Vanity Fair - Page 475/573

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?"