Burlesques
by
William Makepeace Thackeray
Part 2 out of 9
measles: she lives and is still fair."
"Fair, ay, peerless fair; but what more, Philibert? Not false? By
Saint Botibol, say not false," groaned the elder warrior.
"A month syne," Philibert replied, "she married the Baron de
Barbazure."
With that scream which is so terrible in a strong man in agony, the
brave knight Romane de Clos-Vougeot sank back at the words, and
fell from his charger to the ground, a lifeless mass of steel.
II.
Like many another fabric of feudal war and splendor, the once vast
and magnificent Castle of Barbazure is now a moss-grown ruin. The
traveller of the present day, who wanders by the banks of the
silvery Loire, and climbs the steep on which the magnificent
edifice stood, can scarcely trace, among the shattered masses of
ivy-covered masonry which lie among the lonely crags, even the
skeleton of the proud and majestic palace stronghold of the Barons
of Barbazure.
In the days of our tale its turrets and pinnacles rose as stately,
and seemed (to the pride of sinful man!) as strong as the eternal
rocks on which they stood. The three mullets on a gules wavy
reversed, surmounted by the sinople couchant Or; the well-known
cognizance of the house, blazed in gorgeous heraldry on a hundred
banners, surmounting as many towers. The long lines of
battlemented walls spread down the mountain to the Loire, and were
defended by thousands of steel-clad serving-men. Four hundred
knights and six times as many archers fought round the banner of
Barbazure at Bouvines, Malplaquet, and Azincour. For his services
at Fontenoy against the English, the heroic Charles Martel
appointed the fourteenth Baron Hereditary Grand Bootjack of the
kingdom of France; and for wealth, and for splendor, and for skill
and fame in war, Raoul, the twenty-eighth Baron, was in no-wise
inferior to his noble ancestors.
That the Baron Raoul levied toll upon the river and mail upon the
shore; that he now and then ransomed a burgher, plundered a
neighbor, or drew the fangs of a Jew; that he burned an enemy's
castle with the wife and children within;--these were points for
which the country knew and respected the stout Baron. When he
returned from victory, he was sure to endow the Church with a part
of his spoil, so that when he went forth to battle he was always
accompanied by her blessing. Thus lived the Baron Raoul, the pride
of the country in which he dwelt, an ornament to the Court, the
Church, and his neighbors.
But in the midst of all his power and splendor there was a domestic
grief which deeply afflicted the princely Barbazure. His lovely
ladies died one after the other. No sooner was he married than he
was a widower; in the course of eighteen years no less than nine
bereavements had befallen the chieftain. So true it is, that if
fortune is a parasite, grief is a republican, and visits the hall
of the great and wealthy as it does the humbler tenements of the
poor.
. . . . . .
"Leave off deploring thy faithless, gad-about lover," said the Lady
of Chacabacque to her daughter, the lovely Fatima, "and think how
the noble Barbazure loves thee! Of all the damsels at the ball
last night, he had eyes for thee and thy cousin only."
"I am sure my cousin hath no good looks to be proud of!" the
admirable Fatima exclaimed, bridling up. "Not that I care for my
Lord of Barbazure's looks. MY heart, dearest mother, is with him
who is far away!"
"He danced with thee four galliards, nine quadrilles, and twenty-
three corantoes, I think, child," the mother said, eluding her
daughter's remark.
"Twenty-five," said lovely Fatima, casting her beautiful eyes to
the ground. "Heigh-ho! but Romane danced them very well!"
"He had not the court air," the mother suggested.
"I don't wish to deny the beauty of the Lord of Burbazure's
dancing, mamma," Fatima replied. "For a short, lusty man, 'tis
wondrous how active he is; and in dignity the King's Grace himself
could not surpass him."
"You were the noblest couple in the room, love," the lady cried.
"That pea-green doublet, slashed with orange-tawny, those ostrich
plumes, blue, red, and yellow, those party-colored hose and pink
shoon, became the noble baron wondrous well," Fatima acknowledged.
"It must be confessed that, though middle-aged, he hath all the
agility of youth. But alas, madam! The noble baron hath had nine
wives already."
"And your cousin would give her eyes to become the tenth," the
mother replied.
"My cousin give her eyes!" Fatima exclaimed. "It's not much, I'm
sure, for she squints abominably." And thus the ladies prattled,
as they rode home at night after the great ball at the house of the
Baron of Barbazure.
The gentle reader, who has overheard their talk, will understand
the doubts which pervaded the mind of the lovely Fatima, and the
well-nurtured English maiden will participate in the divided
feelings which rent her bosom. 'Tis true, that on his departure
for the holy wars, Romane and Fatima were plighted to each other;
but the folly of long engagements is proverbial; and though for
many months the faithful and affectionate girl had looked in vain
for news from him, her admirable parents had long spoken with
repugnance of a match which must bring inevitable poverty to both
parties. They had suffered, 'tis true, the engagement to subside,
hostile as they ever were to it; but when on the death of the ninth
lady of Barbazure, the noble baron remarked Fatima at the funeral,
and rode home with her after the ceremony, her prudent parents saw
how much wiser, better, happier for their child it would be to have
for life a partner like the baron, than to wait the doubtful return
of the penniless wanderer to whom she was plighted.
Ah! how beautiful and pure a being! how regardless of self! how
true to duty! how obedient to parental command, is that earthly
angel, a well-bred woman of genteel family! Instead of indulging
in splenetic refusals or vain regrets for her absent lover, the
exemplary Fatima at once signified to her excellent parents her
willingness to obey their orders; though she had sorrows (and she
declared them to be tremendous), the admirable being disguised them
so well, that none knew they oppressed her. She said she would try
to forget former ties, and (so strong in her mind was DUTY above
every other feeling!--so strong may it be in every British maiden!)
the lovely girl kept her promise. "My former engagements," she
said, packing up Romane's letters and presents, (which, as the good
knight was mortal poor, were in sooth of no great price)--"my
former engagements I look upon as childish follies;--my affections
are fixed where my dear parents graft them--on the noble, the
princely, the polite Barbazure. 'Tis true he is not comely in
feature, but the chaste and well-bred female knows how to despise
the fleeting charms of form. 'Tis true he is old; but can woman be
better employed than in tending her aged and sickly companion?
That he has been married is likewise certain--but ah, my mother!
who knows not that he must be a good and tender husband, who, nine
times wedded, owns that, he cannot be happy without another
partner?"
It was with these admirable sentiments the lovely Fatima proposed
obedience to her parents' will, and consented to receive the
magnificent marriage-gift presented to her by her gallant
bridegroom.
III.
The old Countess of Chacabacque had made a score of vain attempts
to see her hapless daughter. Ever, when she came, the porters
grinned at her savagely through the grating of the portcullis of
the vast embattled gate of the Castle of Barbazure, and rudely bade
her begone. "The Lady of Barbazure sees nobody but her confessor,
and keeps her chamber," was the invariable reply of the dogged
functionaries to the entreaties of the agonized mother. And at
length, so furious was he at her perpetual calls at his gate, that
the angry Lord of Barbazure himself, who chanced to be at the
postern, armed a cross-bow, and let fly an arblast at the crupper
of the lady's palfrey, whereon she fled finally, screaming, and in
terror. "I will aim at the rider next time!" howled the ferocious
baron, "and not at the horse!" And those who knew his savage
nature and his unrivalled skill as a bowman, knew that he would
neither break his knightly promise nor miss his aim.
Since the fatal day when the Grand Duke of Burgundy gave his famous
passage of arms at Nantes, and all the nobles of France were
present at the joustings, it was remarked that the Barbazure's
heart was changed towards his gentle and virtuous lady.
For the three first days of that famous festival, the redoubted
Baron of Barbazure had kept the field against all the knights who
entered. His lance bore everything down before it. The most
famous champions of Europe, assembled at these joustings, had
dropped, one by one, before this tremendous warrior. The prize of
the tourney was destined to be his, and he was to be proclaimed
bravest of the brave, as his lady was the fairest of the fair.
On the third day, however, as the sun was declining over the
Vosges, and the shadows were lengthening over the plain where the
warrior had obtained such triumphs;--after having overcome two
hundred and thirteen knights of different nations, including the
fiery Dunois, the intrepid Walter Manny, the spotless Bayard, and
the undaunted Dugueselin, as the conqueror sat still erect on his
charger, and the multitudes doubted whether ever another champion
could be found to face him, three blasts of a trumpet were heard,
faint at first, but at every moment ringing more clearly, until a
knight in pink armor rode into the lists with his visor down, and
riding a tremendous dun charger, which he managed to the admiration
of all present.
The heralds asked him his name and quality.
"Call me," said he, in a hollow voice, "the Jilted Knight." What
was it made the Lady of Barbazure tremble at his accents.
The knight refused to tell his name and qualities; but the
companion who rode with him, the young and noble Philibert de
Coquelicot, who was known and respected universally through the
neighborhood, gave a warranty for the birth and noble degree of the
Jilted Knight--and Raoul de Barbazure, yelling hoarsely for a two-
hundred-and-fourteenth lance, shook the huge weapon in the air as
though it were a reed, and prepared to encounter the intruder.
According to the wont of chivalry, and to keep the point of the
spear from harm, the top of the unknown knight's lance was shielded
with a bung, which the warrior removed; and galloping up to
Barbazure's pavilion, over which his shield hung, touched that
noble cognizance with the sharpened steel. A thrill of excitement
ran through the assembly at this daring challenge to a combat a
l'outrance. "Hast thou confessed, Sir Knight?" roared the
Barbazure; "take thy ground, and look to thyself; for by heaven
thy last hour is come!" "Poor youth, poor youth!" sighed the
spectators; "he has called down his own fate." The next minute the
signal was given, and as the simoom across the desert, the cataract
down the rock, the shell from the howitzer, each warrior rushed
from his goal.
. . . . . .
"Thou wilt not slay so good a champion?" said the Grand Duke, as at
the end of that terrific combat the knight in rose armor stood over
his prostrate foe, whose helmet had rolled off when he was at
length unhorsed, and whose bloodshot eyes glared unutterable hate
and ferocity on his conqueror.
"Take thy life," said he who had styled himself the Jilted Knight;
"thou hast taken all that was dear to me." And the sun setting,
and no other warrior appearing to do battle against him, he was
proclaimed the conqueror, and rode up to the duchess's balcony to
receive the gold chain which was the reward of the victor. He
raised his visor as the smiling princess guerdoned him--raised it,
and gave ONE sad look towards the Lady Fatima at her side!
"Romane de Clos-Vougeot!" shrieked she, and fainted. The Baron of
Barbazure heard the name as he writhed on the ground with his
wound, and by his slighted honor, by his broken ribs, by his roused
fury, he swore revenge; and the Lady Fatima, who had come to the
tourney as a queen, returned to her castle as a prisoner.
(As it is impossible to give the whole of this remarkable novel,
let it suffice to say briefly here, that in about a volume and a
half, in which the descriptions of scenery, the account of the
agonies of the baroness, kept on bread and water in her dungeon,
and the general tone of morality, are all excellently worked out,
the Baron de Barbazure resolves upon putting his wife to death by
the hands of the public executioner.)
. . . . . .
Two minutes before the clock struck noon, the savage baron was on
the platform to inspect the preparation for the frightful ceremony
of mid-day.
