e>c THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA BEQUEST OF ANITA D. S. BLAKE \urvxl »N W* Wa.Jusia*. UA* U "iirtu^ \v Aim* l^iu. -tjtfb '^ruurnvvkf : otul 1*^( oj\ itrtu c W*447 to whose opinions it is pleasant and profitable to listen. They are full of anecdotes, which are always moral and well-chosen ; their talk is never free, or on light sub- jects. I have one or two old smoking-room pillars in my eye now, who would be perfect models for any young gentleman entering life, and to whom a father could not do better than intrust the education of his son. To drop the satirical vein, my dear Bob, I am com- pelled as a man to say my opinion, that the best thing you can do with regard to that smoking-room is to keep out of it ; or at any rate never to be seen in the place after midnight. They are very pleasant and frank, those jolly fellows, those loose fishes, those fast young men — but the race in life is not to such fast men as these — and you who want to win must get up early of a morning, my boy. You and an old college-chum or two may sit together over your cigar-boxes in one another's chambers, and talk till all hours, and do yourselves good probably. Talking among you is a wholesome exercitation ; humour comes in an easy flow ; it doesn't preclude grave argument and manlv interchange of thought — I ow r n myself, when I was younger, to have smoked many a pipe with advantage in the company of Doctor Parr. Honest men, with pipes or cigars in their mouths, have great physical advantages in conversation. You may stop talking if you like — but the breaks of silence never seem disa- 68 mr. brown's letters, greeable, being rilled up by the puffing of the smoke — hence there is no awkwardness in resuming the conver- sation — no straining for effect — sentiments are deliver- ed in a grave easy manner — the cigar harmonises the society, and soothes at once the speaker and the sub- ject whereon he converses. I have no doubt that it is from the habit of smoking that Turks and American Indians are such monstrous well-bred men. The pipe draws wisdom from the lips of the philosopher, and shuts up the mouth of the foolish : it generates a style of conversation, contemplative, thoughtful, benevolent, and unaffected : in fact, dear Bob, I must out with it — I am an old smoker. At home I have done it up the chimney rather than not do it (the which I own is a crime). I vow and believe that the cigar has been one of the greatest creature-comforts of my life — a kind companion, a gentle stimulant, an amiable anodyne, a cementer of friendship. May I die if I abuse that kindly weed which has given me so much pleasure ! Since I have been a member of that Club, what num- bers of men have occupied this room and departed from it, like so many smoked-out cigars, leaving nothing behind but a little disregarded ashes ! Bob, my boy, they drop off in the course of twenty years, our boon companions, and jolly fellow bottle-crackers. — I mind me of many a good fellow who has talked and laughed here, and whose pipe is put out for ever. Men, I remember as dashing youngsters but the other day, have passed BROWN THE rOUNGER AT A CLUB. 61) into the state of old fogies : they have sons, Sir, of almost our age, when first we joined the Polyanthus. Grass grows over others in all parts of the world. Where is poor Ned ? Where is poor Fred ? Dead rhymes with Ned and Fred too — their place known them not — their names one year appeared at the end of the Club list, under that dismal category of " Members Deceased," in which you and I shall rank some day. Do you keep that subject steadily in your mind ? I do not see why one shouldn't meditate upon Death in Pall Mall as well as in a howling wilderness. There is enough to remind one of it at every corner. There is a strange face looking out of Jack's old lodgings in Jermyn Street, — somebody else has got the Club chair which Tom used to occupy. He doesn't dine here and grumble as he used formerly. He has been sent for, and has not come back again — one day Fate will send for us, and we shall not return — and the people will come down to the Club as usual, saying, " Well, and so poor old Brown's gone." — Indeed, a smoking-room on a morning is not a cheerful spot. Our room has a series of tenants of quite distinct characters. After an early and sober dinner below, certain habitues of the Polyanthus mount up to this apart- ment for their coffee and cigar, and talk as gravely as Sachems at a Palaver. Trade and travel, politics and geography, are their discourse — they are in bed long before their successors the jolly fellows begin their 70 mr. brown's letters. night life, and the talk of the one set is as different to the conversation of the other, as any talk can be. After the grave old Sachems, come other frequenters of the room ; a squad of sporting men very likely — very solemn and silent personages these — who give the odds, and talk about the cup in a darkling under tone. Then you shall have three or four barristers with high voices, seldom able to sit long without talking of their profession, or mentioning something about Westminster Hall. About eleven, men in white neckcloths drop in from dinner-parties, and show their lacquered boots and shirt-studs with a little complacency — and at midnight, after the theatres, the young rakes and viveurs come swaggering in, and call loudly for gin-twist. But as for a club smoking-room after midnight, I vow again that you are better out of it : that you will waste money and your precious hours and health there ; and you may frequent this Polyanthus room for a year, and not car- ry away from the place one single idea or story that can do you the least good in life. How much you shall take away of another sort, I do not here set down ; but I have before my mind's eye the image of Old Silenus with purple face and chalk-stone fingers, telling his foul old garrison legends over his gin-and-water. He is ir the smoking-room every night ; and I feel that no mar can get benefit from the society of that old man. What society he has he gets from this place. He sits for hours in a corner of the sofa, and makes up his BROWN THE YOUNGER AT A CLUB. 71 parties here. He will ask you after a little time, seeing that you' are a gentleman and have a good address, and will give you an exceedingly good dinner. I went once, years ago, to a banquet of his — and found all the men at his table were Polyanthuses : so that it was a house dinner in Square, with Mrs. Silenus at the head of the table. After dinner she retired and was no more seen, and Silenus amused himself by making poor Mr. Tippleton drunk. He came to the Club the next day, he amused himself by describing the arts by which he had practis- ed upon the easy brains of poor Mr. Tippleton — (as if that poor fellow wanted any arts or persuasion to induce him to intoxicate himself), and told all the smoking- room, how he had given a dinner, how many bottles of wine had been emptied, and how many Tippleton had drunk for his share. " I kept my eye on Tip, Sir," the horrid old fellow said — " I took care to make him mix his liquors well, and before 11 o'clock I finished him and had him as drunk as a lord, Sir !" Will you like to have that gentleman for a friend ? He has elected himself our smoking-room king at the Polyan- thus, and midnight monarch. As he talks, in comes poor Tippleton — a kind soul — a gentleman — a man of reading and parts — who has friends at home very likely, and had once a careei before him — and what is he now? His eyes are vacant ; he reels into a sofa corner, and sits in maudlin 72 mr. brown's letters. silence, and hiccups every now and then. Old Silenus winks knowingly round at the whole smoking-room : most of the men sneer — some pity — some very young cubs laugh and jeer at him. Tippleton's drunk. in. From the Library and Smoking-room regions let us descend to the lower floor. Here you behold the Coffee-room, where the neat little tables are already laid out, awaiting the influx of diners. A great advance in civilisation was made, and the honesty as well as economy of young men of the middle classes immensely promoted, when the ancient tavern system was overthrown, and those houses of meeting instituted where a man, without sacrificing his dignity, could dine for a couple of shillings. I remember in the days of my youth when a very moderate dinner at a reputable coffee-house cost a man half-a-guinea : when you were obliged to order a pint of wine for the good of the house ; when the waiter got a shilling for his attendance ; and when young gentlemen were no richer than they are now, and had to pay thrice as much as they at present need to disburse for the maintenance of their station. Then men (who had not the half guinea at command,) used to dive into dark streets in the vicinage of Soho or Covent Garden, and get a meagre meal at shilling taverns — or Tom, the clerk, issued out from your Cham- BROWN THE LOUNGER AT A CLUB. 73 bers in Pump Court and brought back your dinner between two plates from a neighbouring ham and beef shop. Either repast was strictly honourable, and one can find no earthly fault with a poor gentleman, for eating a poor meal. But that solitary meal in Cham- bers was indeed a dismal refection. I think with any- thing but regret of those lonely feasts of beef and cab- bage ; and how there was no resource for the long even- ings but those books, over which you had been poring all day, or the tavern with its deuced expenses, or the theatre — a young bachelor's life was a clumsy piece of wretchedness then— mismanaged and ill economised — just as your Temple Chambers or College rooms now are, which are quite behind the age, in the decent con- veniences which every modern tenement possesses. And that dining for a shilling and strutting about Pall Mall afterwards was, after all, an hypocrisy. At the time when the Trois Freres Provenqaux at Paris had two entrances, one into the place of the Palais Eoyal, and one into the street behind, where the sixteen sous dinner-houses are, I have seen bucks with profuse toothpicks walk out of these latter houses of entertain- ment, pass up the Trois Freres stair, and descend from the other door into the Palais Royal, so that the people walking there might fancy these poor fellows had been dining regardless of expense. No ; what you call put- ting a good face upon poverty, that is, hiding it under a grin, or concealing its rags under a make-shift, is 4 74 mr. brown's letters. always rather a base stratagem. Your Beaux Tibbs's and twopenny dandies can never be respectable alto- gether : and if a man is poor, I say he ought to seem poor ; and that both he and Society are in the wrong, if either sees any cause of shame in poverty. That is why I say we ought to be thankful for Clubs. Here is no skulking to get a cheap dinner : no ordering of expensive liquors and dishes for the good of the house, or cowering sensitiveness as to the opinion of the waiter. We advance in simplicity and honesty as we advance in civilisation, and it is my belief that we be- come better bred and less artificial, and tell more truth every day. This you see is the Club Coffee-room — it is three o'clock, young Wideawake is just finishing his break- fast (with whom I have nothing to do at present, but to say parenthetically, that if you will sit up till five o'clock in the morning, Bob, my boy, you may look out to have a headache and a breakfast at three in the afternoon). Wideawake is at breakfast — Goldsworthy is ordering his dinner — while Mr. Nudgit, whom you see yonder, is making his lunch. In those two gentlemen is the moral and exemplification of the previous little remarks which I have been making. You must know, Sir, that at the Polyanthus, in com- mon with most Clubs, gentlemen are allowed to enjoy, gratis, in the Coffee-room, bread, beer, sauces, and pickles. BROWN THE YOUNGER AT A CLUB. *75 After four o'clock, if you order your dinner, you have to pay sixpence for what is called the table — the clean cloth, the vegetables, cheese, and so forth : before that hour you may have lunch, when there is no table charge. Now, Goldsworthy is a gentleman and a man of genius, who has courage and simplicity enough to be poor — not like some fellows whom one meets, and who make a fanfaronnade of poverty, and draping them- selves in their rags, seem to cry, " See how virtuous I am, — how honest Diogenes is !" but he is a very poor man, whose education and talents are of the best, and who in so far claims to rank with the very best people in the world. In his place in Parliament, when he takes off his hat (which is both old and well brushed), the Speaker's eye is pretty sure to meet his, and the House listens to him with the respect which is due to so much honesty and talent. He is the equal of any man, how- ever lofty or wealthy. His social position is rather im- proved by his poverty, and the world, which is a manly and generous world in its impulses, hoAvever it may be in its practice, contemplates with a sincere regard and admiration Mr. Goldsworthy's manner of bearing his lack of fortune. He is going to dine for a shilling ; he will have two mutton chops (and the mutton chop is a thing unknown in domestic life and in the palaces of epicures, where you may get cutlets dressed with all sorts of French sauces, but not the admirable mutton *76 mr. brown's letters. chop), and with a due allowance of the Club bread and beer, he will make a perfectly wholesome, and sufficient, and excellent meal ; and go down to the House and fire into Ministers this very night. Now, I say, this man dining for a shilling is a plea- sant spectacle to behold. I respect Mr. Goldsworthy with all my heart, without sharing those ultra-conserva- tive political opinions, which we all know he entertains, and from which no interest, temptation, or hope of place will cause him to swerve ; and you see he is waited upon with as much respect here, as old Silenus, though he order the most sumptuous banquet the cook can devise, or bully the waiters ever so. But ah, Bob ! what can we say of the conduct of that poor little Mr. Nudgit ? He has a bed-chamber in some court unknown in the neighbourhood of the Polyanthus. He makes a breakfast with the Club bread and beer : he lunches off the same supplies — and being of an Epicurean taste, look what he does — he is actually pouring a cruet of anchovy sauce over his bread to give it a flavour ; and I have seen the unconscionable little gourmand sidle off to the pickle jars when he thought nobody was observing, and pop a walnut or half a dozen of pickled onions into his mouth, and swallow them with a hideous furtive relish. He disappears at dinner time, and returns at half-past seven or eight o'clock, and wanders round the tables when the men are at their dessert and generous over BROWN THE YOUNGER AT A CLUB. 77 their wine. He lias a number of little stories about the fashionable world to tell, and is not unentertaining. When you dine here, sometimes give Nudgit a glass or two out of your decanter, Bob, my boy, and comfort his poor old soul. He was a gentleman once and had money, as he will be sure to tell you. He is mean and feeble, but not unkind — a poor little parasite not to be un pitied. Mr. Xudgit, allow me to introduce you to a new member, my nephew, Mr. Robert Brown. At this minute old Silenus swaggers in, bearing his great waistcoat before him, and walking up to the desk where the coffee-room clerk sits and where the bills of fare are displayed. As he passes he has to undergo the tire of Mr. Goldsworthy's eyes, which dart out at him two flashes of the most killing scorn. He has passed by the batterv without sinking, and lavs himself alono-side the desk. jSYdgit watches him, and will presently go up smirking humbly to join him. "Hunt," he says, "I want a table, my table, you know, at seven — dinner for eight — Lord Hobanob • lines with me — send the butler — What's in the bill of fare ? Let's have clear soup and turtle — I 've sent it in from the city — dressed fish and turbot," and with a swollen trembling hand he writes down a pompous bill of fare. As I said, Xudgit comes up simpering, with a news- paper in his hand. 78 MR. BROWN'S LEITERS. " Hullo, Nudg !" says Mr. Silenus, " how's the beer ! Pickles good to-day ?" Nudgit smiles in a gentle deprecatory manner. " Smell out a good dinner, hey, Nudg ?" says Dives. " If any man knows how to give one, you do," an- swers the poor beggar. " I wasn't a bad hand at order- ing a dinner myself, once ; what's the fish in the list to-day ?" and with a weak smile he casts his eye over the bill of fare. " Lord Hobanob dines with me, and he knows what a good dinner is, I can tell you," says Mr. Silenus, " so does Cramley." "Both well-known epicures," says Nudgit. " I'm going to give Hobanob a return dinner to his at the Rhododendrum. He bet me that Batifol, the chef at the Rhododendrum, did better than our man can. Hob's dinner was last Wednesday, and I don't say it wasn't a good one ; or that taking Grosbois by surprise, is giving him quite fair play — but we'll see, Nudgit. / know what Grosbois can do." " I should think you did, indeed, Silenus," says the other. " I see your mouth's watering. I'd ask you, only I know you're engaged. You're always engaged, Nud- git — Not to-day ? Well then, you may come ; and I say, Mr. Nudgit, we'll have a wet evening, Sir, mind you that." BROWN THE YOUNGER AT A CLUB. 79 Mr. Bowls, the butler, here coming in, Mr. Silenus falls into conversation with him about wines and icing. I am glad poor Nudgit has got his dinner. He will go and walk in the Park to get up an appetite. And now, Mr. Bob, having shown you over your new house, I too will bid vou for the present farewell. 80 mr. brown's letters. A WORD ABOUT BALLS IN SEASON. When my good friend, Mr. Punch, some time since, asked me to compile a series of conversations for young men in the dancing world, so that they might be agree- able to their partners, and advance their own success in life, I consented with a willing heart to my venerable friend's request, for I desire nothing better than to pro- mote the amusement and happiness of all young people ; and nothing, I thought, would be easier than to touch off a few light, airy, graceful little sets of phrases, which young fellows might adopt or expand, according to their own ingenuity and leisure. Well, Sir, I imagined myself, just for an instant, to be young again, and that I had a neat waist instead of that bow-window with which Time and Nature have ornamented the castle of my body, and brown locks instead of a bald pate (there was a time, Sir, when my hair was not considered the worst part of me, and I recollect when I was a young ma*n in the Militia, and when pig-tails finally went out in our corps, who it was that longed to have my queue — it was found in her A WORD ABOUT BALLS IN SEASON. 81 desk at her death, and my poor dear wife was always jealous of her), — I just choose, I say, to fancy myself a young man, and that I would go up in imagination and ask a girl to dance with me. So I chose Maria — a man might go farther and fare worse than choose Maria, Mr. Bob. " My dear Miss K," says I, " may I have the honour of dancing the next set with you ?" " The next what ?" says Miss E., smiling, and turning to Mrs. E., as if to ask what a set meant. " I forgot," says I ; " the next quadrille, I would say." " It is rather slow dancing, quadrilles," says Miss E.; " but if I must, I must." " Well, then, a waltz, will that do ? I know nothing prettier than a waltz played not too quick." " What !" says she, " do you want a horrid old three- timed waltz, like that which the little figures dance upon the barrel-organs ? You silly old creature : you are good-natured, but you are in your dotage. All these dances are passed away. You might as well ask me to wear a gown with a waist up to my shoulders, v like that in which mamma was married ; or a hoop and high heels, like grandmamma, in the picture ; or to dance a gavotte or a minuet. Things are changed, old gentleman — the fashions of your time are gone, and — and the bucks of your time will go too, Mr. Brown. If I want to dance, here is Captain Whiskerfield, who is ready ; or young Studdington, who is a delightful 4* 82 mr. brown's letters. partner. He brings a little animation into our balls ; and when he is not in society, dances every night at Vauxhall and the Casino." I pictured to myself Maria giving some such reply to my equally imaginative demand — for of course I never made the request, any more than she did the answer — and, in fact, dear Bob, after turning over the matter of ball-room conversations in my mind, and sitting with pen and ink before me for a couple of hours, I found that I had nothing at all to say on the subject, and have no more right to teach a youth what he is to say in the present day to his partner, than I should have had in my own boyhood to instruct my own grandmother in the art of sucking eggs. We should pay as much reverence to youth as we should to age ; there are points in which you young folks are altogether our superiors : and I can't help constantly crying out to persons of my own years, when busied about their young people — leave them alone ; don't be always meddling with their affairs, which they can manage for them- selves ; don't be always insisting upon managing their boats, and putting your oars in the water with theirs. So I have the modesty to think that Mr. Punch and I were a pair of conceited old fogies, in devising the above plan of composing conversation for the benefit of youth, and that young folks can manage to talk of what interests them, without any prompting on our part. To say the truth, I have hardly been to a ball A WORD ABOUT BALLS IN SEASON. 83 these three years. I saw the head of the stair at H. E.'s the T Ambassador in Br ne Square, the othei night, but retired without even getting a sight of, or making my bow to Her Excellency ; thinking wisely that mon lait de poule, et mon bonnet de nuit, much better became me at that hour of midnight, than the draught in a crowded passage, and the sight of ever so many beauties. But though I don't go myself to these assemblies, I have intelligences amongst people who go : and hear from the girls and their mammas, what they do, and how they enjoy themselves. I must own that some of the new arrangements please me very much as being natural and simple, and, in so far, superior to the old mode. In my time, for instance, a ball-room used to be more than half-filled with old male and female fogies, whose persons took up a great deal of valuable room, who did not in the least ornament the walls against which they stood, and who would have been much better at home in bed. In a great country-house where you have a hall fire-place in which an ox might be roasted con- veniently, the presence of a few score more or less of stout old folks can make no difference ; there is room for them at the card-tables, and round the supper-board, and the sight of their honest red faces and white waist- coats lining the wall cheers and illuminates the Assem- bly Room. But it is a very different case when you have a small 84 mr. brown's letters. house in Mayfair, or in the pleasant district of Pimlico and Tyburn ; and accordingly I am happy to hear that the custom is rapidly spreading of asking none but dancing people to balls. It was only this morning that I was arguing the point with our cousin Mrs. Crowder, who was greatly irate because her daughter Fanny had received an invitation to go with her aunt, Mrs. Timmins, to Lady Tutbury's ball, whereas poor Mrs. Crowder had been told that she could on no account get a card Now Blanche Crowder is a very large woman natu- rally, and with the present fashion of flounces in dress, this balloon of a creature would occupy the best part of a back drawing-room ; whereas Rosa Timmins is a little bit of a thing, who takes up no space at all, and indeed furnishes the side of a room as prettily as a bank of flowers could. I tried to convince our cousin upon this point, this embonpoint, I may say, and of course being too polite to make remarks personal to Mrs. Crowder, I playfully directed them elsewhere. " Dear Blanche," said I, " don't you see how greatly Lady Tutbury would have to extend her premises if all the relatives of all her dancers were to be invited ? She has already flung out a marquee over the leads, and actually included the cistern — what can she do more ? If all the girls were to have chaperons, where could the elders sit ? Tutbury himself will not be present. He is a large and roomy man like your humble servant, and Lady Tut has sent him off to Greenwich, or the Star and Garter for A WORD ABOUT BALLS IN SEASON. 