The London Visitor | Page 2

be called anonymous; and a mouth, whose habitual
mechanical smile (a smile which, by the way, conveyed no impression
either of gaiety or of sweetness) displayed a set of teeth which did great
honour to his dentist. His whiskers and his wig were a capital match as
to colour; and altogether it was a head calculated to convey a very
favourable impression of the different artists employed in getting it up.
His dress was equally creditable to his tailor and his valet, "rather rich
than gaudy," (as Miss Byron said of Sir Charles Grandison,) except in
the grand article of the waistcoat, a brocade brodé of resplendent lustre,
which combined both qualities. His shoes were bright with the new
French blacking, and his jewellery, rings, studs, brooches, and chains
(for he wore two, that belonging to his watch, and one from which

depended a pair of spectacles, folded so as to resemble an eye-glass,)
were of the finest material and the latest fashion.
In short, our new acquaintance was an old beau. He was not, however,
that which an old beau so frequently is, an old bachelor. On the
contrary, he spoke of Mrs. Thompson and her parties, and her box at
the opera (he did not say on what tier) with some unction, and
mentioned with considerable pride a certain Mr. Browne, who had
lately married his eldest daughter; Browne, be it observed, with an e, as
his name (I beg his pardon for having misspelt it) was Thomson
without the p; there being I know not what of dignity in the absence of
the consonant, and the presence of the vowel, though mute. We soon
found that both he and Mr. Browne lent these illustrious names to half a
score of clubs, from the Athenaeum downward. We also gathered from
his conversation that he resided somewhere in Gloucester Place or
Devonshire Place, in Wimpole Street or Harley Street, (I could not
quite make out in which of those respectable double rows of houses his
domicile was situate,) and that he contemplated with considerable
jealousy the manner in which the tide of fashion had set in to the
south-west, rolling its changeful current round the splendid mansions of
Belgrave Square, and threatening to leave this once distinguished
quartier as bare and open to the jesters of the silver-fork school as the
ignoble precincts of Bloomsbury. It was a strange mixture of feeling.
He was evidently upon the point of becoming ashamed of a
neighbourhood of which he had once been not a little proud. He spoke
slightingly of the Regent's Park, and eschewed as much as possible all
mention of the Diorama and the Zoological, and yet seemed pleased
and flattered, and to take it as a sort of personal compliment, when Mrs.
Dunbar professed her fidelity to the scene of her youthful gaiety,
Cavendish Square and its environs.
He had been, it seemed, an old friend of the General's, and had coine
down partly to see him, and partly for the purpose of a day's fishing,
although, by some mistake in the wording of his letter, his host, who
did not expect him until the next week, happened to be absent. This,
however, had troubled him little. He saw the General often enough in
town. Angling was his first object in the country; and as the fine piece

of water in the park (famous for its enormous pike) remained in statu
quo, and Edward Dunbar was ready to accompany and assist him, he
had talked the night before of nothing but his flies and his rods, and
boasted, in speaking of Ireland, the classic land of modern fishermen,
of what he meant to do, and what he had done--of salmon caught in the
wilds of Connemara, and trout drawn out amid the beauties of
Killarney. Fishing exploits, past and future, formed the only theme of
his conversation during his first evening at the Hall. On that which we
spent in his company, nothing could be farther from his inclination than
any allusion, however remote, to his beloved sport, He had been out in
the morning, and we at last extorted from Edward Dunbar, upon a
promise not to hint at the story until the hero of the adventure should be
fairly off, that, after trying with exemplary patience all parts of the
mere for several hours without so much as a nibble, a huge pike, as Mr.
Thompson asserted, or, as Edward suspected, the root of a tree, had
caught fast hold of the hook. If pike it were, the fish had the best of the
battle, for, in a mighty jerk on one side or the other (the famous Dublin
tackle maintaining its reputation, and holding as firm as the cordage of
a man-of-war,) the unlucky angler had been