Page:Satire in the Victorian novel (IA satireinvictoria00russrich).pdf/162



a delicate case, a turnip-field and a piece of carrots alternately, and let him eat as many as he likes. There an't better land in the county than this perwerse lad grazed on, and yet he goes and catches cold and indigestion and what not, and then his friends brings a lawsuit against me!"

The Professor of Deportment, not subject to these sordid contacts, inhales a more rarified atmosphere, and recognizes the value of a succes d'estime, sufficient to compensate for neglect on the part of a stupid public.

"It may not be for me to say that I have been called, for some years now, Gentleman Turveydrop; or that His Royal Highness, the Prince Regent, did me the honour to inquire, on my removing my hat as he drove out of the Pavilion at Brighton (that fine building), 'Who is he? Who the devil is he? Why don't I know him? Why hasn't he thirty thousand a year?' But these are little matters of anecdote—the general property, ma'am,—still repeated, occasionally, among the upper classes."

The contributions of the ladies seem to be along psychological rather than social or sociological lines. Mrs. Nickleby is plaintively aware of the thistle-ball nature of the masculine mind, fixed by no friendly star, though the star was not wanting. She discerns on the part of her son a certain inattentiveness to her remarks.

"But that was always the way with your poor dear papa,—just his way—always wandering, never able to fix his thoughts on any one subject for two minutes together. I think I see him now! * * * looking at me while I was talking to him about his affairs, just as if his ideas were in a state of perfect conglomeration! Anybody who had come in upon us suddenly would have supposed I was confusing and distracting him instead of making things plainer; upon my word they would."