THE LONDON VISITOR

By Mary Russell Mitford

Being in a state of utter mystification, (a very disagreeable state, by-the-bye, ) I hold it advisable to lay my unhappy case, in strictconfidence, in the lowest possible whisper, and quite in a corner, before my kind friend, patron, and protector, the public, through whosemeans--for now-a-days every body knows everything, and there is noriddle so dark but shall find an OEdipus to solve it--I may possiblybe able to discover whether the bewilderment under which I have beenlabouring for the last three days be the result of natural causes, likethe delusions recorded in Dr. Brewster's book, or whether there be inthis little south of England county of ours, year 1836, a revival ofthe old science of Gramarye, the glamour art, which, according to thatveracious minstrel, Sir Walter Scott, was exercised with such singularsuccess in the sixteenth century by the Ladye of Branksome upon the goodknight, William of Deloraine, and others his peers. In short, I want toknow---- But the best way to make my readers understand my story, willbe to begin at the beginning. 

I am a wretched visitor. There is not a person in all Berkshire who hasso often occasion to appeal to the indulgence of her acquaintanceto pardon her sins of omission upon this score. I cannot tell how ithappens; nobody likes society better when in it, or is more delighted tosee her friends; but it is almost as easy to pull a tree of my age andsize up by the roots, as it is to dislodge me in summer from my flowerygarden, or in the winter from my sunny parlour, for the purpose ofaccepting a dinner invitation, or making a morning call. Perhaps thegreat accumulation of my debts in this way, the very despair of everpaying them all, may be one reason (as is often the case, I believe, inpecuniary obligations) why I so seldom pay any; then, whether I do muchor not, I have generally plenty to do; then again, I so dearly love todo nothing; then, summer or winter, the weather is commonly too coldfor an open carriage, and I am eminently a catch-cold person; so thatbetween wind and rain, business and idleness, no lady in the county withso many places that she ought to go to, goes to so few: and yet it wasfrom the extraordinary event of my happening to leave home three daysfollowing, that my present mystification took its rise. Thus the casestands. 

Last Thursday morning, being the 23rd day of this present month ofJune, I received a note from my kind friend and neighbour, Mrs. Dunbar, requesting very earnestly that my father and myself would dine thatevening at the Hall, apologising for the short notice, as arising outof the unexpected arrival of a guest from London, and the equallyunexpected absence of the General, which threw her (she was pleased tosay) upon our kindness to assist in entertaining her visitor. At seveno'clock, accordingly, we repaired to General Dunbar's, and foundour hostess surrounded by her fine boys and girls, conversing with agentleman, whom she immediately introduced to us as Mr. Thompson. 

Mr. Thompson was a gentleman of about----

Pshaw! nothing is so unpolite as to go guessing how many years a man mayhave lived in this most excellent world, especially when it is perfectlyclear, from his dress and demeanour, that the register of his birthis the last document relating to himself which he would care to seeproduced. 

Mr. Thompson, then, was a gentleman of no particular age; not quite soyoung as he had been, but still in very tolerable preservation, beingpretty exactly that which is understood by the phrase an old beau. He was of middle size and middle height, with a slight stoop in theshoulders; a skin of the true London complexion, between brown andyellow, and slightly wrinkled: eyes of no very distinct colour; a nosewhich, belonging to none of the recognised classes of that many-namedfeature, may fairly be called anonymous; and a mouth, whose habitualmechanical smile (a smile which, by the way, conveyed no impressioneither of gaiety or of sweetness) displayed a set of teeth which didgreat honour to his dentist. His whiskers and his wig were a capitalmatch as to colour; and altogether it was a head calculated to convey avery favourable impression of the different artists employed in gettingit up. 

His dress was equally creditable to his tailor and his valet, "ratherrich than gaudy, " (as Miss Byron said of Sir Charles Grandison, ) exceptin the grand article of the waistcoat, a brocade brodé of resplendentlustre, which combined both qualities. His shoes were bright with thenew French blacking, and his jewellery, rings, studs, brooches, andchains (for he wore two, that belonging to his watch, and one from whichdepended a pair of spectacles, folded so as to resemble an eye-glass, )were of the finest material and the latest fashion. 