85 the night, where, I have no doubt, he and some other stout fellows will make themselves comfortable. At a ball amongst persons of moderate means and large ac- quaintance in London, room is much more precious than almost anybody's company, except that of the beauties and the dancers. Look at Lord Trampleton, that enormous hulking monster (who nevertheless dances beautifully, as all big men do), when he takes out his favorite partner, Miss Wirledge, to polk, his arm, as he whisks her round and round, forms radii of a circle of very considerable diameter. He almost wants a room to himself. Young men and women now, when they dance, dance really ; it is no lazy sauntering, as of old, but downright hard work — after which they want air and refreshment. How can they get the one, when the rooms are filled with elderly folks ; or the other, when we are squeezing round the supper-tables, and drinking up all the available Champagne and Seltzer water ? No, no ; the present plan, which I hear is becoming general, is admirable for London. Let there be a half-dozen of good, active, bright-eyed chaperons and duennas, little women, who are more active, and keep a better look-out than your languishing voluptuous beauties" (I said this, casting at the same time a look of peculiar tenderness towards Blanche Crowder), "let them keep watch and see that all is right — that the young men don't dance too often with the same girl, or disappear on to the bal- cony, and that sort of thing ; let them have good large 86 mr. brown's letters. roomy family coaches to carry the young women home to their mammas. In a word, at a ball, let there be for the future no admittance except upon business. In all the affairs of London life, that is the rule, depend upon it," " And pray who told you, Mr. Brown, that I didn't wish to dance myself?" says Blanche, surveying her great person in the looking-glass (which could scarcely contain it) and flouncing out of the room ; and I ac- tually believe that the unconscionable creature, at her age and size, is still thinking that she is a fairy, and that the young fellows would like to dance round the room with her. Ah, Bob ! I remember that grotesque wo- man a slim and graceful girl. I remember others ten- der and beautiful, whose bright eyes glitter, and whose sweet voices whisper no more. So they pass away — youth and beauty, love and innocence, pass away and perish. I think of one now, whom I remember the fair- est and the gayest, the kindest and the purest ; her laughter was music — I can hear it still, though it will never echo any more. Far away, the silent tomb closes over her. Other roses than those of our prime, grow up and bloom, and have their day. Honest youth, generous youth, may yours be as pure and as fair. I did not think when I began to write it, that the last sentence would have finished so : but life is not altogether jocular, Mr. Bob, and one comes upon serious thoughts suddenly as upon a funeral in the street. Let us go A WORD ABOUT BALLS IN SEASON. 87 back to the business we are upon, namely balls, whereof it perhaps has struck you that your uncle has very little to say. I saw one announcement in the morning; fashionable print to-day, with a fine list of some of the greatest folks in London, and had previously heard from various quar- ters how eager many persons were to attend it, and how splendid an entertainment it was to be. And so the morning paper announced that Mrs. Hornby Madox threw open her house in So-and-So Street, and was as- sisted in receiving her guests by Lady Fugleman. Now this is a sort of entertainment and arrangement than which I confess I can conceive nothing more queer, though I believe it is by no means uncommon in Eng- lish society. Mrs. Hornby Madox comes into her for- tune of ten thousand a-year — wishes to be presented in the London world, having lived in the country previous- ly — spares no expense to make her house and festival as handsome as may be, and gets Lady Fugleman to ask the company for her — not the honest Hornbys, not the family Madoxes, not the jolly old squires and friends and relatives of her family, and from her county ; but the London dandies and the London society : whose names you see chronicled at every party, and who, being Lady Fugleman's friends, are invited by her Ladyship to Mrs. Hornby's house. What a strange notion of society does this give — of friendship, of fashion, of what people will do to be in 88 mr. brown's letters. the fashion ! Poor Mrs. Hornby comes into her for- tune, and says to her old friends and family, " My good people, I am going to cut every one of you. You were very well as long as we were in the country, where I might have my natural likings and affections. But, henceforth, I am going to let Lady Fugleman choose my friends for me. I know nothing about you any more. I have no objection to you, but if you want to know me you must ask Lady Fugleman : if she says yes, I shall be delighted ; if no, Bon jour." This strange business goes on daily in London. Ho- nest people do it, and think not the least harm. The proudest and noblest do not think they demean them- selves by crowding to Mrs. Goldcalf's parties, and strike quite openly a union between her wealth and their titles, to determine as soon as the former ceases. There is not the least hypocrisy about this at any rate — the terms of the bargain are quite understood on every hand. But oh, Bob ! see what an awful thing it is to con- fess, and would not even hypocrisy be better than this daring cynicism, this open heartlessness — Godlessness I had almost called it ? Do you mean to say, you great folks, that your object in society is not love, is not friendship, is not family union and affection — is not truth and kindness ; — is not generous sympathy and union of Christian"(pardon me the word, but I can indi- cate my meaning by no other) — of Christian men and A WORD ABOUT BALLS IN SEASON. 89 women, parents and children, — but that you assemble and meet together, not caring or trying to care for one another, — without a pretext of good will — with a daring selfishness openly avowed? I am sure I wish Mrs. Goldcalf or the other lady no harm, and have never spoken to, or set eyes on either of them, and I do not mean to say, Mr. Robert, that you and I are a whit better than they are, and doubt whether they have made the calculation for themselves of the consequences of what they are doing. But as sure as two and two make four, a person giving up of his own accord his natural friends and relatives, for the sake of the fashion, seems to me to say, I acknowledge myself to be heart- less ; I turn my back on my friends, I disown my rela- tives, and I dishonour my father and mother. And so no more at present, dear Bob, from your affectionate, Brown the Elder. 90 mr. brown's letters. A WORD ABOUT DINNERS. English Society, my beloved Bob, has this eminent ad- vantage over all other — that is, if there be any society left in the wretched distracted old European continent — that it is above all others a dinner-giving society. A people like the Germans, that dines habitually, and with what vast appetite I need not say, at one o'clock in the afternoon — like the Italians, that spends its evenings in Opera boxes — like the French, that amuses itself of nights with eau sucree and intrigue — cannot, believe me, understand Society rightly. I love and admire my nation for its good sense, its manliness, its friendliness, its morality in the main — and these, I take it, are all expressed in that noble institution, the dinner. The dinner is the happy end of the Briton's day. We work harder than the other nations of the earth. We do more, we live more in our time, than Frenchmen or Germans. Every great man amongst us lilies his dinner, and takes to it kindly. I could mention the most august names of poets, statesmen, philosophers, historians, judges, and divines, who are great at the A WORD ABOUT DINNERS. 91 dinner-table as in the field, the closet, the senate, or the bench. Gibbon mentions that he wrote the first two volumes of his history whilst a placeman in London, lodging in St. James's, going to the House of Commons, to the Club, and to dinner every day. The man flou- rishes under that generous and robust regimen ; the healthy energies of society are kept up by it ; our friendly intercourse is maintained ; our intellect ripens with the good cheer, and throws off surprising crops, like the fields about Edinburgh, under the influence of that admirable liquid, Claret. The best wines are sent to this country therefore : for no other deserves them as ours does. I am a diner out, and live in London. I protest, as I look back at the men and dinners I have seen in the last week, my mind is filled with manly respect and pleasure. How good they have been ! how admirable the entertainments ! how worthy the men ! Let me, without divulging names, and with a cordial gratitude, mention a few of those whom I have met and who have all done their duty. Sir, I have sat at table with a great, a world-renowned statesman. I watched him during the progress of the banquet — I am at liberty to say that he enjoyed it like a man. On another day, it was a celebrated literary charac- ter. It was beautiful to see him at his dinner : cordial and generous, jovial and kindly, the great author en- 92 MR. BROWNS LETTERS. . — — ■» joyed himself as the great statesman — may he long give ns good books and good dinners ! Yet another day, and I sat opposite to a Eight Re- verend Bishop. My Lord, I was pleased to see good thing after good thing disappear before you ; and think no man ever better became that rounded episcopal apron. How amiable he was ! how kind ! He put water into his wine. Let us respect the moderation of the Church. And then the men learned in the law : how they dine ! what hospitality, what splendour, what comfort, what wine ! As we walked away very gently in the moon- light, only three days since, from the 's, a friend of my youth and myself, we could hardly speak for gratitude : " Dear Sir," — we breathed fervently, " ask us soon again." One never has too much at those per- fect banquets — no hideous headaches ensue, or horrid resolutions about adopting Revalenta Arabica for the future — but contentment with all the world, light slum- bers, joyful waking to grapple with the morrow's work. Ah, dear Bob, those lawyers have great merits. There is a dear old judge at whose family table, if I could see you seated, my desire in life would be pretty nearly ful- filled. If you make yourself agreeable there, you will be in a fair way to get on in the world. But you are a youth still. Youths go to balls : men go to dinners. Doctors, again, notoriously eat well ; when my excel- lent friend San gr ado takes a bumper, and saying, with A WORD ABOUT DINNERS. 93 a shrug and a twinkle of his eye, " Video meliora pro- boque, deteriora sequor" tosses off the wine, I always ask the butler for a glass of that bottle. The inferior clergy, likewise, dine very much and well. I don't know when I have been better entertained, as far as creature comforts go, than by men of very low church principles ; and one of the very best repasts that ever I saw in my life was at Darlington, given by a Quaker. Some of the best wine in London is given to his friends by a poet of my acquaintance. All artists are notoriously fond of dinners, and invite you, but not so profusely. Newspaper-editors delight in dinners on Saturdays, and give them, thanks to the present position of Literature, very often and good. Dear Bob, I have seen the mahoganies of many men. Every evening between 7 and 8 o'clock, I like to look at the men dressed for dinner, perambulating the western districts of our city. I like to see the smile on their countenances lighted up with an indescribable self-im- portance and good humour ; the askance glances which they cast at the little street-boys and foot-passengers who eye their shiny boots ; the dainty manner in which they trip over the pavement on those boots, eschewing the mud-pools and dirty crossings ; the refreshing white- ness of their linen ; the coaxing twiddle which they give to the ties of their white chokers — the caress of a fond parent to an innocent child. 94 mr. brown's letters. I like walking- myself. Those who go in cabs or Broughams I have remarked, somehow, have not the same radiant expression which the pedestrian exhibits. A man in his own Brougham has anxieties about the stepping of his horse, or the squaring of the groom's elbows, or a doubt whether Jones's turn-out is not better ; or whether something is not wrong in the springs ; or whether he shall have the Brougham out if the night is rainy. They always look tragical behind the glasses. A cab diner-out has commonly some cares, lest his sense of justice should be injured by the overcharge of the driver (these fellows are not uncommonly exorbitant in their demands upon gentlemen whom they set down at good houses) ; lest the smell, of tobacco left by the last occupants of the vehicle (five medical students, let us say, who have chartered the vehicle and smoked cheroots from the London University to the play-house in the Haymarket) should infest the clothes of Tom La- vender who is going to Lady Rosemary's ; lest straws should stick unobserved to the glutinous lustre of his boots — his shiny ones, and he should appear in Dives's drawing-room like a poet with a tenui avena, or like mad Tom in the play. I hope, my dear Bob, if a straw should ever enter a drawing-room in the wake of your boot, you will not be much disturbed in mind. Hark ye, in confidence ; I have seen * in a hack cab. * Mr. Brown's MS. here contains a name of such prodigious dignity out of the P — r — ge, that we really do not dare to print it. A WORD ABOUT DINNERS. 95 There is no harm in employing one. There is no harm in anything natural, any more. I cannot help here parenthetically relating a story which occurred in my own youth, in the year 1815, at the time when I first made my own entree into society (for everything must have a beginning, Bob ; and though we have been gentlemen long before the Conqueror, and have always consorted with gentlemen, yet we had not always attained that haute volee of fashion which has distinguished some of us subsequently) ; I recollect, I say, in 1815, when the Marquis of Sweetbread was good enough to ask me and the late Mr. Ruffles to dinner, to meet Prince Schwartzenberg and the Hetman Platoff. Ruffles was a man a good deal about town in those days, and certainly in very good society. I was myself a young one, and thought Ruffles was rather inclined to patronize me : which I did not like. " I would have you to know, Mr. Ruffles," thought I, " that, after all, a gentleman can but be a gentleman ; that though we Browns have no handles to our names, we are quite as well-bred as some folks who possess those ornaments — and in fine I determined to give him a lesson. So when he called for me in the hackney- coach at my lodgings in Swallow Street, and we had driven under the porte-cochere of Sweetbread House, where two tall and powdered domestics in the uniform of the Sweetbreads, viz. a spinach-coloured coat, with waistcoat and the rest of delicate yellow or melted-butter colour, 96 mr. brown's letters. opened the doors of trie hall — what do you think, Sir, 1 did ? In the presence of these gentlemen, who were holding on at the door, I offered to toss up with Ruf- fles, heads or tails, who should pay for the coach ; and then purposely had a dispute with the poor Jarvey about the fare. Ruffles's face of agony during this transac- tion I shall never forget. Sir, it was like the Laocoon. Drops of perspiration trembled on his pallid brow, and he flung towards me looks of imploring terror that would have melted an ogre. A better fellow than Ruffles never lived — he is dead long since, and I don't mind owning to this harmless little deceit. A person of some note — a favourite Snob of mine (to use the words of a somewhat coarse writer who previ- ously contributed to this periodical) — I am told, when he goes to dinner, adopts what he considers a happy ar- tifice, and sends his cab away at the corner of the street ; so that the gentleman in livery may not behold its number, or that lord with whom he dines, and about whom he is always talking, may not be supposed to know that Mr. Smith came in a hack-cab. A man who is troubled with a shame like this, Bob, is unworthy of any dinner at all. Snch a man must needs be a sneak and a humbug, anxious about the effect which he is to produce : uneasy in his mind : a donkey in a lion's skin : a small pretender — distracted by doubts and frantic terrors of what is to come next. Such a man can be no more at ease in his chair at dinner than a man A WORD ABOUT DINNERS. 97 is in the fauteuil at the dentist's (unless indeed )-e go to the admirable Mr. Gilbert in Suffolk Place, who is dragged into this essay for the benefit of mankind alone, and who, I vow, removes a grinder with so lit'le pain, that all the world should be made aware of 1 im) — a fellow, I say, ashamed of the original from w.iich he sprung, of the cab in which he drives, awkward, there- fore, affected, and unnatural, can never hope or deserve to succeed in society. The great comfort of the society of great foil • is, that they do not trouble themselves about your t\ o-penny little person, as smaller persons do, but take you for what you are — a man kindly and good-natured, or witty and sarcastic, or learned and eloquent, or a good raccon- teur, or a very handsome man, (and in '15 some of the Browns were — but I am speaking of five-and-thirty years ago,) or an excellent gourmand and judge of wines — or what not. Nobody sets you so quickly at your ease as a fine gentleman. I have seen more noise made about a knight's lady than about the Duchess of Fitz- battleaxe herself : and Lady Mountararat, whose family dates from the Deluge, enter and leave a room, with her daughters, the lovely Ladies Eve and Lilith D'Arc, with much less pretension and in much simpler capotes and what-do-you-call-ems, than Lady de Mogyns or Mrs. Shindy, who quit an assembly in a whirlwind as it were, with trumpets and alarums like a stage King and Queen. 5 98 mr. brown's letters. But my pen can run no further, for my paper is out, and it is time to dress for dinner. Let us resume this theme next week, dear youth, and believe me in the meantime to be your affectionate Brown the Elder. SOME OLD CUSTOMS OF THE DINNER-TABLE. 99 ON SOME OLD CUSTOMS OF THE DINNER-TABLE. Of all the sciences which have made a progress in late years, I think, dear Bob (to return to the subject from which I parted with so much pleasure last week), that the art of dinner-giving has made the most delightful and rapid advances. Sir, I maintain, even now with a matured age and appetite, that the dinners of this present day are better than those we had in our youth, and I can't but be thankful at least once in every day for this decided improvement in our civilization. Those who remember the usages of five-and-twenty years back will be ready, I am sure, to acknowledge this progress. I was turning over at the Club yesterday a queer little book written at that period, which, I believe, had some authority at the time, and which records some of those customs which obtained, if not in good London Society, at least in some companies, and parts of our island. Sir, many of these practices seem as antiquated now, as the usages described in the accounts of Homeric feasts, or Queen Elizabeth's banquets and breakfasts. Let us be happy to think they are gone. 100 mr. brown's letters. The book in question is called The Maxims of Sir Morgan O'Doherty, a queer baronet, who appears to have lived in the first quarter of the century, and whose opinions the antiquarian may examine, not without profit — a strange barbarian indeed it is, and one won- ders that such customs should ever have been prevalent in our country. Fancy such opinions as these having ever been holden by any set of men among us. Maxim 2. "It is laid down in fashionable life that you must drink champagne after white cheeses, water after red." . . . " Ale is to be avoided, in case a wet night is to be expected, as should cheese also." Maxim 4. " A fine singer, after dinner, is to be avoided, for he is a great bore, and stops the wine . . . One of the best rules (to put him down) is to applaud him most vociferously as soon as he has sung the first verse, as if all was over, and say to the gentleman furthest from you at table that you admire the conclusion of this song very much." Maxim 25. " You meet people occasionally who tell you it is bad taste to give cham- pagne at dinner — Port and Tenerifte being such superior drinking," airy and great Babylon. As an old soldier when he gets to his ground begins straightway a se caser as the French say, makes the most of his circumstances, and himself as comfortable as he can, an old London man, if obliged to pass the dull season in town, accommodates himself to the time, and forages here and there in the deserted city, and manages to make his own tent snug. A thousand means of com- fort and amusement spring up, whereof a man has no idea of the existence, in the midst of the din and racket of the London season. I, for my part, am grown to that age, Sir, when I like the quiet time the best : the gaiety of the great London season is too strong and noisy for me ; I like to talk to my beloved metropolis when she. has done dancing at crowded balls, and squeezing at concerts, and chattering at conversaziones, and gorging at great dinners — when she is calm, contemplative, con- fidential, and at leisure. Colonel Padmore of our club being out of town, and too wise a man to send his favourite old cob to grass, I mounted him yesterday, and took a ride in Rotten Row, and in various parts of the city, where but ten days back all sorts of life, hilarity, and hospitality, 144 mr. brown's letters. were going on. What a change it is now in the Park, from that scene which the modern Pepys, and that inge- nious youth who signs his immortal drawings with a D surmounted by a dicky-bird, depicted only a few weeks ago ! Where are the thousands of carriages that crawled along the Serpentine shore, and which give an observant man a happy and wholesome sense of his own insigni- ficance — for you shall be a man long upon the town, and pass five hundred equipages without knowing the owners of one of them ? Where are the myriads of horsemen who trampled the Row ? — the splendid dan- dies whose boots were