The three clerks

The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Three Clerks, by Anthony Trollope, et al This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: The Three Clerks Author: Anthony Trollope Release Date: May 8, 2003 [eBook #7481] Last Updated: October 13, 2018 Language: English ***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE THREE CLERKS*** E-text prepared by Charles Franks, Delphine Lettau, Mark Sherwood, and the people at Distributed Proofreading HTML file produced by David Widger THE THREE CLERKS By Anthony Trollope With an Introduction by W Teignmouth Shore CONTENTS ANTHONY TROLLOPE INTRODUCTION CHAPTER I — THE WEIGHTS AND MEASURES CHAPTER II — THE INTERNAL NAVIGATION CHAPTER III — THE WOODWARDS CHAPTER IV — CAPTAIN CUTTWATER CHAPTER V — BUSHEY PARK CHAPTER VI — SIR GREGORY HARDLINES CHAPTER VII — MR FIDUS NEVERBEND CHAPTER VIII — THE HON UNDECIMUS SCOTT CHAPTER IX — MR MANYLODES CHAPTER X — WHEAL MARY JANE CHAPTER XI — THE THREE KINGS CHAPTER XII — CONSOLATION CHAPTER XIII — A COMMUNICATION OF IMPORTANCE CHAPTER XIV — VERY SAD CHAPTER XV — NORMAN RETURNS TO TOWN CHAPTER XVI — THE FIRST WEDDING CHAPTER XVII — THE HONOURABLE MRS VAL AND MISS GOLIGHTLY CHAPTER XVIII — A DAY WITH ONE OF THE NAVVIES.— MORNING CHAPTER XIX — A DAY WITH ONE OF THE NAVVIES.— AFTERNOON CHAPTER XX — A DAY WITH ONE OF THE NAVVIES.— EVENING CHAPTER XXI — HAMPTON COURT BRIDGE CHAPTER XXII — CRINOLINE AND MACASSAR; OR, MY AUNT'S WILL CHAPTER XXIII — SURBITON COLLOQUIES CHAPTER XXIV — MR M'BUFFER ACCEPTS THE CHILTERN HUNDREDS CHAPTER XXV — CHISWICK GARDENS CHAPTER XXVI — KATIE'S FIRST BALL CHAPTER XXVII — EXCELSIOR CHAPTER XXVIII — OUTERMAN v TUDOR CHAPTER XXIX — EASY IS THE SLOPE OF HELL CHAPTER XXX — MRS WOODWARD'S REQUEST CHAPTER XXXI — HOW APOLLO SAVED THE NAVVY CHAPTER XXXII — THE PARLIAMENTARY COMMITTEE CHAPTER XXXIII — TO STAND, OR NOT TO STAND CHAPTER XXXIV — WESTMINSTER HALL CHAPTER XXXV — MRS VAL'S NEW CARRIAGE CHAPTER XXXVI — TICKLISH STOCK CHAPTER XXXVII — TRIBULATION CHAPTER XXXVIII — ALARIC TUDOR TAKES A WALK CHAPTER XXXIX — THE LAST BREAKFAST CHAPTER XL — MR CHAFFANBRASS CHAPTER XLI — THE OLD BAILEY CHAPTER XLII — A PARTING INTERVIEW CHAPTER XLIII — MILLBANK CHAPTER XLIV — THE CRIMINAL POPULATION IS DISPOSED OF CHAPTER XLV — THE FATE OF THE NAVVIES CHAPTER XLVI — MR NOGO'S LAST QUESTION CHAPTER XLVII — CONCLUSION ANTHONY TROLLOPE Born London, April 24, 1815 Died London, December 6, 1882 INTRODUCTION There is the proper mood and the just environment for the reading as well as for the writing of works of fiction, and there can be no better place for the enjoying of a novel by Anthony Trollope than under a tree in Kensington Gardens of a summer day Under a tree in the avenue that reaches down from the Round Pond to the Long Water There, perhaps more than anywhere else, lingers the early Victorian atmosphere As we sit beneath our tree, we see in the distance the dun, red-brick walls of Kensington Palace, where one night Princess Victoria was awakened to hear that she was Queen; there in quaint, hideously ugly Victorian rooms are to be seen Victorian dolls and other playthings; the whole environment is early Victorian Here to the mind's eye how easy it is to conjure up ghosts of men in baggy trousers and long flowing whiskers, of prim women in crinolines, in hats with long trailing feathers and with ridiculous little parasols, or with Grecian-bends and chignons—church-parading to and fro beneath the trees or by the water's edge—perchance, even the fascinating Lady Crinoline and the elegant Mr Macassar Jones, whose history has been written by Clerk Charley in the pages we are introducing to the 'gentle reader' As a poetaster of an earlier date has written:— Where Kensington high o'er the neighbouring lands 'Midst green and sweets, a royal fabric, stands, And sees each spring, luxuriant in her bowers, A snow of blossoms, and a wild of flowers, The dames of Britain oft in crowds repair To gravel walks, and unpolluted air Here, while the town in damps and darkness lies, They breathe in sunshine, and see azure skies; Each walk, with robes of various dyes bespread, Seems from afar a moving tulip bed, Where rich brocades and glossy damasks glow, And chintz, the rival of the showery bow Indeed, the historian of social manners, when dealing with the Victorian period, will perforce have recourse to the early volumes of Punch and to the novels of Thackeray, Dickens, and Trollope There are certain authors of whom personally we know little, but of whose works we cannot ever know enough, such a one for example as Shakespeare; others of whose lives we know much, but for whose works we can have but scant affection: such is Doctor Johnson; others who are intimate friends in all their aspects, as Goldsmith and Charles Lamb; yet others, who do not quite come home to our bosoms, whose writings we cannot entirely approve, but for whom and for whose works we find a soft place somewhere in our hearts, and such a one is