Boys and Girls from ThackeraySweetser, Kate Dickinson
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Boys and Girls from Thackeray
Sweetser, Kate Dickinson
Thackeray, William Makepeace, 1811-1863 -- Characters
Thus wrote Clive from Bonn, and now that the old Countess and Barnes were
away, the barrier between Clive and this family was withdrawn. The young
folks who loved him were free to see him as often as he would come. They
were going to Baden: would he come, too? He was glad enough to go with
them, and to travel in the orbit of such a lovely girl as Ethel Newcome,
whose beauty made all the passengers on all the steamers look round and
admire. The journey was all sunshine and pleasure and novelty; and I like
to think of the pretty girl and the gallant young fellow enjoying this
holiday. Few sights are more pleasant than to watch a happy, manly
English youth, freehanded and generous-hearted, content and good-humour
shining in his honest face, pleased and pleasing, eager, active, and
thankful for services, and exercising bravely his noble youthful
privilege to be happy and to enjoy. As for J. J., he, too, had his share
of enjoyment. Clive was still his hero as ever, his patron, his splendid
young prince and chieftain. Who was so brave, who was so handsome,
generous, witty as Clive? To hear Clive sing, as the lad would whilst
they were seated at their work, or driving along on this happy journey,
through fair landscapes in the sunshine, gave J. J. the keenest pleasure;
his wit was a little slow, but he would laugh with his eyes at Clive's
sallies, or ponder over them and explode with laughter presently, giving
a new source of amusement to these merry travellers, and little Alfred
would laugh at J.J.'s laughing; and so, with a hundred harmless jokes to
enliven, and the ever-changing, ever-charming smiles of Nature to cheer
and accompany it, the happy day's journey would come to an end.
So they travelled by the accustomed route to the prettiest town of all
places where Pleasure has set up her tents, and there enjoyed themselves
to the fullest extent.
Among Colonel Newcome's papers to which the family biographer has had
access, there are a couple of letters from Clive, dated Baden this time,
and full of happiness, gaiety, and affection. Letter No. 1 says: "Ethel
is the prettiest girl here. At the Assemblies all the princes, counts,
dukes, etc., are dying to dance with her. She sends her dearest love to
her uncle." By the side of the words "Prettiest girl" are written in a
frank female hand the monosyllable "_stuff_"; and as a note to the
expression "dearest love," with a star to mark the text and the note, are
squeezed in the same feminine characters at the bottom of Clive's page
the words "_that I do_. E. N."
In letter No. 2, Clive, after giving amusing details of life at Baden and
the company whom he met there, concludes with this: "Ethel is looking
over my shoulder. She thinks me such a delightful creature that she is
never easy without me. She bids me to say that I am the best of sons and
cousins, and am, in a word, a darling du--" The rest of this important
word is not given, but "_goose_" is added in the female hand.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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