shiny, whose chins were tufted, whose shirts were astounding, whose manners were frank and manly, whose brains were somewhat small ? W'here are the stout old capitalists and bishops on their cobs (the Bench, by the way, cuts an uncommonly good figure on horseback) ? Where are the dear rideresses, above all ? Where is she the gleaming of whose red neck- ribbon in the distance made your venerable uncle's heart beat, Bob ? He sees her now prancing by, severe and beautiful — a young Diana, with pure bright eyes ! Where is Fanny who wore the pretty grey hat and fea- ther, and rode the pretty grey mare ? Fanny changed her name last week, without ever so much as sending me a piece of cake ? The gay squadrons have disap- peared : the ground no longer thrills with the thump of their countless hoofs. WATTEAu-like groups in shot silks no longer compose themselves under the green OUT OF TOWN. 145 boughs of Kensington Gardens : the scarlet trumpeters have blown themselves away thence ; you don't behold a score of horsemen in the course of an hour's ride ; and Mrs. Catherine Highflyer, whom a fortnight since you never saw unaccompanied by some supertj young Earl and roue of the fashion, had yesterday so little to do with her beautiful eyes, that she absolutely tried to kill your humble servant with them as she cantered by me in at the barriers of the Row, and looked round firing Parthian shots behind her. But Padmore's cob did not trot, nor did my blood run, any the quicker, Mr. Bob ; man and beast are grown too old and steady to be put out of our pace by any Mrs. Highflyer of them. all ; and though I hope, if I live to be a hundred, never to be unmoved by the sight of a pretty girl, it is not thy kind of beauty, O ogling and vain Delilah, that can set me cantering after thee. By the way, one of the benefits I find in the dull sea- son is at my own lodgings. When I ring the bell now, that uncommonly pretty young woman, the landlady's daughter, condescends to come in and superintend my comfort, and whisk about amongst the books and tea- things, and wait upon me in general : whereas in the full season, when young Lord Claude Lollypop is here attending to his arduous duties in Parliament, and oc- cupying his accustomed lodgings on the second floor, the deuce a bit will Miss Flora ever deign to bring a message or a letter to old Mr. Brcwn on the first, but n 146 mr. brown's letters. sends me in Muggins, my old servant, whose ugly face I have known any time these thirty years, or the blowsy maid-of-all-work with her sandy hair in papers. Again, at the club, how many privileges does a man lingering in London enjoy, from which he is precluded in the full season ! Every man in every club has three or four special aversions — men who somehow annoy him, as I have no doubt but that you and I, Bob, are hated by some particular man, and for that excellent reason for which the poet disliked Dr. Fell — the appear- ance of old Banquo, in the same place, in the same arm-chair, reading the newspaper day after day and evening after evening ; of Mr. Plodder threading among the coffee-room tables and taking note of every man's dinner ; of old General Hawkshaw who makes that constant noise in the club, sneezing, coughing, and blow- ing his nose — all these men, by their various defects or qualities, have driven me half mad at times, and I have thought to myself, that I could go to the club without seeing Banquo — O that Plodder would not come and inspect my mutton chop — that fate would remove Hawkshaw and his pocket handkerchief for ever out of my sight and hearing ! Well, August arrives, and one's three men of the sea are off one's shoulders. Mr. and Mrs. Banquo are at Leamington, the paper says ; Mr. Plodder is gone to Paris to inspect the dinners at the Trois Freres ; and Hawkshaw is coughing away at Brighton where the sad sea waves murmur before OUT OF TOWN. 147 him. The club is your own. How pleasant it is ! You can get the Globe and Standard now without a struggle ; you may see all the Sunday papers ; when you dine it is not like dining in a street dinned by the tramp of waiters perpetually passing with clanking dishes of vari- ous odours, and jostled by young men who look scowl- ingly down upon your dinner as they pass with creaking boots. They are all gone — you sit in a vast and agree- able apartment with twenty large servants at your orders — if you were a Duke with a thousand pounds a day you couldn't be better served or lodged. Those men, having nothing else to do, are anxious to prevent your desires and make you happy — the butler bustles about with your pint of wine — if you order a dish, the chef himself will probably cook it: what mortal can ask more ? I once read in a book purporting to give descriptions of London, and life and manners, an account of a family in the lower ranks of genteel life, who shut up the front windows of their house, and lived in the back rooms, from which they only issued for fresh air surreptitiously at midnight, so that their friends might suppose that they were out of town. I suppose that there is some founda- tion for this legend. I suppose that some people are actually afraid to be seen in London, when the persons who form their society have quitted the metropolis : and that Mr. and Mrs. Higgs being left at home at Isling- ton, when Mr. and Mrs. Biggs, their next door neigh- 148 MR. brown's letters. bours, have departed for Margate or Gravesend, feel pangs of shame at their own poverty, and envy at their friends' better fortune. I have seen many men and cities, my dear Bob, and noted their manners : and for servility I will back a free-born Englishman of the re- spectable classes against any man of any nation in the world. In the competition for social rank between Higgs and Biggs, think what a strange standard of superiority is set up ! — a shilling steamer to Gravesend, and a few shrimps more or less on one part or the other, settles the claim. Perhaps in what is called high life, there are disputes as paltry, aims as mean, and distinc- tions as absurd : but my business is with this present folly of being ashamed to be in London. Ashamed, Sir ! I like being in London at this time, and have so much to say regarding the pleasures of the place in the dead season, that, per favour of Mr. Punch, I hope to write you, probably, another letter regarding it next week. II. Careering during the season from one party to another, from one great dinner of twenty covers to another of eighteen guests ; from Lady IIusTLEBURr's rout to Mrs. Packington's soiree — friendship, to a man about town, becomes impossible from February to August : it is only his acquaintances he can cultivate during those six months of turmoil. OUT OF TOWN. 149 In the last fortnight, one has had leisure to recur to more tender emotions : in other words, as nobody has asked me to dinner, I have been about seeking dinners from my old friends. And very glad are they to see you : very kindly and hospitable are they disposed to be, very pleasant are those little calm reunions in the quiet summer-evenings, when the be- loved friend of your youth and you sip a bottle of claret together leisurely without candles, and ascend to the drawing-room where the friend of your youth's wife sits blandly presiding over the tea-pot. What matters that it is the metal tea-pot, the silver utensils being packed off to the banker's ? what matters that the hangings are down, and the lustre in a brown-hollands bag ? In- timacy increases by this artless confidence — you are admitted to a family en deshabille. In an honest man's house, the wine is never sent to the banker's ; he can always go to the cellar for that. And so we drink and prattle in quiet — about the past season, about our sons at college, and what not. We become intimate again, because Fate, which has long separated us, throws us once more together. I say the dull season is a kind season : gentle and amiable, friendly and full of quiet enjoyment. Among these pleasant little meetings, for which the present season has given time and opportunity, I shall mention one, Sir, which took place last Wednesday, and which during the very dinner itself I vowed I would 150 mr. brown's letters. describe, if the venerable Mr. Punch would grant me leave and space, in the columns of a journal which has for its object the promotion of mirth and good will. In the year eighteen hundred and something, Sir, there lived at a villa, at a short distance from London, a certain gentleman and lady who had many acquain- tances and friends, among whom was your humble servant. For to become acquainted with this young woman was to become her friend, so friendly was she, so kind, so gentle, so full of natural genius, and grace- ful feminine accomplishment. Whatever she did she did charmingly ; her life was decorated with a hundred pretty gifts, with which, as one would fancy, kind fairies had endowed her cradle ; music and pictures seemed to How naturally out from her hand, as she laid it on the piano or the drawing-board. She sang exquisitely, and with a full heart, and as if she couldn't help it any more than a bird. I have an image of this fair creature before me now, v calm, sunshiny evening, a green lawn flaring with roses and geraniums, and a half-dozen gentlemen sauntering thereon in a state of great con- tentment, or gathered under the verandah, by the open French window : near by she sits singing at the piano. She is in a pink dress : she has gigot sleeves ; a little child in a prodigious sash is playing about at her mother's knee. She sings song after song ; the sun goes down behind the black fir-trees that belt the lawn, and Missy in the blue sash vanishes to the nursery ; the OUT OF TOWN. 151 room darkens in the twilight ; the stars appear in the heaven — and the tips of the cigars glow in the bal- cony ; she sings song after song, in accents soft and low, tender and melodious — we are never tired of hearing her. Indeed, Bob, I can hear her still — the stars of those calm nights still shine in my memory, and I have been humming one of her tunes with my pen in my mouth, to the surprise of Mr. Dodder, who is writ- ing at the opposite side of the table, and wondering at the lackadaisical expression which pervades my vene- rable muo\ You will naturally argue from the above pathetic passage, that I was greatly smitten by Mrs. Nightin- gale- (as we will call this lady, if you will permit me). You are right, Sir. For what is an amiable woman made, but that we should fall in love with her ! I do not mean to say that you are to lose your sleep, or give up your dinner, or make yourself unhappy in her ab- sence ; but when the sun shines (and it is not too hot) I like to bask in it : when the bird sings, to listen : and to admire that which is admirable, with an honest and hearty enjoyment. There were a half-dozen men at the period of which I speak, who wore Mrs. Nightingale's ( olours, and we used to be invited down from London cf a Saturday and Sunday, to Thornwood, by the hos- pitable host and hostess there, and it seemed like going- back to school, when we came away by the coach of a Monday morning : we talked of her all the way back to 152 mr. brown's letters. London, to separate upon our various callings when we got into the smoky city. Salvator Rodgers the painter, went to his easel ; Woodward the barrister, to his chambers ; Piper, the doctor, to his patient (for he then only had one), and so forth. Fate called us each to his business, and has sent us upon many a distant errand since that day. But from that day to this, whenever we meet, the remembrance of the holidays at Thornwood has been always a bond of union between us: and we have always had Mrs. Nightingale's colours put away amongst the cherished relics of old times. 1ST. was a West India merchant, and his property went to the bad. He died at Jamaica. Thornwood was let to other people who knew us not. The widow with a small jointure retired, and educated her daughter abroad. We had not heard of her for years and years, nor until she came to town about a legacy a few weeks since. In those years and years what changes have taken place ? Sir Salvator Rodgers is a Member of the Royal Academy. Woodward the barrister has made a fortune at the Bar ; and in seeing Doctor Piper in his barouche, as he rolls about Belgravia and May Fair, you at once know what a man of importance he has be- come. On last Monday week, Sir, I received a letter in a delicate female hand-writing, with which I was not ac- OUT OF TOWN. 153 quainted, and which Miss Flora, the landlady's daugh- ter, condescended to bring me, saying that it had been left at the door by two ladies in a Brougham. " — Why did you not let them come up stairs ?" 6aid ~ in a rage, after reading the note. " We don't know what sort of people goes about in Broughams," said Miss Flora, with a toss of her head, " we don't want no ladies in our house ;" and she flung her impertinence out of the room. The note was signed Frances Nightingale, — where- as our Nightingale's name was Louisa. But this Frances was no other than the little thing in the large blue sash, whom we remembered at Thornwood, ever so many years ago. The writer declared that she recol- lected me quite well, that her mamma was most anxious to see an old friend, and that they had apartments at No. 166, Clarges Street, Piccadilly, whither I hastened off* to pay my respects to Mrs. Nightingale. When I entered the room, a tall and beautiful young woman with blue eyes, and a serene and majestic air, came up to shake hands with me : and I beheld in her, without in the least recognising, the little Fanny of the blue sash. Mamma came out of the adjoining apart- ment presently. We had not met since — since all sorts of events had occurred — her voice was not a little agi- tated. Here was that fair creature whom we had ad- mired so. Sir, I shall not say whether she was altered or not. The tones of her voice were as sweet and kind 1* 154 mr. brown's letters. as ever ; — and we talked about Miss Fanny as a sub* ject in common between us, and I admired the growth and beauty of the young lady, though I did not mind telling her to her face (at which to be sure the girl was delighted), that she never in my eyes would be half as pretty as her mother. Well, Sir, upon this day arrangements were made for that dinner which took place on Wednesday last, and to the remembrance of which I determined to consecrate this present page. It so happened that everybody was in town of the old set of whom I have made mention, and everybody was disengaged. Sir Salvator Rodgers (who has become such a swell since he was knighted and got the cordon of the order of the George and Blue Boar of Russia, that we like to laugh at him a little) made his appearance at eight o'clock, and was perfectly natural and affable t Woodward the lawyer forgot his abominable law and his money about which he is always thinking : and final- ly Dr. Piper of whom we despaired because his wife is mortally jealous of every lady whom he attends, and will hardly let him dine out of her sight, had pleaded Lady Rackstraw's situation as a reason for not going down to Wimbledon Common till nisdit — and so we six had a meeting. The door was opened to us by a maid who looked us hard in the face as we went up stairs, and who was no other than little Fannt's nurse in former days, come like OUT OF TOWN. 155 us to visit her old mistress. We all knew her except Woodward the lawyer, and all shook hands with her except him. Constant study had driven her out of the lawyer's memory. I don't think he ever cared for Mrs. Nightingale as much as the rest of us did, or indeed that it is in the nature of that learned man to care for any but one learned person. And what do you think, Sir, this dear and faithful widow had done to make us welcome ? She remember- ed the dishes that we used to like ever so long ago, and she had everv man's favourite dish for him. Rodgers used to have a passion for herrings— there they were : the lawyer, who has an enormous appetite, which he gratifies at other people's expense, had a shoulder of mutton and onion sauce, which the lean and hungry man devoured almost entirely : mine did not come till the second course — it was baked plum-pudding — I was affected when I saw it, Sir — I choked almost when I eat it. Piper made a beautiful little speech, and made an ice compound, for which he was famous, and we drank it just as we used to drink it in old times, and to the health of the widow. How should we have had this dinner, how could we all have assembled together again, if everybody had not been out of town, and everybody had not been disen- gaged ? Just for one evening, the scattered members of an old circle of friendship returned and met round the old table again — round this little green island we 156 MR. BROWNS LETTERS. moor for the night at least, — to-morrow we part com- pany, and each man for himself sails over the ingens cequor. Since I wrote the above, I find that everybody really is gone away. The widow left town on Friday. I have been on my round just now, and have been met at every step by closed shutters and the faces of unfamiliar char- women. No. 9 is gone to Malvern. No. 37, 15, 25, 48, and 36a, are gone to Scotland. The solitude of the Club begins to be unbearable, and I found Muggins this morning, preparing a mysterious apparatus of travelling boot-trees, and dusting the portmanteaus. If you are not getting on well with the Kicklebury's at Hamburg I recommend you to go to Spa. Mrs. Nightingale is going thither, and will be at the Hotel d'Orange ; where you may use my name and present yourself to her : and I may hint to you in confidence that Miss Fanny will have a very pretty little fortune. THE PROSEE. THE PROSER. +»♦■ I. ON A LADY IN AN OPERA-BOX. Going the other night to the Conservatoire at Paris, where there was a magnificent assemblage of rank and fashion gathered together to hear the delightful per- formance of Madame Sontag, the friend who conferred upon me the polite favour of a ticket to the stalls, also pointed out to me who were the most remarkable per- sonages round about us. There were ambassadors, politicians, and gentlemen, military and literary ; there were beauties, French, Russian, and English : there were old ladies who had been beauties once, and who, by the help of a little distance and politeness (and if you didn't use your opera-glass, which is a cruel detec- tor of paint and wrinkles), looked young and handsome still : and a plenty of old bucks in the stalls and boxes, well wigged, well gloved, and brilliantly waistcoated, veiy obsequious to the ladies, and satisfied with them- selves and the world. 160 THE PROSER. Up in the second tier of boxes I saw a very stout, jolly, good-humoured looking lady, whose head-dress and ringlets and general appurtenances were unmistake- ably English — and whom, were you to meet her at Timbuctoo, or in the seraglio of the Grand Sultan amongst a bevy of beauties collected from all the countries of the earth, one would instantly know to be a British female. I do not mean to say, that, were I the Padishah, I would select that moon-faced houri out of all the lovely society, and make her the Empress or Grand Signora of my dominions ; but simply that there is a character about our countrywomen which leads one to know, recognise, and admire, and wonder at them among all women of all tongues and countries. We have our British Lion ; we have our Britannia ruling the waves; we have our British female — the most respectable, the most remarkable, of the women of this world. And now we have come to the woman who gives the subject, though she is not herself the subject, of these present remarks. As I looked at her with that fond curiosity and silent pleasure and wonder which she (I mean the great British Female) always inspires in my mind, watching her smiles, her ways and motions, her allurements and attractive gestures — her head bobbing to this friend whom she recognised in the stalls — her jolly fat hand wagging a welcome to that acquaintance in a neigh- bouring box — my friend and guide for the evening ON A LADY IN AN OPERA-BOX. 161 caught her eye, and made her a respectful bow, and said to me with a look of much meaning, " That is Mrs. Trotter- Walker." And from that minute I forgot Madame Sontag, and thought only of Mrs. T.-W. " So that," said I, " is Mrs. Trotter-Walker ! You have touched a chord in my heart. You have brought back old times to my memory, and made me recal some of the griefs and disappointments of my early days." "Hold your tongue, man!" says Tom, my friend. " Listen to the Sontag ; how divinely she is singing ! how fresh her voice is still !" I looked up at Mrs. Walker all the time with unabated interest. " Madam," thought I, " you look to be as kind and good-natured a person as eyes ever fc lighted upon. The way in which you are smiling to that young dandy with the double eye-glass, and the empressement with which he returns the salute, shows that your friends are persons of rank and elegance, and that you are esteemed by them — giving them, as I am sure from your kind appearance you do, good dinner and pleasant balls. But I wonder what would you think if you knew that I was looking at you ? I behold you for the first time : there are a hundred pretty ' voung girls in the house, whom an amateur of mere beauty would examine with much greater satisfaction than he would naturally bestow upon a lady whose prime is past ; and yet the sight of you interest? me, and tiokles me so to speak, and my eye-glass can't 162 THE PROSER. remove itself from the contemplation of your honest face. " What is it that interests me so ? What do you suppose interests a man the most in this life ? Himself, to be sure. It is at himself he is looking through his Dpera-glass — himself who is concerned, or he would not be watching you so keenly. And now let me confess why it is that the lady in the upper box excites me so, and why I say, ' That is Mrs. Trotter- Walker, is it V with an air of such deep interest." Well, then. In the year eighteen hundred and thirty odd, it happened that I went to pass the winter at Rome, as we will call the city. Major-General and Mrs. Trotter- Walker were also there ; and until I heard of them there, I had never heard that there were such people in existence as the General and the lady — the lady yonder with the large fan in the upper boxes. Mrs. Walker, as became her station in life, took, I dare say, very comfortable lodgings, gave dinners and parties to her friends, and had a night in the week for receptions. Much as I have travelled and lived abroad, these evening reunions have never greatly fascinated me. Man cannot live upon lemonade, wax candles, and weak tea. Gloves and white neck-cloths cost money, and those plaguy shiny boots are always so tight and hot. Am I made of money, that I can hire a coach to go to one of these soirees on a rainy Roman night ; or can J ON A LADY IN AN OPERA-BOX. 163 come in goloshes, and take them off in the ante-cham- ber ? I am too poor for cabs, and too vain for goloshes. If it had been to see the girl of my heart (I mean at the time when there were girls, and I had a heart), I couldn't have gone in goloshes. Well, not being in love, and not liking weak tea and lemonade, I did not go to evening parties that year at Rome ; nor, of later years, at Paris, Vienna, Copenhagen, Islington, or wher- ever I may have been. What, then, were my feelings when my dear and valued friend, Mrs. Coverlade (she is a daughter of that venerable peer, the Right Honourable the Lord Comandine), who was passing the winter too at Rome, said to me, " My dear Dr. Pacifico, what have you done to offend Mrs. Trotter- Walker ?" " I know no person of that name," I said. " I knew Walker of the Post Office, and poor Trotter who was a captain in our regiment, and died under my hands at the Bahamas. But with the Trotter- Walkers I haven't the honour of an acquaintance." " Well, it is not likely that you will have that honour," Mrs. Coverlade said. "Mrs. Walker said last night that she did not wish to make your acquaint- ance, and that she did not intend to receive you." "I think she might have waited until I asked her, Madam," I said. " What have I done to her ? I have never seen or heard of her : how should I want to get into her house ? or attend at her Tuesdavs — confound 164 THE PROSER. her Tuesdays !" I am sorry to say I said, Confound Mrs. Walker's Tuesdays, and the conversation took another turn, and it so happened that I was called away from Rome suddenly, and never set eyes upon Mrs. Walker, or indeed thought about her from that day to this. Strange endurance of human vanity ! a million of much more important conversations have escaped one since then, most likely — but the memory of this little mortification (for such it is, after all) remains quite fresh in the mind, and unforgotten, though it is a trifle, and more than half a score of years old. We forgive injuries, we survive even our remorse for great wrongs that we ourselves commit ; but I doubt if we ever for- give slights of this nature put upon us, or forget circum- stances in which our self-love had been made to suffer. Otherwise, why should the remembrance of Mrs. Trotter- Walker have remained so lively in this bosom ? Why should her appearance have excited such a keen interest in these eyes ? Had Venus or Helen (the favourite beauty of Paris) been at the side of Mrs. T.