Anthony Trollope His novels are not for every-day reading, any more than are those of Marryat and Borrow—to take two curious examples There are times and moods and places in which it would be quite impossible to read The Three Clerks; others in which this story is almost wholly delightful With those who are fond of bed-reading Trollope should ever be a favourite, and it is no small compliment to say this, for small is the noble army of authors who have given us books which can enchant in the witching hour between waking and slumber It is probable that all lovers of letters have their favourite bed-books Thackeray has charmingly told us of his Of the few novels that can really be enjoyed when the reader is settling down for slumber almost all have been set forth by writers who—consciously or unconsciously—have placed character before plot; Thackeray himself, Miss Austen, Borrow, Marryat, Sterne, Dickens, Goldsmith and—Trollope Books are very human in their way, as what else should they be, children of men and women as they are? Just as with human friends so with book friends, first impressions are often misleading; good literary coin sometimes seems to ring untrue, but the untruth is in the ear of the reader, not of the writer For instance, Trollope has many odd and irritating tricks which are apt to scare off those who lack perseverance and who fail to understand that there must be something admirable in that which was once much admired by the judicious He shares with Thackeray the sinful habit of pulling up his readers with a wrench by reminding them that what is set before them is after all mere fiction and that the characters in whose fates they are becoming interested are only marionettes With Dickens and others he shares the custom, so irritating to us of to-day, of ticketing his personages with clumsy, descriptive labels, such as, in The Three Clerks, Mr Chaffanbrass, Sir Gregory Hardlines, Sir Warwick West End, Mr Neverbend, Mr Whip Vigil, Mr Nogo and Mr Gitemthruet He must plead guilty, also, to some bad ways peculiarly his own, or which he made so by the thoroughness with which he indulged in them He moralizes in his own person in deplorable manner: is not this terrible:—'Poor Katie!—dear, darling, bonnie Katie!—sweet, sweetest, dearest child! why, oh, why, has that mother of thine, that tender-hearted loving mother, put thee unguarded in the way of such perils as this? Has she not sworn to herself that over thee at least she would watch as a hen over her young, so that no unfortunate love should quench thy young spirit, or blanch thy cheek's bloom?' Is this not sufficient to make the gentlest reader swear to himself? Fortunately this and some other appalling passages occur after the story is in full swing and after the three Clerks and those with whom they come into contact have proved themselves thoroughly interesting companions Despite all his old-fashioned tricks Trollope does undoubtedly succeed in giving blood and life to most of his characters; they are not as a rule people of any great eccentricity or of profound emotions; but ordinary, every-day folk, such as all of us have met, and loved or endured Trollope fills very adequately a space between Thackeray and Dickens, of whom the former deals for the most part with the upper 'ten', the latter with the lower 'ten'; Trollope with the suburban and country-town 'ten'; the three together giving us a very complete and detailed picture of the lives led by our grandmothers and grandfathers, whose hearts were in the same place as our own, but whose manners of speech, of behaviour and of dress have now entered into the vague region known as the 'days of yore' The Three Clerks is an excellent example of Trollope's handiwork The development of the plot is sufficiently skilful to maintain the reader's interest, and the major part of the characters is lifelike, always well observed and sometimes depicted with singular skill and insight Trollope himself liked the work well:— 'The plot is not so good as that of The Macdermots; nor are any characters in the book equal to those of Mrs Proudie and the Warden; but the work has a more continued interest, and contains the first well-described love-scene that I ever wrote The passage in which Kate Woodward, thinking she will die, tries to take leave of the lad she loves, still brings tears to my eyes when I read it I had not the heart to kill her I never could do that And I do not doubt that they are living happily together to this day 'The lawyer Chaffanbrass made his first appearance in this novel, and I do not think that I have cause to be ashamed of him But this novel now is chiefly noticeable to me from the fact that in it I introduced a character under the name of Sir Gregory Hardlines, by which I intended to lean very heavily on that much loathed scheme of competitive examination, of which at that time Sir Charles Trevelyan was the great apostle Sir Gregory Hardlines was intended for Sir Charles Trevelyan—as any one at