In short, our new acquaintance was an old beau. He was not, however, that which an old beau so frequently is, an old bachelor. On thecontrary, he spoke of Mrs. Thompson and her parties, and her box at theopera (he did not say on what tier) with some unction, and mentionedwith considerable pride a certain Mr. Browne, who had lately married hiseldest daughter; Browne, be it observed, with an _e_, as his name (I beghis pardon for having misspelt it) was Thomson without the _p_; therebeing I know not what of dignity in the absence of the consonant, andthe presence of the vowel, though mute. We soon found that both he andMr. Browne lent these illustrious names to half a score of clubs, fromthe Athenaeum downward. We also gathered from his conversation that heresided somewhere in Gloucester Place or Devonshire Place, in WimpoleStreet or Harley Street, (I could not quite make out in which of thoserespectable double rows of houses his domicile was situate, ) and that hecontemplated with considerable jealousy the manner in which the tideof fashion had set in to the south-west, rolling its changeful currentround the splendid mansions of Belgrave Square, and threatening to leavethis once distinguished quartier as bare and open to the jesters ofthe silver-fork school as the ignoble precincts of Bloomsbury. It was astrange mixture of feeling. He was evidently upon the point of becomingashamed of a neighbourhood of which he had once been not a little proud. He spoke slightingly of the Regent's Park, and eschewed as much aspossible all mention of the Diorama and the Zoological, and yet seemedpleased and flattered, and to take it as a sort of personal compliment, when Mrs. Dunbar professed her fidelity to the scene of her youthfulgaiety, Cavendish Square and its environs. 

He had been, it seemed, an old friend of the General's, and had coinedown partly to see him, and partly for the purpose of a day's fishing, although, by some mistake in the wording of his letter, his host, whodid not expect him until the next week, happened to be absent. This, however, had troubled him little. He saw the General often enough intown. Angling was his first object in the country; and as the fine pieceof water in the park (famous for its enormous pike) remained _in statuquo_, and Edward Dunbar was ready to accompany and assist him, he hadtalked the night before of nothing but his flies and his rods, andboasted, in speaking of Ireland, the classic land of modern fishermen, of what he meant to do, and what he had done--of salmon caught in thewilds of Connemara, and trout drawn out amid the beauties of Killarney. Fishing exploits, past and future, formed the only theme of hisconversation during his first evening at the Hall. On that which wespent in his company, nothing could be farther from his inclination thanany allusion, however remote, to his beloved sport, He had been out inthe morning, and we at last extorted from Edward Dunbar, upon a promisenot to hint at the story until the hero of the adventure should befairly off, that, after trying with exemplary patience all parts of themere for several hours without so much as a nibble, a huge pike, asMr. Thompson asserted, or, as Edward suspected, the root of a tree, hadcaught fast hold of the hook. If pike it were, the fish had the best ofthe battle, for, in a mighty jerk on one side or the other (the famousDublin tackle maintaining its reputation, and holding as firm as thecordage of a man-of-war, ) the unlucky angler had been fairly pulled intothe water, and soused over head and ears. How his valet contrived toreinstate his coëffure, unless, indeed, he travelled with a changeof wigs, is one of those mysteries of an old beau's toilet which passfemale comprehension. 

Of course there was no further mention of angling. Our new acquaintancehad quite subjects enough without touching upon that. In eating, forinstance, he might fairly be called learned. Mrs. Dunbar's cuisinewas excellent, and he not only praised the different dishes in a mostscientific and edifying manner, but volunteered a recipe for certainlittle mutton pies, the fashion of the season. In drinking he wasequally at home. Edward had produced his father's choicest hermitage andlachryma, and he seemed to me to know literally by heart all the mostcelebrated vintages, and to have made pilgrimages to the most famousvineyards all over Europe. He talked to Helen Dunbar, a musicalyoung lady, of Grisi and Malibran; to her sister Caroline, a literaryenthusiast, of the poems of the year, "Ion, " and "Paracelsus;" tome he spoke of geraniums; and to my father of politics--contriving toconciliate both parties, (for there were Whigs and Tories in the room, )by dubbing himself a liberal Conservative. In short, he played his partof Man of the World perfectly to his own satisfaction, and would havepassed with the whole family for the very model of all London visitors, had he not unfortunately nodded over certain verses which he hadflattered Miss Caroline into producing, and fallen fast asleep duringher sister's cavatina; and if his conversation, however easy and smooth, had not been felt to be upon the whole rather vapid and prosy. "Justexactly, " said young Edward Dunbar, who, in the migration transitbetween Eton, which he had left at Easter, and Oxford, which he wasto enter at Michaelmas, was plentifully imbued with the aristocraticprejudices common to each of those venerable seats of learning "justexactly what in the fitness of things the talk of a Mr. Thompson oughtto be. "