The block was laid forth--the hideous minister of vengeance, masked
and in black, with the flaming glaive in his hand, was ready. The
baron tried the edge of the blade with his finger, and asked the
dreadful swordsman if his hand was sure? A nod was the reply of
the man of blood. The weeping garrison and domestics shuddered and
shrank from him. There was not one there but loved and pitied the
gentle lady.
Pale, pale as a stone, she was brought from her dungeon. To all
her lord's savage interrogatories, her reply had been, "I am
innocent." To his threats of death, her answer was, "You are my
lord; my life is in your hands, to take or to give." How few are
the wives, in our day, who show such angelic meekness! It touched
all hearts around her, save that of the implacable Barbazure! Even
the Lady Blanche, (Fatima's cousin), whom he had promised to marry
upon his faithless wife's demise, besought for her kinswoman's
life, and a divorce; but Barbazure had vowed her death.
"Is there no pity, sir?" asked the chaplain who had attended her.
"No pity?" echoed the weeping serving-maid.
"Did I not aye say I would die for my lord?" said the gentle lady,
and placed herself at the block.
Sir Raoul de Barbazure seized up the long ringlets of her raven
hair. "Now!" shouted he to the executioner, with a stamp of his
foot--"Now strike!"
The man (who knew his trade) advanced at once, and poised himself
to deliver his blow: and making his flashing sword sing in the air,
with one irresistible, rapid stroke, it sheared clean off the head
of the furious, the bloodthirsty, the implacable Baron de Barbazure!
Thus he fell a victim to his own jealousy: and the agitation of the
Lady Fatima may be imagined, when the executioner, flinging off his
mask, knelt gracefully at her feet, and revealed to her the well-
known features of Romane de Clos-Vougeot.
LORDS AND LIVERIES.
BY THE AUTHORESS OF "DUKES AND DEJEUNERS," "HEARTS AND DIAMONDS,"
"MARCHIONESSES AND MILLINERS," ETC. ETC.
I.
"CORBLEU! What a lovely creature that was in the Fitzbattleaxe box
to-night," said one of a group of young dandies who were leaning
over the velvet-cushioned balconies of the "Coventry Club," smoking
their full-flavored Cubas (from Hudson's) after the opera.
Everybody stared at such an exclamation of enthusiasm from the lips
of the young Earl of Bagnigge, who was never heard to admire
anything except a coulis de dindonneau a la St. Menehould, or a
supreme de cochon en torticolis a la Piffarde; such as Champollion,
the chef of the "Traveller's," only knows how to dress; or the
bouquet of a flask of Medoc, of Carbonell's best quality; or a
goutte of Marasquin, from the cellars of Briggs and Hobson.
Alured de Pentonville, eighteenth Earl of Bagnigge, Viscount Paon
of Islington, Baron Pancras, Kingscross, and a Baronet, was, like
too many of our young men of ton, utterly blase, although only in
his twenty-fourth year. Blest, luckily, with a mother of excellent
principles (who had imbued his young mind with that Morality which
is so superior to all the vain pomps of the world!) it had not been
always the young earl's lot to wear the coronet for which he now in
sooth cared so little. His father, a captain of Britain's navy,
struck down by the side of the gallant Collingwood in the Bay of
Fundy, left little but his sword and spotless name to his young,
lovely, and inconsolable widow, who passed the first years of her
mourning in educating her child in an elegant though small cottage
in one of the romantic marine villages of beautiful Devonshire.
Her child! What a gush of consolation filled the widow's heart as
she pressed him to it! How faithfully did she instil into his
young bosom those principles which had been the pole-star of the
existence of his gallant father!
In this secluded retreat, rank and wealth almost boundless found
the widow and her boy. The seventeenth Earl--gallant and ardent,
and in the prime of youth--went forth one day from the Eternal City
to a steeple-chase in the Campagna. A mutilated corpse was brought
back to his hotel in the Piazza di Spagna. Death, alas! is no
respecter of the Nobility. That shattered form was all that
remained of the fiery, the haughty, the wild, but the generous
Altamont de Pentonville! Such, such is fate!
The admirable Emily de Pentonville trembled with all a mother's
solicitude at the distinctions and honors which thus suddenly
descended on her boy. She engaged an excellent clergyman of the
Church of England to superintend his studies; to accompany him on
foreign travel when the proper season arrived; to ward from him
those dangers which dissipation always throws in the way of the
noble, the idle, and the wealthy. But the Reverend Cyril Delaval
died of the measles at Naples, and henceforth the young Earl of
Bagnigge was without a guardian.
What was the consequence? That, at three-and-twenty, he was a
cynic and an epicure. He had drained the cup of pleasure till it
had palled in his unnerved hand. He had looked at the Pyramids
without awe, at the Alps without reverence. He was unmoved by the
sandy solitudes of the Desert as by the placid depths of
Mediterranean's sea of blue. Bitter, bitter tears did Emily de
Pentonville weep, when, on Alured's return from the Continent, she
beheld the awful change that dissipation had wrought in her
beautiful, her blue-eyed, her perverted, her still beloved boy!
"Corpo di Bacco," he said, pitching the end of his cigar on to the
red nose of the Countess of Delawaddymore's coachman--who, having
deposited her fat ladyship at No. 236 Piccadilly, was driving the
carriage to the stables, before commencing his evening at the
"Fortune of War" public-house--"what a lovely creature that was!
What eyes! what hair! Who knows her? Do you, mon cher prince?"
"E bellissima, certamente," said the Duca de Montepulciano, and
stroked down his jetty moustache.
"Ein gar schones Madchen," said the Hereditary Grand Duke of
Eulenschreckenstein, and turned up his carroty one.
"Elle n'est pas mal, ma foi!" said the Prince de Borodino, with a
scowl on his darkling brows. "Mon Dieu, que ces cigarres sont
mauvais!" he added as he too cast away his Cuba.
"Try one of my Pickwicks," said Franklin Fox, with a sneer,
offering his gold etui to the young Frenchman; "they are some of
Pontet's best, Prince. What, do you bear malice? Come, let us be
friends," said the gay and careless young patrician; but a scowl on
the part of the Frenchman was the only reply.
"Want to know who she is? Borodino knows who she is, Bagnigge,"
the wag went on.
Everybody crowded around Monsieur de Borodino thus apostrophized.
The Marquis of Alicompayne, young De Boots of the Lifeguards, Tom
Protocol of the Foreign Office; the gay young Peers, Farintosh,
Poldoody, and the rest; and Bagnigge, for a wonder, not less eager
than any one present.
"No, he will tell you nothing about her. Don't you see he has gone
off in a fury!" Franklin Fox continued. "He has his reasons, ce
cher prince: he will tell you nothing; but I will. You know that I
am au mieux with the dear old duchess."
"They say Frank and she are engaged after the duke's death," cried
Poldoody.
"I always thought Fwank was the duke's illicit gweatgwandson,"
drawled out De Boots.
"I heard that he doctored her Blenheim, and used to bring her wigs
from Paris," cried that malicious Tom Protocol, whose mots are
known in every diplomatic salon from Petersburg to Palermo.
"Burn her wigs and hang her poodle!" said Bagnigge. "Tell me about
this girl, Franklin Fox."
"In the first place, she has five hundred thousand acres, in a ring
fence in Norfolk; a county in Scotland, a castle in Wales, a villa
at Richmond, a corner house in Belgrave Square, and eighty thousand
a year in the three-per-cents."
"Apres?" said Bagnigge, still yawning.
"Secondly, Borodino lui fait la cour. They are cousins, her mother
was an Armagnac of the emigration; the old Marshal, his father,
married another sister. I believe he was footman in the family,
before Napoleon princified him."
"No, no, he was second coachman," Tom Protocol good-naturedly
interposed--"a cavalry officer, Frank, not an infantry man."
"'Faith you should have seen his fury (the young one's, I mean)
when he found me in the duchess's room this evening, tete-a-tete
with the heiress, who deigned to receive a bouquet from this hand."
"It cost me three guineas," poor Frank said, with a shrug and a
sigh, "and that Covent Garden scoundrel gives no credit: but she
took the flowers;--eh, Bagnigge?"
"And flung them to Alboni," the Peer replied, with a haughty sneer.
And poor little Franklin Fox was compelled to own that she had.
The maitre d'hotel here announced that supper was served. It was
remarked that even the coulis de dindonneau made no impression on
Bagnigge that night.
II.
The sensation produced by the debut of Amethyst Pimlico at the
court of the sovereign, and in the salons of the beau-monde, was
such as has seldom been created by the appearance of any other
beauty. The men were raving with love, and the women with
jealousy. Her eyes, her beauty, her wit, her grace, her ton,
caused a perfect fureur of admiration or envy.
Introduced by the Duchess of Fitzbattleaxe, along with her Grace's
daughters, the Ladies Gwendoline and Gwinever Portcullis, the
heiress's regal beauty quite flung her cousins' simple charms into
the shade, and blazed with a splendor which caused all "minor
lights" to twinkle faintly. Before a day the beau-monde, before a
week even the vulgarians of the rest of the town, rang with the
fame of her charms; and while the dandies and the beauties were
raving about her, or tearing her to pieces in May Fair, even Mrs.
Dobbs (who had been to the pit of the "Hoperer" in a green turban
and a crumpled yellow satin) talked about the great HAIRESS to her
D. in Bloomsbury Square.
Crowds went to Squab and Lynch's, in Long Acre, to examine the
carriages building for her, so faultless, so splendid, so quiet, so
odiously unostentatious and provokingly simple! Besides the
ancestral services of argenterie and vaisselle plate, contained in
a hundred and seventy-six plate-chests at Messrs. Childs', Rumble
and Briggs prepared a gold service, and Garraway, of the Haymarket,
a service of the Benvenuto Cellini pattern, which were the
admiration of all London. Before a month it is a fact that the
wretched haberdashers in the city exhibited the blue stocks, called
"Heiress-killers, very chaste, two-and-six:" long before that, the
monde had rushed to Madame Crinoline's, or sent couriers to Madame
Marabou, at Paris, so as to have copies of her dresses; but, as the
Mantuan bard observes, "Non cuivis contigit,"--every foot cannot
accommodate itself to the chaussure of Cinderella.
With all this splendor, this worship, this beauty; with these
cheers following her, and these crowds at her feet, was Amethyst
happy? Ah, no! It is not under the necklace the most brilliant
that Briggs and Rumble can supply, it is not in Lynch's best
cushioned chariot that the heart is most at ease. "Que je me
ruinerai," says Fronsac in a letter to Bossuet, "si je savais ou
acheter le bonheur!"
With all her riches, with all her splendor, Amethyst was wretched--
wretched, because lonely; wretched, because her loving heart had
nothing to cling to. Her splendid mansion was a convent; no male
person even entered it, except Franklin Fox, (who counted for
nothing,) and the duchess's family, her kinsman old Lord
Humpington, his friend old Sir John Fogey, and her cousin, the
odious, odious Borodino.
The Prince de Borodino declared openly that Amethyst was engaged to
him. Crible de dettes, it is no wonder that he should choose such
an opportunity to refaire sa fortune. He gave out that he would
kill any man who should cast an eye on the heiress, and the monster
kept his word. Major Grigg, of the Lifeguards, had already fallen
by his hand at Ostend. The O'Toole, who had met her on the Rhine,
had received a ball in his shoulder at Coblentz, and did not care
to resume so dangerous a courtship. Borodino could snuff a bougie
at a hundred and fifty yards. He could beat Bertrand or Alexander
Dumas himself with the small-sword: he was the dragon that watched
this pomme d'or, and very few persons were now inclined to face a
champion si redoutable.
