessed the same character of perfect womanhood as her husband the opposite quality, while dainty and pretty accomplishments were added to her other attractions. By nature and education she was as capable of taking the lead in a princely establishment, as of imparting dignity and grace to the occasion, had she been compelled by circumstances to help some old laundress lay the platters and knives for her husband's dinner in the Temple while he superintended the cooking of his own chop by his sitting-room fire, or she was equally fitted to fill, with decorum and sweetness, any of the intermediate grades between the two extremes of position.
Moreover, Mrs. Nat was excessively handsome, and wore, in all her relations with the world external to her own social happy one, a bearing of feminine and sweet reserve which the most reckless libertinism dared never attempt to offend.
This quality, more charming and more rare than any other, arose principally from her intense and absorbing love for her husband; and, owing to Nat's peculiar disposition, it was, of all gifts his wife possessed, the one most essential to his happiness. If my friend Nat possessed an especial idiosyncrasy, it was his almost morbid sensitiveness in regard to his wife's reception by his friends. This one point was an exception to the whole of his character—the heel of the Achilles, the bit of shining material in the sombre-coloured lapis-lazuli of his nature. In reference to people's opinions of himself, individually, he was almost too careless, and seldom took the trouble to explain any error of a personal nature, even of the most glaring description.
It so happened, there resided at Brighton a certain family of the name of Jones, who feeling that there was not that tone of distinction attached to their surname which all English people desire, added thereunto their exact locality, and they called themselves, and were called by others, the Joneses of Montpelier. Now, the Joneses of Montpelier were not a bad sort of people, and their father, Mr. Alphonso Jones, some years deceased, having achieved a very honourable position as one of the most scientific men of his day, bequeathed to his family the many advantages accruing from a parent's posthumous celebrity. Giving to the inheritance of this benefit, the members of the Jones family, with one exception, conceived it incumbent upon themselves to set up as patrons of all the savans and literati who sunned themselves, temporary or permanently, on the Brighton cliffs; and not content with this assumption, they furthermore established themselves as the centre of a clique, after that truly British fashion, which makes foreigners feel so great a contempt for our social manners, and which engenders such a vast amount of ill-feeling, heart-burnings, and disgust amongst the members of our own community. Woe to the luckless intruder from that other clique who ventured within the sacred boundary of the Joneses' select coterie—a jar and discord, and a little social earthquake were sure to follow. The Joneses of Montpelier were undoubtedly a clever family, if by the word clever we understood various accomplishments, such as music, language, and drawing; but, independently of these, they were clever in the ways of the world, and more especially they were clever in the use of that description of insolent insouciance which, though very difficult to define, is used by the followers of fashion as their most effective and essential weapon;—the silent puff-dart of the Indian is not more certain in its mode of wounding, and the assagai of the Kaffir not more deadly in its results. With what exquisite art the missile is handled! how charmingly unconscious the countenance appears! how smiling and gracious are those pretty lips at the very moment when a deadly little shaft is being discharged from the coral bow! Not even the warning twang of the string is heard, but the arrow has sped and rankles in the wound. Added to their other accomplishments, the Joneses of Montpelier were tremendous talkers, and this, perhaps, was one of their most amiable qualities. To edge in a word during a morning call was improbable, to gain admission for a whole sentence, impossible; and the tone of their voices