-W., I should have looked at the latter more than at the Queen of Love herself. Had Mrs. Walker mur- dered Mrs. Pacifico, or inflicted some mortal injury upon me, I might forgive her — but for slight ? Never, Mrs. Trotter- Walker ; never, by Nemesis, never ! And now, having allowed my personal wrath to ON A LADY IN AN OPERA-BOX. 165 explode, let us calmly moralize for a minute or two upon this little circumstance ; for there is no circumstance, however little, that won't afford a text for a sermon. Why was it that Mrs. General Trotter-Walker iefused to receive Dr. S. Pacifico at her parties ? She had noticed me probably somewhere where I had not remarked her; she did not like my aquiline coun- tenance, my manner of taking snuff, my Blucher boots, or what not; or she had seen me walking with my friend Jack Raggett, the painter, on the Pincio — a fel- low with a hat and beard like a bandit, a shabby paTe- tot, and a great pipe between his teeth. I was not genteel enough for her circle — I assume that to be the reason ; indeed, Mrs. Coverlade, with a good-natured smile at my coat, which I own was somewhat shabby, o-ave me to understand as much. You little know, my worthy kind lady, what a loss you had that season at Rome, in turning up your amiable nose at the present writer. I could have given you appropriate anecdotes (with which my mind is stored) of all the courts of Europe, (besides of Africa, Asia, and St. Domingo) which I have visited. I could have made the General die of laughing after dinner with some of my funny stories, of which I keep a book, with out which I never travel. I am content with my din- ner : I can carve beautifully, and make jokes upon almost any dish at table. I can talk about wine, cookery, hotels all over the continent : — anything you 166 THE PROSER. will. I have been familiar with Cardinals, Red Repub- licans, Jesuits, German Princes, and Carbonari ; and what is more, I can listen and hold my tongue to admiration. Ah, Madam ! what did you lose in refus- ing to make the acquaintance of Solomon Pacific o, M. D. ! And why ? because my coat was a trifle threadbare ; because I dined at the Lepre, with Raggett and some of those other bandits of painters, and had not the money to hire a coach and horses. Gentility is the death and destruction of social hap- piness amongst the middle classes in England. It destroys naturalness (if I may coin such a word) and kindly sympathies. The object of life, as I take it, is to be friendly with everybody. As a rule, and to a philosophical cosmopolite, every man ought to be wel- come. I do not mean to vour intimacy or affection, but to your society ; as there is, if we would or could but discover it, something notable, something worthy of observation, of sympathy, of wonder and amusement in every fellow mortal. If I had been Mr. Pacifico, travelling with a courier and a carriage, would Mrs. Walker have made any objection to me ? I think not. It was the Blucher-boots and the worn hat, and the homely companion of the individual, which were unwel- come to this lady. If I had been the disguised Duke of Pacifico, and not a retired army-surgeon, would she have forgiven herself for slighting me ? What ON A LADY IN AN OPERA-BOX. 167 stores of novels, what foison of plays, are composed upon this theme, — the queer old character in the wig and cloak throws off coat and spectacles, and appears sud- denly with a star and Crown, — a Haroun Alraschid, or other Merry Monarch. And straightway we clap our hands and applaud — what ? — the star and garter. But disguised emperors are not common now-a- days. You don't turn away monarchs from your door, any more than angels, unawares. Consider, though, how manv a £*" od fellow you may shut out and sneer upon ! what an immense deal of pleasure, frankness, kindness, good fellowship, we forego for the sake of our confounded gentility, and respect for outward show ! Instead of placing our society upon an honest footing, we make our aim almost avowedly sordid. Love is of necessity banished from your society when you measure all your guests by a money-standard.* I think of all this — a harmless man- — seeing a good- natured looking, jolly woman in the boxes yonder, who thought herself once too great a person to associate with the likes of me. If I give myself airs to my neighbour, may I think of this too, and be a little more humble ! And you, honest friend, who read this — have you ever poohpoohed a man as good as you ? If you fall into the society of people whom you are pleased to call your inferiors, did you ever sneer ? If so, change I into U, and the fable is narrated for your own benefit, by your obedient servant, Solomon Pacifico. 168 THE PROSER. II. ON THE PLEASURES OF BEING A FOGY. Whilst I was riding the other day by the beautiful Serpentine River upon my excellent friend Heavyside's grey cob, and in company of the gallant and agreeable Augustus Toplady, a carriage passed from which looked out a face of such remarkable beauty, that Augustus and myself quickened our pace to follow the vehicle, and to keep for awhile those charming features in view. My beloved and unknown young friend who peruse these lines, it w^s very likely your face which attracted your humble servant ; recollect whether you were not in the Park upon the day I allude to, and if you were, whom else could I mean but you ? I don't know your name; I have forgotten the arms on the carriage, or whether there were any ; and as for women's dresses, who can remember them ? but your dear kind coun tenance was so pretty and good-humoured and pleasant to look at, that it remains to this day faithfully engraven on my heart, and I feel sure that you are as good as you are handsome. Almost all handsome women are OX THE PLEASURES OF BEING A FOGY. 169 good : lhev cannot choose but he good and gentle with the e - I features and that charming graceful figure. A dav in which one sees a very pretty woman should alwavs be noted as a holvdav with a man. and marked with a white stone. In this way. and at this season in London, to be sure, such a dav comes seven times in the k, and our calendar, like that of the Roman Catho- lics, is all Saints' day?. Topladt, then, on his chesnut horse, with his glass in eye, and the tips oi his shiny boots just touching the stirrup, and your slave, the present writer, (who by the way is rather better and younger looking than the de- signer has made him) rode after your earr: _ . and looked at you with such notes of admiration expre- in their ey< s, that you remember you blushed, you smiled, and then becran to talk to that very niee-lookina: elderly lady in the from s . who of course was your Mamma. You turned out of the ride — it was time to go home and dress for dinner. — you were gone. l : luck go with you, and with all fair things whicfe thus come and pa— ly ! Top caused his horse to cut all sorts of absurd capers and caracoles bv the side oi vour carriage. He made it dance upon two h gs, then upon other two. then as if he would jump over the railings and crush the admir- ing 1 nurserv-maids and the rest oi the infantry. I should think he got his animal from Battt's. and that, at a crack of "Weddicomb's whip, he could dance a 8 170 THE PROSER. quadrille. He ogled, he smiled, he took off his hat to a Countess's carriage that happened to be passing in the other line, and so showed his hair ; he grinned, he kissed his little finger-tips and flung them about as if he would shake them off — whereas the other party, on the grey cob — the old gentleman — powdered along at a resolute trot, and never once took his respectful eyes off you while you continued in the ring. Yv 7 hen you were done (you see by the way in which I linger about you still, that I am unwilling to part with you) Toplady turned rotmd upon me with a killing tri- umphant air, and stroked that impudent little tuft he has on his chin, and said — " I say, old boy, it was the chesnut she was looking at, and not the gway." And I make no doubt he thinks you are in love with him to this minute. "You silly young jackanapes," said I; "what do I care whether she was looking at the grey or the ches- nut ? I was thinking about the girl ; you were thinking about yourself, and be hanged to your vanity !" And with this thrust in his little chest, I flatter myself 1 upset young Toplady, that triumphant careering rider. It was natural that he should wish to please ; that is, that he should wish other people to admire him. Au- gustus Toplady is young (still) and lovely. It is not until a late period of life that a genteel young fellow, with a Grecian nose and a suitable waist and whiskers, begins to admire other people besides himself. ON THE PLEASURES OF BEIXG A FOGY. l7l That, however, is the great advantage which a man possesses whose morning of life is over, whose reason is not taken prisoner by any kind of blandishments, and who knows and feels that he is a FOGY. As an old buck is an odious sight, absurd, and ridiculous before gods and men ; cruelly, but deservedly, quizzed by you young people, who are not in the least duped by his youthful airs or toilette artifices ; so an honest, good- natured, straight-forward, middle-aged, easily-pleased Fogy is a worthy and amiable member of society, and a man who gets both respect and liking. Even in the lovely sex, who has ^ot remarked how painful is that period of a woman's life when she is passing out of her bloom, and thinking about giving up her position as a beauty ? What sad injustice and stra- tagems she has to perpetrate during the struggle ! She hides away her daughters in the school-room, she makes them wear cruel pinafores, and dresses herself in the garb which they ought to assume. She is obliged to distort the calendar, and to resort to all sorts of schemes and arts to hide, in her own person, the august and respectable marks of time. Ah ! what is this revolt against nature but impotent blasphemy ? Is not Autumn beautiful in its appointed season, that we are to be ashamed of her and paint her yellowing leaves pea- green ? Let us, I say, take the fall of the year as it was made, serenely and sweetly, and await the time when Winter comes and the nights shut in. I know, for my 172 THE PROSER. part, many ladies who are far more agreeable and more beautiful too, now that they are no longer beauties ; and, by converse, I have no doubt that Toplady, about whom we were speaking just now, will be a far plea- santer person when he has given up the practice, or desire, of killing the other sex, and has sunk into a mellow repose as an old bachelor or a married man. The great and delightful advantage that a man enjoys in the world, after he has abdicated all pretensions as a conqueror and enslaver of females, and both formally, and of his heart, acknowledges himself to be a Fogy, is that he now comes for the first time to enjoy and appre- ciate duly the society of women. For a young man about town, there is only one woman in the whole city — (at least very few indeed of the young Turks, let us hope, dare to have two or three strings to their wicked bows) — he goes to ball after ball in pursuit of that one person ; he sees no other eyes but hers ; hears no other voice ; cares for no other petticoat but that in which his charmer dances : he pursues her — is refused — is ac- cepted and jilted : breaks his heart, mends it, of course, and goes on again after some other beloved being, until in the order of fate and nature he marries and settles, or remains unmarried, free, and a Fogy. Until then we know nothing of women — the kindness and refinement and wit of the elders ; the artless prattle and dear little chatter of the young ones ; all these are hidden from us until we take the Fogy's degree : nay, even perhaps ON THE PLEASURES IF BEING A FOGY. 173 from married men, whose age and gravity entitle them to rank amongst Fogies ; for every woman, who is worth anything, will be jealous of her husband up to seventy or eighty, and always prevent his intercourse with other ladies. But an old bachelor, or better still, an old wi- dower, has this delightful entree into the female world : he is free to come, to go : to listen : to joke : to sym- pathise : to talk with mamma about her plans and trou- bles : to pump from Miss the little secrets that gush so easily from her pure little well of a heart ; the ladies do not gener themselves before him, and he is admitted to their mysteries like the Doctor, the Confessor, or the Kislar Aga. What man, who can enjoy this pleasure and privilege, ought to be indifferent to it ? If the society of one woman is delightful, as the young fellows think, and justly, how much more delightful is the society of a thousand ! One woman, for instance, has brown eyes, and a geological or musical turn; another has sweet blue eyes, and takes, let us say, the Gorham side of the controversy, at present pending ; a third darling, with long fringed lashes hiding eyes of hazel, lifts them up ceiling-wards in behalf of Miss Sellon, thinks the Lord Chief Justice has hit the poor young lady very hard in publishing her letters, and proposes to quit the Church next Tuesday or Wednesday, or whenever Mr. Oriel is ready — and, of course, a man may be in love with one or the other of these. But it is manifest that brown 174 THE PROSER. eyes will remain brown eyes to the end, and that, having no other interest but music or geology, her conversation on those points may grow more than sufficient. Sap- piiira, again, when she has said her say with regard to the Gorham affair, and proved that the other party are but Romanists in disguise, and who is interested on no other subject, may possibly tire you — so may Hazelia, who is working altar-cloths all day, and would desire no better martyrdom than to walk barefoot in a night pro- cession up Sloane Street and home by Wilton Place, time enough to get her poor meurtris little feet into white satin slippers for the night's ball — I say, if a man can be wrought up to rapture, and enjoy bliss in the company of any one of these young ladies, or any other individu- als in the infinite variety of Miss-kind — how much real sympathy, benevolent pleasure, and kindly observation may he enjoy, when he is allowed to be familiar with the whole charming race, and behold the brightness of all their different eyes, and listen to the sweet music of their various voices ! ON THE BENEFITS OF 1SEING A FOGY. 1*75 III. ON THE BENEFITS OF BEING A FOGY. In possession of the right and privilege of garrulity which is accorded to old age, I cannot allow that a sin- gle side of paper should contain all that I have to say in respect to the manifold advantages of being a Fogy. I am a Fogy, and have been a young man. I see twenty women in the world constantly to whom I would like to have given a lock of my hair in days when my pate boasted of that ornament ; for whom my heart felt tu- multuous emotions, before the victorious and beloved Mrs. Pacifico subjugated it. If I had any feelings now, Mrs. P. wo]jJd order them and me to be quiet : but I have none ; I am tranquil — yes, really tranquil (though, as my dear Leonora is sitting opposite to me at this minute, and has an askance glance from her novel to my paper as I write — even if I were not tran- quil, I should say that I was), but I am quiet : I have passed the hot stage : and I do not know a pleasanter and calmer feeling of mind than that of a respectable person of the middle age, who can still be heartily and 176 THE PR0SER. generously fond of all the women about whom he waa in a passion and a fever in early life. If you cease lik- ing a woman when you cease loving her, depend on it, that one of you is a bad one. You are parted, never mind with what pangs on either side, or by what cir- cumstances of fate, choice, or necessity, — you have no money or she has too much, or she likes somebody else better, and so forth ; but an honest Fogy should always, unless reason be given to the contrary, think well of the woman whom he has once thought well of, and remem- ber her with kindness and tenderness, as a man remem- bers a place where he has been very happy. A proper management of his recollections thus con- stitutes a very great item in the happiness of a Fogy. I, for my part, would rather remember , and > and (I dare not mention names, for isn't my Leo- nora pretending to read "the Initials," and peeping over my shoulder ?) than be in love over again. It is because I have suffered prodigiously from that passion that I am interested in beholding others undergoing the malady. I watch it in ball-rooms (over my cards, where I and the old ones sit), and dinner-parties. "Without sentiment, there would be no flavour in life at all. I like to watch young folks who are fond of each other, be it the housemaid furtively engaged smiling and glancing with John through the area railings; be it Miss and the Captain whispering in the embrasure of the drawing-room window — Amant is interesting to me, ON THE BENEFITS OF BEING A FOGY. /7? because of amavi — of course it is Mrs. Pacifico 1 mean. All Fogies of good breeding and kind condition of mind, who go about in the world much, should remem- ber to efface themselves — if I may use a French phrase — they should not, that is to say, thrust in their old mugs on all occasions. When the people are marching out to dinner, for instance, and the Captain is sidling up to Miss, Fogy, because he is twenty years older than the Captain, should not push himself forward to arrest that young fellow, and carry off the disappointed girl on his superannuated rheumatic old elbow. "When there is any thing of this sort going on (and a man of the world has possession of the carte clu pays with half an eye), I become interested in a picture, or have some- thing particular to say to pretty Polly the parrot, or to little Tommy, who is not coming in to dinner, and while I am talking to him, Miss and the Captain make their little arrangement. In this way I managed only last week to let young Billington and the lovely Blanche Pouter get together ; and walked down stairs with my hat for the only partner of my arm. Augustus Top- lady now, because he was a Captain of Dragoons almost before Billington was born, would have insisted upon his right of precedence over Billington, who only got his troop the other day. Precedence ! Fiddlestick ! Men squabble about pre- cedence because they are doubtful about their condition 8* 1*78 THE PROSER. as Irishmen will insist upon it that you are determined to insult and trample upon their beautiful country, whe- ther you are thinking about it or no ; men young to the world mistrust the bearing of others towards them, be- cause they mistrust themselves. I have seen many sneaks and much cringing of course in the world ; but the fault of gentlefolks is generally the contrary — an absurd doubt of the intentions of others towards us, and a perpetual assertion of our twopenny dignity, which no- body is thinking of wounding. As a young man, if the Lord I knew did not happen to notice me, the next time I met him, I used to enve- lope myself in my dignity, and treat his Lordship with such a tremendous hauteur and killing coolness of de- meanour, that you might have fancied I was an Earl at least, and he a menial upon whom I trampled. Where- as he was a simple, good-natured creature, who had no idea of insulting or slighting me, and, indeed, scarcely any idea about any subject except racing and shooting. Young men have this uneasiness in society, because they are thinking about themselves : Fogies are happy and tranquil because they are taking advantage of, and en- joying, without suspicion, the good-nature and good offices of other well-bred people. Have you not often wished for yourself, or some other dear friend, ten thousand a-year ? It is natural that you should like such a good thing as ten thousand a-year; and all the pleasures and comforts which it ON THE BENEFITS OF BEING A FOGY. 1*79 brings. So also it is natural that a man should like the society of people well-to-do in the world ; who make their houses pleasant, who gather pleasant pert ms about them, who have fine pictures on their walls, pleasant books in their libraries, pleasant parks and town and country houses, good cooks and good cellars : if I were coming to dine with you, I would rather a good dinner than a bad one ; if so-and-so is as good as you and possesses these things, he, in so far, is better than you who do not possess them : therefore I had rather go to his house in Belgravia than to your lodg- ings in Kentish Town. That is the rationale of living in good company. An absurd, conceited, high-and-mighty young man hangs back, at once insolent and bashful ; an honest, simple, quiet, easy, clear-sighted Fogy steps in and takes the goods which the gods provide, without elation as without squeamishness. It ll only a few men who attain simplicity in early life. This man has his conceited self-importance to be cured of; that has his conceited bashfulness to be " taken out of him," as the phrase is. You have a . disquiet which you try 1?o hide, and you put on a haughty guarded manner. You are suspicious of the good-will of the company round about you, or of the estimation in which they hold you. You sit mum at table. It is not your place to " put yourself forward." You are thinking about yourself, that is ; you are suspicious about that personage and everybody else 180 THE PROSER. that is, you are not frank ; that is, you are not well- bred ; that is, you are not agreeable. I would instance my young friend Mumford as a painful example — one of the wittiest, cheeriest, cleverest, and most honest of fellows in his own circle ; but having the honour to dine the other day at Mr. Hobanob's, where His Excellency the Crimean Minister and several gentlemen of honour and wit were assembled, Mumford did not open his mouth once for