Over a salmi d'escargot at the "Coventry," the dandies whom we
introduced in our last volume were assembled, there talking of the
heiress; and her story was told by Franklin Fox to Lord Bagnigge,
who, for a wonder, was interested in the tale. Borodino's
pretensions were discussed, and the way in which the fair Amethyst
was confined. Fitzbattleaxe House, in Belgrave Square, is--as
everybody knows--the next mansion to that occupied by Amethyst. A
communication was made between the two houses. She never went out
except accompanied by the duchess's guard, which it was impossible
to overcome.
"Impossible! Nothing's impossible," said Lord Bagnigge.
"I bet you what you like you don't get in," said the young Marquis
of Martingale.
"I bet you a thousand ponies I stop a week in the heiress's house
before the season's over," Lord Bagnigge replied with a yawn; and
the bet was registered with shouts of applause.
But it seemed as if the Fates had determined against Lord Bagnigge,
for the very next day, riding in the Park, his horse fell with him;
he was carried home to his house with a fractured limb and a
dislocated shoulder; and the doctor's bulletins pronounced him to
be in the most dangerous state.
Martingale was a married man, and there was no danger of HIS riding
by the Fitzbattleaxe carriage. A fortnight after the above events,
his lordship was prancing by her Grace's great family coach, and
chattering with Lady Gwinever about the strange wager.
"Do you know what a pony is, Lady Gwinever?" he asked. Her
ladyship said yes: she had a cream-colored one at Castle Barbican;
and stared when Lord Martingale announced that he should soon have
a thousand ponies, worth five-and-twenty pounds each, which were
all now kept at Coutts's. Then he explained the circumstances of
the bet with Bagnigge. Parliament was to adjourn in ten days; the
season would be over! Bagnigge was lying ill chez lui; and the
five-and-twenty thousand were irrecoverably his. And he vowed he
would buy Lord Binnacle's yacht--crew, captain, guns and all.
On returning home that night from Lady Polkimore's, Martingale
found among the many billets upon the gold plateau in his
antichambre, the following brief one, which made him start--
"DEAR MARTINGALE.--Don't be too sure of Binnacle's yacht. There
are still ten days before the season is over; and my ponies may lie
at Coutts's for some time to come.
"Yours,
"BAGNIGGE.
"P. S.--I write with my left hand; for my right is still splintered
up from that confounded fall."
III.
The tall footman, number four, who had come in the place of John,
cashiered, (for want of proper mollets, and because his hair did
not take powder well,) had given great satisfaction to the under-
butler, who reported well of him to his chief, who had mentioned
his name with praise to the house-steward. He was so good-looking
and well-spoken a young man, that the ladies in the housekeeper's
room deigned to notice him more than once; nor was his popularity
diminished on account of a quarrel in which he engaged with
Monsieur Anatole, the enormous Walloon chasseur, who was one day
found embracing Miss Flouncy, who waited on Amethyst's own maid.
The very instant Miss Flouncy saw Mr. Jeames entering the Servants'
Hall, where Monsieur Anatole was engaged in "aggravating" her, Miss
Flouncy screamed: at the next moment the Belgian giant lay
sprawling upon the carpet; and Jeames, standing over him, assumed
so terrible a look, that the chasseur declined any further combat.
The victory was made known to the house-steward himself, who, being
a little partial to Miss Flouncy herself, complimented Jeames on
his valor, and poured out a glass of Madeira in his own room.
Who was Jeames? He had come recommended by the Bagnigge people.
He had lived, he said, in that family two years. "But where there
was no ladies," he said, "a gentleman's hand was spiled for
service;" and Jeames's was a very delicate hand; Miss Flouncy
admired it very much, and of course he did not defile it by menial
service: he had in a young man who called him sir, and did all the
coarse work; and Jeames read the morning paper to the ladies; not
spellingly and with hesitation, as many gentlemen do, but easily
and elegantly, speaking off the longest words without a moment's
difficulty. He could speak French, too, Miss Flouncy found, who
was studying it under Mademoiselle Grande fille-de-chambre de
confiance; for when she said to him, "Polly voo Fransy, Munseer
Jeames?" he replied readily, "We, Mademaselle, j'ay passay boco de
tong a Parry. Commong voo potty voo?" How Miss Flouncy admired
him as he stood before her, the day after he had saved Miss
Amethyst when the horses had run away with her in the Park!
Poor Flouncy, poor Flouncy! Jeames had been but a week in
Amethyst's service, and already the gentle heart of the washing-
girl was irrecoverably gone! Poor Flouncy! Poor Flouncy! he
thought not of thee.
It happened thus. Miss Amethyst being engaged to drive with her
cousin the prince in his phaeton, her own carriage was sent into
the Park simply with her companion, who had charge of her little
Fido, the dearest little spaniel in the world. Jeames and
Frederick were behind the carriage with their long sticks and neat
dark liveries; the horses were worth a thousand guineas each, the
coachman a late lieutenant-colonel of cavalry: the whole ring could
not boast a more elegant turn-out.
The prince drove his curricle, and had charge of his belle cousine.
It may have been the red fezzes in the carriage of the Turkish
ambassador which frightened the prince's grays, or Mrs. Champignon's
new yellow liveries, which were flaunting in the Park, or hideous
Lady Gorgon's preternatural ugliness, who passed in a low
pony-carriage at the time, or the prince's own want of skill,
finally; but certain it is that the horses took fright, dashed
wildly along the mile, scattered equipages, pietons, dandies' cabs,
and snobs' pheaytons. Amethyst was screaming; and the prince,
deadly pale, had lost all presence of mind, as the curricle came
rushing by the spot where Miss Amethyst's carriage stood.
"I'm blest," Frederick exclaimed to his companion, "if it ain't the
prince a-drivin our missis! They'll be in the Serpingtine, or
dashed to pieces, if they don't mind." And the runaway steeds at
this instant came upon them as a whirlwind.
But if those steeds ran at a whirlwind pace, Jeames was swifter.
To jump from behind, to bound after the rocking, reeling curricle,
to jump into it, aided by the long stick which he carried and used
as a leaping-pole, and to seize the reins out of the hands of the
miserable Borodino, who shrieked piteously as the dauntless valet
leapt on his toes and into his seat, was the work of an instant.
In a few minutes the mad, swaying rush of the horses was reduced to
a swift but steady gallop; presently into a canter, then a trot;
until finally they pulled up smoking and trembling, but quite
quiet, by the side of Amethyst's carriage, which came up at a rapid
pace.
"Give me the reins, malappris! tu m'ecrases le corps, manant!"
yelled the frantic nobleman, writhing underneath the intrepid
charioteer.
"Tant pis pour toi, nigaud," was the reply. The lovely Amethyst of
course had fainted; but she recovered as she was placed in her
carriage, and rewarded her preserver with a celestial smile.
The rage, the fury, the maledictions of Borodino, as he saw the
latter--a liveried menial--stoop gracefully forward and kiss
Amethyst's hand, may be imagined rather than described. But Jeames
heeded not his curses. Having placed his adored mistress in the
carriage, he calmly resumed his station behind. Passion or danger
seemed to have no impression upon that pale marble face.
Borodino went home furious; nor was his rage diminished, when, on
coming to dinner that day, a recherche banquet served in the
Frangipane best style, and requesting a supply of a puree a la
bisque aux ecrevisses, the clumsy attendant who served him let fall
the assiette of vermeille cisele, with its scalding contents, over
the prince's chin, his Mechlin jabot, and the grand cordon of the
Legion of honor which he wore.
"Infame," howled Borodino, "tu l'as fait expres!"
"Oui, je l'ai fait expres," said the man, with the most perfect
Parisian accent. It was Jeames.
Such insolence of course could not be passed unnoticed even after
the morning's service, and he was chassed on the spot. He had been
but a week in the house.
The next month the newspapers contained a paragraph which may
possibly elucidate the above mystery, and to the following effect:--
"Singular Wager.--One night, at the end of last season, the young
and eccentric Earl of B-gn-gge laid a wager of twenty-five thousand
pounds with a broken sporting patrician, the dashing Marquis of
M-rt-ng-le, that he would pass a week under the roof of a celebrated
and lovely young heiress, who lives not a hundred miles from
B-lgr-ve Squ-re. The bet having been made, the earl pretended an
illness, and having taken lessons from one of his lordship's own
footmen (Mr. James Plush, whose name he also borrowed) in 'the
MYSTERIES of the PROFESSION,' actually succeeded in making an entry
into Miss P-ml-co's mansion, where he stopped one week exactly;
having time to win his bet, and to save the life of the lady, whom
we hear he is about to lead to the altar. He disarmed the Prince
of Borodino in a duel fought on Calais sands--and, it is said,
appeared at the C---- club wearing his PLUSH COSTUME under a cloak,
and displaying it as a proof that he had won his wager."
Such, indeed, were the circumstances. The young couple have not
more than nine hundred thousand a year, but they live cheerfully,
and manage to do good; and Emily de Pentonville, who adores her
daughter-in-law and her little grandchildren, is blest in seeing
her darling son enfin un homme range.
CRINOLINE.
BY JE-MES PL-SH, ESQ.
I.
I'm not at libbaty to divulj the reel names of the 2 Eroes of the
igstrawny Tail which I am abowt to relait to those unlightnd
paytrons of letarature and true connyshures of merrit--the great
Brittish public--But I pledj my varacity that this singlar story of
rewmantic love, absobbing pashn, and likewise of GENTEEL LIFE, is,
in the main fax, TREW. The suckmstanzas I elude to, ocurd in the
rain of our presnt Gratious Madjisty and her beluvd and roil
Concert Prince Halbert.
Welthen. Some time in the seazen of 18-- (mor I dar not rewheel)
there arrived in this metropulus, per seknd class of the London and
Dover Railway, an ellygant young foring gentleman, whom I shall
danomminate Munseer Jools De Chacabac.
Having read through "The Vicker of Wackfield" in the same oridganal
English tung in which this very harticle I write is wrote too, and
halways been remarkyble, both at collidge and in the estamminy, for
his aytred and orror of perfidgus Halbion, Munseer Jools was
considered by the prapriretors of the newspaper in which he wrote,
at Parris, the very man to come to this country, igsamin its
manners and customs, cast an i upon the politticle and finalshle
stat of the Hempire, and igspose the mackynations of the infyamous
Palmerston, and the ebomminable Sir Pill--both enemies of France;
as is every other Britten of that great, gloarus, libberal, and
peasable country. In one word, Jools de Chacabac was a penny-a-
liner.
"I will go see with my own I's," he said, "that infimus hiland of
which the innabitants are shopkeepers, gorged with roast beef and
treason. I will go and see the murderers of the Hirish, the
pisoners of the Chynese, the villians who put the Hemperor to death
in Saintyleany, the artful dodges who wish to smother Europe with
their cotton, and can't sleep or rest heasy for henvy and hatred of
the great inwinsable French nation. I will igsammin, face to face,
these hotty insularies; I will pennytrate into the secrets of their
Jessywhittickle cabinet, and beard Palmerston in his denn." When
he jumpt on shor at Foaxton (after having been tremenguously sick
in the fourcabbing), he exclaimed, "Enfin je te tiens, Ile maudite!
je te crache a la figure, vieille Angleterre! Je te foule a mes
pieds an nom du monde outrage," and so proseaded to inwade the
metropulus.
