Sketches by Boz, Illustrative of Every-Day Life and Every-Day PeopleDickens, Charles
General
Sketches by Boz, Illustrative of Every-Day Life and Every-Day People
Dickens, Charles
London (England) -- Social life and customs -- 19th century; London (England) -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction
That smart-looking fellow in the black coat with velvet facings and
cuffs, who wears his _D’Orsay_ hat so rakishly, is ‘Honest Tom,’ a
metropolitan representative; and the large man in the cloak with the
white lining—not the man by the pillar; the other with the light hair
hanging over his coat collar behind—is his colleague. The quiet
gentlemanly-looking man in the blue surtout, gray trousers, white
neckerchief and gloves, whose closely-buttoned coat displays his manly
figure and broad chest to great advantage, is a very well-known
character. He has fought a great many battles in his time, and
conquered like the heroes of old, with no other arms than those the
gods gave him. The old hard-featured man who is standing near him, is
really a good specimen of a class of men, now nearly extinct. He is a
county Member, and has been from time whereof the memory of man is not
to the contrary. Look at his loose, wide, brown coat, with capacious
pockets on each side; the knee-breeches and boots, the immensely long
waistcoat, and silver watch-chain dangling below it, the wide-brimmed
brown hat, and the white handkerchief tied in a great bow, with
straggling ends sticking out beyond his shirt-frill. It is a costume
one seldom sees nowadays, and when the few who wear it have died off,
it will be quite extinct. He can tell you long stories of Fox, Pitt,
Sheridan, and Canning, and how much better the House was managed in
those times, when they used to get up at eight or nine o’clock, except
on regular field-days, of which everybody was apprised beforehand. He
has a great contempt for all young Members of Parliament, and thinks it
quite impossible that a man can say anything worth hearing, unless he
has sat in the House for fifteen years at least, without saying
anything at all. He is of opinion that ‘that young Macaulay’ was a
regular impostor; he allows, that Lord Stanley may do something one of
these days, but ‘he’s too young, sir—too young.’ He is an excellent
authority on points of precedent, and when he grows talkative, after
his wine, will tell you how Sir Somebody Something, when he was
whipper-in for the Government, brought four men out of their beds to
vote in the majority, three of whom died on their way home again; how
the House once divided on the question, that fresh candles be now
brought in; how the Speaker was once upon a time left in the chair by
accident, at the conclusion of business, and was obliged to sit in the
House by himself for three hours, till some Member could be knocked up
and brought back again, to move the adjournment; and a great many other
anecdotes of a similar description.
There he stands, leaning on his stick; looking at the throng of
Exquisites around him with most profound contempt; and conjuring up,
before his mind’s eye, the scenes he beheld in the old House, in days
gone by, when his own feelings were fresher and brighter, and when, as
he imagines, wit, talent, and patriotism flourished more brightly too.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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