Beside my native stream I rove:
When the gray sea of fading light
Ebbs gradual down the western height,
I softly trace my native grove.
When forth at morn the heifers go,
And fill the fields with plaintive low,

Re-echoed by their young confined;
When sunbeams wake the slumbering breeze
And light the dew-drops on the trees,
Beside the stream I lie reclined,

And view the water-spiders glide
Along the smooth and level tide,

Which, printless, yields not as they pass;
While still their slender frisky feet
Scarce seen with tiny step to meet

The surface blue and clear as glass.

I love the rivulet's stilly chime

That marks the ceaseless lapse of time,
And seems in Fancy's ear to say-

an assassin; but, lest you should imagine that some dark and terrible mystery environed his being, I may as well tell you briefly and frankly who as well as what he was. He was just a shrewd pushing young man of the nineteenth century (seventh decade), who had made his way, and meant to go a great deal farther if he could. Perhaps his Christian name was Samuel, with or without the Surbiton following or preceding. His father's name had been certainly Mellor-at least he was under that designation declared a bankrupt, under that designation and as a coal merchant, in the year 1836. He never paid any dividend, never got his certificate, and taking to drinking, died. Exit Mellor senior. His widow struggled through a dubious existence in a lodging-house in Salisbury Street, Strand; and when she quitted this vale of tears, poor soul, she had nothing to leave her children—a boy and a girl, aged respectively twenty-two and eighteen-save the fag-end of a lease, and a thin remnant of remarkable ramshackle furniture. The boy Surbiton had been for some time earning a meagre living in the counting-houses of divers city firms. The girl-I think her name was Rosa-"went out" as an assistant in a linen-draper's shop in Regent Street; then she went to keep the books at an hotel in Liverpool; then she married a red-faced gentleman who travelled in hemp, hogs' bristles, or sponges, or ever-pointed pencils, or something in that line; and then she and her husband emigrated to Australia, and drifted down the great stream of oblivion.

[George Augustus Sala, born in London 1827. His Such breakings-up of families among the

father was a Portuguese gentleman, and his mother an eminent vocalist. For some time he studied art with

the intention of becoming a painter; but having made several successful ventures in literature, he afterwards devoted himself entirely to that profession, and the celebrity which he rapidly achieved justified the alteration of his plans. The vivacity and marvellous fertility of his genius maintain his wide-spread popularity. He has displayed his power as an essayist, novelist, traveller, and journalist, and in each character has won new laurels. His principal works are-A Journey due North-being Notes of a Residence in Russia in the Summer of 1856; Twice Round the Clock, or the Hours of the Day and Night in London, 1859; The Baddington Peerage, 1860; Hisory of IL garth and His Times, 1860; Dutch Pictures, 1861; Captain Dangerous, 1863-a story somewhat in the manner of Defoe: My Diary in America in the Midst of War, 1865; &c. Mr. Sala was sometime editor of the Temple Bar magazine; and he is now a regular contributor to the Belgravia magazine (edited by Miss Braddon, the author of Lady Audley's Secret). It is from the latter periodical we take the following lively sketch of London life]

Murder, they say, will out. Surbiton P. Mellor, Esq., had never murdered anybody, and had not the slightest intention to become

If she

smaller middle-classes are common enough.
The brother was as fond of his sister as need
be; but he could not be always tracing her
footsteps. He had his way to make in the
world, and she had hers; and he had equitably
divided with her the product of the ramshackle
furniture and the fag-end of the lease in Salis-
bury Street. He formed new connections, and
got on, and prospered. If sister Rosy had come
back to him likewise prosperous, he would of
course have been delighted to see her.
had returned sick and poor, he would have
done his duty by her, no doubt; but Rosy had
written once or twice, at long intervals, and
he had been too busy to answer by return of
post; and so, by degrees, the bond of blood faded
away to the very palest of pink shadows.
and again Surbiton would think of the old
days when he and his sister used to go to Miss
Tattworth's morning seminary in Maiden Lane,
and when they used to play in the back parlour
of the dingy house in Salisbury Street, the shrill
scolding of their mother (who had a tempcr)

Now

292

MRS. MELLOR'S DIAMONDS.