As he wisht to micks with the very chicest sosiaty, and git the
best of infamation about this country, Munseer Jools of coarse went
and lodgd in Lester Square--Lester Squarr, as he calls it--which,
as he was infommed in the printed suckular presented to him by a
very greasy but polite comishner at the Custumus Stares, was in the
scenter of the town, contiggus to the Ouses of Parlyment, the
prinsple theayters, the parx, St. Jams Pallice, and the Corts of
Lor. "I can surwhey them all at one cut of the eye," Jools
thought; "the Sovring, the infamus Ministers plotting the
destruction of my immortial country; the business and pleasure of
these pusprond Londoners and aristoxy; I can look round and see
all." So he took a three-pair back in a French hotel, the "Hotel
de l'Ail," kep by Monsieur Gigotot, Cranbourne Street, Lester
Squarr, London.
In this otell there's a billiard-room on the first floor, and a
tabble-doat at eighteenpence peredd at 5 o'clock; and the landlord,
who kem into Jools's room smoaking a segar, told the young gent
that the house was friquented by all the Brittish nobillaty, who
reglar took their dinners there. "They can't ebide their own
quiseen," he said. "You'll see what a dinner we'll serve you to-
day." Jools wrote off to his paper--
"The members of the haughty and luxurious English aristocracy, like
all the rest of the world, are obliged to fly to France for the
indulgence of their luxuries. The nobles of England, quitting
their homes, their wives, miladies and mistriss, so fair but so
cold, dine universally at the tavern. That from which I write is
frequented by Peel and Palmerston. I fremis to think that I may
meet them at the board to-day."
Singlar to say, Peel and Palmerston didn't dine at the "Hotel de
l'Ail" on that evening. "It's quite igstronnary they don't come,"
said Munseer de l'Ail.
"Peraps they're ingaged at some boxing-match or some combaw de
cock," Munseer Jools sejested; and the landlord egreed that was
very likely.
Instedd of English there was, however, plenty of foring sociaty, of
every nation under the sun. Most of the noblemen were great
hamatures of hale and porter. The tablecloth was marked over with
brown suckles, made by the pewter-pots on that and the previous
days.
"It is the usage here," wrote Jools to his newspaper, "among the
Anglais of the fashonne to absorb immense quantities of ale and
porter during their meals. These stupefying, but cheap, and not
unpalatable liquors are served in shining pewter vessels. A mug of
foaming hafanaf (so a certain sort of beer is called) was placed by
the side of most of the convives. I was disappointed of seeing Sir
Peel: he was engaged to a combat of cocks which occurs at Windsor."
Not one word of English was spoke during this dinner, excep when
the gentlemen said "Garsong de l'afanaf," but Jool was very much
pleased to meet the eleet of the foringers in town, and ask their
opinion about the reel state of thinx. Was it likely that the
bishops were to be turned out of the Chambre des Communes? Was it
true that Lor Palmerston had boxed with Lor Broghamm in the House
of Lords, until they were sepparayted by the Lor Maire? Who was
the Lor Maire? Wasn't he Premier Minister? and wasn't the
Archeveque de Cantorbery a Quaker? He got answers to these
questions from the various gents round about during the dinner--
which, he remarked, was very much like a French dinner, only
dirtier. And he wrote off all the infamation he got to his
newspaper.
"The Lord Maire, Lord Lansdowne, is Premier Ministre. His Grace
has his dwelling in the City. The Archbishop of Cantabery is not
turned Quaker, as some people stated. Quakers may not marry, nor
sit in the Chamber of Peers. The minor bishops have seats in
the House of Commons, where they are attacked by the bitter
pleasantries of Lord Brougham. A boxer is in the house; he taught
Palmerston the science of the pugilate, who conferred upon him the
seat," &c. &c.
His writing hover, Jools came down and ad a gaym at pool with two
Poles, a Bulgian, and 2 of his own countrymen. This being done
amidst more hafanaf, without which nothink is done in England, and
as there was no French play that night, he & the two French gents
walked round and round Lester Squarr smoking segaws in the faces of
other French gents who were smoaking 2. And they talked about the
granjer of France and the perfidgusness of England, and looked at
the aluminated pictur of Madame Wharton as Haryadney till bedtime.
But befor he slep, he finished his letter you may be sure, and
called it his "Fust Imprestiuns of Anglyterre."
"Mind and wake me early," he said to Boots, the ony Brittish
subject in the "Hotel de l'Ail," and who therefore didn't
understand him. "I wish to be at Smithfield at 6 hours to see THE
MEN SELL THEIR WIVES." And the young roag fell asleep, thinking
what sort of a one he'd buy.
This was the way Jools passed his days, and got infamation about
Hengland and the Henglish--walking round and round Lester Squarr
all day, and every day with the same company, occasionally
dewussified by an Oprer Chorus-singer or a Jew or two, and every
afternoon in the Quadrant admiring the genteal sosiaty there.
Munseer Jools was not over well funnisht with pocket-money, and so
his pleasure was of the gratis sort cheafly.
Well, one day as he and a friend was taking their turn among the
aristoxy under the Quadrant--they were struck all of a heap by
seeing-- But, stop! who WAS Jools's friend? Here you have
pictures of both--but the Istory of Jools's friend must be kep for
another innings.
II.
Not fur from that knowble and cheerflie Squear which Munseer Jools
de Chacabac had selacted for his eboad in London--not fur, I say,
from Lester Squarr, is a rainje of bildings called Pipping's
Buildings, leading to Blue Lion Court, leading to St. Martin's
Lane. You know Pipping's Buildings by its greatest ornament, an am
and beefouce (where Jools has often stood admiring the degstaraty
of the carver a-cuttin the varous jints), and by the little
fishmungur's, where you remark the mouldy lobsters, the fly-blown
picklesammon, the playbills, and the gingybear bottles in the
window--above all, by the "Constantinople" Divan, kep by the Misses
Mordeky, and well known to every lover of "a prime sigaw and an
exlent cup of reel Moky Coffy for 6d."
The Constantinople Divann is greatly used by the foring gents of
Lester Squar. I never ad the good fortn to pass down Pipping's
Buildings without seeing a haf a duzen of 'em on the threshole of
the extablishment, giving the street an oppertunity of testing the
odar of the Misses Mordeky's prime Avannas. Two or three mor may
be visable inside, settn on the counter or the chestis, indulging
in their fav'rit whead, the rich and spisy Pickwhick, the ripe
Manilly, or the flagrant and arheumatic Qby.
"These Divanns are, as is very well known, the knightly resott of
the young Henglish nobillaty. It is ear a young Pier, after an
arjus day at the House of Commons, solazes himself with a glas of
gin-and-water (the national beveridge), with cheerful conversation
on the ewents of the day, or with an armless gaym of baggytell in
the back-parlor."
So wrote at least our friend Jools to his newspaper, the Horriflam;
and of this back-parlor and baggytell-bord, of this counter, of
this "Constantinople" Divan, he became almost as reglar a
frequenter as the plaster of Parish Turk who sits smoking a hookey
between the two blue coffee-cups in the winder.
I have oftin, smokin my own shroot in silents in a corner of the
Diwann, listened to Jools and his friends inwaying aginst Hingland,
and boastin of their own immortial country. How they did go on
about Wellintun, and what an arty contamp they ad for him!--how
they used to prove that France was the Light, the Scenter-pint, the
Igsample and hadmiration of the whole world! And though I scarcely
take a French paper now-a-days (I lived in early days as groom in a
French famly three years, and therefore knows the languidg),
though, I say, you can't take up Jools's paper, the Orriflam,
without readin that a minister has committed bribery and perjury,
or that a littery man has committed perjury and murder, or that a
Duke has stabbed his wife in fifty places, or some story equally
horrible; yet for all that it's admiral to see how the French gents
will swagger--how they will be the scenters of civilization--how
they will be the Igsamples of Europ, and nothink shall prevent 'em--
knowing they will have it, I say I listen, smokin my pip in
silence. But to our tail.
Reglar every evening there came to the "Constantanople" a young
gent etired in the igth of fashn; and indead presenting by the
cleanlyness of his appearants and linning (which was generally a
pink or blew shurt, with a cricketer or a dansuse pattern) rather a
contrast to the dinjy and whistkcard sosaity of the Diwann. As for
wiskars, this young mann had none beyond a little yallow tought to
his chin, which you woodn notas, only he was always pulling at it.
His statue was diminnative, but his coschume supubb, for he had the
tippiest Jane boots, the ivoryheadest canes, the most gawjus
scarlick Jonville ties, and the most Scotch-plaidest trowseys, of
any customer of that establishment. He was univusaly called
Milord.
"Que est ce jeune seigneur? Who is this young hurl who comes
knightly to the 'Constantanople,' who is so proddigl of his gold
(for indeed the young gent would frequinly propoase gininwater to
the company), and who drinks so much gin?" asked Munseer Chacabac
of a friend from the "Hotel de l'Ail."
"His name is Lord Yardham," answered that friend. "He never comes
here but at night--and why?"
"Y?" igsclaimed Jools, istonisht.
"Why? because he is engaygd all day--and do you know where he is
engaygd all day?"
"Where?" asked Jools.
"At the Foring Office--NOW do you begin to understand?"--Jools
trembled.
He speaks of his uncle, the head of that office.--"Who IS the head
of that offis?--Palmerston."
"The nephew of Palmerston!" said Jools, almost in a fit.
"Lor Yardham pretends not to speak French," the other went on. "He
pretends he can only say wee and commong porty voo. Shallow
humbug!--I have marked him during our conversations.--When we have
spoken of the glory of France among the nations, I have seen his
eye kindle, and his perfidious lip curl with rage. When they have
discussed before him, the Imprudents! the affairs of Europe, and
Raggybritchovich has shown us the next Circassian Campaign, or
Sapousne has laid hare the plan of the Calabrian patriots for the
next insurrection, I have marked this stranger--this Lor Yardham.
He smokes, 'tis to conceal his countenance; he drinks gin, 'tis to
hide his face in the goblet. And be sure, he carries every word of
our conversation to the perfidious Palmerston, his uncle."
"I will beard him in his den," thought Jools. "I will meet him
corps-a-corps--the tyrant of Europe shall suffer through his
nephew, and I will shoot him as dead as Dujarrier."
When Lor Yardham came to the "Constantanople" that night, Jools i'd
him savidgely from edd to foot, while Lord Yardham replied the
same. It wasn't much for either to do--neyther being more than 4
foot ten hi--Jools was a grannydear in his company of the Nashnal
Gard, and was as brayv as a lion.
"Ah, l'Angleterre, l'Angleterre, tu nous dois une revanche," said
Jools, crossing his arms and grinding his teeth at Lord Yardham.
"Wee," said Lord Yardham; "wee."
"Delenda est Carthago!" howled out Jools.
"Oh, wee," said the Erl of Yardham, and at the same moment his glas
of ginawater coming in, he took a drink, saying, "A voternsanty,
Munseer:" and then he offered it like a man of fashn to Jools.