the time would know who had taken an interest in the Civil Service 'We always call him Sir Gregory,' Lady Trevelyan said to me afterwards when I came to know her husband I never learned to love competitive examination; but I became, and am, very fond of Sir Charles Trevelyan Sir Stafford Northcote, who is now Chancellor of the Exchequer, was then leagued with his friend Sir Charles, and he too appears in The Three Clerks believe, in England, that any kind of work here is sure to command a high price; of this I am quite sure, that in no employment in England are people so tasked as they are here Alaric was four months in these men's counting-house, and I am sure another four months would have seen him in his grave Though I knew not then what other provision might be made for us, I implored him, almost on my knees, to give up that He was expected to be there for ten, sometimes twelve, hours a day; and they thought he should always be kept going like a steamengine You know Alaric never was afraid of work; but that would have killed him And what was it for? What did they give him for that—for all his talent, all his experience, all his skill? And he did give them all His salary was two pounds ten a week! And then, when he told them of all he was doing for them, they had the baseness to remind him of—— Dearest mother, is not the world hard? It was that that made me insist that he should leave them.' Alaric's present path was by no means over roses This certainly was a change from those days on which he had sat, one of a mighty trio, at the Civil Service Examination Board, striking terror into candidates by a scratch of his pen, and making happy the desponding heart by his approving nod His ambition now was not to sit among the magnates of Great Britain, and make his voice thunder through the columns of the Times; it ranged somewhat lower at this period, and was confined for the present to a strong desire to see his wife and bairns sufficiently fed, and not left absolutely without clothing He inquired little as to the feeling of the electors of Strathbogy And had he utterly forgotten the stirring motto of his early days? Did he ever mutter 'Excelsior' to himself, as, with weary steps, he dragged himself home from that hated counting-house? Ah! he had fatally mistaken the meaning of the word which he had so often used There had been the error of his life 'Excelsior!' When he took such a watchword for his use, he should surely have taught himself the meaning of it He had now learnt that lesson in a school somewhat of the sternest; but, as time wore kindly over him, he did teach himself to accept the lesson with humility His spirit had been wellnigh broken as he was carried from that courthouse in the Old Bailey to his prison on the river-side; and a broken spirit, like a broken goblet, can never again become whole But Nature was a kind mother to him, and did not permit him to be wholly crushed She still left within the plant the germ of life, which enabled it again to spring up and vivify, though sorely bruised by the heels of those who had ridden over it He still repeated to himself the old watchword, though now in humbler tone and more bated breath; and it may be presumed that he had now a clearer meaning of its import 'But his present place,' continued Gertrude, 'is much—very much more suited to him He is corresponding clerk in the first bank here, and though his pay is nearly double what it was at the other place, his hours of work are not so oppressive He goes at nine and gets away at five—that is, except on the arrival or dispatch of the English mails.' Here was a place of bliss for a man who had been a commissioner, attending at the office at such hours as best suited himself, and having clerks at his beck to do all that he listed And yet, as Gertrude said, this was a place of bliss to him It was a heaven as compared with that other hell 'Alley is such a noble boy,' said Gertrude, becoming almost joyous as she spoke of her own immediate cares 'He is most like Katie, I think, of us all; and yet he is very like his papa He goes to a day-school now, with his books slung over his back in a bag You never saw such a proud little fellow as he is, and so manly Charley is just like you—oh! so like It makes me so happy that he is He did not talk so early as Alley, but, nevertheless, he is more forward than the other children I see here The little monkeys! they are neither of them the least like me But one can always see oneself, and it don't matter if one does not.' 'If ever there was a brick, Gertrude is one,' said Norman 'A brick!' said Charley—'why you might cut her to pieces, and build another Kensington palace out of the slices I believe she is a brick.' 