breaking in from time to time on their sports;
but these recollections grew dimmer and less
frequent every year. The world is so very wide,
and the claims of "business" are so very absorb-
ing. Rosy at the Antipodes perhaps had likewise
We cannot always be
her business to mind.
thinking of old times; and tenacity of memory
may be very often one of the results of idleness.
Surbiton Mellor continued to gain ground
in the race of life; but he was far advanced
towards thirty ere letters addressed to him
began to be addressed Surbiton P. Mellor, Esq.
He was all kinds of things commercial: clerk
to a wholesale druggist, sampler to a tea-dealer,
traveller to a tobacco-manufacturer, book-
keeper to a fashionable West-end tailor. He
had done law-writing; be had tried his hand
at school-teaching; he had made the round of
the provinces delivering lectures in "ventila-
tion" of the features of a newly-formed Life As-
surance Company. His first important rise in
the world was his appointment as secretary to
the Company for Manufacturing Lavender-
water from Irish Bog-peat. That led to con-
nection with the Joots Testimonial Committee
(Joots was a commercial philanthropist, who
was testimonialized to the extent of ten thou-
sand pounds as a reward for having made a
fortune of half a million by "amalgamating"
Subsequently he
impecunious companies).
became secretary to the Society for the Sup-
pression of Snuff-taking; and was one of the
most active promoters of the Anti-Pale Ale
League. The road to success was now open;
for the chairman of the League happened to
be Harpie Wyndford, Esq., who was said to be
the son either of the Marquis of Malagrowthie's
bailiff or of his butler. When H. Wyndford,
Esq., promoted the Eolian and Hyperborean
Joint-stock Bank, and was appointed paid
secretary thereof, what was more natural than
that he should prefer to a confidential post
therein a young man whose shining capacity
for business he had fortunately discerned?
From a cashier in the chief office Surbiton P.
Mellor speedily became manager of the Prim-
rose-hill branch. There, the murder is all out
Mr. Mellor had simply "got on" in the
He may not have been ashamed of his
origin, or of his early struggles; but where was
the need of his alluding to them? No one
impeached him: what had he to answer? If a
man has a wooden leg, or a great scar on his
face, some inquisitive people may conceive that
they have a right to inquire how he came by
those hurts; but Surbiton Mellor was neither
His
a Greenwich pensioner nor Le Balafré.
success was his own, his money was his own;

now.

world.

and both were honestly earned. He had a
thousand a year as manager of the branch bank,
but that was only a portion of his income. He
speculated widely and profitably. He had the
At the commencement
revenue of a gentleman, and he lived like one,
continuing to pay as keen attention to business
as he did to pleasure.

a

He

of his career he was-notwithstanding
magnificent handwriting and ability to pro-
nounce his 's correctly-profoundly illiterate;
but, like many other young men of the nine-
teenth century (seventh decade), he had educated
himself to a very fair intellectual status.
had taught himself French and German out of
Ollendorff; had always utilized his annual
epitomes of Adam Smith, Ricardo, and Mill;
holidays in continental trips; had made careful
and Chambers' Educational Course and the
Penny Cyclopedia had done the rest. He read
the morning and evening newspapers very care-
fully, and could hold his own in any society.
He went to the theatre very frequently, and
He had taken surreptitious lessons
could talk about Shakspeare and about bur-
lesques.
from an instructress who taught adults to dance
in twelve lessons; and a three-guinea course at
best ride a livery-stable hack in Rotten Row
a Brompton riding-school had enabled him to
without tumbling off. He had even been seen
driving a mail phaeton in Piccadilly very credit-
ably. Wherever he had learned the charioteer's
accomplishment I must confess that I do not
know; but technics have their intuitions, and
there are some men who do excellently well
Up to the age of thirty Surbiton P. Mellor
that which they have never been taught to do.
had remained a gay young bachelor, occupying,
since his prosperity had become a substantial
In process of time it
fact, an elegant suite of chambers in Parliament
Street, Westminster.
occurred to him that his position demanded
that he should take a house, that the house in
question should be elegantly and expensively
furnished, and that a wife would be a very
excellent adjunct to the mansion and to the
ameublement in question. The house was soon
found, and a handsome sum paid for a long
lease, with the faculty of purchasing the free-
hold when convenient. Nor was there much
difficulty in securing a wife as elegant and as
expensive as the furniture of her destined home.
There is a curious section of society in London
which seems to bear a close affinity to first-class
upholstery, first-class millinery and dress-mak-
ing, first-class china, glass, and table-linen,
and diners à la Russe sent in from the pastry-
cook's. In this society are to be found numbers
of young ladies-comely, healthy, virtuous,

234

MRS. MELLOR'S DIAMONDS.

course of time-the furnishing and decoration
of the house at Bayswater being satisfactorily
completed-Surbiton P. Mellor led Maude
Matilda Wilhelmina Fenton to the altar of St.
James's, Piccadilly, or St. George's, Hanover
Square, I forget which; and the Rev. Bajazet
Bergamotte, M.A., assisted by the Rev. Arthur
Gwynplaine, B.D., joined them together in
the bonds of holy matrimony; and there were
no cards; and the young couple spent their
honeymoon in the Engadine, and found the
baths of St. Maurice full of the most delightful
company.

