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+Produced by Donald Lainson
+
+
+
+
+
+THE FITZ-BOODLE PAPERS.
+
+By William Makepeace Thackeray
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+THE FITZ-BOODLE PAPERS.
+
+
+FITZ-BOODLE'S CONFESSIONS:--
+
+Preface
+
+Dorothea
+
+Ottilia
+
+
+FITZ-BOODLE'S PROFESSIONS:--
+
+First Profession
+
+Second Profession
+
+
+
+
+FITZ-BOODLE'S CONFESSIONS.*
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+GEORGE FITZ-BOODLE, ESQUIRE, TO OLIVER YORKE, ESQUIRE.
+
+
+OMNIUM CLUB, May 20, 1842.
+
+
+DEAR SIR,--I have always been considered the third-best whist-player in
+Europe, and (though never betting more than five pounds) have for many
+years past added considerably to my yearly income by my skill in the
+game, until the commencement of the present season, when a French
+gentleman, Monsieur Lalouette, was admitted to the club where I usually
+play. His skill and reputation were so great, that no men of the club
+were inclined to play against us two of a side; and the consequence has
+been, that we have been in a manner pitted against one another. By a
+strange turn of luck (for I cannot admit the idea of his superiority),
+Fortune, since the Frenchman's arrival, has been almost constantly
+against me, and I have lost two-and-thirty nights in the course of a
+couple of score of nights' play.
+
+     * The "Fitz-Boodle Papers" first appeared in Fraser's
+     Magazine for the year 1842.
+
+Everybody knows that I am a poor man; and so much has Lalouette's luck
+drained my finances, that only last week I was obliged to give him that
+famous gray cob on which you have seen me riding in the Park (I can't
+afford a thoroughbred, and hate a cocktail),--I was, I say, forced to
+give him up my cob in exchange for four ponies which I owed him. Thus,
+as I never walk, being a heavy man whom nobody cares to mount, my time
+hangs heavily on my hands; and, as I hate home, or that apology for
+it--a bachelor's lodgings--and as I have nothing earthly to do now until
+I can afford to purchase another horse, I spend my time in sauntering
+from one club to another, passing many rather listless hours in them
+before the men come in.
+
+You will say, Why not take to backgammon, or ecarte, or amuse yourself
+with a book? Sir (putting out of the question the fact that I do not
+play upon credit), I make a point never to play before candles are
+lighted; and as for books, I must candidly confess to you I am not a
+reading man.
+
+'Twas but the other day that some one recommended me to your Magazine
+after dinner, saying it contained an exceedingly witty article upon--I
+forget what. I give you my honor, sir, that I took up the work at six,
+meaning to amuse myself till seven, when Lord Trumpington's dinner was
+to come off, and egad! in two minutes I fell asleep, and never woke till
+midnight. Nobody ever thought of looking for me in the library, where
+nobody ever goes; and so ravenously hungry was I, that I was obliged to
+walk off to Crockford's for supper.
+
+What is it that makes you literary persons so stupid? I have met various
+individuals in society who I was told were writers of books, and that
+sort of thing, and expecting rather to be amused by their conversation,
+have invariably found them dull to a degree, and as for information,
+without a particle of it. Sir, I actually asked one of these fellows,
+"What was the nick to seven?" and he stared in my face and said he
+didn't know. He was hugely over-dressed in satin, rings, chains and
+so forth; and at the beginning of dinner was disposed to be rather
+talkative and pert; but my little sally silenced HIM, I promise you,
+and got up a good laugh at his expense too. "Leave George alone,"
+said little Lord Cinqbars, "I warrant he'll be a match for any of
+you literary fellows." Cinqbars is no great wiseacre; but, indeed, it
+requires no great wiseacre to know THAT.
+
+What is the simple deduction to be drawn from this truth? Why,
+this--that a man to be amusing and well-informed, has no need of
+books at all, and had much better go to the world and to men for his
+knowledge. There was Ulysses, now, the Greek fellow engaged in the
+Trojan war, as I dare say you know; well, he was the cleverest man
+possible, and how? From having seen men and cities, their manners noted
+and their realms surveyed, to be sure. So have I. I have been in every
+capital, and can order a dinner in every language in Europe.
