Whilst the widow talks on in this strain to her sympathising friends,
her son and Rowland Prothero are in another small room of the house,
engaged in a very different style of conversation. The room in which
they are is worth a few words of description, not for any beauty or
desert of its own, but for its heterogeneous, contents. You would think
a small music warehouse, a miniature tobacco shop, or branch depot of
foreign grammars and dictionaries were before you. Every kind of musical
instrument seems to have met with a companion in this tiny apartment.
Here are a violin, violoncello, horn, and cornopean; there an old Welsh
harp and unstrung guitar. On this shelf are pipes of all sorts and
sizes, forms, and nations--the straight English, the short German, and
the long Turkish; on that are cigar-boxes, snuff-boxes, and
tobacco-boxes of various kinds and appearances. Scattered about the room
are play-books without number, from Shakspeare to the dramatists of the
present day; and, interspersed with these, collections of songs of all
countries and of all grades of merit. Some few novels, mostly French,
live with the plays and songs; and Latin, French, German, Italian,
Welsh, Spanish, and English grammars and dictionaries take up their
abode in every available corner. A quantity of fishing tackle and a gun
are thrown upon the window seat, and an embroidered waistcoat, blue
satin cravat, and a pair of yellow kid gloves lie on an unoccupied
chair.
From the general appearance of this room, the imagination would conceive
great things of its inmate. All we shall here say is that he is one who
has the reputation of being a natural genius, and firmly believes that
he is one.
As all natural geniuses are supposed to have something very remarkable
in their appearance, we will just take a sketch of the miser's son, as
he alternately leans on the table or stalks about the room during his
earnest conversation with his cousin. He has decidedly sentimental hair;
long, black, shining, and with a tendency to curl; he has what might be
termed poetical eyes, bright, piercing, and very restless; the sharp,
aquiline nose of his father, slightly modified; and a mouth and brow
which curl and knit in a manner that may be poetic, but might be
disagreeable, under less soothing influences. That he is very handsome
no one could dispute, and it is equally certain that he has an air much
above the position in which he was born; but the expression of his face
inspires distrust rather than confidence, and conveys the impression
that there is more of passion than feeling beneath the fiery eyes and
compressed mouth.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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