extremity. In consideration
of this eminent public service, the Barnacle then in power had recommended the
Crown to bestow a pension of two or three hundred a-year on his widow; to which
the next Barnacle in power had added certain shady and sedate apartments in the
Palace at Hampton Court, where the old lady still lived, deploring the
degeneracy of the times, in company with several other old ladies of both sexes.
Her son, Mr. Henry Gowan, inheriting from his father, the Commissioner, that
very questionable help in life, a very small independence, had been difficult to
settle; the rather, as public appointments chanced to be scarce, and his genius,
during his earlier manhood, was of that exclusively agricultural character which
applies itself to the cultivation of wild oats. At last he had declared that he
would become a Painter; partly because he had always had an idle knack that way,
and partly to grieve the souls of the Barnacles-in-chief who had not provided
for him. So it had come to pass successively, first, that several distinguished
ladies had been frightfully shocked; then, that portfolios of his performances
had been handed about o' nights, and declared with ecstasy to be perfect
Claudes, perfect Cuyps, perfect phænomena; then, that Lord Decimus had bought
his picture, and had asked the President and Council to dinner at a blow, and
had said, with his own magnificent gravity, »Do you know, there appears to me to
be really immense merit in that work?« and, in short, that people of condition
had absolutely taken pains to bring him into fashion. But, somehow it had all
failed. The prejudiced public had stood out against it obstinately. They had
determined not to admire Lord Decimus's picture. They had determined to believe
that in every service, except their own, a man must qualify himself, by
striving, early and late, and by working heart and soul, might and main. So now
Mr. Gowan, like that worn-out old coffin which never was Mahomet's nor anybody
else's, hung midway between two points: jaundiced and jealous as to the one he
had left: jaundiced and jealous as to the other that he couldn't reach.
    Such was the substance of Clennam's discoveries concerning him, made that
rainy Sunday afternoon and afterwards.
    About an hour or so after dinner time, Young Barnacle appeared, attended by
his eye-glass; in honour of whose family connections, Mr. Meagles had cashiered
the pretty parlour-maids for the day,