The Sun.
London, England, 1867-01-04 00:00:00

Old Stories Re-Told.

(From Dickens's "All the Year Round.")
THOMAS GRIFFITHS WAINE WRIGHT (JANUS WEATHER-
COCK), THE POISONER.

One of those pleasant winter evenings, when fires
burn frosty blue, and hearts grow warmer as the
weather grows colder. It is an evening soon after

he ascent to the throne of his Most Gracious Ma-

jesty King George the Fourth.
A pleasant, merry, and highly intellectual party
are dining at the house of the publishers of that
clever periodical the " Lond in Magazine," in
Waterloo-place, to celebrate the new proprietozallip.
The cloth has been removed, the glasses spArklu in
the light of the wax candles, the wine glows ruby
and topaz in the fast revolving decanters, the
oranges gleam golden, the crystallised fruits glitter
with jewelled frost, the chestnuts, tight in their
leather jackets, are hoarding their warm floury meal
for the palates of poets and thinkers, puns are flash-

ing in the air like fireworks, smart sayings are dart-
ing past like dragon-flies, even the gravest faces
glow and brighten. A ring of brilliants the party
resembles, for there is no one round the well-spread

;able but has a name in the world of letters or in
the world of fashion. There is Charles Lamb, now

busy with his " Elia," the finest essays ever written :
a little grave man in black, but with the face of a
genius; Hazlitt is glorying in a Titian, upon which
he is expatiating ; Thomas Hood, with a face like,

that of an invalid Plato, is watching for a pun li'Le
a fly-fisher waiting for his cast. The Rev. H. eau
(the translator of Dante), the mildest and gentlest
of men, is explaining a passage of the " Inferno" to
that fine, vigorous Scotch poet, Allan Cunningham,
the sculptor. Mr. Proctor (Barry Cornwall), in
his own kind, cheery way, is defending a fine pas-

sage in Ben Jonson from the volatile flippancy of
the art-critic and gay dilettante of the magazine—.
to wit—Janus Weathercock, otherwise Thomas
Griffiths Wainewright.
He is a fop and a dandy, but is clever, has a re-
fined taste, and is the kindliest and most light-
hearted creature in the world. He has run through
one fortune, has been in some dragoon regiment,
and no doubt distinguished himself against the
French—if he ever met them. He is on the wrong
side of thirty, and records his military career by that
exquisitely blue undress military coat he wears, all
braided and befrogged down the front. His cravat
is tied to a nicety. His manner most gallant, in-
sinuating, and winning. His face, however, is by
no means that of the mere dandy. His head is
massive, and widens at the back. His eyes are deeply
set in their orbits. His jaw is square and solid. He
seldom looks the person he talks to full in the face.
He has his hair curled every morning (a stray ring-
let or so left free), and slightly stoops. His expres-
sion is at once repelling and fascinating.
He is übiquitous. Go to the Park, and you ob-
serve him in his phaeton, leaning out with his
cream-coloured gloves and bis large turned-down
wristbands conspicuous over the splashboard. Go
to old Lady Fitzrattle's ball the same evening, and
you will see the fascinating creature with the belle
of the evening, gracefully revolving in the waltz.
In the club library he is conspicuous ; at the supper
party he is the merriest and the gayest. He has
fortunately lett us portraits of himself both at the
coffee-house and at home.
Let us see the charming man at 9 o'clock on a
November evening, 1822. The diners at George's
Coffee-house, 213, Strand, then the great resort of
Kentish lawyers and men from the Temple, are all
gone but three—two young barristers in the last box
but one from the fire, and next to them a fashion-
ably dressed man with the exquisite cravat, the
square jaw, and the deep-set eyes, that we at once
recognise. George's was famous for its soups and
wines, and Mt. Wainewright has dined luxuriously.
A bottle of the rarest wine he has sipped away with
supercilious pleasure. He now holds to the candle,
in an affected manner, displaying carefully his
white jewelled fingers, a little glass of eau de vie de
Dantzig, and is languidly watching the little flakes,
or, as he would call them, " aureate particles," float
and glimmer in the oily and glutinous fluid like
scales of gold- fish. The voices in the next box
catch his ear ; he listens. The one Templar is read-
ing to the other with unction an article by Janus
Weathercock iu the last Loudon Magazine.
" Soothed into that desirable sort of self-
satisfaction so necessary to the bodying out
those deliciously voluptuous ideas perfumed with
languor which occasionally swim and undulate like
gauzy clouds over the brain of the most cold-blooded
men, we put forth one hand to the folio,which leant
against a chair by the sofa side, and, at hap-hazard,
extracted thence Lancret's charming Repas—
A summer party in the greenwood shade,
With wine prepared and cloth on herbage laid,
And ladies' laughter coming through the air.
Rimini.