the purposes of conversation, but sat and ate his dinner as silently as a brother of La Trappe. He was thinking with too much distrust of himself (and of others by consequence) as Toplady was think- ing of himself in the little affair in Hyde Park to which I have alluded in the former chapter. When Mumford is an honest Fogy, like some folks, he will neither distrust his host, nor his company, nor himself ; he will make the best of the hour and the people round»about him ; he will scorn tumbling over head-and-heels for his dinner, but he will take and give his part of the good things, join in the talk and laugh unaffectedly, nay, actually tumble, over head-and-heels, perhaps, if he has a talent that way ; not from a wish to show off his powers, but from a sheer good-humour and desire to oblige. Whether as guest or as entertainer, your part and business in society is to make people as happy and as easy as you can ; the master gives you his best wine and welcome — you give, in your turn, a smiling hc<\ a ON THE BENEFITS OF BEING A FOGY. 181 disposition to be pleased and to please ; and my good young friend who read this, don't doubt about your- self, or think about your precious person. When you have got on your best coat and waistcoat, and have your dandy shirt and tie arranged — consider these as so many settled things, and go forward and through your business. That is why people in what is called the great world are commonly better bred than persons less fortunate in their condition : not that they are better in reality, but from circumstances they are never uneasy about their position in the world : therefore they are more honest and simple : therefore, they are better bred than Growler, who scowls at the great man a defiance and a determi- nation that he will not be trampled upon : or poor Fawner, who goes quivering down on his knees, and licks my Lord's shoes. But I think in our world — at least in my experience — there are even more Growl- ers than Fawners. It will be seen, by the above remarks, that a desire to shine or to occupy a marked place in society, does not constitute my idea of happiness, or become the charac- ter of a discreet Fogy. Time, which has dimmed the lustre of his waistcoats, allayed the violence of his feel- ings, and sobered down his head with grey, should give to the whole of his life a quiet neutral tinge ; out of which calm and reposeful condition an honest old Fogy 182 THE PROSER. looks on the world, and the struggle there of women and men. I doubt whether this is not better than struggling yourself, for you preserve your interest, and do not lose your temper. Succeeding? What is the great use of succeeding? Failing? Where is the great harm ? It seems to you a matter of vast interest at one time of your life whether you shall be a lieu- tenant or a colonel — whether you shall or shall not be invited to the Duchess's party — whether you shall get the place you and a hundred other competitors are trying for — whether Miss will have you or not : what the deuce does it all matter a few years afterwards ? Do you, Jones, mean to intimate a desire that History should occupy herself with your paltry personality ? The Future does not care whether you were a captain or a private soldier. You get a card to the Duchess's party : it is no more or less than a ball or breakfast- like other balls or breakfasts. You are half-distracted be- cause Miss won't have you and takes the other fellow, or you get her (as I did Mrs. Pacifico) and find that she is quite a different thing from what you expected. Psha! These things appear as nought — when Time passes — Time the consoler — Time the anodyne — Time the grey calm satirist, whose sad smile seems to say, Look, man, at the vanity of the objects you pursue, and of yourself who pursue them ! But on the one hand, if there is an alloy in all ON THE BENEFITS OF BEING A FOGY. 183 success, is there not a something wholesome in all disappointment? To endeavour to regard them both benevolently is the task of a philosopher ; and he who can do so is a very lucky Fogy. «y MISCELLANIES. MISCELLANIES. -♦♦♦- CHILD'S PARTIES: AND A REMONSTRANCE CONCERNING THEM. I. Conceive, Sir, that in spite of my warning and entreaty we were invited to no less than three Child's Parties last Tuesday ; to two of which a lady in this house, who shall be nameless, desired that her children should be taken. On Wednesday we had Dr. Lens's microscope ; and on Thursday you were good enough to send me your box for the Haymarket Theatre ; and of course Mrs. S. and the children are extremely obliged to you for the attention. I did not mind the theatre so much. I sate in the back of„the box, and fell asleep. I wish there was a room with easy chairs and silence enjoined, whither parents might retire, in the houses where Chil- dren's Parties are given. But no — it would be of no use : the fiddling and piano-forte playing and scuffling and laughing of the children would keep you awake. I am looking out in the papers for some eligible 188 MISCELLANIES. schools where there shall be no vacations — I can't bear those festivities much longer. I begin to hate children in their evening dresses : when children are attired in those absurd best clothes, what can you expect from them but affectation and airs of fashion ? One day last year, Sir, having to conduct the two young ladies who then frequented juvenile parties, I found them, upon entering the fly, into which they had preceded me under convoy of their maid — I found them — in what a condi- tion, think you ? Why, with the skirts of their stiff muslin frocks actually thrown over their heads, so that they should not crumple in the carriage ! A child who cannot go into society but with a muslin frock in this position, I say, had best stay in the nursery in her pina- fore. If you are not able to enter the world with your dress in its proper place, I say stay at home. I blushed, Sir, to see that Mrs. S. didn't blush when I informed her of this incident, but only laughed in a strange inde- corous manner, and said that the girls must keep their dresses neat. — Neatness as much as you please, but 1 should have thought Neatness would wear her frock in the natural way. And look at the children when they arrive at their place of destination ; what processes of coquetry they are made to go through ! They are first carried into a room where there are pins, combs, looking-glasses, and lady's-maids, who shake the children's ringlets out, spread abroad their great immense sashes and ribbons, child's parties. 189 and finally send them full sail into + he dancing-room. With what a monstrous precocity they ogle their own faces in the looking-glasses ! I have seen my hoys, Gustavus and Adolphus, grin into the glass, and ar- range their curls or the ties of their neckcloths with as much eagerness as any grown-up man could show, who was going to pay a visit to the lady of his heart. With what an abominable complacency they get out their little gloves, and examine their silk stockings ! How can they be natural or unaffected when they are so pre- posterously conceited about their fine clothes ? The other day we met one of Gus's schoolfellows, Master Chaffers, at a party, who entered the room with a little gibus hat under his arm, and to be sure made his bow with the aplomb of a dancing-master of sixty; and my boys, who I suspect envied their comrade the gibus hat, began to giggle and sneer at him ; and, further to dis- concert him, Gus goes up to him and says, "Why, Chaffers, you consider yourself a deuced fine fellow, but there's a straw on your trowsers." Why shouldn't there be ? And why should that poor little boy be called upon to blush because he came to a party in a hack-cab ? I, for my part, ordered the children to walk home on that night, in order to punish them for their pride. It rained. Gus wet and spoiled his shiny boots, Dol got a cold, and my wife scolded me for cruelty. As to the airs which the wretches give themselves about dancing, I need not enlarge upon them here, for 190 MISCELLANIES. the dangerous artist of the "Rising Generation" has already taken them in hand. Not that his satire does the children the least good : they don't see anything absurd in courting pretty girls, or in asserting the supe- riority of their own sex over the female. A few nights since, I saw Master Sultan at a juvenile ball, standing at the door of the dancing-room, egregiously displaying his muslin pocket-handkerchief, and waving it about as if he was in doubt to which of the young beauties he should cast it. " Why don't you dance, Master Sul- tan ?" says I. "My good Sir," he answered, "just look round at those girls and say if I can dance V Blase and selfish now, what will that boy be, Sir, when his whiskers grow ? And when you think how Mrs. Mainchance seeks out rich partners for her little boys — how my own ad- mirable Eliza has warned her children — " My dears, I would rather you should dance with your Brown cou- sins than your Jones cousins," who are a little rough in their manners ; (the fact being, that our sister Maria Jones lives at Islington, while Fanny Brown is an Upper Baker Street lady) — when I have heard my dear wife, I say, instruct our boy, on going to a party at the Baronet's, by no means to neglect his cousin Adeliza, but to dance with her as soon as ever he can engage her — what can I say, Sir, but that the world of men and boys is the same — that society is poisoned at its source — and that our little chubby-cheeked cherubim are in* child's parties. 191 structed to be artful and egotistical, when you would think by their faces they are just fresh from heaven. Among the very little children, I confess I get a consolation as I watch them, in seeing the artless little girls walking after the boys to whom they in- cline, and courting them by a hundred innocent little wiles and caresses, putting out their little hands, and inviting them to dances, seeking them out to pull crackers with them, and begging them to read the mottoes, and so forth — this is as it should be — this is natural and kindly. ; The women, by rights, ought to court the men ; and they would if we but left them alone.* And, absurd as the games are, I own I like to see some thirty or forty of the creatures on the floor in a ring, playing at petits jeux, of all ages and sexes, from the most insubordinate infanthood of Master Jacky, who will crawl out of the circle, and talks louder than anybody in it, though he can't speak, to blushing Miss Lily, who is just conscious that she is sixteen — I own, I say, that I can't look at such a circlet or chaplet of children, as it were, in a hundred different colours, laughing and happy, without a sort of pleasure. How they laugh, how they twine together, how they wave about, as if the wind was passing over the flowers ' Poor little buds, shall you bloom long ? — (I then say to * On our friend's manuscript there is here written, in a female hand* writing, " Vulgar, immodest. — E. S." 192 MISCELLANIES. myself, by way of keeping up a proper frame of mind) — shall frosts nip you, or tempests scatter you, drought wither you, or rain beat you down ? And oppressed with my feelings, I go below and get some of the weak negus with which Children's parties are refreshed. At those houses where the magic lantern is prac- tised, I still sometimes get a degree of pleasure, by hearing the voices of the children in the dark, and the absurd remarks which they make as the various scenes are presented — as, in the dissolving views, Cornhill changes into Grand Cairo, as Cupid comes down with a wreath and pops it on to the head of the Duke of Wellington, as Saint Peter's at Rome suddenly be- comes illuminated, and fireworks, not the least like real fireworks, begin to go off from Fort St. Angelo — it is certainly not unpleasant to hear the " o-o-o's " of the audience, and the little children chattering in the dark- ness. But I think I used to like the " Pull devil, pull baker," and the Doctor Syntax of our youth, much better than all your new-fangled dissolving views and pyrotechnic imitations. As for the conjuror, I am sick of him. There is one conjuror I have met so often during this year and the last, that the man looks quite guilty when the folding doors are opened and he sees my party of children, and myself amongst the seniors in the back rows. He for- gets his jokes when he beholds me : his wretched clap- child's parties. 19< traps and waggeries fail liiin : lie trembles, falters, and turns pale. I on my side too feel reciprocally uneasy. What right have we to be staring that creature out of his silly countenance ? Very likely he has a wife and fa- mily dependent for their bread upon his antics. I should be glad to admire them if I could ; but how do so ? When I see him squeeze an orange or a cannon-ball right away into nothing as it were, or multiply either into three cannon-balls or oranges, I know the others are in his pockets somewhere. I know that he doesn't put out his eye when he sticks the penknife into it : or that after swallowing (as the miserable humbug pretends to do) a pocket handkerchief, he cannot by any possibility convert it into a quantity of coloured wood-shavings. These flimsy articles may amuse children, but not us. I think I shall go and sit down below amongst the ser- vants whilst this wretched man pursues his idiotic de- lusions before the children. And the supper, Sir, of which our darlings are made to partake. Have they dined ? I ask. Do they have a supper at home, and why do not they ? Because it is unwholesome. If it is unwholesome, why do they have supper at all ? I have mentioned the wretched quality of the negus. How they can administer such stuff to children I can't think. Though only last week I heard a little boy, Master Swilby, at Miss Waters' say, that he had drunk nine glasses of it, and eaten I don't know 9 194 MISCELLANIES. how many tasteless sandwiches and insipid cakes ; after which feats he proposed to fight my youngest son. As for that Christmas Tree, which we have from the Germans — anybody who knows what has happened to them may judge what will befall us from following their absuid customs. Are we to put up pine-trees in our parlours, with wax candles and bonbons, after the manner of the ancient Druids ? Are we . . . . . My dear Sir, my manuscript must here abruptly terminate. Mrs. S. has just come into my study, and my daughter enters, grinning behind her, with twenty- five little notes, announcing that Master and Miss Spec request the pleasure of Miss Brown, Miss F. Brown, and M. A. Brown's company on the 25th instant. There is to be a conjuror in the back drawing-room, a magic lantern in my study, a Christmas Tree in the dining-room, dancing in the drawing-room — " And, my dear, we can have whist in our bed-room," my wife says. " You know we must be civil to those who have been so kind to our darling children." Spec. II. Condescending Sir, As your publication (which an admirable critic in tin Quarterly Review justly pronounces to be the wondei of the age) finds its way to almost every drawing-room table in this metropolis, and is read by the young and old in every family, I beseech you to give admission to child's parties. 195 the remonstrance of an unhappy parent, and to endea- vour to put a stop to a practice which appears to me to be increasing daily, and is likely to operate most inju- riously upon the health, morals, and comfort of society in general. The awful spread of Juvenile Parties, Sir, is the fact to which I would draw vour attention. There is no end to those entertainments, and if the custom be not speedily checked, people will be obliged to fly from London at Christmas, and hide their children during the holidays. I gave mine warning in a speech at breakfast this day, and said with tears in my eyes that if the Juvenile Party system went on, I would take a house at Margate next winter, for that, by Heavens ! I could not bear another Juvenile Season in London. If they would but transfer Innocents' Day to the sum- mer holidays, and let the children have their pleasures in May or June, we might get on. But now in this most ruthless and cut-throat season of sleet, thaw, frost, wind, snow, mud, and sore-throats, it is quite a tempting of fate to be going much abroad ; and this is the time of all others that is selected for the amusement of our little darlings. As a first step towards the remedying of the evil of which I complain, I am obliged to look Mr. Punch himself in his venerable beard, and say, "You, Sii, have, by your agents, caused not a little of the mis* chief. I desire that, during Christmas time at least, 196 MISCELLANIES. Mr. Leecp should be abolished, or sent to take a holiday. Judging from his sketches, I should say that he must be endowed with a perfectly monstrous organ of philoprogenitiveness ; he revels in the delineation of the dearest and most beautiful little boys and girls in turned-down collars and broad sashes, and in the Almanack, just published, produces a picture of a child's costume ball, in which he has made the little wretches in the dresses of every age, and looking so happy, beautiful, and charming, that I have carefully kept the picture from the sight of the women and children of my own household, and — I will not say burned it, for I had not the heart to do that — but locked it away privately, lest they should conspire to have a costume ball themselves, and little Polly should insist upon appearing in the dress of* Ann Bullen, or little Jacky upon turning out as an Ancient Britjfn." An odious, revolting, and disagreeable practice, Sir, I say, ought not to be described in a manner so atro ciously pleasing. The real satirist has no right to lead the public astray about the Juvenile Fete nuisance, and to describe a child's ball as if it was a sort of Paradise, and the little imps engaged as happy and pretty as so many cherubs. They should be drawn, one and all, as hideous — disagreeable — distorted — affected — jealous of each other — dancing awkwardly — with shoes too tight for them — over-eating themselves at supper — very un- well (and deservedly so) the next morning, with Mamma child's parties. 19*1 *- administering a mixture made after the Doctor's pre- scription, and which should be painted awfully black, in an immense large teacup, and (as might be shown by the horrible expression on the little patient's face) of the most disgusting flavour. Banish, I say, that Mr Leech during Christmas time, at' least ; for by a mis- placed kindness and absurd fondness for children, he is likely to do them and their parents an incalculable quantity of harm. As every man, Sir, looks at the world out of his own eyes or spectacles, or, in other words, speaks of it as he finds it himself, I will lay before you my own case, being perfectly sure that many another parent will sympathise with me. My family, already inconveniently large, is yet constantly on the increase, and it is out of the question that Mrs. Spec should go to parties, as that admirable woman has the best of occupations at home, where she is always nursing the baby. Hence, it becomes the father's duty to accompany his children abroad and t<5 give them pleasure during the holi- days. Our own place of residence is in South Carolina Place, Clapham Road North, in one of the most healthy of the suburbs of this great City. But our relatives and acquaintances are numerous; and they are spread all over the town and its outskirts. Mrs. S. has sisters married, and dwelling respectively in Islington, Haver- stock Hill, Bedford Place, Upper Baker Street, and 198 MISCELLANIES. Tyburn Gardens ; besides the children's grandmother, Kensington Gravel Pits, whose parties we are all of course obliged to attend. A very great connexion of curs, and nearly related to a B-r-n-t and M.P., lives not a hundred miles from B-lg-ve Square. I could enumerate a dozen more places where our kinsmen or intimate friends are — heads of families every one of them, with their quivers more or less full of little arrows. What is the consequence ? I herewith send it to you in the shape of these eighteen inclosed notes, written in various styles more or less correct, and corrected from Miss Fanny's, aged seven, who hopes in lound hand, that her dear cousins will come and drink i«a with her on New Year's Eve, her birth-day, — to Jiat of the Governess of the B-r-n-t in question, who requests the pleasure of our company at a ball, a con- juror, and « Christmas Tree. Mrs. Spec, for the valid reason above stated, cannot frequent these meetings : I am the deplorable chaperon of the young people. I am called upon to conduct my family five miles to tea at six o'clock. No count is taken of our personal habits, hours of dinner, or intervals of rest. We are made the victims of an infantile conspiracy, nor will the lady of the house hear of any revolt or denial. " Why," says she, with the spirit which becomes a woman and mother, "you go to your ma?i > s parties eagerly enough : what an unnatural wretch you must be to grudge your children their pleasures!" She child's parties. 199 looks round, sweeps all six of them into her arms, whilst the baby on her lap begins to bawl, and you are assailed by seven pairs of imploring eyes, against which there is no appeal. You must go. If you are dying of lumbago, if you are engaged to the best of dinners, if you are longing to stop at home and read Macau- lay, you must give up all and go. And it is not to one party or two, but to almost all You must go to the Gravel Pits, otherwise the Grand- mother will cut the children out of her will, and leave her property to her other grand-children. If you refuse Islington, and accept Tyburn Gardens, you sneer at a poor relation, and acknowledge a rich one readily enough. If you decline Tyburn Gardens, you fling away the chances of the poor dear children in life, and the hopes of the cadetship for little Jacky. If you go to Hampstead, having declined Bedford Place, it is because you never refuse an invitation to Hampstead, where they make much of you, and Miss Maria is pretty, (as you think, though your wife doesn't,) and do not care for the Doctor in Bedford Place. And if you accept Bedford Place, you dare not refuse Upper Baker Street, because there is a coolness between the two families, and you must on no account seem to take part with one or the other. In this way many a man besides myself, I dare say, finds himself miserably tied down, and a helpless prisoner, like Gulliver in the hands of the Liliputians. 200 MISCELLANIES. Let us just enumerate a few of the miseries of the pitiable parental slave. In the first place examine the question in a pecuniary point of view. The expenses of children's toilets at this resent time are perfectly frightful. My eldest boy, Gustavus, at home from Dr. Birch's Academy, Rodwell Regis, wears turquoise studs, fine linen shirts, white waistcoats, and shiny boots : and, when I proposed that he should go to a party in Berlin gloves, asked me if I wished that he should be mistaken for a footman ? My second, Augustus, grumbles about getting his elder brother's clothes, nor could he be brought to accommodate himself to Gustavus's waistcoats at all, had not his mother coaxed him by the loan of her chain and watch, which latter the child broke, after many desperate attempts to wind it up. As for the little fellow, Adolphus, his mother has him attired in a costume partly Scotch, partly Hunga- rian, mostly buttons, and with a Louis Quatorze hat and scarlet feather, and she curls this child's hair with her own blessed tongs every night. I wish she would do as much for the girls, though : but no, Monsieur Florid or must do that : and accord- ingly, every day this season, that abominable little Frenchman, who is, I have no doubt, a Red Republican, and smells of cigars and hair-oil, comes over, and, at a cost of eighteenpence par tete, figs out my little crea- child's parties. 