my father to get me an Indian Writership—as also that previously I had once hopes of the Registrarship from Lord John Russell, afterwards given to Mr. Lyster. The letter proves how much my no-speech hindered both my good father's efforts and my own;—and explains itself. In those days it cost 9d. between Albury and London.
My Dearest Father—I can fully, though not perhaps so fully as you can, enter into your great anxieties about your five great boys, and actuated by this sympathy I sit down to say a word more about India.—I do hope you have not yet given Lady Spencer a decisive answer, as the horizon seems a little to clear of its indigenous hurricanes. Since my last letter to you I have, I can truly say, made every effort to speak like a man, but, alas I too unsuccessfully: my tongue seems only able to say veto to the Church, and that speaking is a necessary qualification "needs no demonstration." Aunt Fanny has strongly recommended me to think more seriously about it, and Mr. M'Neile has also given me his valuable opinion on the subject, that at least I must inquire what I am more fitted for, and not lightly put aside those opportunities which Providence places in my way. However, I would by no means be hurried in my choice either way: I must inquire what is the office of a writer; whether oratorical powers be not requisite, &c., for as yet I have a very vague and indefinite idea of what I reject or choose. I really do find my impediment most truly a grievous impediment to what appears more desirable; but I would wish to consider this, as every other constitutional infirmity or affliction, as but an instrument in the hands of God to subserve some wise purpose. Let this letter therefore, if you please, serve as a preventive, if not too late, to your final decision about it, and put me, my dear father, in possession of more of the peculiar features, in a writer's employment if you can, I hope to be with you on Friday.
Till then, and ever believe me, my dear father, your affectionate son,
M. F. Tupper.
Albury, December 28th, Wednesday.
The day after I took my degree as a barrister, I married my cousin after a nine years' engagement; my father having resolved I should not marry without a profession. I did my best at this vocation of the law much against the grain, and actually achieved, with Lewin's help, a voluminous will, and a marriage settlement, with some accessory deeds, procured for me by my mother's friend Mr. Hunt, through one Dangerfield, a solicitor. I have often felt anxious to know how far my conveyancing held water; but the thought of Lewin's skill has comforted me—and besides I have never heard a word about it now for half a century. My fee for all was fifty guineas—pretty well for a first and last exploit in the way of law and its rewards.
As I am just leaving my father's house for Park Village, and thereafter Albury, here I will insert two little memories of past days when I lived with my parents at No. 5. Here is one. Theodore Hook's famous Berners Street hoax had lately made such exploits very catching among schoolboys—and in my Charterhouse days it was repeated by "Punsonby & Co." at my father's town-house. On a certain Saturday when I had my weekly holiday at home, I marvelled to find the street crowded with vans, coal-carts, trucks, a mourning coach, fishmongers, butchers, and confectioners with trays, and a number of servants wanting places. All these were crowding round No. 5, as ordered or advertised for by Mr. Tupper: of course soon explained away, and rejected, to a general indignation at the hoaxers. Now, as I had my suspicions, I sat unseen at the front drawing-room window, and watched: and as more than once I had noticed P. and his friends pass down the street on the opposite side, I taxed them with their exploit on the Monday; and I rather think it cost them not a trifling sum to satisfy that crowd of disappointed tradesmen. Happily such practical joking is now long since (or ought to be) a social outrage of the past; Hook's being first had the grace of original humour—but imitations are dull repetition, not to be excused. I only once met Theodore Hook, and that was in his decadence; he looked puffy and only semi-sober; but I recollect with how much deference and expectation the "livener-up" was eagerly surrounded, and how sillily the dupes laughed at every word he uttered, whether humorous or not.
For another last memory of No. 5, in the dining-room whereof Lord Sandwich, who had once lived there, is said to have invented "sandwiches," I will record this.
In those days of long ago, how well I remember our next-door neighbour, old Lady Cork, "The Dowager-Countess of Cork and Orrery," as her door-plate proclaimed, some of whose peculiarities I may mention without offence, as they were notorious and (the physicians judged) innocent and venial. Whenever she found herself alone (and she kept profuse hospitality three or four days a week, with her vast illuminated conservatory full of artificial flowers and grapes and oranges tied on everything), when those famous routs were silent, and dance music no longer kept us awake at night, the little old lady would send in a message, asking "neighbour Tupper to give her a dinner to-day"—sometimes even coming unannounced. She usually appeared all in white, even to her shoes and bonnet, which latter she would keep on the whole evening; the only colour about her being rouged cheeks, sometimes decorated with a piece of white paper cut into the shape of a heart, and stuck on "to charm away the tic." Well, her ladyship was always full of society anecdotes; and I only wish that her diary may soon be published, as probably a more spicy record of past celebrities than even Pepys's in old times, or Greville's in our own; but she is said to have left instructions to her executors not to publish till every one mentioned by her was dead: so we must wait till that tontine is over. But the specialty of the aged countess, who died at past ninety but never owned to more than sixty, was a propensity to annex small properties; always it happened that next morning after a visit either her butler or her lady's-maid would bring to us a spoon or a fork or a piece of bric-à-brac which she had carried off with her in seeming unconsciousness; and as she never inquired for them afterwards, possibly it was so. Let doctors decide. Requiescat. The forthcoming memoirs of that once famous and lovely Miss Monckton will be interesting indeed, if not over-edited.
CHAPTER VI.
STAMMERING AND CHESS.
One of the apparent calamities of my life (overruled, as I have long since seen, for good) was the before-mentioned affliction of a very bad impediment of speech, which blighted my youth and manhood from fifteen to thirty-five, obliging me to social humiliations of many kinds, to silence in class and on examination occasions (hence my written poetries in lieu of spoken prose), and in early manhood preventing me from taking orders, and thereafter from speaking in the law courts. But I was hopelessly and practically a dumb man, except under special excitations, when I could burst into eloquent speech which surprised third persons more than myself; for when quite alone I could spout like Demosthenes; it was only nervous fear that paralysed my tongue. Accordingly, my good father placed me from time to time with well-meaning and well-paid pretenders to make a perfect cure of my affliction, and I did many things and suffered much from such false physicians. I am sure no one can truly say what I can, viz., that in a purposely monotonous note and syllable by syllable, with a crutch under my chin, and a sort of gag on the rebellious tongue, I have read all through in a loud voice Milton's whole Paradise Lost and Regained, and the most of Cowper's poems! That was the sort of tongue-drill and nerve-quieting recommended and enforced for many hours a day, through weary months, by a certain Mr. C., while Dr. P., his successor to the well-named "patient," gave, first, emulcents, and then styptics, and was fortunately prevented in time by my father from some surgical experiments on the muscles of lip and tongue. However, nobody could cure me, until I cured myself; rather, let me gratefully and humbly confess, until God answered constant prayer, and granted stronger bodily health, and gave me good success in my literary life, and made me to feel I was equal in speech, as now, to the most fluent of my fellows. So let any stammerer (and there are many such) take comfort from my cure, and pray against the trouble as I did, and courageously stand up against the multitude to claim before heaven and earth man's proudest prerogative—the privilege of speech. In my Proverbial Essay "Of Speaking" will be found two contrasted pictures drawn from my