A light broak on Jools's mind as he igsepted the refreshmint.
"Sapoase," he said, "instedd of slaughtering this nephew of the
infamous Palmerston, I extract his secrets from him; suppose I pump
him--suppose I unveil his schemes and send them to my paper? La
France may hear the name of Jools de Chacabac, and the star of
honor may glitter on my bosom."
So axepting Lord Yardham's cortasy, he returned it by ordering
another glass of gin at his own expence, and they both drank it on
the counter, where Jools talked of the affaers of Europ all night.
To everything he said, the Earl of Yardham answered, "Wee, wee;"
except at the end of the evening, when he squeeged his & and said,
"Bong swore."
"There's nothing like goin amongst 'em to equire the reel
pronounciation," his lordship said, as he let himself into his
lodgings with his latch-key. "That was a very eloquent young gent
at the 'Constantinople,' and I'll patronize him."
"Ah, perfide, je te demasquerai!" Jools remarked to himself as he
went to bed in his "Hotel de l'Ail." And they met the next night,
and from that heavning the young men were continyually together.
Well, one day, as they were walking in the Quadrant, Jools talking,
and Lord Yardham saying, "Wee, wee," they were struck all of a heap
by seeing--
But my paper is igshosted, and I must dixcribe what they sor in the
nex number.
III.
THE CASTLE OF THE ISLAND OF FOGO.
The travler who pesews his dalitefle coarse through the fair rellum
of Franse (as a great romantic landskippist and neamsack of mind
would say) never chaumed his i's within a site more lovely, or vu'd
a pallis more magniffiznt than that which was the buthplace of the
Eroing of this Trew Tale. Phansy a country through whose werdant
planes the selvery Garonne wines, like--like a benevvolent sarpent.
In its plasid busum antient cassles, picturask willidges, and
waving woods are reflected. Purple hills, crownd with inteak
ruings; rivvilets babbling through gentle greenwoods; wight farm
ouses, hevvy with hoverhanging vines, and from which the appy and
peaseful okupier can cast his glans over goolden waving cornfealds,
and M. Herald meddows in which the lazy cattle are graysinn; while
the sheppard, tending his snoughy flox, wiles away the leisure
mominx on his loot--these hoffer but a phaint pictur of the rurial
felissaty in the midst of widge Crinoline and Hesteria de Viddlers
were bawn.
Their Par, the Marcus de Viddlers, Shavilear of the Legend of Honor
and of the Lion of Bulgum, the Golden Flease, Grand Cross of the
Eflant and Castle, and of the Catinbagpipes of Hostria, Grand
Chamberleng of the Crownd, and Major-Genaril of Hoss-Mareens, &c.
&c. &c.--is the twenty-foth or fith Marquis that has bawn the
Tittle; is disended lenyally from King Pipping, and has almost as
antient a paddygree as any which the Ollywell Street frends of the
Member of Buckinumsheer can supply.
His Marchyniss, the lovely & ecomplisht Emily de St. Cornichon,
quitted this mortial spear very soon after she had presented her
lord with the two little dawling Cherrybins above dixcribed, in
whomb, after the loss of that angle his wife, the disconslit
widderer found his only jy on huth. In all his emusemints they
ecumpanied him; their edjacation was his sole bisniss; he atcheaved
it with the assistnce of the ugliest and most lernid masters, and
the most hidjus and egsimplary governices which money could
procure. R, how must his peturnle art have bet, as these Budds,
which he had nurrisht, bust into buty, and twined in blooming
flagrance round his pirentle Busm!
The villidges all round his hancestral Alls blessed the Marcus and
his lovely hoffsprig. Not one villidge in their naybrood but was
edawned by their elygint benifisns, and where the inhabitnts wern't
rendered appy. It was a pattern pheasantry. All the old men in
the districk were wertuous & tockative, ad red stockins and i-eeled
drab shoes, and beautiful snowy air. All the old women had peaked
ats, and crooked cains, and chince gowns tucked into the pockits of
their quiltid petticoats; they sat in pictarask porches, pretendin
to spinn, while the lads and lassis of the villidges danst under
the hellums. O, tis a noble sight to whitniss that of an appy
pheasantry! Not one of those rustic wassals of the Ouse of
Widdlers, but ad his air curled and his shirt-sheaves tied up with
pink ribbing as he led to the macy dance some appy country gal,
with a black velvit boddice and a redd or yaller petticoat, a
hormylu cross on her neck, and a silver harrow in her air!
When the Marcus & ther young ladies came to the villidge it would
have done the i's of the flanthropist good to see how all reseaved
'em! The little children scattered calico flowers on their path,
the snowy-aired old men with red faces and rinkles took off their
brown paper ats to slewt the noble Marcus. Young and old led them
to a woodn bank painted to look like a bower of roses, and when
they were sett down danst ballys before them. O 'twas a noble site
to see the Marcus too, smilin ellygint with fethers in his edd and
all his stars on, and the young Marchynisses with their ploomes,
and trains, and little coronicks!
They lived in tremenjus splendor at home in their pyturnle alls,
and had no end of pallises, willers, and town and country
resadences; but their fayvorit resadence was called the Castle of
the Island of Fogo.
Add I the penn of the hawther of a Codlingsby himself, I coodnt
dixcribe the gawjusness of their aboad. They add twenty-four
footmen in livery, besides a boy in codroys for the knives & shoes.
They had nine meels aday--Shampayne and pineapples were served to
each of the young ladies in bed before they got up. Was it Prawns,
Sherry-cobblers, lobster-salids, or maids of honor, they had but to
ring the bell and call for what they chose. They had two new
dresses every day--one to ride out in the open carriage, and
another to appear in the gardens of the Castle of the Island of
Fogo, which were illuminated every night like Voxhall. The young
noblemen of France were there ready to dance with them, and festif
suppers concludid the jawyus night.
Thus they lived in ellygant ratirement until Missfortune bust upon
this happy fammaly. Etached to his Princes and abommanating the
ojus Lewyphlip, the Marcus was conspiring for the benefick of the
helder branch of the Borebones--and what was the consquince?--One
night a fleat presented itself round the Castle of the Island of
Fogo--and skewering only a couple of chests of jewils, the Marcus
and the two young ladies in disgyise, fled from that island of
bliss. And whither fled they?--To England!--England the ome of the
brave, the refuge of the world, where the pore slave never setts
his foot but he is free!
Such was the ramantic tail which was told to 2 friends of ours by
the Marcus de Viddlers himself, whose daughters, walking with their
page from Ungerford Market (where they had been to purchis a paper
of srimps for the umble supper of their noble father), Yardham and
his equaintnce, Munseer Jools, had remarked and admired.
But how had those two young Erows become equainted with the noble
Marcus?--That is a mistry we must elucydate in a futur vollam.
THE STARS AND STRIPES.
THE AUTHOR OR "THE LAST OF THE MULLIGANS," "PILOT," ETC
I.
The King of France was walking on the terrace of Versailles; the
fairest, not only of Queens, but of women, hung fondly on the Royal
arm; while the children of France were indulging in their infantile
hilarity in the alleys of the magnificent garden of Le Notre (from
which Niblo's garden has been copied in our own Empire city of New
York), and playing at leap-frog with their uncle, the Count of
Provence; gaudy courtiers, emlazoned with orders, glittered in the
groves, and murmured frivolous talk in the ears of high-bred beauty.
"Marie, my beloved," said the ruler of France, taking out his
watch, "'tis time that the Minister of America should be here."
"Your Majesty should know the time," replied Marie Antoinette,
archly, and in an Austrian accent; "is not my Royal Louis the first
watchmaker in his empire?"
The King cast a pleased glance at his repeater, and kissed with
courtly grace the fair hand of her who had made him the compliment.
"My Lord Bishop of Autun," said he to Monsieur de Talleyrand
Perigord, who followed the royal pair, in his quality of arch-
chamberlain of the empire, "I pray you look through the gardens,
and tell his Excellency Doctor Franklin that the King waits." The
Bishop ran off, with more than youthful agility, to seek the United
States' Minister. "These Republicans," he added, confidentially,
and with something of a supercilious look, "are but rude courtiers,
methinks."
"Nay," interposed the lovely Antoinette, "rude courtiers, Sire,
they may be; but the world boasts not of more accomplished
gentlemen. I have seen no grandee of Versailles that has the noble
bearing of this American envoy and his suite. They have the
refinement of the Old World, with all the simple elegance of the
New. Though they have perfect dignity of manner, they have an
engaging modesty which I have never seen equalled by the best of
the proud English nobles with whom they wage war. I am told they
speak their very language with a grace which the haughty Islanders
who oppress them never attained. They are independent, yet never
insolent; elegant, yet always respectful; and brave, but not in the
least boastful."
"What! savages and all, Marie?" exclaimed Louis, laughing, and
chucking the lovely Queen playfully under the royal chin. "But
here comes Doctor Franklin, and your friend the Cacique with him."
In fact, as the monarch spoke, the Minister of the United States
made his appearance, followed by a gigantic warrior in the garb of
his native woods.
Knowing his place as Minister of a sovereign state, (yielding even
then in dignity to none, as it surpasses all now in dignity, in
valor, in honesty, in strength, and civilization,) the Doctor
nodded to the Queen of France, but kept his hat on as he faced the
French monarch, and did not cease whittling the cane he carried in
his hand.
"I was waiting for you, sir," the King said, peevishly, in spite of
the alarmed pressure which the Queen gave his royal arm.
"The business of the Republic, sire, must take precedence even of
your Majesty's wishes," replied Dr. Franklin. "When I was a poor
printer's boy and ran errands, no lad could be more punctual than
poor Ben Franklin; but all other things must yield to the service
of the United States of North America. I have done. What would
you, Sire?" and the intrepid republican eyed the monarch with a
serene and easy dignity, which made the descendant of St. Louis
feel ill at ease.
"I wished to--to say farewell to Tatua before his departure," said
Louis XVI., looking rather awkward. "Approach, Tatua." And the
gigantic Indian strode up, and stood undaunted before the first
magistrate of the French nation: again the feeble monarch quailed
before the terrible simplicity of the glance of the denizen of the
primaeval forests.
The redoubted chief of the Nose-ring Indians was decorated in his
war-paint, and in his top-knot was a peacock's feather, which had
been given him out of the head-dress of the beautiful Princess of
Lamballe. His nose, from which hung the ornament from which his
ferocious tribe took its designation, was painted a light-blue, a
circle of green and orange was drawn round each eye, while
serpentine stripes of black, white, and vermilion alternately were
smeared on his forehead, and descended over his cheek-bones to his
chin. His manly chest was similarly tattooed and painted, and
round his brawny neck and arms hung innumerable bracelets and
necklaces of human teeth, extracted (one only from each skull) from
the jaws of those who had fallen by the terrible tomahawk at his
girdle. His moccasins, and his blanket, which was draped on his
arm and fell in picturesque folds to his feet, were fringed with
tufts of hair--the black, the gray, the auburn, the golden ringlet
of beauty, the red lock from the forehead of the Scottish or the
Northern soldier, the snowy tress of extreme old age, the flaxen
down of infancy--all were there, dreadful reminiscences of the
chief's triumphs in war. The warrior leaned on his enormous rifle,
and faced the King.