There was no madness in the Mellor-Fenton
alliance-no love madness, at least. Surbiton
He knew
was never troubled with the slightest approach
to jealousy as regarded his wife.
very well that, being in society and handsome
and showy, she must have admirers. He would
as soon have thought of forbidding them to
admire her as of covering up his handsome
furniture, or locking up his wine-cellar. He
was an attentive husband, but not an uxorious
He was eminently reasonable, always in
the way when wanted, never inopportunely
present. I believe that the man was really
and sincerely attached to his wife; that he had
early discovered her one weak point, and that
her weakness was not of a nature to excite any
Othello-like suspicions on his part.

one.

Murder will out, I have already had the
honour to observe in these pages. Let me make
a clean breast of it as regards Mrs. Surbiton
Mellor's foible. The poor woman was desper-
ately extravagant: her prodigality in dress was
well-nigh inconceivable. When I hint that she
thought nothing of giving 2 guineas a pair
for her stays, my lady readers will understand
the scale of her sumptuary lavishness. Her
expenditure in every other respect was on a
commensurate scale. An extravagant person
must always be poorer than a workhouse pauper.
At the beginning of the fifth year of her wedded
life Mrs. Surbiton Mellor was desperately in
debt, and was as desperately dunned on every
side.

Was her husband aware of her weakness, her
folly, her madness? We shall see.

It is difficult for any person, man or woman,
to go to the deuce financially, without some
active and obliging Mephistopheles to show
the way, make it smooth for you, open the
gates, clear the tolls and bridges, and do other
friendly acts for you, until you are safely
landed in the place whence Dante returned,
but where Eurydice remained. Mrs. Surbiton
Mellor's Mephistopheles was a certain Madame
Schumakers, a prodigious fat Dutchwoman

from Amsterdam, and who looked well-nigh
as solid and substantial as the Stadt Huis of
terious of women, carrying jewelry of great
the Batavian capital. She was the most mys-
value in a dirty market-basket, point-lace in
her umbrella, and undertaking all kinds of
cloudy tasks-from providing false plaits and
rouge for ladies of quality to smuggling cigars
and schiedam under her crinoline on board the
Rotterdam steamers. She lived anywhere and,
as it seemed, everywhere-now to be heard of
tenham; now prowling about the corridors of
at Brighton; now lurking about Bath or Chel-
the Grand Hôtel, Paris; now sending in occult
messages to ladies stopping at the Quatres
levers of duchesses in Belgravia Square. I
Saisons at Hombourg, or attending the petits
have met Madame Schumakers myself in the
verandah of the Continental Hotel, Saratoga,
U.S., where she told me she was "fixing'
ladies' hair at a dollar per coiffure; and she
lent me three sovereigns once to go down to
the Derby, on condition that I left four pounds
ten for her on the ensuing Saturday at the bar
of the Shoulder of Mutton, Lower Norcott
Street, Lambeth Marsh.

Poor Maude Matilda Wilhelmina had given
herself up, body and soul, to this abdominous
ventre. She was altogether in the Schumakers'
hag, this Witch of Endor qui avait pris du
hands, who, besides providing her with innum-
erable articles of finery, lent her money to pay
something on account to the fashionable trades-
for the settlement of their little accounts. Of
people when they became disagreeably pressing
course the articles were supplied at extravagant
prices, and the loans advanced at exorbitant
rates of interest. The woman was always at
to sell or something to lend; until (as commonly
Mrs. Mellor's elbow; she had always something
happens when you have dealings with Mephis
topheles) she suddenly announced one fine
morning, at the very height of the season of
186-, that she would not advance another
customer; and that unless she was forthwith
sixpence or another pocket-handkerchief to her
on account of her long outstanding claims, the
paid the sum of one hundred pounds in cash,
amount of which, she declared, exceeded five
hundred pounds, she would forthwith repair to
the office of the branch of the Eolian and
Hyperborean Joint-stock Bank, and inform
Surbiton P. Mellor how matters stood; "an'
"dere will pe der duyvel's dondershine!"
den," said Madame Schumakers, in conclusion,

This threat happened to have been uttered on precisely the same morning which had brought Mrs. Mellor by post a number of polite