This completed the charm."
The gay writer listens with half-turned head,
gloating over every word, inhaling the intense so
delicious to his vanity, taking care, however, that
the waiter is not looking. Again they arc talking

about it.
First Voice—" How glowing, how exquisite, bow
recherché, how elegant, how full of the true West-
end manner! A fine mind that young fellow has.
Oh, he'll do."
Second Voice—" Don't like it. Flashy assump-
tion. Mere amateur stuff. By-the-by, when does
that case of. Badger versus Beaver come on, Jones ?
Isn't to-day the 15th ?"
" Low creature ; debased nature," thinks Janus.
" Upon my honour, these coffee-houses are getting
mere haunts for the inferior classes. The 15th,
eh? So it is. Why, that's the day I promised to
write my article for the Loudon. I must be off to
Turnham-green."
Let us follow the delight of society to the White
Horse, and take a seat beside him in :the two-horse
stage till it stops at the door of Linden House, Mr.
Wainewright's elegant residence. His wife meets
him at the door, and with her there come
dancing out, radiant with almost an exuber-
ance of life, Phcebe and Madeleine, the two
blooming daughters by a second husband of his
wife's mother. They kiss him, they pet him, they
load him with playful caresses, for he is their idol,
they admire his genius, they love him as their
nearest and dearest relation. Laughingly he frowns
in assumed anger, and pleads the occupation of a
popular author and a great critic. He breaks at
last from their pretty syren wiles, and locks him-
self in his sanctum. It is a luxurious den. We
can sketch it in almost Alr.Wainewright's own cox-
combical words.
He strips off his smart tight-waisted befrogged
coat, in which he so exquisitely masquerades as the
galicghghiltsnasta:
retired officer of dragoons, and, in his own airy
way,
essw
nitegogs_
elegant
nersto
gay
yne
French
hiatshyl
apm
npk,
floweredribbons.the rgursotllulinne
idire
globe of which is painted with gay flowers and
gaudy butterflies. He then hauls forth. languidly,
as if the severity of the labour almost exhausted
him," portfolio No. 9," and nestles down into the
cushioned corner of " a Grecian couch ;" stroking
" our favourite tortoise-shell cat" into a sonorous
pur; he next, by a tremendous effort, contrives to
ring the bell by the fireside. A smiling " Venetian
shaped" girl enters, and places on the table "a flask
of as rich Montepulciauo as ever voyaged from fair
Italy;" then after contemplating his elegant figure
in a large glass, placed with a true artistic sense
opposite the chimney mirror, with a fresh exertion he
pours out " a full cut glass" of wine with one hand,
and strokes the cat with the other. The sheet of
glass returns sharp-cut photographs of a gay carpet,
the pattern of which consists of garlands of flowers,
a cast of the Venus de Medicis (for pin Waine-
wri,ght is an artist), a Tomkinson piano, some Lo uis
Quinze novels and tales, bound in French " mar-
roquin," withtabby silk linings, some playfuand Charles
l volumes
choicely covered by Rogers, Payne,
Lewis, some azaleas teeming with crimson blossoms,
standing on a white marble slab, and a large peaceful
Newfoundland dog also. A fine Damascus sabre
dragoons again), an almost
hung against the wall (
objectionable picture by Fuseli, that gay old bache-
lor at Somerset House (a friend of the eminently
popular and accomplished. art-critic); and last, but
not least of all, the exquisite man of the world him-
self, full of heart, full of soul, and bathed in the