"And it was with that carabine that you shot Wolfe in '57?" said
Louis, eying the warrior and his weapon. "'Tis a clumsy lock, and
methinks I could mend it," he added mentally.
"The chief of the French pale-faces speaks truth," Tatua said.
"Tatua was a boy when he went first on the war-path with Montcalm."
"And shot a Wolfe at the first fire!" said the King.
"The English are braves, though their faces are white," replied the
Indian. "Tatua shot the raging Wolfe of the English; but the other
wolves caused the foxes to go to earth." A smile played round Dr.
Franklin's lips, as he whittled his cane with more vigor than ever.
"I believe, your Excellency, Tatua has done good service elsewhere
than at Quebec," the King said, appealing to the American Envoy:
"at Bunker's Hill, at Brandywine, at York Island? Now that
Lafayette and my brave Frenchmen are among you, your Excellency
need have no fear but that the war will finish quickly--yes, yes,
it will finish quickly. They will teach you discipline, and the
way to conquer."
"King Louis of France," said the Envoy, clapping his hat down over
his head, and putting his arms a-kimbo, "we have learned that from
the British, to whom we are superior in everything: and I'd have
your Majesty to know that in the art of whipping the world we have
no need of any French lessons. If your reglars jine General
Washington, 'tis to larn from HIM how Britishers are licked; for
I'm blest if YU know the way yet."
Tatua said, "Ugh," and gave a rattle with the butt of his carabine,
which made the timid monarch start; the eyes of the lovely
Antoinette flashed fire, but it played round the head of the
dauntless American Envoy harmless as the lightning which he knew
how to conjure away.
The King fumbled in his pocket, and pulled out a Cross of the Order
of the Bath. "Your Excellency wears no honor," the monarch said;
"but Tatua, who is not a subject, only an ally, of the United
States, may. Noble Tatua, I appoint you Knight Companion of my
noble Order of the Bath. Wear this cross upon your breast in
memory of Louis of France;" and the King held out the decoration to
the Chief.
Up to that moment the Chief's countenance had been impassible. No
look either of admiration or dislike had appeared upon that grim
and war-painted visage. But now, as Louis spoke, Tatua's face
assumed a glance of ineffable scorn, as, bending his head, he took
the bauble.
"I will give it to one of my squaws," he said. "The papooses in my
lodge will play with it. Come, Medecine, Tatua will go and drink
fire-water;" and, shouldering his carabine, he turned his broad
back without ceremony upon the monarch and his train, and
disappeared down one of the walks of the garden. Franklin found
him when his own interview with the French Chief Magistrate was
over; being attracted to the spot where the Chief was, by the crack
of his well-known rifle. He was laughing in his quiet way. He had
shot the Colonel of the Swiss Guards through his cockade.
Three days afterwards, as the gallant frigate, the "Repudiator,"
was sailing out of Brest Harbor, the gigantic form of an Indian
might be seen standing on the binnacle in conversation with
Commodore Bowie, the commander of the noble ship. It was Tatua,
the Chief of the Nose-rings.
II.
Leatherlegs and Tom Coxswain did not accompany Tatua when he went
to the Parisian metropolis on a visit to the father of the French
pale-faces. Neither the Legs nor the Sailor cared for the gayety
and the crowd of cities; the stout mariner's home was in the
puttock-shrouds of the old "Repudiator." The stern and simple
trapper loved the sound of the waters better than the jargon of the
French of the old country. "I can follow the talk of a Pawnee," he
said, "or wag my jaw, if so be necessity bids me to speak, by a
Sioux's council-fire and I can patter Canadian French with the
hunters who come for peltries to Nachitoches or Thichimuchimachy;
but from the tongue of a Frenchwoman, with white flour on her head,
and war-paint on her face, the Lord deliver poor Natty Pumpo."
"Amen and amen!" said Tom Coxswain. "There was a woman in our aft-
scuppers when I went a-whalin in the little 'Grampus'--and Lord
love you, Pumpo, you poor land-swab, she WAS as pretty a craft as
ever dowsed a tarpauling--there was a woman on board the 'Grampus,'
who before we'd struck our first fish, or biled our first blubber,
set the whole crew in a mutiny. I mind me of her now, Natty,--her
eye was sich a piercer that you could see to steer by it in a
Newfoundland fog; her nose stood out like the 'Grampus's' jibboom,
and her woice, Lord love you, her woice sings in my ears even now:--
it set the Captain a-quarrelin with the Mate, who was hanged in
Boston harbor for harpoonin of his officer in Baffin's Bay;--it set
me and Bob Bunting a-pouring broadsides into each other's old
timbers, whereas me and Bob was worth all the women that ever
shipped a hawser. It cost me three years' pay as I'd stowed away
for the old mother, and might have cost me ever so much more, only
bad luck to me, she went and married a little tailor out of
Nantucket; and I've hated women and tailors ever since!" As he
spoke, the hardy tar dashed a drop of brine from his tawny cheek,
and once more betook himself to splice the taffrail.
Though the brave frigate lay off Havre de Grace, she was not idle.
The gallant Bowie and his intrepid crew made repeated descents upon
the enemy's seaboard. The coasts of Rutland and merry
Leicestershire have still many a legend of fear to tell; and the
children of the British fishermen tremble even now when they speak
of the terrible "Repudiator." She was the first of the mighty
American war-ships that have taught the domineering Briton to
respect the valor of the Republic.
The novelist ever and anon finds himself forced to adopt the
sterner tone of the historian, when describing deeds connected with
his country's triumphs. It is well known that during the two
months in which she lay off Havre, the "Repudiator" had brought
more prizes into that port than had ever before been seen in the
astonished French waters. Her actions with the "Dettingen" and the
"Elector" frigates form part of our country's history; their
defence--it may be said without prejudice to national vanity--was
worthy of Britons and of the audacious foe they had to encounter;
and it must be owned, that but for a happy fortune which presided
on that day over the destinies of our country, the chance of the
combat might have been in favor of the British vessels. It was not
until the "Elector" blew up, at a quarter past three P.M., by a
lucky shot which fell into her caboose, and communicated with the
powder-magazine, that Commodore Bowie was enabled to lay himself on
board the "Dettingen," which he carried sword in hand. Even when
the American boarders had made their lodgment on the "Dettingen's"
binnacle, it is possible that the battle would still have gone
against us. The British were still seven to one; their carronades,
loaded with marline-spikes, swept the gun-deck, of which we had
possession, and decimated our little force; when a rifle-ball from
the shrouds of the "Repudiator" shot Captain Mumford under the star
of the Guelphic Order which he wore, and the Americans, with a
shout, rushed up the companion to the quarter-deck, upon the
astonished foe. Pike and cutlass did the rest of the bloody work.
Rumford, the gigantic first-lieutenant of the "Dettingen," was cut
down by Commodore Bowie's own sword, as they engaged hand to hand;
and it was Tom Coxswain who tore down the British flag, after
having slain the Englishman at the wheel. Peace be to the souls of
the brave! The combat was honorable alike to the victor and the
vanquished; and it never can be said that an American warrior
depreciated a gallant foe. The bitterness of defeat was enough to
the haughty islanders who had to suffer. The people of Herne Bay
were lining the shore, near which the combat took place, and cruel
must have been the pang to them when they saw the Stars and Stripes
rise over the old flag of the Union, and the "Dettingen" fall down
the river in tow of the Republican frigate.
Another action Bowie contemplated: the boldest and most daring
perhaps ever imagined by seaman. It is this which has been so
wrongly described by European annalists, and of which the British
until now have maintained the most jealous secrecy.
Portsmouth Harbor was badly defended. Our intelligence in that
town and arsenal gave us precise knowledge of the disposition of
the troops, the forts, and the ships there; and it was determined
to strike a blow which should shake the British power in its
centre.
That a frigate of the size of the "Repudiator" should enter the
harbor unnoticed, or could escape its guns unscathed, passed the
notions of even American temerity. But upon the memorable 26th of
June, 1782, the "Repudiator" sailed out of Havre Roads in a thick
fog, under cover of which she entered and cast anchor in Bonchurch
Bay, in the Isle of Wight. To surprise the Martello Tower and take
the feeble garrison thereunder, was the work of Tom Coxswain and a
few of his blue-jackets. The surprised garrison laid down their
arms before him.
It was midnight before the boats of the ship, commanded by
Lieutenant Bunker, pulled off from Bonchurch with muffled oars, and
in another hour were off the Common Hard of Portsmouth, having
passed the challenges of the "Thetis" and the "Amphion" frigates,
and the "Polyanthus" brig.
There had been on that day great feasting and merriment on board
the Flag-ship lying in the harbor. A banquet had been given in
honor of the birthday of one of the princes of the royal line of
the Guelphs--the reader knows the propensity of Britons when liquor
is in plenty. All on board that royal ship were more or less
overcome. The Flag-ship was plunged in a deathlike and drunken
sleep. The very officer of the watch was intoxicated: he could not
see the "Repudiator's" boats as they shot swiftly through the
waters; nor had he time to challenge her seamen as they swarmed up
the huge sides of the ship.
At the next moment Tom Coxswain stood at the wheel of the "Royal
George"--the Briton who had guarded, a corpse at his feet. The
hatches were down. The ship was in possession of the "Repudiator's"
crew. They were busy in her rigging, bending her sails to carry her
out of the harbor. The well-known heave of the men at the windlass
woke up Kempenfelt in his state-cabin. We know, or rather do not
know, the result; for who can tell by whom the lower-deck ports of
the brave ship were opened, and how the haughty prisoners below sunk
the ship and its conquerors rather than yield her as a prize to the
Republic!
Only Tom Coxswain escaped of victors and vanquished. His tale was
told to his Captain and to Congress, but Washington forbade its
publication; and it was but lately that the faithful seaman told it
to me, his grandson, on his hundred-and-fifteenth birthday.
A PLAN FOR A PRIZE NOVEL.
IN A LETTER FROM THE EMINENT DRAMATIST BROWN TO THE EMINENT
NOVELIST SNOOKS.
"CAFE DES AVEUGLES.
"MY DEAR SNOOKS,--I am on the look-out here for materials for
original comedies such as those lately produced at your theatre;
and, in the course of my studies, I have found something, my dear
Snooks, which I think will suit your book. You are bringing, I
see, your admirable novel, 'The Mysteries of May Fair,' to an end--
(by the way, the scene, in the 200th number, between the Duke, his
Grandmother, and the Jesuit Butler, is one of the most harrowing
and exciting I ever read)--and, of course, you must turn your real
genius to some other channel; and we may expect that your pen shall
not be idle.
"The original plan I have to propose to you, then, is taken from
the French, just like the original dramas above mentioned; and,
indeed, I found it in the law report of the National newspaper, and
a French literary gentleman, M. Emanuel Gonzales, has the credit of
the invention. He and an advertisement agent fell out about a
question of money, the affair was brought before the courts, and
the little plot so got wind. But there is no reason why you should
not take the plot and act on it yourself. You are a known man; the
public relishes your works; anything bearing the name of Snooks is
eagerly read by the masses; and though Messrs. Hookey, of Holywell
Street, pay you handsomely, I make no doubt you would like to be
rewarded at a still higher figure.
"Unless he writes with a purpose, you know, a novelist in our days
is good for nothing. This one writes with a socialist purpose;
that with a conservative purpose: this author or authoress with the
most delicate skill insinuates Catholicism into you, and you find
yourself all but a Papist in the third volume: another doctors you
with Low Church remedies to work inwardly upon you, and which you
swallow down unsuspiciously, as children do calomel in jelly.