201 tures' heads with fixature, bandoline, crinoline — the deuce knows what. The bill for silk stockings, sashes, white frocks, is so enormous, that I have not been able to pay my own tailor these three years. The bill for flys to 'Amstid and back, to Hizzlinton and take up, &c, is fearful. The drivers, in this extra weather, must be paid extra, and they drink extra. Having to go to Hackney in the snow, on the night of the 5th of January, our man was so hopelessly ine- briated, that I was compelled to get out and drive myself; and I am now, on what is called Twelfth Day (with, of course, another child's party before me for the evening), writing this from my bed, Sir, with a severe cold, a violent toothache, and a most acute rheumatism. As I hear the knock of our medical man, whom an anxious wife has called in, I close this letter ; asking leave, however, if I survive, to return to this painful subject next week. And, wishing you a merry ! New Year, I have the honour to be, dear Mr. Punch, Your constant reader, Spec. 0* 202 MISCELLANIES. THE STORY OF KOOMPANEE JEHAN. Some time after the death of Aurungzebe, a mighty prince held domination over India, from the seven mouths of the Ganges to the five tails of the Indus, who was renowned above most other monarchs for his strength, riches, and wisdom. His name was Koompanee Jehan. Although this monarch had innumerable magnificent palaces at Delhi and Agra, at Benares, Boggleywollah, and Ahmednugger, his common residence was in the beautiful island of Ingleez, in the midst of the capital of which, the famous city of Lundoon, Koompanee Jehan had a superb castle. It was called the Hall of Lead, and stood at the foot of the Mountain of Corn, close by the verdure-covered banks of the silvery Tameez, where the cypresses wave and the zendewans or nightingales love to sing. In this palace he sate and gave his orders, to govern the multitudinous tribes which paid him tribute from the Cashmerian hills to the plains watered by the Irrawaddy. The great Koompanee Jehan governed his dominions with the help of a council of twenty-four vizeers, who THE STORY OF KOOMPANEE JEHAN. 203 assembled daily in the Hall of Lead, and who were selected from among the most wealthy, wise, brave, and eminent of the merchants, scribes, and warriors in the service of his vast empire. It must have been a grand sight to behold the twenty-four sages assembled in Durbar, smoking their kaleoons round the monarch's magnificent throne. It was only by degrees, and by the exercise of great cunning and prodigious valour, that the illustrious Koompanee Jehan had acquired the vast territory over which he ruled. By picking endless quarrels in which he somehow always seemed to be in the right, and innumerable battles in which his bravery ever had the uppermost, he added kingdom after kingdom to his possessions. Thus the Rajahs, Princes, and Emperors of India fell before the sword of his servants ; and it is known that Boonapoort, Tippoo Sahib the Mysore Sultan, and Iskender Shah, who conquered Porus Singh on the banks of the Indus, were severally over- come by the lieutenants of the victorious warrior who dwelt in the Hall of Lead. One of his chieftains, the great Elleen-Burroo, a stronger man than Antar himself, carried off the gates of Somnauth on his back and brought them to the foot of the throne of the palace, on the Mountain of Corn, by the banks of th6 Tameez. This mighty monarch, who had guns enough to blow this world into Jehanum, and who counted his warriors 204 MISCELLANIES. by lakhs, was, like many other valiant sovereigns, the slave of a woman ; and historians assert that he gave up the chief government of his country to the Empress, his mother, the Queen of the Ingleez, of whom he was so fond that he could deny her nothing. He appointed the Captains and Colonels of his regiments, but the Empress nominated all the chief Generals ; and the chiefs of Koompanee Jehan, who had carried his flag- in a hundred battles, and notched their scimitars across the head-pieces of thousands of his foes, were not a little angry to see strangers put over them, who came from Lundoon smelling of musk and rose-water, and who got the lion's share of the honours, while they took no more (as who indeed can ?) than the lion's share of the fighting. Thus, in a famous action in Kabool, a certain Captain of Artillery blew open the gates of the city, but it was the General, Keen Bahawder, who was made a bashaw of three tails for the feat which the other had done : and for a series of tremendous actions on the Sutlej River, Harding Shah, Smith Sahib, and Goof Bahawder were loaded with honours, and had their mouths well nigh choked with barley-sugar; whereas one of Koompanee's own warriors, Littler Singh, a better soldier than any of those other three, was passed over with scarcely a kind word. In consequence of this system — for the Empress mother would often cause her son to select Generals who had no more brains than a wezz or goose — disas- THE STORY OF KOOMPANEE JEHAN. 205 ters frequently befel Koompanee Jehan's armies, and that prince had many a bekhelool or hard nut to crack- One army was waylaid and utterly destroyed, because the Queen Mother chose to give the command of it to an officer, out of whom age and illness had squeezed all the valour : and another warrior, though as brave as Roostum, yet was a hundred years old, and had been much better at home handling a pipe than a sword, for which his old hands were now quite unfit. Lion as he was, Goof Bahawder did not remember that the enemy with whom he had to do were derans or foxes, and that a pack of foxes is more dangerous than a lion in a pit. Finding one day the enemy posted in a jungle, this Goof Bahawder sent his troops in upon them helter-skelter ; but some fled, many were slain, Goof Bahawder had a dismal account of the battle to render, and when he claimed a victory, people only laughed at his ancient beard. That is, they would have laughed, but the people of Lundoon were in too great a rage to be merry. Every- where, in every house, and from the highest to the lowest, from the Omrahs and Lords prancing about in the Meidan, to the camel-drivers in the streets, all men cried out ; and the Indian soldiers said, " Why is this old man to be left to jeopardise the lives of warriors, and bring our country to sorrow ? If the Queen-mother will appoint chiefs for the armies of India, over the heads of those who are as brave and more experienced. 206 MISCELLANIES., let her give us men that are fit to lead us. Who ia Goof, and who is Elphinstoon, and who is Keen, to whom you give all the honours ? And what are they to compare to Thackwell and Littler, to Nott and Pollock Khan ?" Now there was, when the news came to the City of Lundoon, that Goof Bahawder had been beaten upon the banks of the Chenaub, a warrior who, though rather old, and as savage as a bear whose head is sore, was allowed by all mankind to be such a Roostum as had never been known since the days of Wellingtoon. His name was Napeer Sing. He with two thousand men had destroyed thirty thousand of the enemy : he despis- ed luxury : he had a beak like an eagle, and a beard like a Cashmere goat. When he went into a campaign he took with him but a piece of soap and a pair of towels : he dined off a hunch of bread and a cup of water. " A warrior," said he, " should not care for wine or luxury, for fine turbans or embroidered shulwars; his tulwar should be bright, and never mind whether his papooshes are shiny." Napeer Sing was a lion indeed ; and his mother was a mother of lions. But this lion, though the bravest of animals, was the most quarrelsome that ever lashed his tail and roared in a jungle. After gaining several victories, he became so insolent and contemptuous in his behaviour towards King Koompanee Jehan, whom he insulted, whom he assailed, whom he called an old woman, that the offend- THE STORY OF KOOMPANEE JEHAN. 207 ed monarch was glad when General Napeer Sing's time of service was out, and vowed no more to employ him. It is related of Napeer Singh, that when he was recalled to the Island of the Ingleez, he went into the Hall of Lead, where the monarch sate in full Durbar, knocked the heads of the twenty-four vizeers one against another, and seizing upon King Koompanee himself by the royal nose, pulled him round the room, and kicked him over among the sprawling Counsellors of his Dewan. I know not whether this tale is true ; but certain it is, that there was a tremendous tehwash or row, and that when the king heard the General's name mentioned, he grew as yellow and as sour as an ilemoon or lemon. When the news of Goof's discomfiture came to Lundoon and the Hall of Lead, and the Queen of Fer- inghistan, all the Ingleez began to quake in their shoes. " Wallah ! wallah !" they cried, " we have been made to swallow abominations ! Our beraks have been cap- tured from our standard-bearers ; our guns have been seized ; our horsemen have fled, overpowered by odds, and because Goof Bahawder knew not how to lead them into battle. How shall we restore the honor of our arms ? What General is there, capable of resisting those terrible Sikhs and their Sirdars ?" The voice of all the nation answered, " There is but one Chief, and his name is Napeer Singh." 208 MISCELLANIES. The twenty-four vizeers in the Hall of Lead, remem- bering the treatment which they had received from that General, and still smarting uneasily on their seats from the kicks which he had administered, cried out, " No ; we will not have that brawling Sampson — take any man but him. If Goof Bahawder will not do, take Goom Bahawder. We will not have Napeer Singh, or eat the pie of humility any more." The people still roared out, " Nobody can help us but Napeer Singh." Now Napeer Singh was as sulky as the twenty-four vizeers. " I go," said he, " to serve a monarch who has been grossly ungrateful, and whose nose I have tweaked in Durbar ? Never, never !" But an old General, nearly a hundred years old, brave and wise, the Great Wellingtoon, came to Napeer Singh and said, " khan, in these times of danger men must forget their quarrels and serve their country. — If you will not go to the Indus, I will go — one or other of us must." They were two lions, two Roostums, two hooked-beaked eagles of war — they rushed into each other's arms, and touched each other's beaks. " O Father," Napeer Singh said, " I will go :" and he went forth and he bought a piece of soap, and he got two towels ; and he took down from the wall his bright and invincible tulwar. Meanwhile the twenty-four vizeers and King Koom pa nee Jehan had been taking council in the Hall oi THE STORY OF KOOMPANEE JEHAN. 209 Lead. Many of the angry ones said, "No, we will not appoint him our General." Some of the wise vizeers said, " Yes, we will appoint him ; for without him we shall not have a kingdom at all." At last the King himself, who was bajil, that is very fat, rose up from his throne and said — " O my Agas, Omrahs, Scribes, and men of Avar. There are many things which a man has to put into his imameh or pipe, which are hard to smoke, and have an unsavoury perfume : I have been smoking a chill um of this sort. A kick is not a pleasant thing to swallow, neither is a dose of senna. Adversity sometimes pre- scribes one, as the Doctor orders the other. We have had all our beards pulled, we have been kicked round the room, we have been tumbled helter-skelter bv this Roostum. Bekhesm ! Bismillah ! my sides ache still with the violence of his papooshes. But what of this ? If I am drowning, shall I refuse to live because a man pulls me out of the water by the nose \ If I want to fly, shall I refuse a horse because he kicks a little ? I will mount him in the name of Fate, and ride for my life. We know how strong this Sams o on is ; let him go in Heaven's name, and fight the enemy for us. Let him go. Make out his papers ; give him a khelat, and a feast of honour !" And the wise and beneficent monarch sate down and puffed away at his kaleoon, as the twenty-four vizeers, bowing their heads, cried — " Be it as the King says." 210 MISCELLANIES. When the Ingleez heard of this Elemzshedeh, or good news, they all rejoiced exceedingly ; and the Queen of the Ingleez clapped her hands for joy. And as for Napeer Singh, he took his two towels, and his piece of soap, and his scimetar, and he went away to the ship which was to carry him to the sea. SCIENCE AT CAMBRIDGE. 211 SCIENCE AT CAMBRIDGE. Among the new sciences which are to be taught at Cambridge University, and for the teaching of which eminent Professors are to be appointed, we are informed that H.R.H. the Chancellor, and the Heads, have deter- mined to create two new Chairs, upon the applications of the two eminent men whose letters we subjoin. " To His Roil Highness the Chanslor, and the Nobs of the University of Cambridge. " Tom Spring's. " Sein perposials for astabblishing new Purfessurships in the Univussaty of Cambridge (where there is litell enuff now lurnt, as Evins knows), I beg leaf to hoffer myself to your Royal Ighness as Purfessur of Sulf- defens, which signts I old to be both nessary and useful to every young mann. " I ave sean on his entry into life without knowing the use of his ands, a young chap fiord by a fellar of ^ his sighs ; and all for the want of those fust principills which a few terms under me would give him. 212 MISCELLANIES. " I ave sean, on the contry, many an honfest young Mann pervented from doing right and knockin down a raskle who insults a lady in distress, or chaughs you, or anythink, simply from not knowing how to imploy them fistis which natur has endowd him with, and which it ia manifest were not made for nothink. " I old that the fust use of a man's ands is to fight with ; and that the fust and most nessary duty of a feller is to know how to defend his nob. " I should like to know in some instanses whether all your Algibry and Mathamadix, your Greik and Latn and that, would serve a young gent half so well as a good nollidge of sparring and fibbing, which I shall be appy to teach him, has also to serve any Ead of any Ouse in the Unaversaty. " Peraps I could not stand up before Dr. Biggwhigg and Doctor Squartoes in the Latn Mathamadics ; but could they stand up to me with the gloves ? Why, I would wop them with one and, and ingage to make the young gentlemen of the Univussaty to do likewise. "Therefor I propose to your Royal Ighness and the Eads of Ouses, to allow the manly ar»d trew English Scients of Boxint to be took up for honours by the young gentlemen of Cambridge. Igsamanations might be eld in the Sennit House, both with and without the mufflers, it would be a pretty site — plesnt to parints (for what sight can be nobler than for a fond mother to see a galliant young feller pitchin into his man in good SCIENCE AT CAMBRIDGE. 213 style, or taking his punishment like a trump ?) and would etract quanties of foreigners and ladies to the Uniwur- saty, like the Hancient games of the Koman athleeks. "The Cribb Purfessurship in the branch of Matha- matacal Science, which I'm blest if it isn't, I purpose to your Roil Consideration, and ham, " With the deepest respect, " Your Royal Highness's obedient to command, " Benjamin Bendigo." From Professor Soyer. " Pall Pall. "Mighty Prince, and Reverend and Illustrious Gentlemen ! "It has been universally allowed by most na- tions, that Science would be vain if it did not tend to produce happiness, and that that science is the great- est, by which the greatest amount of happiness is pro- duced. " I agree with the poet Solon in this remark — and if, as I have no doubt it is one which has also struck the august intelligence of your Royal Highness — I beg to ask with retiring modesty, what Science confers greater pleasure than that which I have the honour to profess, and which has made my name famous throughout the world ? " Eating is the first business of a man. If his food is 214 MISCELLANIES. unpleasant to him, his health suffers, his labour is not so productive, his genius deteriorates, and his progeny dwindles and sickens. A healthy digestion, on the other hand, produces a healthy mind, a clear intellect, a vigorous family, and a series of inestimable benefits to generations yet unborn : and how can you have a good digestion, I ask, without a good dinner ? and how have a good dinner, without knowing how to cook it ? " May it please your Royal Highness Consort of the Imperial Crown of England, and you ye learned and reverend doctors, proctors, provosts, gyps, and common sizars of the Royal University of Cambridge, now that you are wisely resolved to enlarge the former narrow sphere of knowledge in which your pupils move. — I ask you at once, and with unanimity, to ordain that MY Science be among the new ones to be taught to the ingenuous youth of England. " Mine is both a physical and moral science — phy- sical, it acts on the health ; moral, on the tempers and tastes of mankind. Under one or other of these heads then, it deserves to be taught in the famous Halls of Cambridge. I demand and humbly request that the SOYER PROFESSORSHIP of Culinarious Science, be established without loss of time. And I ask of vour Imperial Highness and the learned Heads of the Uni- versity, what knowledge more useful than that which I possess and profess could be conferred upon a rising and ardent youth ? SCIENCE AT CAMBRIDGE. 215 " Who are the young men of Cambridge ? They are brought up for the most part to the study of the Law or the Church. " Those who have partaken of food in the miserable chambers of the law student, and seen their cadaverous appearance and unearthly voracity, will at once agree with me that they are in a lamentable state as regards eating. But it is of the other profession which I speak. " I can conceive now no person so likely to become eminently useful and beloved as an interesting young ecclesiastic going down to take possession of his curacy in a distant and barbarous province, where the inhabit- ants eat their meat raw, their vegetables crude, and know no difference between a white and a brown sauce. — I say, most noble, mighty, and learned Sirs, I can conceive of no character more delightful than a young curate coming into such a district after having gradu- ated honourably in MY science. He is like Saint Au- gustin, but he bears a saucepan in his train, and he endears the natives to him and to his doctrines by a hundred innocent artifices. In his own humble home — see my Regenerator art, my kitchen at home — he gives a model of neatness, propriety, and elegant moderation. He goes from cottage to cottage, improving the diet of the poor. He flavours the labourer's soup with simple herbs, and roasts the stalled ox of the squire or farmer to a turn. He makes tables comfortable, which before were sickening ; families are united which once avoided 216 MISCELLANIES. each other, or quarrelled when they met ; health re- turns, which bad diet had banished from the cottager's home ; children flourish and multiply, and as they crowd round the simple but invigorating repast, bless the in- structor who has taught them to prepare their meal. Ah ! honoured Prince, and exalted gentlemen, what a picture do I draw of clerical influence and parochial harmony ! Talk of schools, indeed ! I very much doubt whether a school-inspector could make a souffle, or S. G. O. of the Times could toss a pancake ! " And ah ! gentlemen, what a scene would the exa- mination which I picture to myself present ! The Pro- fessor enters the Hall, preceded by his casserole bearers ; a hundred furnaces are lighted ; a hundred elegant neo- phytes in white caps, are present behind them, exercis- ing upon the roasts, the stews, the vegetables, the sweets. A Board of Examiners is assembled at a table spread with, damask, and the exercises of the young men are carried up to them hot and hot. Who would not be proud to sit on such a Board, and superintend the en- deavours of youth engaged in such labour ? Blushing, the Senior Medallist receives the Vice-Chancellor's com- pliment, and is crowned with a fillet by the Yeoman Bedell ; this — this I would fain behold in the great, the enlightened, the generous, the liberal country of my adoption ! " And if ever British gratitude should erect a statue to a national benefactor, 1 can suppose an image of my- SCIENCE AT CAMBRIDGE. 21? self, the First Professor of Cookery in Cambridge, to be elevated in some conspicuous situation in after ages, holding out the nectar which he discovered, and the sauce with which he endowed the beloved country into which he came. " Waiting your answer with respectful confidence, I am, of your Royal Highness and Gentlemen, "The profound Servant, "CORYDON SOYER." 10 218 MISCELLANIES. A DREAM OF WHITEFRIARS. I do not know how it happened the other day, that after reading Dr. Ullathorne's letter in the Times, in my back shop, over a glass of brandy-and-water, and thinking what a mild, moderate, artless letter the Bis- hop's was, I fell into a doze, from which I was awaken- ed by the appearance of a Friar, with a map of London in his hand, who had lost his way to Smithfield, whither he said he was bound, having been just appointed mas- ter of the Charter House and Archdeacon of London. " Is Dr. Rain then dead ?" said I, in the Italian language, of which I don't understand a word. " Yes," said he. " Have you not heard ? All the Archdeacons, Deans, and Bishops, and the two Arch- bishops are dead ; and we have come over to take pos- session. Your religion is dead : it died the night before last. I am to bury it ; and I am walking about this confounded town since morning. Pray, show me the way to the Chartreux." My daughter Fanny Punch, who has just come home from a finishing school in Belgravia, fell down on her A DREAM OF WHITEFRIARS. 