Note 6 — Chapter IX · PICCADILLY, BOND STREET, AND ALBERT GATE.
Reading edition
Mr. Dickens used to relate how, at one of his last dinners when in this senile state, the servant, who had the whole répertoire by heart, would suggest and prompt. “Tell the gentlemen, sir, about Mr. Selwyn and the Duke of Queensberry, sir,” etc., on which the old man, set a-going like some musical-box, would start off on his narrative. He was a sad spectacle.
Nose and chin to shame a knocker, Wrinkles that would puzzle Cocker.
One of the best stories told to us by Mr. Dickens in a railway carriage—unpublished, too—we must repeat; but the voice cannot be supplied: it was that of Justice Stareleigh, as given at the “readings,” very slow and funereal:—
“The Honour-a-ble Augustus Stanhope, one of the most fashionable bloods of his day, fell in love with the lovely Miss Beauclerk, who did not re-turn his passion. He bribed her maid to secrete him in her cheea—mber. When she came up to attire herself for a ball, he emerged from his concealment. She looked at him fixedly. ‘Why don’t you begin?’ she asked, after a pause. She took him for the ’airdresser!”