Note Back to Main Text — Chapter XLI

It always appeared to me that James Ballantyne felt his genius rebuked in the presence of Constable: his manner was constrained, his smile servile, his hilarity elaborate. Not so with Johnny: the little fellow never seemed more airily frolicsome than when he capered for the amusement of the Czar.[111] I never, however, saw those two together, where, I am told, the humors of them both were exhibited to the richest advantage—I mean at the dinners with which Constable regaled, among others, his own circle of literary serfs, and when "Jocund Johnny" was very commonly his croupier. There are stories enough of practical jokes upon such occasions, some of them near akin to those which the author of Humphrey Clinker has thought fit to record of his own suburban villa, in the most diverting of young Melford's letters to Sir Watkin Philips. I have heard, for example, a luculent description of poor Allister Campbell, and another drudge of the same class, running a race after dinner for a new pair of breeches, which Mr. David Bridges, tailor in ordinary to this northern potentate,—himself a wit, a virtuoso, and the croupier on that day in lieu of Rigdum,—had been instructed to bring with him, and display before the threadbare rivals. But I had these pictures from John Ballantyne, and I dare say they might be overcharged. That Constable was a most bountiful and generous patron to the ragged tenants of Grub Street, there can, however, be no doubt: and as little that John himself acted on all occasions by them in the same spirit, and this to an extent greatly beyond what prudence (if he had ever consulted that guide in anything) would have dictated.