Fiction advocates all sorts of truth and causes--doesn't the
delightful bard of the Minories find Moses in everything? M.
Gonzales's plan, and the one which I recommend to my dear Snooks,
simply was to write an advertisement novel. Look over The Times or
the 'Directory,' walk down Regent Street or Fleet Street any day--
see what houses advertise most, and put yourself into communication
with their proprietors. With your rings, your chains, your studs,
and the tip on your chin, I don't know any greater swell than Bob
Snooks. Walk into the shops, I say, ask for the principal, and
introduce yourself, saying, 'I am the great Snooks; I am the author
of the "Mysteries of May Fair;" my weekly sale is 281,000; I am
about to produce a new work called "The Palaces of Pimlico, or the
Curse of the Court," describing and lashing fearlessly the vices of
the aristocracy; this book will have a sale of at least 530,000; it
will be on every table--in the boudoir of the pampered duke, as in
the chamber of the honest artisan. The myriads of foreigners who
are coming to London, and are anxious to know about our national
manners, will purchase my book, and carry it to their distant
homes. So, Mr. Taylor, or Mr. Haberdasher, or Mr. Jeweller, how
much will you stand if I recommend you in my forthcoming novel?'
You may make a noble income in this way, Snooks.
"For instance, suppose it is an upholsterer. What more easy, what
more delightful, than the description of upholstery? As thus:--
"'Lady Emily was reclining on one of Down and Eider's voluptuous
ottomans, the only couch on which Belgravian beauty now reposes,
when Lord Bathershins entered, stepping noiselessly over one of
Tomkins's elastic Axminster carpets. "Good heavens, my lord!" she
said--and the lovely creature fainted. The Earl rushed to the
mantel-piece, where he saw a flacon of Otto's eau-de-Cologne, and,'
&c.
"Or say it's a cheap furniture-shop, and it may be brought in just
as easily, as thus:--
"'We are poor, Eliza,' said Harry Hardhand, looking affectionately
at his wife, 'but we have enough, love, have we not, for our humble
wants? The rich and luxurious may go to Dillow's or Gobiggin's,
but we can get our rooms comfortably furnished at Timmonson's for
20L.' And putting on her bonnet, and hanging affectionately on her
husband, the stoker's pretty bride tripped gayly to the well-known
mart, where Timmonson, within his usual affability, was ready to
receive them.
"Then you might have a touch at the wine-merchant and purveyor.
'Where did you get this delicious claret, or pate de fois gras, or
what you please?' said Count Blagowski to the gay young Sir Horace
Swellmore. The voluptuous Bart answered, 'At So-and-So's, or So-
and-So's.' The answer is obvious. You may furnish your cellar or
your larder in this way. Begad, Snooks! I lick my lips at the
very idea.
"Then, as to tailors, milliners, bootmakers, &c., how easy to get a
word for them! Amranson, the tailor, waited upon Lord Paddington
with an assortment of his unrivalled waistcoats, or clad in that
simple but aristocratic style of which Schneider ALONE has the
secret. Parvy Newcome really looked like a gentleman, and though
corpulent and crooked, Schneider had managed to give him, &c.
Don't you see what a stroke of business you might do in this way.
"The shoemaker.--Lady Fanny flew, rather than danced, across the
ball-room; only a Sylphide, or Taglioni, or a lady chausseed by
Chevillett of Bond Street could move in that fairy way; and
"The hairdresser.--'Count Barbarossa is seventy years of age,' said
the Earl. 'I remember him at the Congress of Vienna, and he has
not a single gray hair.' Wiggins laughed. 'My good Lord Baldock,'
said the old wag, 'I saw Barbarossa's hair coming out of
Ducroissant's shop, and under his valet's arm--ho! ho! ho!'--and
the two bon-vivans chuckled as the Count passed by, talking with,
&c. &c.
"The gunmaker.--'The antagonists faced each other; and undismayed
before his gigantic enemy, Kilconnel raised his pistol. It was one
of Clicker's manufacture, and Sir Marmaduke knew he could trust the
maker and the weapon. "One, two, THREE," cried O'Tool, and the two
pistols went off at that instant, and uttering a terrific curse,
the Lifeguardsman,' &c.--A sentence of this nature from your pen,
my dear Snooks, would, I should think, bring a case of pistols and
a double-barrelled gun to your lodgings; and, though heaven forbid
you should use such weapons, you might sell them, you know, and we
could make merry with the proceeds.
"If my hint is of any use to you, it is quite at your service, dear
Snooks; and should anything come of it, I hope you will remember
your friend."
THE DIARY OF C. JEAMES DE LA PLUCHE, ESQ.,
WITH HIS LETTERS.
A LUCKY SPECULATOR.
"Considerable sensation has been excited in the upper and lower
circles in the West End, by a startling piece of good fortune which
has befallen James Plush, Esq., lately footman in a respected
family in Berkeley Square.
"One day last week, Mr. James waited upon his master, who is a
banker in the City; and after a little blushing and hesitation,
said he had saved a little money in service, was anxious to retire,
and to invest his savings to advantage.
"His master (we believe we may mention, without offending delicacy,
the well-known name of Sir George Flimsy, of the house of Flimsy,
Diddler, and Flash,) smilingly asked Mr. James what was the amount
of his savings, wondering considerably how, out of an income of
thirty guineas--the main part of which he spent in bouquets, silk
stockings, and perfumery--Mr. Plush could have managed to lay by
anything.
"Mr. Plush, with some hesitation, said he had been SPECULATING IN
RAILROADS, and stated his winnings to have been thirty thousand
pounds. He had commenced his speculations with twenty, borrowed
from a fellow-servant. He had dated his letters from the house in
Berkeley Square, and humbly begged pardon of his master for not
having instructed the Railway Secretaries who answered his
applications to apply at the area-bell.
"Sir George, who was at breakfast, instantly rose, and shook Mr. P.
by the hand; Lady Flimsy begged him to be seated, and partake of
the breakfast which he had laid on the table; and has subsequently
invited him to her grand dejeuner at Richmond, where it was
observed that Miss Emily Flimsy, her beautiful and accomplished
seventh daughter, paid the lucky gentleman MARKED ATTENTION.
"We hear it stated that Mr. P. is of a very ancient family (Hugo de
la Pluche came over with the Conqueror); and the new brougham which
he has started bears the ancient coat of his race.
"He has taken apartments in the Albany, and is a director of
thirty-three railroads. He proposes to stand for Parliament at the
next general election on decidedly conservative principles, which
have always been the politics of his family.
"Report says, that even in his humble capacity Miss Emily Flimsy
had remarked his high demeanor. Well, 'None but the brave,' say
we, 'deserve the fair.'"--Morning Paper.
This announcement will explain the following lines, which have been
put into our box* with a West End post-mark. If, as we believe,
they are written by the young woman from whom the Millionnaire
borrowed the sum on which he raised his fortune, what heart will
not melt with sympathy at her tale, and pity the sorrows which she
expresses in such artless language?
If it be not too late; if wealth have not rendered its possessor
callous; if poor Maryanne BE STILL ALIVE; we trust, we trust, Mr.
Plush will do her justice.
* The letter-box of Mr. Punch, in whose columns these papers were
first published.
"JEAMES OF BUCKLEY SQUARE.
"A HELIGY.
"Come all ye gents vot cleans the plate,
Come all ye ladies maids so fair--
Vile I a story vill relate
Of cruel Jeames of Buckley Square.
A tighter lad, it is confest,
Neer valked with powder in his air,
Or vore a nosegay in his breast,
Than andsum Jeames of Buckley Square.
"O Evns! it vas the best of sights,
Behind his Master's coach and pair,
To see our Jeames in red plush tights,
A driving hoff from Buckley Square.
He vel became his hagwilletts,
He cocked his at with SUCH a hair;
His calves and viskers VAS such pets,
That hall loved Jeames of Buckley Square.
"He pleased the hup-stairs folks as vell,
And o! I vithered vith despair,
Missis VOULD ring the parler bell,
And call up Jeames in Buckley Square.
Both beer and sperrits he abhord,
(Sperrits and beer I can't a bear,)
You would have thought he vas a lord
Down in our All in Buckley Square.
"Last year he visper'd 'Mary Ann,
Ven I've an under'd pound to spare,
To take a public is my plan,
And leave this hojous Buckley Square.'
O how my gentle heart did bound,
To think that I his name should bear.
'Dear Jeames.' says I, 'I've twenty pound;
And gev them him in Buckley Square.
"Our master vas a City gent,
His name's in railroads everywhere,
And lord, vot lots of letters vent
Betwigst his brokers and Buckley Square:
My Jeames it was the letters took,
And read them all, (I think it's fair,)
And took a leaf from Master's book,
As HOTHERS do in Buckley Square.
Encouraged with my twenty pound,
Of which poor I was unavare,
He wrote the Companies all round,
And signed hisself from Buckley Square.
And how John Porter used to grin,
As day by day, share after share,
Came railvay letters pouring in,
'J. Plush, Esquire, in Buckley Square.'
"Our servants' All was in a rage--
Scrip, stock, curves, gradients, bull and bear,
Vith butler, coachman, groom and page,
Vas all the talk in Buckley Square.
But O! imagine vot I felt
Last Vensday veek as ever were;
I gits a letter, which I spelt
'Miss M. A. Hoggins, Buckley Square.'
"He sent me back my money true--
He sent me back my lock of air,
And said, 'My dear, I bid ajew
To Mary Hann and Buckley Square.
Think not to marry, foolish Hann,
With people who your betters are;
James Plush is now a gentleman,
And you--a cook in Buckley Square.
"'I've thirty thousand guineas won,
In six short months, by genus rare;
You little thought what Jeames was on,
Poor Mary Hann, in Buckley Square.
I've thirty thousand guineas net,
Powder and plush I scorn to vear;
And so, Miss Mary Hann, forget
For hever Jeames, of Buckley Square.'"
. . . . . .
The rest of the MS. is illegible, being literally washed away in a
flood of tears.
A LETTER FROM "JEAMES, OF BUCKLEY SQUARE."
"ALBANY, LETTER X. August 10, 1845.
"SIR,--Has a reglar suscriber to your emusing paper, I beg leaf to
state that I should never have done so, had I supposed that it was
your abbit to igspose the mistaries of privit life, and to hinjer
the delligit feelings of umble individyouals like myself, who have
NO IDEER of being made the subject of newspaper criticism.
"I elude, sir, to the unjustafiable use which has been made of my
name in your Journal, where both my muccantile speclations and the
HINMOST PASHSN OF MY ART have been brot forrards in a ridicklus way
for the public emusemint.
"What call, sir, has the public to inquire into the suckmstansies
of my engagements with Miss Mary Hann Oggins, or to meddle with
their rupsher? Why am I to be maid the hobjick of your REDICULE IN
A DOGGRIL BALLIT impewted to her? I say IMPEWTED, because, in MY
time at least, Mary Hann could only sign her + mark (has I've
hoften witnist it for her when she paid hin at the Savings Bank),
and has for SACRIFICING TO THE MEWSES and making POATRY, she was as
HINCAPIBLE as Mr. Wakley himself.