'I wonder whether I shall ever see her again?' said Mrs Woodward, not with dry eyes 'Oh yes, mamma,' said Katie 'She shall come home to us some day, and we will endeavour to reward her for it all.' Dear Katie, who will not love you for such endeavour? But, indeed, the reward for heroism cometh not here There was much more in the letter, but enough has been given for our purpose It will be seen that hope yet remained both for Alaric and his wife; and hope not without a reasonable base Bad as he had been, it had not been with him as with Undy Scott The devil had not contrived to put his whole claw upon him He had not divested himself of human affections and celestial hopes He had not reduced himself to the present level of a beast, with the disadvantages of a soul and of an eternity, as the other man had done He had not put himself beyond the pale of true brotherhood with his fellow-men We would have hanged Undy had the law permitted us; but now we will say farewell to the other, hoping that he may yet achieve exaltation of another kind And to thee, Gertrude—how shall we say farewell to thee, excluded as thou art from that dear home, where those who love thee so well are now so happy? Their only care remaining is now thy absence Adversity has tried thee in its crucible, and thou art found to be of virgin gold, unalloyed; hadst thou still been lapped in prosperity, the true ring of thy sterling metal would never have been heard Farewell to thee, and may those young budding flowerets of thine break forth into golden fruit to gladden thy heart in coming days! The reading of Gertrude's letter, and the consequent discussion, somewhat put off the execution of the little scheme which had been devised for that evening's amusement; but, nevertheless, it was still broad daylight when Mrs Woodward consigned the precious document to her desk; the drawing-room windows were still open, and the bairns were still being fondled in the room It was the first week in July, when the night almost loses her dominion, and when those hours which she generally claims as her own, become the pleasantest of the day 'Oh, Charley,' said Katie, at last, 'we have great news for you, too Here is another review on "The World's Last Wonder."' Now 'The World's Last Wonder' was Charley's third novel; but he was still sensitive enough on the subject of reviews to look with much anxiety for what was said of him These notices were habitually sent down to him at Hampton, and his custom was to make his wife or her mother read them, while he sat by in lordly ease in his arm-chair, receiving homage when homage came to him, and criticizing the critics when they were uncivil 'Have you?' said Charley 'What is it? Why did you not show it me before?' 'Why, we were talking of dear Gertrude,' said Katie; 'and it is not so pleasant but that it will keep What paper do you think it is?' 'What paper? how on earth can I tell?—show it me.' 'No; but do guess, Charley; and then mamma will read it—pray guess now.' 'Oh, bother, I can't guess The Literary Censor, I suppose—I know they have turned against me.' 'No, it's not that,' said Linda; 'guess again.' 'The Guardian Angel,' said Charley 'No—that angel has not taken you under his wings as yet,' said Katie 'I know it's not the Times,' said Charley, 'for I have seen that.' 'O no,' said Katie, seriously; 'if it was anything of that sort, we would not keep you in suspense.' 'Well, I'll be shot if I guess any more—there are such thousands of them.' 'But there is only one Daily Delight,' said Mrs Woodward 'Nonsense!' said Charley 'You don't mean to tell me that my dear old friend and foster-father has fallen foul of me—my old teacher and master, if not spiritual pastor; well—well—well! The ingratitude of the age! I gave him my two beautiful stories, the first-fruits of my vine, all for love; to think that he should now lay his treacherous axe to the root of the young tree—well, give it here.' 'No—mamma will read it—we want Harry to hear it.' 'O yes—let Mrs Woodward read it,' said Harry 'I trust it is severe I know no man who wants a dragging over the coals more peremptorily than you do.' 'Thankee, sir Well, grandmamma, go on; but if there be anything very bad, give me a little notice, for I am nervous.' And then Mrs Woodward began to read, Linda sitting with Katie's baby in her arms, and Katie performing a similar office for her sister "'The World's Last Wonder,' by Charles Tudor, Esq." 'He begins with a lie,' said Charley, 'for I never called myself Esquire.' 'Oh, that was a mistake,' said Katie, forgetting herself 'Men of that kind shouldn't make such mistakes,' said Charley 'When one fellow attempts to cut up another fellow, he ought to take special care that he does it fairly.' "By the author of 'Bathos.'" 'I didn't put that in,' said Charley, 'that was the publisher I only put Charles Tudor.' 'Don't be so touchy, Charley, and let me go on,' said Mrs Woodward 'Well, fire away—it's good fun to you, I dare say, as the fly said to the spider.' 'Well, Charley, at any rate we are not the spiders,' said Linda Katie said nothing, but she could not help feeling that she must look rather spiderish 'Mr Tudor has acquired some little reputation as a humorist, but as is so often the case with those who make us laugh, his very success will prove his ruin.' 