The next afternoon I happened to be engaged to the Lady Margaret Gore, another pleasant neighbour, to drink tea; a convenient fashion, whichsaves time and trouble, and is much followed in these parts during thesummer months. A little after eight I made my appearance in her saloon, which, contrary to her usual polite attention, I found empty. In thecourse of a few minutes she entered, and apologised for her momentaryabsence, as having been caused by a London gentleman on a visit at thehouse, who arriving the evening before, had spent all that morning atthe side of Loddon fishing, (where, by the way, observed her ladyship, he had caught nothing, ) and had kept them waiting dinner. "He is avery old friend of ours, " added Lady Margaret; "Mr. Thompson, of HarleyStreet, whose daughter lately married Mr. Browne of Gloucester Place, "and, with the word, entered Mr. Thompson in his own proper person. 

Was it or was it not the Mr. Thompson of the day before? Yes! no!----No! yes! It would have been, only that it could not be. The alibi wastoo clearly proved: Lady Margaret had spent the preceding evening with_her_ Mr. Thompson in one place, and I myself with _my_ Mr. Thompsonin another. Different they must be, but oh, how alike! I am tooshort-sighted to be cognizant of each separate feature. But there itwas, the same common height and common size, and common physiognomy, wigged, whiskered, and perfumed to a hair! The self-same sobermagnificence of dress, the same cut and colour of coat, the samewaistcoat of brocade brodé--of a surety they must have employed oneidentical tailor, and one measure had served for both! Chains, studs, brooches, rings--even the eye-glass spectacles were there. Had he (thishe) stolen them? Or did the Thompsons use them alternately, upon theprinciple of ride and tie?

In conversation the similarity was even more striking--safe, civil, prosy, dosy, and yet not without a certain small pretension. The Mr. Thompson of Friday talked as his predecessor of Thursday had done, ofMalibran and Grisi, "Paracelsus" and "Ion, " politics and geraniums. Healluded to a recipe (doubtless the famous recipe for mutton pies) whichhe had promised to write out for the benefit of the housekeeper, andwould beyond all question have dosed over one young lady's verses, andfallen asleep to another's singing, if there had happened to be suchnarcotics as music and poetry in dear Lady Margaret's drawing-room. Mindand body, the two Mr. Thompsons were as alike as two peas, as two dropsof water, as two Emperor-of-Morocco butterflies, as two death's-headmoths. Could they have been twin brothers, like the Dromios of the olddrama? or was the vicinity of the Regent's Park peopled with Cockneyanglers--Thompsons whose daughters had married Brownes?

The resemblance haunted me all night. I dreamt of Brownes and Thompsons, and to freshen my fancy and sweep away the shapes by which I was beset, I resolved to take a drive. Accordingly, I ordered my little phaeton, and, perplexed and silent, bent my way to call upon my fair friend, Miss Mortimer. Arriving at Queen's-bridge Cottage, I was met in therose-covered porch by the fair Frances. "Come this way, if you please, "said she, advancing towards the dining-room; "we are late at luncheonto-day. My friend, Mrs. Browne, and her father, Mr. Thompson, our oldneighbours when we lived in Welbeck Street, have been here for this weekpast, and he is so fond of fishing that he will scarcely leave the rivereven to take his meals, although for aught I can hear he never gets somuch as a bite. "

As she ceased to speak, we entered: and another Mr. Thompson--another, yet the same, stood before me. It was not yet four o'clock in theday, therefore of course the dress-coat and the brocade waistcoat werewanting; but there was the man himself, Thompson the third, wigged, whiskered, and eye-glassed, just as Thompson the first might havetumbled into the water at General Dunbar's, or Thompson the second havestood waiting for a nibble at Lady Margaret's. There he sat evidentlypreparing to do the agreeable, to talk of music and of poetry, of Grisiand Malibran, of "Ion" and "Paracelsus, " to profess himself a liberalConservative, to give recipes for pates, and to fall asleep overalbums. It was quite clear that he was about to make this display ofhis conversational abilities; but I could not stand it. Nervous andmystified as the poor Frenchman in the memorable story of "MonsieurTonson, " I instinctively followed his example, and fairly fled thefield.