219 knees at the sight of this ragged old hermit and begged his blessing. Whereas ray son Jack, who is a student at Saint Bartholomew's, looked as savage as might be at the interesting foreigner ; and muttered something in his teeth about " confound the old Guy Fawkes, I'll Haynau him :" and he was for sending the Friar to Pimlico (to Jericho he might go if he liked, Jack said) had I not reproved him for his discourtesy to a stranger. Miss Fanny went up the chimney to get a bottle of Eau de Cologne to wash the dear Father's feet, and to work him a pair of slippers, she said : and Jack was, in the meanwhile, so struck by the spirited nature of my rebuke, that he begged pardon of the " old Buck," as he called him, and offered his Reverence my glass of brandy-and-water, and a penny Pickwick, which the old man, putting on his mitre, began to smoke. It was a very handsome mitre, made out of a copy of the Daily News, containing the Pope's letter : and, having a bottle of red ink before me, I painted a few devils on it, with my finger, so that it became the Friar very well. And Toby, smelling his wallet, began nuzzling his nose into it, where he found a rack, a thumbscrew, and a stake ready for roasting. The Friar turned rather red when Toby pulled them out, and hid them away up his sleeve as a dentist hides his pincers. I was of course too well-bred to make any remark, though I saw that my name was on the stake with a Latin inscription ; but went on painting up the 220 MISCELLANIES. mitre until it was complete, when I presented it to him, and he fell to drinking my brandy-and-water, till his eyes began to wink as if he was for all the world a miraculous picture. Whilst partaking of the brandy (which is Morel's, and the very best in London), he sang, to a melody of Mozart, that beautiful canticle of an early English divine, Gualterus de Mapes, beginning " Mihi est pro- position in taberna mori, vinum sit appositum morientis ori," &c. ; and as I looked at him, I remembered that I had seen him twenty years ago, when I was making a tour with my friends the Ivyleafs. I remembered him perfectly well. He was the first friar I ever saw — a regular Rabelaisian Friar, a dirty, lazy, red-bearded, thick-lipped, leering vagabond, crawl- ing along a wall in the sunshine — looking, if ever man did, slupid, brutal, and idle. What was the impression on my mind on looking at that fellow ? If I had been a sovereign prince, and administrator of the law, I should have liked to begin by kicking him soundly, and then would have said, " Take a pickaxe and dig, you lazy swindler — take a musket and march, you big beggar — take an oar and pull, a hod and get to work — do something to earn your life, stupid ! You shall fill your paunch at other men's charges no more." Our friend Mrs. Ivyleaf was one of that company, and saw like me a Friar for the first time — and what A DREAM OF Willi EFRIARS. ' 221 was the impression upon that good woman, that kind Puseyite soul ? Mrs. Ivyleaf confessed that she should have liked to kneel down and get a blessing from that venerable man. So different, in our minds, were the impressions of each, at the view of our bare- footed friend. One wanted to kick him : one to kneel down at those red shanks, and beg a blessing from that beggar. The fellow represented quite different emotions to each of us. To the one, Friend Barefoot was the symbol of piety, austerity, celibate purity, charity, and self-denial. Touching pictures of convent gates crowded by poor, and venerable Fathers feeding them ; sweet images of pale-faced nuns, in moon-lit cloisters, march- ing to church, singing ravishing hymns ; magnificent minsters, filled with kneeling faithful, and echoing with pealing organs ; altars crowned with roses, and served by dear old bald-headed, venerable priests, in gilt vestments, and little darlings of white-robed incense- boys ; confessionals, and O such dear, melancholy, wasted, consumptive clergymen, with such high fore- heads, and such fine eyes, waiting within ! — Mrs. Ivy- leaf knelt to all these, no doubt, in her adoration of her First Friar. Whereas, what was the feeling of Mr. Punch? Think of hard pinched peasants, and simple women and children, depriving themselves of their meal to feed that lazy, besotted, ignorant boor ; that pampered Flemish Obi-man, thought I ! Think of that fellow's 222 MISCELLANIES. blessing carrying a supernatural grace with it! — of yonder vagabond assuming to be one of the celestial chamberlains, without whose introduction one can't get admission to the Courts of Heaven ! Camerier of His Holiness, he carries his key, along with begged sausages and onions, in his wallet. That man means ignorance : that man means superstition : that man means priest-worship : that man means assumption of divine powers by one man over another ; powers to curse and bless ; to deny hope and Heaven ; powers to separate wife and man, child and father ; powers of occult domination, or open tyranny, or ruthless and bloody persecution, as it may be. — Powers divinely transmitted, says Father Barefoot, sealed with the seal of the Fisherman, and handed down these eighteen hundred years — Powers Infernal, I say, to be fought with all weapons, with hate, with scorn, with ridicule, with reason. " Hatred — scorn — my son !" says Father Barefoot. " For shame ! You have good feelings — why do you malign us so unjustly ?" " Look at this image," says he, taking one out of his bag, " this little figure of a Sister of Charity. Can any- thing be more beautiful than she ? Think of her deny- ing the world and its vanities ; gathering together the little children of the poor, and teaching them ; watching the pallets of the sick ; hanging over the lips of the fevered patient, whispering consolation, and catching in- A DREAM OF WHITEFRIARS. 223 fection and death for her reward. Here is a missionary in China or England. Death is the end of his career — he knows, and braves it ; and Tuy goes to the sword, or Campian to the gallows, martyrs to the Truth which they serve. Or look at this venerable figure, this white- haired priest with the infant in his arms, the Almoner of Providence, the Father of the poor. Can all History show a character more beautiful — can any heretic, how- ever hardened, refuse his love and reverence to St. Vin- cent de Paul ?" ? Yes, reverend Sir, Saints and Martyrs you can show in abundance ; faith and charity among your people, goodness and virtue, who denies them ? I suppose the most sceptic among us would take off his hat to Fene- lon, or ask a blessing of Pascal. But these, pious Father, are not the only figures in your wallet. Show us Alva ; show us Tilly ; show us the block and the fagot all over Europe, and by the side of every victim a priest applauding and abetting. Show us Borgia burn- ing Savonarola ; show us Gregory the Good singing Te Deum for the glorious day of Bartholomew, and all the Friars of Paris, with gun and dagger, achieving the victory. You say that Henry and Elizabeth perse- cuted as well as Mary and Philip ? Yes, and by the same right, and by the same logic. Grant to you or them the ordering of belief and the possession of the truth infallible ; and persecution becomes a necessary and laudable means of strengthening doctrine. If by 224 MISCELLANIES. taking me out of my shop in Fleet Street, and carrying me to Smithfield, and there roasting me, you can stop my wicked tongue, put an end to my pestilent publica- tion, and frighten my family and their children after them into orthodox faith and certain salvation ; it is much better that I should be roasted. I daresay Fa- ther Newman would think it a duty to look on. Ask him whether his Church has been a persecuting Church or not ? Ask him whether persecution is lawful or not ? Ask him, who loves the flogging of the discipline, whether its application to heretic shoulders would not be useful ? I declare solemnly, and vow, Barefoot, that if I held your belief, and if I had the power, I would begin persecuting to-morrow : and I would give a dangerous philosopher who doubted about the age of mankind, a touch of the rack, just to admonish him, as Galileo was laudably admonished by the Holy Office. " Your Reverence says, Psha ! old-world bigotry, wicked persecution, and that it is we who are persecu- tors now — not you. — My dear Sir, look at the Synod of Thurles. It was bigotry on our parts twenty years ago to doubt that the spirit of the Roman Catholic clergy was not one of meekness and brotherhood. What did they want but that our children and theirs should be edu- cated together ? What other desire had they but that, little heretics and little papists should learn the A, B, C, on the same benches, and the rule-of-three off the same "^late ? Who could be more quiet, genteel, loyal, and A DREAM OF WHITEFRIARS. 225 retiring than a poor persecuted Roman Ecclesiastic be- fore the Catholic Repeal Act, desiring nothing so much as fraternity ; nothing but equal rights ; having no wish to ask anything from Government beyond that fair share which should belong to every citizen ? Now there is a Blessed spelling-book and a Cursed spelling-book : now there is a Godly rule-of-three and a Godless rule-of- three : now division is requisite : hatred must be organ- ized. How are the Godly and Godless to live together ? " Do you suppose the story is a new one ? The Reve- rend Mr. Tartuffe began in this way. The worthy man, kicked out by a neighbour with whom he had been playing the same game, first entered into Orgon's house by sufferance ; hung about as a humble retainer ; made himself useful by a thousand means ; was so good, so gentle, so correct in his morals and edifying in his speech ; ate so little, and was really so agreeable and clever, that everybody was glad to give him house-room, and pitied the poor fellow for the monstrous persecu- tions to which he had been subject, and the unkind things said of him in his former place. "We know what came next. He slowly went on winning favour, the dear man ; and setting the family by the ears. He put the father against the son, and the wife against the husband He worked on the terrors of some ; the follies of all ; until, one fine day, when he announced that the house was his own, and that he was no longer dependent, but master. " And wljat happened ? The good-natured drama- 10* 226 MISCELLANIES. tist (that kindest and gentlest of mortal men), who had the power over his little creation, brings condign pun- ishment on Mons. Tartuffe ; and the curtain falls as he is marched off to prison, to the applause of all the spectators ; and with a compliment to the author's gra- cious Prince, the hater of hypocrisy, the lover of free- dom and justice. It was the gracious Prince who revoked the Edict of Nantes ; who (with the applause of the reverend the clergy) carried fire and sword amongst hundreds and thousands of honest citizens, his best sub- jects ; and who died a drivelling old dotard, wife-and- priest-ridden, his pride trampled down by Protestant victories, and defeated by Anglican Schismatics. " That is what His Holiness calls us Christians in his kind letter, which creates our country into a pro- vince again, and provides us with a dozen Bishops and a Primate. Welcome, gentlemen ! Welcome, my Lords and your Eminence ! Come with cross and banner, shaved heads and disciplines. Come with a winking picture, if you like, and let it wink on Ludgate Hill. Come with your gentle nuns and ardent missionaries : come with roses, and wax candles, and pretty hymns, and brilliant processions — and with hatred and curses, and tyranny and excommunication, such as you know how to use in due season, when ^ou dare. What ? Is Pole alive again, and Bonner only dead ? Is St. Vi>,- cent de Paul resuscitated, and holy Dominic shut up ? Has Ignatius left off swindling ; and shirking disguised A DREAM OF WHITEFRIARS. 227 amongst families, and is his fraternity only going to teach in schools, and missionarize the Indies ? Not so. Other institutions change, but theirs is one, and always remains the same. You brag of it. His Holiness says the Church is always the Church. And so it is : with the same art ; the same arrogance ; the same remorse- less logic ; marching pitiless to the same end. "And so, Father Barefoot, your Reverence, with the beard and sandals, is welcome, as the Oratorian young gentlemen with the black cloaks and broad brims, who parade our city. Why not these as well as a Quakers beaver, or a Bishop's shovel-hat ? You can't give us, Englishmen, a Church in Rome ; because you are avo\^lly tyrants, and intolerant of any creed but your own. But that is no reason whv we should refuse you. "Walk in, gentlemen, and you, old Barefoot, give us your hand, as the practice of Englishmen is, before they set to." " -My good Sir, you are growing angry," the Monk said. " This conversation must end. I want to get to the Charter-House, I tell you, before the Angelus ; and see the place where our Monks were murdered by your Protestants." " You go through Smithfield," I said, " where our Protestants were murdered by your Monks." And he got up in a huff to go away. But I suppose [ must have been in a dream, for when he went out I thought my Monk had turned into Dr. Pusey. 228 MISCELLANIES. MR. PUNCH'S ADDRESS TO THE GREAT CITY OF CASTLEBAR. Ye Men of Mayo ! Mr. Hughes, the Secretary of the Castlebar Industrial Society of Gentlemen ! Your letter, with its inclosures, has come to hand ; and as the Castlebar Industrial Society appears desirous to give publicity to its resolutions, I have the honour to print them, in this the last number of my periodkal, which appears in this last week of the melancholy year 1850 : " Resolved : That in consequence of the attacks made on the Catholic religion of this country, as well as on all Catholics indiscriminately, all over the world, by that notorious paper called Punch ; notorious for many falsehoods and wicked inten- tions ; and although the subscription is paid for some time in advance, the Committee are unanimously of opinion that it would be encouraging a repetition of similar falsehoods and designs, as well as encouraging that fanatical system of igno- rance and intolerance in the misguided English people, to receive it, for the future, into their Reading-Rooms ; and our Clerk is directed to give intimation of this our intention to the Proprietor, as well as to send him a copy of this Resolution ; and that the Telegraph, the FreemavUs Journal, and Tablet newspapers, be supplied a copy, requesting that same will be inserted in their patriotic papers." mr. punch's address. 229 It appears from trie above statement, (1) that in con- sequence of the attacks made by the notorious Punch on the Catholic religion of Ireland, and, indeed, of all other countries, (and although the subscription is paid for some time in advance,) the Committee of the Cas- tlebar Society will not receive the misguided English people into their reading-rooms : and (2) that the Clerk is instructed to inform the Proprietor : and that the editors of three Irish newspapers shall "be supplied a copy " of this resolution, requesting " that same " will be inserted in their papers. As the Proprietor of the benighted English people, I must grieve that the doors of your Athenaeum are closed to them : considering " the subscription is paid for some time in advance," this measure is hard upon my peo- ple ; but as your Committee has come to the resolution, I have but to record " that same," and deplore the loss which has befallen this infatuated nation. Sir, and good friend — this is the end of the year ; my paper will appear upon a day which, since the first of Christmas days, has been consecrated to peace and good-will ; and I am not going to lose my temper at this season, or have a word of anything but kindness, for you or any other Irishman, Anglican, Roman, Pusey- ite, Gorhamite, Mormonite, or what not. This is a truce day — and ought to be held as those days were held in the Peninsular campaigns, when the French and the Anglo- Irish outposts came down and talked to each other in a 230 MISCELLANIES. friendly manner, and handed each other their beef or their brandy-flasks across the water, with a " Bonjour, Paddy I" or " How d'ye do, Mounseer ?" I hope, in the neighbouring capital of Tuam, His Grace your Lord Archbishop will have as good a dinner as my Lord Bishop. I hope his Eminence at St. George's and his Lordship at Fulham will be pretty cheerful ; and Doc- tor Adler will have a comfortable turkey (without sausages) and Doctor Cumming a pleasant dinner, though they both of them belong to sects which are not in the habit of keeping Christmas. And I would that, the year ending so, the next could begin and continue so ; and that you and I, Mr. Hughes, could have no cause for disputing. But be- fore you accuse me and others of making attacks upon Catholics all over the world, see, my good Sir, how it is, and since when it is, that these hostilities have begun ! Not two months ago we were living in peace and quiet; not two months ago, and I had the benefit (or some- body to whom you showed that touching mark of con- fidence) of your subscription to my paper ; not very many months ago, when your people of Mayo were in straits, who came to help ? whose money was it that supplied you ? who ' brought Indian corn and rice to you ? Did relief come from Rome or from London ? It was the English Protestants that helped you — and who showed that their meaning was peace and good- will. mr. punch's address. 231 What was it altered the relations of araitv I Who was it be^an war ? Let the Lion of St. Jarlath's him- self sav, was the truce broken bv us, or was it the Pope's army that marched upon us to take possession of our territory ? Industrial Castlebarians ! we appeal to you. and ask who gave the signal for the fight, and whether it was not his Eminence with his pastoral crook that first occasioned the Shaloo ? Yes, it was the march of that confounded prelate from the Flaminian Gate, who came upon us " rubente tibia sacras jaculatus arces" and caused this abominable strife and uproar. Before that, we were living in peace and freedom ; before that, if the services of the Bishop of Melipota- mus were not required at that remote see, he was quite welcome to live in Golden Square ; before that, our Catholic Mends lived in confidence with us, and we laughed and worked together ; Father Ignatius was as much at libertv to wear a beard as Mr. Muntz : Fa- ther Faber might wear his cloak ; Mr. Bennett might light his candles ; the Lion of St. Jarlath's might growl now and anon — But Chume is a distant place, and the voice of Mayo is not very loud in this city ; we were all at peace and loving each other, or tolerating each other, which is the next thing ; when his Eminence puts his confounded crimson foot into our premises, and our ivhole empire is at strife ; Lord John begins to cry out • Mummery !" Doctor Newman begins to tell us that «re are all — I need not say what ; the Bishop of Lon 232 MISCELLANIES. don begins to blow out poor Mr. Bennett's candles • the boys begin to hoot the Oratorians in the streets ; the Irish begin to thrash the policemen (" Let the Pope give the word, we're the childthren of the Cmseeders," as Mr. Ambrose Phillips says) ; Punch (who must always be a Protestant) begins to caricature his Emi- nence, and to laugh at his stockings ; and my honest Castlebar Industrial Society publishes, not a bull, but a resolution full of bulls ; and there's brawling, and bickering, and broken heads, and friends parting, and fighting and fury all round. Ah, Mr. Hughes — ah, ye men of the Castlebar Athe- nayum ! it's hard to think that the Pope of Rome, who had been got to allow one little Protestant Chapel to exist in his city, in the midst of these very disputes — in the midst of these shrieks for freedom and fair play and liberty of conscience with which his officers are invoking the genius of our country — it is hard, 1 say, that the Pope of Rome should have had that one little Protest- ant Chapel shut up ! On this Christmas Day our peo- ple can find no refuge within the Pope's city, but must go out of the Flaminian Gate to say their prayers. Round the walls of his capital, monuments imperishable of the constancy of Christian men, are caves and cata- combs, in which the first bishops and believers in his mr. punch's address. 233 worshipped and died in secret. The symbol of his creed is raised up triumphantly in the arena, where its mar- tyrs of old braved torture and overcame death ; and the apartments of his palace are still decorated with pic- tures representing and lauding the slaughter of Protest- ants. Ah me ! that Christian people should ever have sale for those portraits or painted them ! You who sneer at the beadle who keeps guard at the shrine of Saint Edward, what say you to the librarian who shows you the medal of the Massacre of Bartholomew ? If a Pope could absolve from allegiance to Elizabeth, excuse us at least for thinking that the same fate might befal the successors of either. See, at any rate, that there are reasons why we must diner from you ; and why, when you make your own claim, plant your own stand- ard, appeal to your own pedigree, we should advance ours in our turn. And when the battle begins again — May the Right Side Win — that is a toast which we all of us can drink on this day of truce ; and which concerns the humblest persons engaged as much as it does the Primate of all England, in whichever part of Lambeth he be. May the Right Side Win, and the fight be conducted with manly fair-play. 234 MISCELLANIES. IRISH GEMS. FROM THE " BENIGHTED IRISHMAN." Our troops having smashed through that castle, and pulled down that flag, which now floats over the butcher Clarendon and his minions, a flood of prosperity will rush into the country, such as only the annals of the Four Masters gives count of since the days of Brian Boroimhe — such days of peace, plenty, and civilization shall not have been known, as those that are in store for our liberated Erin. There will be a Capital. The Ambassadors of the foreign Powers will bring their suites and their splendours to the Court of the Re- public. The nobility will flock back in crowds to our deserted squares. Irish poplin will rise in price to ten shillings a yard, so vast will be the demand for that web by the ladies of our city. Irish diamonds will reach the price of the inferior Golconda article. Irish linen and shirtings will rise immensely. Indeed, ah Irish produce, not being depreciated by the ruinous com- petition for gold, will augment in value. Debt at home, and absenteeism, have been the curses IRISH GEMS. 235 of our country. Henceforth there shall be no absentee- ism, and no debt. He who refuses to live amongst us is not of us — the soil is for the inhabitants of the soil. I have already, my dear friends, instructed you in the manner in which every one of you may get a cheap and handsome property for himself, viz., by holding pos- session of that which you at present occupy. For, as every man has an indefeasible right to subsistence, and as Nature produces for the good of all, it is manifestly right that the many should have the possession, and no1 the few. If a landlord should object to this arrangement (who is but a mere accident on the face of the earth), for the love of God, boys, get rifles and blow his brains out. It is much better that a few landlords should perish, and their families (who have been living on the fat of the land hitherto, and may therefore take a turn of ill for- tune) should starve, than that multitudes should die of want. And thus the curse of quarter-day will be removed at once from this island : and after a very little necessary slaughter. For depend upon it, that when two or three landlords have been served in the way recommended by me, the rest will not care to be pressing for rents. The butchers who govern us instituted the system of hang- ing for this very reason : arguing, that one example before Kilmainham deterred numbers of waverers ; and 236 MISCELLANIES. we may be sure that the rifle, rightly employed, will act upon an aristocrat just as well as upon a housebreaker ; for, are not men men, whether clad in Saxon ermine, or in the rude frieze-coats of our miserable fatherland ? Oat with your rifles, boys, in the name of humanity. They saw that the property of Ireland is mortgaged in a great degree, and for the most part to the brutal Saxon shopkeepers and pedlars. You will have the ad- ' vantage of getting your land entirely free ; there will be no manacle of debt to weigh down the free arms which are henceforth to till the beloved soil of our country. And, the land being unencumbered, you will have the farther advantage of being able to invite capitalists to aid you with money to conduct the operations of agriculture. Glorious America, which sympathises with you sincerely, will be much more ready to lend its capital upon unencumbered, than on cumbered property. And we shall negotiate loans in her magnificent com- mercial cities, where I have no doubt there will be a noble emulation to come to the aid of a free Irish na- tion. The idea of sending cattle and pigs to England, to feed Saxon ruffians, is