'Then upon my word the Daily Delight is safe,' said Charley 'It will never be ruined in that way.' 'There is an elaborate jocosity about him, a determined eternity of most industrious fun, which gives us the idea of a boy who is being rewarded for having duly learnt by rote his daily lesson out of Joe Miller.' 'Now, I'll bet ten to one he has never read the book at all—well, never mind— go on.' "'The World's Last Wonder' is the description of a woman who kept a secret under certain temptations to reveal it, which, as Mr Tudor supposes, might have moved any daughter of Eve to break her faith." 'I haven't supposed anything of the kind,' said Charley 'This secret, which we shall not disclose, as we would not wish to be thought less trustworthy than Mr Tudor's wonderful woman—' 'We shall find that he does disclose it, of course; that is the way with all of them.' —'Is presumed to permeate the whole three volumes.' 'It is told at full length in the middle of the second,' said Charley 'And the effect upon the reader of course is, that he has ceased to interest himself about it, long before it is disclosed to him! 'The lady in question is engaged to be married to a gentleman, a circumstance which in the pages of a novel is not calculated to attract much special attention She is engaged to be married, but the gentleman who has the honour of being her intended sposo——' 'Intended sposo!' said Charley, expressing by his upturned lip a withering amount of scorn—'how well I know the fellow's low attempts at wit! That's the editor himself—that's my literary papa I know him as well as though I had seen him at it.' Katie and Mrs Woodward exchanged furtive glances, but neither of them moved a muscle of her face 'But the gentleman who has the honour of being her intended sposo,' continued Mrs Woodward 'What the devil's a sposo?' said Uncle Bat, who was sitting in an arm-chair with a handkerchief over his head 'Why, you're not a sposo, Uncle Bat,' said Linda; 'but Harry is, and so is Charley.' 'Oh, I see,' said the captain; 'it's a bird with his wings clipped.' 'But the gentleman who has the honour of being her intended sposo——' again read Mrs Woodward 'Now I'm sure I'm speaking by the card,' said Charley, 'when I say that there is not another man in London who could have written that line, and who would have used so detestable a word I think I remember his using it in one of his lectures to me; indeed I'm sure I do Sposo! I should like to tweak his nose oh!' 'Are you going to let me go on?' said Mrs Woodward—'her intended sposo'— Charley gave a kick with his foot and satisfied himself with that—'is determined to have nothing to say to her in the matrimonial line till she has revealed to him this secret which he thinks concerns his own honour.' 'There, I knew he'd tell it.' 'He has not told it yet,' said Norman 'The lady, however, is obdurate, wonderfully so, of course, seeing that she is the world's last wonder, and so the match is broken off But the secret is of such a nature that the lady's invincible objection to revealing it is bound up with the fact of her being a promised bride.' 'I wonder he didn't say sposa,' said Charley 'I never thought of that,' said Katie Mrs Woodward and Linda looked at her, but Charley did not, and her blunder passed by unnoticed 'Now that she is free from her matrimonial bonds, she is free also to tell the secret; and indeed the welfare both of the gentleman and of the lady imperiously demands that it should be told Should he marry her, he is destined to learn it after his marriage; should he not marry her, he may hear it at any time She sends for him and tells him, not the first of these facts, by doing which all difficulty would have at once been put an end to—' 'It is quite clear he has never read the story, quite clear,' said Charley 'She tells him only the last, viz., that as they are now strangers he may know the secret; but that when once known it will raise a barrier between them that no years, no penance, no sorrow on his part, no tenderness on hers, can ever break down She then asks him—will he hear the secret?' 'She does not ask any such thing,' said Charley; 'the letter that contains it has been already sent to him She merely gives him an opportunity of returning it unopened.' 'The gentleman, who is not without a grain of obstinacy in his own composition and many grains of curiosity, declares it to be impossible that he can go to the altar in ignorance of facts which he is bound to know, and the lady, who seems to be of an affectionate disposition, falls in tenderness at his feet She is indeed in a very winning mood, and quite inclined to use every means allowable to a lady for retaining her lover; every means that is short of that specially feminine one of telling her secret 'We will give an extract from this love scene, partly for the sake of its grotesque absurdity—' Charley kicked out another foot, as though he thought that the editor of the Daily Delight might perhaps be within reach '—And partly because it gives a fair example of the manner in which Mr Tudor endeavours to be droll even in the midst of his most tender passages 'Leonora was at this time seated—' 'Oh, skip the extract,' said Charley; 'I suppose there are three or four pages of it?' 