I don't mind the rows between the women.

I believe Mrs.Newcome and Lady Newcome's just as bad too; I know Maria is always driving at her one way or the other, and calling her proud and aristocratic, and that; and yet my wife says Maria, who pretends to be such a Radical, never asks us to meet the Baronet and his lady.

'And why should she, Loo, my dear ?' says I.'I don't want to meet Lady Newcome, nor Lord Kew, nor any of 'em.' Lord Kew, ain't it an odd name?
Tearing young swell, that Lord Kew: tremendous wild fellow." "I was a clerk in that house, sir, as a young man; I was there in the old woman's time, and Mr.Newcome's--the father of these young men--as good a man as ever stood on 'Change." And then Mr.Giles, warming with his subject, enters at large into the history of the house.

"You see, sir," says he, "the banking-house of Hobson Brothers, or Newcome Brothers, as the partners of the firm really are, is not one of the leading banking firms of the City of London, but a most respectable house of many years' standing, and doing a most respectable business, especially in the Dissenting connection." After the business came into the hands of the Newcome Brothers, Hobson Newcome, Esq., and Sir Brian Newcome, Bart., M.P., Mr.Giles shows how a considerable West End connection was likewise established, chiefly through the aristocratic friends and connections of the above-named Bart.
But the best man of business, according to Mr.Giles, whom the firm of Hobson Brothers ever knew, better than her father and uncle, better than her husband Sir T.Newcome, better than her sons and successors above mentioned, was the famous Sophia Alethea Hobson, afterwards Newcome--of whom might be said what Frederick the Great said of his sister, that she was sexu foemina, vir ingenio--in sex a woman, and in mind a man.
Nor was she, my informant told me, without even manly personal characteristics: she had a very deep and gruff voice, and in her old age a beard which many a young man might envy; and as she came into the bank out of her carriage from Clapham, in her dark green pelisse with fur trimmings, in her grey beaver hat, beaver gloves, and great gold spectacles, not a clerk in that house did not tremble before her, and it was said she only wanted a pipe in her mouth considerably to resemble the late Field-Marshal Prince Blucher.
Her funeral was one of the most imposing sights ever witnessed in Clapham.

There was such a crowd you might have thought it was a Derby-day.