Mr. Joseph Hanson, The Haberdasher | Page 4

jars
in a chemist's window as ever was Miss Edgeworth's Rosamond,) and
an eminent china warehouse on the other; our tinman having the

honour to be next-door neighbour to no less a lady than Mrs.
Philadelphia Tyler. Many a thriving tradesman might be found in Oriel
Street, and many a blooming damsel amongst the tradesmen's daughters;
but if the town gossip might be believed, the richest of all the rich
shopkeepers was old John Parsons, and the prettiest girl (even without
reference to her father's moneybags) was his fair daughter Harriet.
John Parsons was one of those loud, violent, blustering, boisterous
personages who always put me in mind of the description so often
appended to characters of that sort in the dramatis personæ of
Beaumont and Fletcher's plays, where one constantly meets with
Ernulpho or Bertoldo, or some such Italianised appellation, "an old
angry gentleman." The "old angry gentleman" of the fine old dramatists
generally keeps the promise of the play-bill. He storms and rails during
the whole five acts, scolding those the most whom he loves the best,
making all around him uncomfortable, and yet meaning fully to do
right, and firmly convinced that he is himself the injured party; and
after quarrelling with cause or without to the end of the comedy, makes
friends all round at the conclusion;--a sort of person whose good
intentions everybody appreciates, but from whose violence everybody
that can is sure to get away.
Now such men are just as common in the real workaday world as in the
old drama; and precisely such a man was John Parsons.
His daughter was exactly the sort of creature that such training was
calculated to produce; gentle, timid, shrinking, fond of her father, who
indeed doated upon her, and would have sacrificed his whole substance,
his right arm, his life, anything except his will or his humour, to give
her a moment's pleasure; gratefully fond of her father, but yet more
afraid than fond.
The youngest and only surviving child of a large family, and brought
up without a mother's care, since Mrs. Parsons had died in her infancy,
there was a delicacy and fragility, a slenderness of form and
transparency of complexion, which, added to her gentleness and
modesty, gave an unexpected elegance to the tinman's daughter. A soft
appealing voice, dove-like eyes, a smile rather sweet than gay, a

constant desire to please, and a total unconsciousness of her own
attractions, were amongst her chief characteristics. Some persons hold
the theory that dissimilarity answers best in matrimony, and such
persons would have found a most satisfactory contrast of appearance,
mind, and manner, between the fair Harriet and her dashing suitor.
Besides his one great and distinguishing quality of assurance and
vulgar pretension, which it is difficult to describe, by any word short of
impudence, Mr. Joseph Hanson was by no means calculated to please
the eye of a damsel of seventeen, an age at which a man who owned to
five-and-thirty, and who looked and most probably was at least ten
years farther advanced on the journey of life, would not fail to be set
down as a confirmed old bachelor. He had, too, a large mouth, full of
large irregular teeth, a head of hair which bore a great resemblance to a
wig, and a suspicion of a squint, (for it did not quite amount to that
odious deformity,) which added a most sinister expression to his
countenance. Harriet Parsons could not abide him; and I verily believe
she would have disliked him just as much though a certain Frederick
Mallet had never been in existence.
How her father, a dissenter, a radical, and a steady tradesman of the old
school, who hated puffs and puffery, and finery and fashion, came to be
taken in by a man opposed to him in religion and politics, in action and
in speech, was a riddle that puzzled half the gossips in Belford. It
happened through a mutual enmity, often (to tell an unpalatable truth of
poor human nature) a stronger bond of union than a mutual affection.
Thus it fell out.
Amongst the reforms carried into effect by the town-council, whereof
John Parsons was a leading member, was the establishment of an
efficient new police to replace the incapable old watchmen, who had
hitherto been the sole guardians of life and property in our ancient
borough. As far as the principle went, the liberal party were united and
triumphant, They split, as liberals are apt to split, upon the rock of
detail. It so happened that a turnpike, belonging to one of the roads
leading into Belford, had been removed, by order of the commissioners,
half a mile farther from the town;--half a mile indeed beyond the town

boundary; and although there were only three houses, one