'It goes down to where Leonora says that his fate and her own are in his hands.' 'Yes, about three columns,' said Charley; 'that's an easy way of making an article—eh, Harry?' 'Aliter non fit, amice, liber,' said the classical Norman 'Well, skip the extract, grandmamma.' 'Now, did anyone ever before read such a mixture of the bombastic and the burlesque? We are called upon to cry over every joke, and, for the life of us, we cannot hold our sides when the catastrophes occur It is a salad in which the pungency of the vinegar has been wholly subdued by the oil, and the fatness of the oil destroyed by the tartness of the vinegar.' 'His old simile,' said Charley; 'he was always talking about literary salads.' 'The gentleman, of course, gives way at the last minute,' continued Mrs Woodward 'The scene in which he sits with the unopened letter lying on his table before him has some merit; but this probably arises from the fact that the letter is dumb, and the gentleman equally so.' 'D——nation!' said Charley, whose patience could not stand such impudence at this 'The gentleman, who, as we should have before said, is the eldest son of a man of large reputed fortune——' 'There—I knew he'd tell it.' 'Oh, but he hasn't told it,' said Norman 'Doesn't the word 'reputed' tell it?' '—The eldest son of a man of large reputed fortune, does at last marry the heroine; and then he discovers—But what he discovers, those who feel any interest in the matter may learn from the book itself; we must profess that we felt none 'We will not say there is nothing in the work indicative of talent The hero's valet, Jacob Brush, and the heroine's lady's-maid, Jacintha Pintail, are both humorous and good in their way Why it should be so, we do not pretend to say; but it certainly does appear to us that Mr Tudor is more at home in the servants' hall than in the lady's boudoir.' 'Abominable scoundrel!' said Charley 'But what we must chiefly notice,' continued the article, 'in the furtherance of those views by which we profess that we are governed—' 'Now, I know, we are to have something very grandiloquent and very false,' said Charley '—Is this: that no moral purpose can be served by the volumes before us The hero acts wrongly throughout, but nevertheless he is rewarded at last There is no Nemesis—' 'No what?' said Charley, jumping up from his chair and looking over the table 'No Nemesis,' said Mrs Woodward, speaking with only half-sustained voice, and covering with her arms the document which she had been reading Charley looked sharply at his wife, then at Linda, then at Mrs Woodward Not one of them could keep her face He made a snatch at the patched-up manuscript, and as he did so, Katie almost threw out of her arms the baby she was holding 'Take him, Harry, take him,' said she, handing over the child to his father And then gliding quick as thought through the furniture of the drawing-room, she darted out upon the lawn, to save herself from the coming storm Charley was quickly after her; but as he made his exit, one chair fell to the right of him, and another to the left Mrs Woodward followed them, and so did Harry and Linda, each with a baby And then Captain Cuttwater, waking from his placid nap, rubbed his eyes in wondering amazement 'What the devil is all the row about?' said he But there was nobody to answer him ***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE THREE CLERKS*** ******* This file should be named 7481-h.htm or 7481-h.zip ******* This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/7/4/8/7481 E-text prepared by Charles Franks, Delphine Lettau, Mark Sherwood, and the people at Distributed Proofreading HTML file produced by David Widger Updated editions will replace the previous one the old editions will be renamed Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no one 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eBooks ... and Dickens, of whom the former deals for the most part with the upper 'ten', the latter with the lower 'ten'; Trollope with the suburban and country-town 'ten'; the three together giving us a very complete and detailed... Sir Stafford Northcote, who is now Chancellor of the Exchequer, was then leagued with his friend Sir Charles, and he too appears in The Three Clerks under the feebly facetious name of Sir Warwick West End But for all that The Three Clerks was a good novel.'... Cellars; they dive at midnight hours into Shades, and know all the back parlours of all the public-houses in the neighbourhood of the Strand Here they leave messages for one another, and call the girl at the bar by her Christian name They are a set of men endowed with sallow complexions, and they wear loud clothing,