+
+My notion, then, is this. I have a great deal of spare time on my hands,
+and as I am told you pay a handsome sum to persons writing for you, I
+will furnish you occasionally with some of my views upon men and things;
+occasional histories of my acquaintance, which I think may amuse you;
+personal narratives of my own; essays, and what not. I am told that I do
+not spell correctly. This of course I don't know; but you will remember
+that Richelieu and Marlborough could not spell, and egad! I am an honest
+man, and desire to be no better than they. I know that it is the matter,
+and not the manner, which is of importance. Have the goodness, then, to
+let one of your understrappers correct the spelling and the grammar
+of my papers; and you can give him a few shillings in my name for his
+trouble.
+
+Begging you to accept the assurance of my high consideration, I am, sir,
+
+Your obedient servant,
+
+GEORGE SAVAGE FITZ-BOODLE.
+
+P.S.--By the way, I have said in my letter that I found ALL literary
+persons vulgar and dull. Permit me to contradict this with regard to
+yourself. I met you once at Blackwall, I think it was, and really did
+not remark anything offensive in your accent or appearance.
+
+
+Before commencing the series of moral disquisitions, &c. which I intend,
+the reader may as well know who I am, and what my past course of life
+has been. To say that I am a Fitz-Boodle is to say at once that I am a
+gentleman. Our family has held the estate of Boodle ever since the
+reign of Henry II.; and it is out of no ill will to my elder brother,
+or unnatural desire for his death, but only because the estate is a
+very good one, that I wish heartily it was mine: I would say as much of
+Chatsworth or Eaton Hall.
+
+I am not, in the first place, what is called a ladies' man, having
+contracted an irrepressible habit of smoking after dinner, which has
+obliged me to give up a great deal of the dear creatures' society; nor
+can I go much to country-houses for the same reason. Say what they will,
+ladies do not like you to smoke in their bedrooms: their silly little
+noses scent out the odor upon the chintz, weeks after you have left
+them. Sir John has been caught coming to bed particularly merry and
+redolent of cigar-smoke; young George, from Eton, was absolutely found
+in the little green-house puffing an Havana; and when discovered they
+both lay the blame upon Fitz-Boodle. "It was Mr. Fitz-Boodle, mamma,"
+says George, "who offered me the cigar, and I did not like to refuse
+him." "That rascal Fitz seduced us, my dear," says Sir John, "and kept
+us laughing until past midnight." Her ladyship instantly sets me down as
+a person to be avoided. "George," whispers she to her boy, "promise me
+on your honor, when you go to town, not to know that man." And when she
+enters the breakfast-room for prayers, the first greeting is a peculiar
+expression of countenance, and inhaling of breath, by which my lady
+indicates the presence of some exceedingly disagreeable odor in the
+room. She makes you the faintest of curtsies, and regards you, if not
+with a "flashing eye," as in the novels, at least with a "distended
+nostril." During the whole of the service, her heart is filled with the
+blackest gall towards you; and she is thinking about the best means of
+getting you out of the house.
+
+What is this smoking that it should be considered a crime? I believe in
+my heart that women are jealous of it, as of a rival. They speak of it
+as of some secret, awful vice that seizes upon a man, and makes him a
+pariah from genteel society. I would lay a guinea that many a lady who
+has just been kind enough to rend the above lines lays down the book,
+after this confession of mine that I am a smoker, and says, "Oh, the
+vulgar wretch!" and passes on to something else.
+
+The fact is, that the cigar IS a rival to the ladies, and their
+conqueror too. In the chief pipe-smoking nations they are kept in
+subjection. While the chief, Little White Belt, smokes, the women are
+silent in his wigwam; while Mahomet Ben Jawbrahim causes volumes of
+odorous incense of Latakia to play round his beard, the women of the
+harem do not disturb his meditations, but only add to the delight of
+them by tinkling on a dulcimer and dancing before him. When Professor
+Strumpff of Gottingen takes down No. 13 from the wall, with a picture
+of Beatrice Cenci upon it, and which holds a pound of canaster, the Frau
+Professorin knows that for two hours Hermann is engaged, and takes up
+her stockings and knits in quiet. The constitution of French society
+has been quite changed within the last twelve years: an ancient and
+respectable dynasty has been overthrown; an aristocracy which Napoleon
+could never master has disappeared: and from what cause? I do not
+hesitate to say,--FROM THE HABIT OF SMOKING. Ask any man whether, five
+years before the revolution of July, if you wanted a cigar at Paris,
+they did not bring you a roll of tobacco with a straw in it! Now, the
+whole city smokes; society is changed; and be sure of this, ladies,
+a similar combat is going on in this country at present between
+cigar-smoking and you. Do you suppose you will conquer? Look over the
+wide world, and see that your adversary has overcome it. Germany has
+been puffing for threescore years; France smokes to a man. Do you think
+you can keep the enemy out of England? Psha! look at his progress. Ask
+the clubhouses, Have they smoking-rooms or not? Are they not obliged to
+yield to the general want of the age, in spite of the resistance of the
+old women on the committees? I, for my part, do not despair to see a
+bishop lolling out of the "Athenaeum" with a cheroot in his mouth, or,
+at any rate, a pipe stuck in his shovel-hat.
