The Works of George W. M. Reynolds — page 64: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE OPERA BOX 47 And now a few words more relative to Edmund, the bearer of the proud title of Saxondale, ere we proceed con- tinuously with our narrative. He was a couple of months past nineteen years of age, short in stature, thin, and slightly made, not exactly ugly, but very far from good-looking, with hair of that suspicious kind of yellowish brown that in certain lights looks reddish, and with eyes which only by a complimentary fiction could be pronounced blue, but might more properly be described as greenish gray. He had good teeth, which were a considerable saving clause in his features; and his countenance, utterly devoid of the aquiline outline which so proudly characterized his mother’s face, had something mean and ignoble not merely in its configu- ration, but also in its expression. His voice, naturally weak and inharmonious, was rendered still more unpleasant by an affectation of those cracked tones which are assumed by the abominable coxcombs of these days. It did not require a very searching look to read his character; a glance would fathom it. Frivolous-minded, addicted to vicious pleasures and dissipated pursuits, selfish, and utterly incapable of generous actions, vain, conceited, and insufferably impudent withal, ignorant, prejudiced, and believing that because he was a nobleman he must necessarily be a demigod towering above the common mass of humanity, spiteful, malignant, and vindictive, so as to be a cowardly tyrant to his inferiors, and an object of terror or dislike with all those to whom he dared manifest his miserable despotism, quarrelsome as a brother, disobedient as a son, and capricious toward every- body, the youthful possessor of the haughty name of Saxon- dale was as detestable a character as ever filled amidst the human species that same kind of place which reptiles occupy in the brute creation. As a matter of course, Edmund had gone through all the various degrees and grades of training which constitute an English nobleman’s education. At home, either at saxondale Castle in Lincolnshire or at the town mansion in Park Lane, he had from his earliest years been taught his consequence in being “ my lorded ”’ by thick-headed tenant- farmers or obsequious domestics. He had passed through Eton with a tutor at his elbow to do his exercises for him, and save him from the kickings and cuffings to which his peevishness and malignity daily and hourly exposed him CONNIE DOOkKS (SO)