Returns to the Genteel World

Good fortune now begins to smile upon Amelia. We are glad to get her
out of that low sphere in which she has been creeping hitherto and
introduce her into a polite circle--not so grand and refined as that in
which our other female friend, Mrs. Becky, has appeared, but still
having no small pretensions to gentility and fashion. Jos's friends
were all from the three presidencies, and his new house was in the
comfortable Anglo-Indian district of which Moira Place is the centre.
Minto Square, Great Clive Street, Warren Street, Hastings Street,
Ochterlony Place, Plassy Square, Assaye Terrace ("gardens" was a
felicitous word not applied to stucco houses with asphalt terraces in
front, so early as 1827)--who does not know these respectable abodes of
the retired Indian aristocracy, and the quarter which Mr. Wenham calls
the Black Hole, in a word? Jos's position in life was not grand enough
to entitle him to a house in Moira Place, where none can live but
retired Members of Council, and partners of Indian firms (who break,
after having settled a hundred thousand pounds on their wives, and
retire into comparative penury to a country place and four thousand a
year); he engaged a comfortable house of a second- or third-rate order
in Gillespie Street, purchasing the carpets, costly mirrors, and
handsome and appropriate planned furniture by Seddons from the
assignees of Mr. Scape, lately admitted partner into the great Calcutta
House of Fogle, Fake, and Cracksman, in which poor Scape had embarked
seventy thousand pounds, the earnings of a long and honourable life,
taking Fake's place, who retired to a princely park in Sussex (the
Fogles have been long out of the firm, and Sir Horace Fogle is about to
be raised to the peerage as Baron Bandanna)--admitted, I say, partner
into the great agency house of Fogle and Fake two years before it
failed for a million and plunged half the Indian public into misery and
ruin.

Scape, ruined, honest, and broken-hearted at sixty-five years of age,
went out to Calcutta to wind up the affairs of the house. Walter Scape
was withdrawn from Eton and put into a merchant's house. Florence
Scape, Fanny Scape, and their mother faded away to Boulogne, and will
be heard of no more. To be brief, Jos stepped in and bought their
carpets and sideboards and admired himself in the mirrors which had
reflected their kind handsome faces. The Scape tradesmen, all
honourably paid, le