"With respect to the ballit, my baleaf is, that it is wrote by a
footman in a low famly, a pore retch who attempted to rivle me in
my affections to Mary Hann--a feller not five foot six, and with no
more calves to his legs than a donkey--who was always a-ritin
(having been a doctor's boy) and who I nockt down with a pint of
porter (as he well recklex) at the 3 Tuns Jerming Street, for
daring to try to make a but of me. He has signed Miss H's name to
his NONSINCE AND LIES: and you lay yourself hopen to a haction for
libel for insutting them in your paper.
"It is false that I have treated Miss H. hill in HANY way. That I
borrowed 20lb of her is TREW. But she confesses I paid it back.
Can hall people say as much of the money THEY'VE lent or borrowed?
No. And I not only paid it back, but giv her the andsomest
pres'nts: WHICH I NEVER SHOULD HAVE ALLUDED TO, but for this
attack. Fust, a silver thimble (which I found in Missus's work-
box); secknd, a vollom of Byrom's poems; third, I halways brought
her a glas of Curasore, when we ad a party, of which she was
remarkable fond. I treated her to Hashley's twice, (and halways a
srimp or a hoyster by the way,) and a THOWSND DELIGIT ATTENTIONS,
which I sapose count for NOTHINK.
"Has for marridge. Haltered suckmstancies rendered it himpossable.
I was gone into a new spear of life--mingling with my native
aristoxy. I breathe no sallible of blame against Miss H., but his
a hilliterit cookmaid fit to set at a fashnable table? Do young
fellers of rank genrally marry out of the Kitching? If we cast our
i's upon a low-born gal, I needn say it's only a tempory
distraction, pore passy le tong. So much for HER claims upon me.
Has for THAT BEEST OF A DOCTOR'S BOY he's unwuthy the notas of a
Gentleman.
"That I've one thirty thousand lb, AND PRAPS MORE, I dont deny. Ow
much has the Kilossus of Railroads one, I should like to know, and
what was his cappitle? I hentered the market with 20lb, specklated
Jewdicious, and ham what I ham. So may you be (if you have 20lb,
and praps you haven't)--So may you be: if you choose to go in &
win.
"I for my part am jusly PROWD of my suxess, and could give you a
hundred instances of my gratatude. For igsample, the fust pair of
hosses I bought (and a better pair of steppers I dafy you to see in
hany curracle,) I crisn'd Hull and Selby, in grateful elusion to my
transackshns in that railroad. My riding Cob I called very
unhaptly my Dublin and Galway. He came down with me the other day,
and I've jest sold him at 1/4 discount.
"At fust with prudence and modration I only kep two grooms for my
stables, one of whom lickwise waited on me at table. I have now a
confidenshle servant, a vally de shamber--He curls my air; inspex
my accounts, and hansers my hinvitations to dinner. I call this
Vally my TRENT VALLY, for it was the prophit I got from that exlent
line, which injuiced me to ingage him.
"Besides my North British Plate and Breakfast equipidge--I have two
handsom suvvices for dinner--the goold plate for Sundays, and the
silver for common use. When I ave a great party, 'Trent,' I say to
my man, 'we will have the London and Bummingham plate to-day (the
goold), or else the Manchester and Leeds (the silver).' I bought
them after realizing on the abuf lines, and if people suppose that
the companys made me a presnt of the plate, how can I help it?
"In the sam way I say, 'Trent, bring us a bottle of Bristol amid
Hexeter!' or, 'Put some Heastern Counties in hice!' HE knows what
I mean: it's the wines I bought upon the hospicious tummination of
my connexshn with those two railroads.
"So strong, indeed, as this abbit become, that being asked to stand
Godfather to the youngest Miss Diddle last weak, I had her
christened (provisionally) Rosamell--from the French line of which
I am Director; and only the other day, finding myself rayther
unwell, 'Doctor,' says I to Sir Jeames Clark, 'I've sent to consult
you because my Midlands are out of horder; and I want you to send
them up to a premium.' The Doctor lafd, and I beleave told the
story subsquintly at Buckinum P-ll-s.
"But I will trouble you no father. My sole objict in writing has
been to CLEAR MY CARRATER--to show that I came by my money in a
honrable way: that I'm not ashaymd of the manner in which I gayned
it, and ham indeed grateful for my good fortune.
"To conclude, I have ad my podigree maid out at the Erald Hoffis (I
don't mean the Morning Erald), and have took for my arms a Stagg.
You are corrict in stating that I am of hancient Normin famly.
This is more than Peal can say, to whomb I applied for a barnetcy;
but the primmier being of low igstraction, natrally stickles for
his horder. Consurvative though I be, I MAY CHANGE MY OPINIONS
before the next Election, when I intend to hoffer myself as a
Candydick for Parlymint.
"Meanwhile, I have the honor to be, Sir,
"Your most obeajnt Survnt,
"FITZ-JAMES DE LA PLUCHE."
THE DIARY.
One day in the panic week, our friend Jeames called at our office,
evidently in great perturbation of mind and disorder of dress. He
had no flower in his button-hole; his yellow kid gloves were
certainly two days old. He had not above three of the ten chains
he usually sports, and his great coarse knotty-knuckled old hands
were deprived of some dozen of the rubies, emeralds, and other
cameos with which, since his elevation to fortune, the poor fellow
has thought fit to adorn himself.
"How's scrip, Mr. Jeames?" said we pleasantly, greeting our
esteemed contributor.
"Scrip be ----," replied he, with an expression we cannot repeat,
and a look of agony it is impossible to describe in print, and
walked about the parlor whistling, humming, rattling his keys and
coppers, and showing other signs of agitation. At last, "MR.
PUNCH," says he, after a moment's hesitation, "I wish to speak to
you on a pint of businiss. I wish to be paid for my contribewtions
to your paper. Suckmstances is altered with me. I--I--in a word,
CAN you lend me --L. for the account?"
He named the sum. It was one so great that we don't care to
mention it here; but on receiving a cheque for the amount (on
Messrs. Pump and Aldgate, our bankers,) tears came into the honest
fellow's eyes. He squeezed our hand until he nearly wrung it off,
and shouting to a cab, he plunged into it at our office-door, and
was off to the City.
Returning to our study, we found he had left on our table an open
pocket-book, of the contents of which (for the sake of safety) we
took an inventory. It contained--three tavern-bills, paid; a
tailor's ditto, unsettled; forty-nine allotments in different
companies, twenty-six thousand seven hundred shares in all, of
which the market value we take, on an average, to be 1/4 discount;
and in an old bit of paper tied with pink ribbon a lock of chestnut
hair, with the initials M. A. H.
In the diary of the pocket-book was a journal, jotted down by the
proprietor from time to time. At first the entries are
insignificant: as, for instance:--"3rd January--Our beer in the
Suvnts' hall so PRECIOUS small at this Christmas time that I reely
MUSS give warning, & wood, but for my dear Mary Hann." February 7--
That broot Screw, the Butler, wanted to kis her, but my dear Mary
Hann boxt his hold hears, & served him right. I DATEST Screw,"--
and so forth. Then the diary relates to Stock Exchange operations,
until we come to the time when, having achieved his successes, Mr.
James quitted Berkeley Square and his livery, and began his life as
a speculator and a gentleman upon town. It is from the latter part
of his diary that we make the following
EXTRAX:--
"Wen I anounced in the Servnts All my axeshn of forting, and that
by the exasize of my own talince and ingianiuty I had reerlized a
summ of 20,000 lb. (it was only 5, but what's the use of a mann
depreshiating the qualaty of his own mackyrel?)--wen I enounced my
abrup intention to cut--you should have sean the sensation among
hall the people! Cook wanted to know whether I woodn like a
sweatbred, or the slise of the breast of a Cold Tucky. Screw, the
butler, (womb I always detested as a hinsalant hoverbaring beest,)
begged me to walk into the Hupper Servnts All, and try a glass of
Shuperior Shatto Margo. Heven Visp, the coachmin, eld out his and,
& said, 'Jeames, I hopes theres no quarraling betwigst you & me, &
I'll stand a pot of beer with pleasure.'
"The sickofnts!--that wery Cook had split on me to the Housekeeper
ony last week (catchin me priggin some cold tuttle soop, of which
I'm remarkable fond). Has for the butler, I always EBOMMINATED him
for his precious snears and imperence to all us Gents who woar
livry (he never would sit in our parlor, fasooth, nor drink out of
our mugs); and in regard of Visp--why, it was ony the day before
the wulgar beest hoffered to fite me, and thretnd to give me a good
iding if I refused. Gentlemen and ladies,' says I, as haughty as
may be, 'there's nothink that I want for that I can't go for to buy
with my hown money, and take at my lodgins in Halbany, letter Hex;
if I'm ungry I've no need to refresh myself in the KITCHING.' And
so saying, I took a dignified ajew of these minnial domestics; and
ascending to my epartment in the 4 pair back, brushed the powder
out of my air, and taking off those hojous livries for hever, put
on a new soot, made for me by Cullin of St. Jeames Street, and
which fitted my manly figger as tight as whacks.
"There was ONE pusson in the house with womb I was rayther anxious
to evoid a persnal leave-taking--Mary Hann Oggins, I mean--for my
art is natural tender, and I can't abide seeing a pore gal in pane.
I'd given her previous the infamation of my departure--doing the
ansom thing by her at the same time--paying her back 20 lb., which
she'd lent me 6 months before: and paying her back not only the
interest, but I gave her an andsome pair of scissars and a silver
thimbil, by way of boanus. 'Mary Hann,' says I, 'suckimstancies
has haltered our rellatif positions in life. I quit the Servnts
Hall for ever, (for has for your marrying a person in my rank,
that, my dear, is hall gammin,) and so I wish you a good-by, my
good gal, and if you want to better yourself, halways refer to me.'
"Mary Hann didn't hanser my speech (which I think was remarkable
kind), but looked at me in the face quite wild like, and bust into
somethink betwigst a laugh & a cry, and fell down with her ed on
the kitching dresser, where she lay until her young Missis rang the
dressing-room bell. Would you bleave it? She left the thimbil &
things, & my check for 20lb. l0s., on the tabil when she went to
hanser the bell. And now I heard her sobbing and vimpering in her
own room nex but one to mine, vith the dore open, peraps expecting
I should come in and say good-by. But, as soon as I was dressed, I
cut down stairs, hony desiring Frederick my fellow-servnt, to fetch
me a cabb, and requesting permission to take leaf of my lady & the
famly before my departure."
. . . . . .
"How Miss Hemly did hogle me to be sure! Her ladyship told me what
a sweet gal she was--hamiable, fond of poetry, plays the gitter.
Then she hasked me if I liked blond bewties and haubin hair.
Haubin, indeed! I don't like carrits! as it must be confest Miss
Hemly's his--and has for a BLOND BUTY, she has pink I's like a
Halbino, and her face looks as if it were dipt in a brann mash.
How she squeeged my & as she went away!
"Mary Hann now HAS haubin air, and a cumplexion like roses and
hivory, and I's as blew as Evin.
"I gev Frederick two and six for fetchin the cabb--been resolved to
hact the gentleman in hall things. How he stared!"
"25th.--I am now director of forty-seven hadvantageous lines, and
have past hall day in the Citty. Although I've hate or nine new
soots of close, and Mr. Cullin fits me heligant, yet I fansy they
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