The Adventures of Harry Richmond — Volume 3Meredith, George
General
The Adventures of Harry Richmond — Volume 3
Meredith, George
Adventure and adventurers -- Fiction
'Miss Penrhys retires to her native Wales; Jorian and I on to London, to
the Continent. Plinlimmon guard us all! I send you our local
newspapers. That I cut entrechats is false. It happens to be a thing I
could do, and not an Englishman in England except myself; only I did not
do it. I did appear in what I was educated to believe was the evening
suit of a gentleman, and I cannot perceive the immodesty of showing my
leg. A dress that is not indecent, and is becoming to me, and is the
dress of my fathers, I wear, and I impose it on the generation of my sex.
However, I dined Hickson of the Fourth Estate (Jorian considers him
hungry enough to eat up his twentieth before he dies--I forget the
wording of the mot), that he might know I was without rancour in the end,
as originally I had been without any intention of purchasing his
allegiance. He offered me his columns; he wished me luck with the
heiress; by his Gods, he swore he worshipped entrechats, and held a silk
leg the most admirable work of the manufactures. "Sir, you're a
gentleman," says he; "you're a nobleman, sir; you 're a prince, you 're a
star of the first magnitude." Cries Jorian, "Retract that, scum! you
see nothing large but what you dare to think neighbours you," and
quarrels the inebriate dog. And this is the maker and destroyer of
reputations in his day! I study Hickson as a miraculous engine of the
very simplest contrivance; he is himself the epitome of a verdict on his
period. Next day he disclaimed in his opposition penny sheet the report
of the entrechats, and "the spectators laughing consumedly," and sent me
(as I had requested him to do) the names of his daughters, to whom I
transmit little comforting presents, for if they are nice children such a
parent must afflict them.
'Cultivate Lady Wilts. You have made an impression. She puts you
forward as a good specimen of our young men. 'Hem! madam.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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