Roundabout Papers - Penn State University

Thackeraylids are closed, is she not there, the little Beautiful One,though invisible, present and smiling still? Friend, theUnseen Ones are round about us. Does it not seem as ifthe time were drawing near when it shall be given tomen to behold them?”The print of which my friend spoke, and which, indeed,hangs in my room, though he has never beenthere, is that charming little winter piece of Sir Joshua,representing the little Lady Caroline Montague, afterwardsDuchess of Buccleuch. She is represented as standingin the midst of a winter landscape, wrapped in muffand cloak; and she looks out of her picture with a smileso exquisite that a Herod could not see her withoutbeing charmed.“I beg your pardon, Mr. Pinto,” I said to the personwith whom I was conversing. (I wonder, by the way,that I was not surprised at his knowing how fond I amof this print.) “You spoke of the Knight of Plympton.Sir Joshua died, 1792: and you say he was your dearfriend?”As I spoke I chanced to look at Mr. Pinto; and then itsuddenly struck me: Gracious powers? Perhaps you area hundred years old, now I think of it. You look morethan a hundred. Yes, you may be a thousand years oldfor what I know. Your teeth are false. One eye is evidentlyfalse. Can I say that the other is not? If a man’sage may be calculated by the rings round his eyes, thisman may be as old as Methuselah. He has no beard. Hewears a large curly glossy brown wig, and his eyebrowsare painted a deep olive-green. It was odd to hear thisman, this walking mummy, talking sentiment, in thesequeer old chambers in Shepherd’s Inn.Pinto passed a yellow bandanna handkerchief over hisawful white teeth, and kept his glass eye steadily fixedon me. “Sir Joshua’s friend?” said he (you perceive, eludingmy direct question). “Is not every one that knowshis pictures Reynolds’s friend? Suppose I tell you that Ihave been in his painting room scores of times, andthat his sister The has made me tea, and his sister Toffyhas made coffee for me? You will only say I am an oldombog.” (Mr. Pinto, I remarked, spoke all languages withan accent equally foreign.) “Suppose I tell you that I211