As for Mr. Brough, that gentleman’s history would fill a volume of itself.  Since he vanished from the London world, he has become celebrated on the Continent, where he has acted a thousand parts, and met all sorts of changes of high and low fortune.  One thing we may at least admire in the man, and that is, his undaunted courage; and I can’t help thinking, as I have said before, that there must be some good in him, seeing the way in which his family are faithful to him.  With respect to Roundhand, I had best also speak tenderly.  The case of Roundhand v.  Tidd is still in the memory of the public; nor can I ever understand how Bill Tidd, so poetic as he was, could ever take on with such a fat, odious, vulgar woman as Mrs. R., who was old enough to be his mother.

As soon as we were in prosperity, Mr. and Mrs. Grimes Wapshot made overtures to be reconciled to us; and Mr. Wapshot laid bare to me all the baseness of Mr. Smithers’s conduct in the Brough transaction.  Smithers had also endeavoured to pay his court to me, once when I went down to Somersetshire; but I cut his pretensions short, as I have shown.  “He it was,” said Mr. Wapshot, “who induced Mrs. Grimes (Mrs. Hoggarty she was then) to purchase the West Diddlesex shares:  receiving, of course, a large bonus for himself.  But directly he found that Mrs. Hoggarty had fallen into the hands of Mr. Brough, and that he should lose the income he made from the lawsuits with her tenants and from the management of her landed property, he determined to rescue her from that villain Brough, and came to town for the purpose.  He also,” added Mr. Wapshot, “vented his malignant slander against me; but Heaven was pleased to frustrate his base schemes.  In the proceedings consequent on Brough’s bankruptcy, Mr. Smithers could not appear; for his own share in the transactions of the Company would have been most certainly shown up.  During his absence from London, I became the husband—­the happy husband—­of your aunt.  But though, my dear sir, I have been the means of bringing her to grace, I cannot disguise from you that Mrs. W. has faults which all my pastoral care has not enabled me to eradicate.  She is close of her money, sir—­very close; nor can I make that charitable use of her property which, as a clergyman, I ought to do; for she has tied up every shilling of it, and only allows me half-a-crown a week for pocket-money.  In temper, too, she is very violent.  During the first years of our union, I strove with her; yea, I chastised her; but her perseverance, I must confess, got the better of me.  I make no more remonstrances, but am as a lamb in her hands, and she leads me whithersoever she pleases.”

Mr. Wapshot concluded his tale by borrowing half-a-crown from me (it was at the Somerset Coffee-house in the Strand, where he came, in the year 1832, to wait upon me), and I saw him go from thence into the gin-shop opposite, and come out of the gin-shop half-an-hour afterwards, reeling across the streets, and perfectly intoxicated.