1831.] The Merchant's Clerk; a 'Legend of the Old Time in London. 285 



head, behind her ears, which seemed to give her features an appearance 

 of being too small. The lady was, truth to confess, not very much 

 admired in the neighbourhood ; and, to continue the confession, she was 

 as little liked. She was said by those who knew her best, or rather as it 

 might seem worst, to be of a sullen temper, and yet, withal, violent ; 

 and the death of one young man was laid at her door, all the way from 

 the East Indies, whither he had gone in despair, after having been for 

 eleven months her accepted suitor, and then discharged in a fit of 

 peevishness. How far this incident, which happened before she was 

 twenty, might have formed her after character ; or how far even her 

 earlier character might have been moulded from the fact of her having 

 been left motherless while yet an infant, and bred up afterwards under 

 the sole care of her father, a harsh and severe man, it is not for me to 

 determine ; and much less so how or why Master Edward Edwards 

 came to fix on her as his partner. Master Edwards himself, at the time 

 we are speaking of, was in the very prime and vigour of life- that is, 

 in his own opinion ; it may be stated, however, that he was in his 

 five-and-fiftieth year ; rather corpulent arid very grey : but the former 

 fact he asserted, and not without truth, was a proof of his stoutness : 

 some men, he observed, quite young men too, (that is, younger than 

 himself,) had contracted a bad habit of stooping, which shewed their 

 walk through life had not been upright ; then, as to his grey hairs, he 

 boasted that they were once the veriest black, but that thought and 

 honourable labour had blanched them ; besides, his worst foes could not 

 say he was bald. For the rest, Master Edwards was a man of tolerable 

 parts, as times went, of an easy and good temper, and one who loved 

 to crack his bottle and his joke as well as any man living, either now or 

 thert. 



For some time, say thirteen months, after the marriage, they lived 

 together in all seeming harmony. I say seeming, of course speakingonly 

 of what met the eyes of others ; for far be it from me to intrude any 

 unnecessary inquiry into the discomforts or discrepancies (if any such 

 existed) of the domestic circle a rather small one, to be sure, seeing it 

 consisted of only two individuals, unless, as a third segment thereof, 

 may be reckoned Master Edwards' clerk, a young man, an orphan, of 

 the name of Simon, who had lived with him from his childhood. He 

 was a youth of good favour, but did not seem to find it in his mistress's 

 eyes ; or rather, latterly, he did not : for at her first coming she had 

 behaved with great kindness to him, while he, on the other hand, always 

 treated her with that distant respect, so becoming in an inferior, but so 

 mortifying to a superior, who may happen, for some purpose or other, 

 to wish to be on more familiar terms. After a little time, Mistress 

 Edwards evidently took a great dislike to poor Simon, and by the 

 exercise of a little domestic despotism, she made his home sufficiently 

 uncomfortable. Master Edwards seldom interfered in the matter ; and 

 to do his wife justice, she concealed, the alteration she had caused in the 

 lad's comforts, as much as she could from his master ; and if ever he did 

 happen to make any reference to the subject, she was pat with a com- 

 plaint against Simon for being so often away from the house ; which 

 was no more than truth, as she frequently made it too hot to hold him ; 

 and also that during his absence, he was continually seen to be in very 

 bad company at which his master would sigh ; and which I am sorry 

 to say was also no less than the truth, and probably the consequence of 

 her harsh treatment. Various little trinkets and other nic-nacs were 