then to be scouted henceforth by all honest Irishmen. We will consume our own beef and pork by our own firesides. There is enough live- stock in this island to give every regenerate Irishman good meals of meat for the next year ensuing ; and our IRISH GEMS. 237 lands, notoriously the greenest and most fertile in the world, will have fed up a similar quantity by the year 185& Thus, we shall never want henceforth; and, while we fatten and nourish, we shall see the Saxon enemy decay. And as the beef-fed scoundrels cannot live upon cotton and hardware, we shall have the satisfaction of reducing the prices of those commodities, and getting them at a much more reasonable rate than that at which the ac- cursed money-mongers now vend them. FROM THE " UNITED IRISHWOMAN." THE DUTIES OF OUR WOMEN. In the coming time the weapon nearest at hand is al- ways the cheapest. Only dilettanti go about picking and choosing. Shillyshallyers are cowards. Brave men are always armed. Brave men and brave women, a few suggestions to housekeepers we have already given : we could supply thousands more. There is no better weapon, for instance, than one which is to be found in every house in the refined quar- ter of the metropolis. A grand piano sent down upon a troop of huzzars will play such a sonata over their heads as the scoundrels never marched off to. A chim- 238 MISCELLANIES. ney-glass is a rare thing for smashing. I should not like to be the Saxon assassin upon whom some white- armed girl of Erin flung it. Pokers and tongs everybody will know the use of. A cut-steel fender is an awkward thing for a dragoon to ride over. A guardsman won't look well with a copper coal-scuttle for a helmet. Ladies' linen will make the best of lint. A laced handkerchief tied round a wounded warrior's brow will be well bestowed. I have seen a servant in college knocked down by a glossy boot, ever so slight, of var- nished leather : if a footman, why not a private soldier ? Have at him, ladies, from the bedroom windows. Your husbands will be away yonder at the barricades. A hot saddle of mutton, flung by cook into the face of a bawling Saxon Colonel, will silence him ; send the dish-cover with it ; or at tea-time try him with the silver tea-urn. Our wife has one. She longs for an oppor- tunity to fling it, heater and all, into a Saxon face. Besides the bottle-rack, the use of which and its con- tents is evident, your husband will leave the keys of the cellar with you, and you know what to do. Old port makes excellent grape-shot ; and I don't know any better use which you can make of a magnum of La- touche than to floor an Englishman with it. Have at them with all the glasses in your house, the china, the decanters, the lamps, and the cut-glass chandelier. A good large cheese would be found rather indiges- IRISH GEMS. 239 tible by a Saxon, if dropped on his nose from a second story. And the children's washing-tub artfully admi- nistered may do execution. Recollect it is a tub to catch a whale. There is a lady in Leeson Street who vows to fling her Angola cat and her pet spaniel at the military while engaged there. The cat may escape, (and it is not the first time the Saxon ruffians have tasted its claws.) The Blenheim cost her twenty-five guineas. She will give that or anything for her country. The water-pipes will be excellent things to tear up and launch at the enemy. They may make a slop in the house at first, but the mains and the gas will be let off. The ruffians shall fight us if they dare, in darkness and drought. You will of course empty the china-closets on the rascals, and all the bed-room foot-baths and washing- basins. Have them readv, and the chests of drawers balancing on the window-sills. Send those after them too. And if any coward Saxon bullet pierces the fair bosom of a maid or a wife of Erin, may the curses of Heaven light on the butcherly dastard ! May the pikes of Erin quiver in his writhing heart, the bullets of Erin whirl through his screaming eyeballs ! May his orphans perish howling, and his true love laugh over his grave ! May his sister's fair fame be blighted, and his grand- mother held up to scorn ! May remorse fang him like 240 MISCELLANIES. a ban-dog, and cowardice whip him like a slave ! May life weary him ! death dishonour, and futurity punish him ! Liar Saxon ! ruffian Saxon ! coward Saxon ! bloody Saxon ! The gentle and the pure defy ye, and spit on ye ! THE CHARLES THE SECOND BALL. 241 THE CHARLES THE SECOND BALL. Since the announcement of the Costume Ball a good deal of excitement has been prevalent about the court regarding it. It is known that Charles the Second used to feed ducks in St. James's Park, and it is thought that this amusement of the Merry Monarch is harmless, and may be repeated on the present festive occasion. Rewards have been offered at the Lord Chamberlain's Office, for a means of keeping the ducks awake till twelve o'clock at night. We hear that some Duchesses decline altogether to assume the characters of their namesakes in the time of Charles the Second ; and that the Dukes, their husbands, perfectly agree in this spirited decision. For the same reason as their Graces, the parts of Maids of Honour are not in much request. But for the character of Catherine Hyde, who married the heir to the throne, there are numberless proposals among the young ladies of the polite world. For the character of the Duke of Buckingham (of Charles the Second's time), who kicked down a grand 11 242 MISCELLANIES. fortune without being able to account for it, we hear a great number of noblemen named ; among others, Lord Addlestone, Lord Muddehead, and the Lord Viscount Wildgoose. The young gentlemen about Downing Street are reading the Biographie Universelle, and acquiring a sur- prising fund of historical knowledge. Young Tapely, old Tapely's son, who is eighteen, and has just entered the Foreign Office, proposes to appear as Colbert : whom Guttleton admires, not as a minister, but as in- ventor of Colbert-soles. . Vander Souchey, of the Dutch Legation, announced at the Club that he would go as the Pensionary de Witt. " Behold de miracle instead of de witt," said Flicflac ; and added, that Count Narcissi (the envoy from Pumpernickel) had best assume this character, because the women are always tearing him to pieces. General the Earl of Slowgo (who does his best to be an F. M.) has just been credibly informed that a work exists — a remarkable work — although a light work, lie may almost say a biographical work — relative to the times of Charles the Second, called Pepys' Diary, and purporting to be edited by a member of their Lordships' House, the Lord Viscount Bray- brook. General Slowgo has, therefore, presented his com- pliments to Lord Viscount Braybrook, and requests to know if the Viscount has edited the work in ques- THE CHARLES THE SECOND BALL. 243 tion ? Should his lordship's reply be in the affirmative, General Lord Slowgo will write to the Librarian of the British Museum, to know: 1st. Whether the work, entitled Pepys' Memoirs^ be in the Library of the British Museum ? 2nd. Whether that work contains an authentic account of the reign of his late Majesty, Kino- Charles the Second ? 3rd. Whether the Librarian of the British Museum can bring the volume, if a rare one, to Slowgo House ? and, 4th, If not, whe- ther, and at what time, General the Earl of Slowgo can consult the work in question at the British Museum ? The two little Miss Budds (who go about with Lady Crabb) have had another contemporary work lent to them by their cousin Rowley, and are busy reading Grammont's Memoirs. When Lady Crabb heard that her wards were reading history, she was highly pleased, and observed that she has no doubt the volume is instructive, as the family of Grammont is one of the highest in France. The Miss Budds say the book is — very instructive. Miss Grigg, who is exceedingly curious in books and antiquarianism, has come upon some surprising illus- trative passages in her Papa's library, in the works of Wycherley and Sir C. Sedley, and in Suckling's poems. Colonel Sir Nigel M'Asser, who has the largest and blackest whiskers not only in the Horse Guard* 244 MISCELLANIES. Green, but (with the exception of one sapper, now at the Cape of Good Hope) in the British army, when he heard that whiskers were not worn in the time of Charles the Second, and that gentlemen would be expected to shave, instantly applied for leave of absence ; and, if that is refused, he will send in his papers. Lady Rosa Twentystone and her daughters have been to Hampton Court, and taken careful note of the Lelys there. But when they came down to dinner in the dresses which they had prepared, and rehearsed the part before Mr. Twentystone, he ordered the whole family up to their rooms, and the dinner to be covered, until they were. " Lady Rosa is so delightful," Varges says, that he thinks " one can't see too much of her" Lord Viscount Methuselah has put himself into the hands of new artists, and will appear with the cheeks, hair, and teeth of twenty. He has selected the character of Lord Rochester, and has sent a request to the Lord Chamberlain that he may be allowed to make his entree into the ball through a window and up a rope-ladder. Lord Hulkington hopes to be able to get into a page's dress, which he wore once in private theatricals, at the Princess of Wales's Court at Naples in 1814 ; and the ladies of his family are busy (for his lordship, since he came into his fortune, is become very economi- cal) in trying to enlarge it. THE CHARLES THE SECOND BALL. 245 Lady Howlbury expects to make a great sensation, and not at a large expense ; having attired herself and daughters, each in a curtain of the state bed at Ivybush, under which Charles the Second passed three days after the battle of Worcester. If the Lord Mayor is invited with his suite, the City Marshal, of course, will go as Marshal Tureen. Lord Tom Noddington was much surprised when he heard that Charles the Second had been up a tree ; and always thought that he ran for the Oaks. His opinion was that Charles the Second had had his head cut off, just before his son, James the First, came into this country, from Scotland, — where Lord Tom goes shooting every year. Mr. Bland Yarges, who is the most notorious wag at Spratt's, said, that as Tom Noddington had no head himself, he had better go as the Marquis of Montrose — after his decapitation. Tom Noddington said he would be hanged if he went as Montrose, which Varges said was more and more in character. Lord Tom said he didn't know. He knew that he had shot the Duke's country, and hoped to shoot there again ; and he thought " it was devilish dangerous, begad, in those confounded levelling times, by Jove, for fellas to go about, saying that other fellas had their heads cut off; and that sort of thing, begad, might put bad ideas into other fellas' heads, and radical fellas, and dam republican fellas." Mr. Varges said that Lord Tom needn't be afraid about his head, and 246 MISCELLANIES. that if he lost it he wouldn't miss it ; on which Tom Noddy said that Varges was always chaffing him. Lord Addlestone — when his librarian informed him he had heard that Louis the Fourteenth as a young man wore a periwig powdered with gold-dust — has hit upon a brilliant thought of his own, and ordered that his wig shall not only be powdered with gold, but that he will have a papillote of bank-notes. If these are scarce, as his steward informs him, his Lordship's man is directed to use promissory notes bearing his Lordship's valuable signature. The young officers of the Eclectic Regiments, horse and foot, Cornets and Lieutenant-Captains with ten shillings per diem of pay, are greatly gratified at the idea of having to pay £40 a piece for their wigs at the Ball. It is said that a venerable Prelate of a Western Dio- cese is going to represent all the seven recusant Bishops of James's time at once ; and Cardinal de Retz, who had a genius for conspiracies, fights, rows, and hot water in general, has a representative in Golden Square, with a hat and costume ready bought and paid for. Ensign and Lieutenant Tipton, of the Coolstreams, says that he intends to take Marlborough's part as a young man, for he is very good-looking, is as poor as a rat, and ready to borrow money of any woman who will lend it. THE GEORGES. 247 THE GEORGES. As the statues of these beloved Monarchs are to be put up in the Parliament palace — we have been favoured by a young lady (connected with the Court) with copies of the inscriptions which are to be engraven under the images of those Stars of Brunswick. GEORGE THE FIRST STAR OF BRUNSWICK. He preferred Hanover to England, He preferred two hideous Mistresses To a beautiful and innocent Wife. He hated Arts and despised Literature ; But He liked train-oil in his salads, And gave an enlightened patronage to bad oysters. And he had Walpole as a Minister : Consistent in his Preference for every kind of Corruption. GEORGE II. In most things I did as my father had done, I was false to my wife and I hated my son : My spending was small and my avarice much, My kingdom was English, my heart was High Dutch : 248 MISCELLANIES. At Dettin2;en fio-lit I was known not to blench, I butchered the Scotch, and I bearded the French I neither had morals, nor manners, nor wit ; I wasn't much missed when I died in a fit. Here set up my statue, and make it complete — With Pitt on his knees at my dirty old feet. GEORGE III. Give me a royal niche — it is my due, The virtuousest King the realm e'er knew. I, through a decent reputable life, Was constant to plain food and a plain wife. Ireland I risked, and lost America ; But dined on legs of mutton every day. My brain, perhaps, might be a feeble part ; But yet I think I had an English heart. When all the Kings were prostrate, I alone Stood face to face against Napoleon ; Nor ever could the ruthless Frenchman forge A fetter for Old England and Old George : I let loose flaming Nelson on his fleets ; I met his troops with Wellesley's bayonets, THE GEORGES. 249 Triumphant waved my flag on land and sea : Where was the King in Europe like to me ? Monarchs exiled found shelter on my shores ; My bounty rescued Kings and Emperors. But what boots victory by land or sea ? What boots that Kings found refuge at my knee ? I was a conqueror, but yet not proud ; And careless, even though Napoleon bow'd. The rescued Kings came kiss my garments" hem : The rescued Kings I never heeded them. My guns roar'd triumph, but I never heard : All England thrilled with joy, I never stirred. What care had I of pomp, or fame, or power, — A crazy old blind man in Windsor Tower ? georgius ultimus. He left an example for age and for youth To avoid. He never acted well by Man or Woman, And was as false to his Mistress as to his Wife. He deserted his Friends and hi3 Principles. He was so Ignorant that he could scarcely Spell ; But he had some Skill in Cutting out Coats, And an undeniable Taste fbr Cookery. 11* 250 MISCELLANIES. He built the Palaces of Brighton and of Buckingham, And for these qualities and Proofs of Genius, An admiring Aristocracy Christened him the " First Gentleman in Europe." Friends, respect the King whose Statue is here, And the generous Aristocracy who admired him. DEATH OF THE EARL OF ROBINSON. 251 DEATH OF THE EARL OF ROBINSON. (In the manner of a popular Necrographer.) It is our duty to record this morning the demise of a nobleman who has for some time held a not insignifi- cant position in English politics and society. Augustus Gustavus Adolphus Smith, Earl, Viscount, and Baron Robinson, expired a quarter-of-an-hour ago at his house in Belgrave Square, where indisposition had of late detained his lordship. His son, the Viscount Smith, at present third Earl of Robinson, was im- mediately sent for from Paris, where his lordship is staying. The death of .the second Earl will no doubt be a shock to the present nobleman ; but as his Lord- ship inherits Castle Robinson in Yorkshire, Robinson- burgh, Mayo, the rich paternal estates in Norfolk and Suffolk, and the funded property, which is very con- siderable, his grief will probably be of trifling dura- tion. The family of the Robinsons is rather numerous than distinguished ; nor can the biographer of the race discover that they were remarkable for talents or wit^ 252 MISCELLANIES. or for public or private virtue. The founder of the House was known for many years by our ancestors as Cock Robinson, and his juvenile escapades with Smith, and Brown, and Jones, were long familiar subjects of public talk. Cock Robinson was a creature of Wal- pole's, and accused — not without justice, probably, — of repeated malversations of the public funds. He was Deputy of the Pewter Closet, did not retire into private life without carrying with him some of that metal over which he had the charge, and was created a Baronet by a clever but certainly not squeamish minister. This Sir Haycock Robinson died in 1*764, and was succeed- ed by his son Sir George Robinson. Sir George represented Robinsontown in Parliament, and increased the family estate, not by any genius or talent of his own, but by an economy which was push- ed perhaps beyond the bounds of manliness ; and, above all, by marrying the immensely rich daughter of Wooley Brown, Esq., of Tobago. The absurdities of the lady and the niggardliness of her husband, formed matter of fun for the wags of the day ; and cheese-paring Robinson and the whitey-brown heiress have had the honour of some satirical verses from the pen of Topham Beauclerc. George III. is said to have been shocked when the Baroness Robinson was presented to Queen Charlotte at Court; and cried out "Black, black; didn't know she was a black woman." However, Rob- inson was a baron. The votes which he commanded. DEATH OF THE EARL OF ROBINSON. 253 and which were at the service of Lord North, Lord Rockingham, the Lord Keeper Cecil, and indeed of every Ministry — and the lucky demise of the black heiress, raised Baron Robinson to an Earldom ; at which period, though stricken in years, he consoled himself by marrying a very young lady — Arabella, daughter of Hicks fifteenth Earl of Blenkinsop, who subsequently ran away from his Lordship. The subject of the present memoir, Augustus Gusta- vus Adolphus (then the Hon. A. G. A. Robinson), in the year 1799 entered the House of Commons, when Quiberoon capitulated, Lord Nelson engaged the Spanish Armada, Mr. Huskisson brought in his Turn- pike Act, Mr. Tierney made his celebrated speech against the Pig-tail Tax, and the one-pound note question was raging. On neither of these questions did the new Peer think fit to speak from his place in the House of Lords ; nor indeed did he open his lips there — a proof of discretion on his Lordship's part, for nature had endowed him with but a feeble brain, and he had the sense to be aware of his utter mental inefficiency. It is a pity that, in this respect, some of their lordships would not take pattern from the Earl of Robinson — a pity, too, that that nobleman's own incapacity was 6uch as to lead them justly to mistrust him. The young nobleman was educated — if that may be called an education where a man can barely write his name (and Lord Robinson could not be said to have 254 MISCELLANIES. gone much further in the practice of orthographical learning)— at Eton, and subsequently at Christchurch. It is needless to say that he took an honorary degree. The continent was as yet open to our aristocratic youth, when the young man achieved the distinction just mentioned, and the young Peer took the grand tour of Europe. A quarto volume was published, with some observations on Hecla and Stromboli, by Viscount Smith ; but it was known that the work was written by the Reverend Baring Leader, his tutor, and after- wards Bishop of Bullocksmith — a man neither con- spicuous for preaching nor practice, and who might be called, by the severe, a disgrace to the Church. In person, Lord Robinson was corpulent rather than athletic, and ungainly without being strong. He was marked with the small pox in infancy, and by that disease deprived of an eye. His lameness was the result of a subsequent accident. His Lordship lisped, and could not pronounce the letter R. Mr. Canning's lines about " Wobinthon" will probably be remembered by our readers. They are to be found in that clever but overrated Miscellany, the Antijacobin. He was sent to negotiate the Treaty of Straalsund, when the capitulation of Magdeburg gave some hopes to the Allies (though it may be supposed that a person such as Lord Robinson was merely a ceremony, and that the work was really done by subordinates), but the negotiations, whatever they might have been, were DEATH OF THE EARL OF ROBINSON. 255 interrupted by the best reason in the world — Mack's victory. The battle of Pultawa, Count Tilly's brilliant engagement with Miroladovich, and the sudden burst of Napoleon into the Ukraine and Swedish Pomerania with an army of five hundred thousand French, Poles, and Italians of the Old Guard, abruptly ended the con ference, and sent the diplomatists to the right-about. Lord Robinson narrowly escaped capture in the frigate the Arethusa, which brought him from his mission. She was chased and engaged by the French ship the Belle Poule, in the Bay of Bengal, and the particulars of the action are narrated in James. His Lordship was not complimented for his courage in the affair — but he was a civilian, and suffered greatly from sea-sickness. In 1811 his Lordship married Blanchefleun, the beautiful daughter of Harquebuss, Duke of Fitz- battleaxe. Gillray's caricatures of the pair are stiU to be seen in the portfolios of collectors. Suffice it to say, their union was not a happy one. The pleasures of the table appear of late years to have been Lord Robinson's only passion. His dinners were the most splendid given in this city, and were frequented by those who contributed their wit in return for his entrees. His Lordship's mind did not enable him to appreciate the former, and it is owing to a too great indulgence in the latter that he has been called away from a world which will not veiy much miss him. 256 MISCELLANIES. With all his splendour Lord Robinson was said tc be stingy, and, though dull, he was not good-natured, as are some stupid people. His deafness of late years still farther excluded him from the enjoyment of society. But beyond these points little can be said in his dis- praise. So long as his tenants paid their rents, he did not annoy them. He cannot be said to have cheated his tradesmen, — to have picked a pocket or to have robbed a church ; nor, on the other hand, can it be stated of him that he invented gunpowder or set the Thames on fire. THE END, ADVERTISEMENTS. APPLETOHS' POPULAS LIBEAEY. ESSAYS FROM THE LONDON TIMES. Price Fifty Cents. Containing the following Papers : LORD NELSON AND LADY HAMILTON. RAILWAY NOVELS. LOUIS PHILIPPE AND HIS FAMILY. DEAMA OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. HOWARD THE PHILANTHROPIST. ROBERT SOUTJIEY. THE AMOURS OF DEAN SWIFT. REMINISCENCES OF COLERIDGE AND SOUTHEY BY COTTLft. JOHN KEATS. SPORTING IN AFRICA. FRANCIS CHANTREY. ANCIENT EGYPT. Brilliant original Essays, frequently displaying the neat humor of s Sydney Smith, the glowing narrative sweep of a Macaulay. These Essays exhibit a variety of treatment, and we models of their class. The sketch of the French Revolution of 1S48, and the paper on the Amours of Dean Swift, arc masterpieces in their different ways ; the one as a forcibly painted picturesque panorama of startling events, the other as a subtle investigation of character. 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