Three generations

334 MEN AND WOMEN MET BY THE WAY
house, together with certain pieces of tapestry which
had decorated his dwelling-house; but neither these
relics nor the evil reputation of this man among his
countrymen — no, not the drops of blood inherited in
common with that same "bluidy Claverse" — had served
to cloud her gay and gallant spirit.
Mrs. S. C. Hall lived in a house in the street in
Kensington in which my sister Margaret and I had
furnished rooms for two winters in succession. Mr.
and Mrs. Hall represented a former day in which his
editorship of the New Monthly Magazine made them
something of a literary force in their generation,
and he and his clever Irish wife came in contact
with the bearers of the great literary names of the
time.
The disastrous notoriety which Hall acquired as the
well-known original of Dickens's Pecksniff had fatally
stamped him with the charge of bombastic humbug
before I ever saw his face. I am not sufficiently
qualified to judge how far the likeness fitted, or how
much of it was consistent with what was otherwise
attributed to him of great worldly wisdon, and con-
siderable sharpness of practice freely accredited to the
apparently guileless philanthropist. I can only bear
witness that he was a friendly neighbour when nothing
was to be gained by it, while I must admit that his
looks and attitude when, he stood with his long white
hair hanging down the back of his artistic black velvet
coat, and held forth in his drawing-room, bore a
suspicious resemblance to those of an accomplished
poseur. Yet withal one liked to hear him tell of his
recent visit to Richmond, where he had looked up the
rooms over a shoemaker's shop in which he and his
wife had spent their honeymoon on the forty pounds,