The Project Gutenberg eBook, The History of Samuel Titmarsh, by William
Makepeace Thackeray

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Title: The History of Samuel Titmarsh
and the Great Hoggarty Diamond

Author: William Makepeace Thackeray

Release Date: February 23, 2006 [eBook #1933]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HISTORY OF SAMUEL TITMARSH***

Transcribed from the 1911 John Murray edition by David Price, email
ccx074@coventry.ac.uk

THE HISTORY OF SAMUEL TITMARSH
AND THE
THE GREAT HOGGARTY DIAMOND

LONDON
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W.
1911

CHAPTER I

GIVES AN ACCOUNT OF OUR VILLAGE AND THE FIRST GLIMPSE OF THE DIAMOND

When I came up to town for my second year, my aunt Hoggarty made me a
present of a diamond-pin; that is to say, it was not a diamond-pin then,
but a large old-fashioned locket, of Dublin manufacture in the year 1795,
which the late Mr. Hoggarty used to sport at the Lord Lieutenant's balls
and elsewhere. He wore it, he said, at the battle of Vinegar Hill, when
his club pigtail saved his head from being taken off,--but that is
neither here nor there.

In the middle of the brooch was Hoggarty in the scarlet uniform of the
corps of Fencibles to which he belonged; around it were thirteen locks of
hair, belonging to a baker's dozen of sisters that the old gentleman had;
and, as all these little ringlets partook of the family hue of brilliant
auburn, Hoggarty's portrait seemed to the fanciful view like a great fat
red round of beef surrounded by thirteen carrots. These were dished up
on a plate of blue enamel, and it was from the GREAT HOGGARTY DIAMOND (as
we called it in the family) that the collection of hairs in question
seemed as it were to spring.

My aunt, I need not say, is rich; and I thought I might be her heir as
well as another. During my month's holiday, she was particularly pleased
with me; made me drink tea with her often (though there was a certain
person in the village with whom on those golden summer evenings I should
have liked to have taken a stroll in the hayfields); promised every time
I drank her bohea to do something han