+
+But as in all great causes and in promulgating new and illustrious
+theories, their first propounders and exponents are generally the
+victims of their enthusiasm, of course the first preachers of smoking
+have been martyrs, too; and George Fitz-Boodle is one. The first gas-man
+was ruined; the inventor of steam-engine printing became a pauper. I
+began to smoke in days when the task was one of some danger, and paid
+the penalty of my crime. I was flogged most fiercely for my first cigar;
+for, being asked to dine one Sunday evening with a half-pay colonel of
+dragoons (the gallant, simple, humorous Shortcut--heaven bless him!--I
+have had many a guinea from him who had so few), he insisted upon my
+smoking in his room at the "Salopian," and the consequence was, that I
+became so violently ill as to be reported intoxicated upon my return
+to Slaughter-House School, where I was a boarder, and I was whipped the
+next morning for my peccadillo. At Christ Church, one of our tutors was
+the celebrated lamented Otto Rose, who would have been a bishop under
+the present Government, had not an immoderate indulgence in water-gruel
+cut short his elegant and useful career. He was a good man, a pretty
+scholar and poet (the episode upon the discovery of eau-de-Cologne,
+in his prize-poem on "The Rhine," was considered a masterpiece of art,
+though I am not much of a judge myself upon such matters), and he was as
+remarkable for his fondness for a tuft as for his nervous antipathy to
+tobacco. As ill-luck would have it, my rooms (in Tom Quad) were exactly
+under his; and I was grown by this time to be a confirmed smoker. I was
+a baronet's son (we are of James the First's creation), and I do believe
+our tutor could have pardoned any crime in the world but this. He had
+seen me in a tandem, and at that moment was seized with a violent fit
+of sneezing--(sternutatory paroxysm he called it)--at the conclusion of
+which I was a mile down the Woodstock Road. He had seen me in pink, as
+we used to call it, swaggering in the open sunshine across a grass-plat
+in the court; but spied out opportunely a servitor, one Todhunter by
+name, who was going to morning chapel with his shoestring untied,
+and forthwith sprung towards that unfortunate person, to set him an
+imposition. Everything, in fact, but tobacco he could forgive. Why
+did cursed fortune bring him into the rooms over mine? The odor of the
+cigars made his gentle spirit quite furious; and one luckless morning,
+when I was standing before my "oak," and chanced to puff a great bouffee
+of Varinas into his face, he forgot his respect for my family altogether
+(I was the second son, and my brother a sickly creature THEN,--he is now
+sixteen stone in weight, and has a half-score of children); gave me a
+severe lecture, to which I replied rather hotly, as was my wont. And
+then came demand for an apology; refusal on my part; appeal to the dean;
+convocation; and rustication of George Savage Fitz-Boodle.
+
+My father had taken a second wife (of the noble house of Flintskinner),
+and Lady Fitz-Boodle detested smoking, as a woman of her high principles
+should. She had an entire mastery over the worthy old gentleman, and
+thought I was a sort of demon of wickedness. The old man went to his
+grave with some similar notion,--heaven help him! and left me but
+the wretched twelve thousand pounds secured to me on my poor mother's
+property.
+
+In the army, my luck was much the same. I joined the --th Lancers,
+Lieut.-Col. Lord Martingale, in the year 1817. I only did duty with the
+regiment for three months. We were quartered at Cork, where I found the
+Irish doodheen and tobacco the pleasantest smoking possible; and was
+found by his lordship, one day upon stable duty, smoking the shortest,
+dearest little dumpy clay-pipe in the world.
+
+"Cornet Fitz-Boodle," said my lord in a towering passion, "from what
+blackguard did you get that pipe?"
+
+I omit the oaths which garnished invariably his lordship's conversation.
+
+"I got it, my lord," said I, "from one Terence Mullins, a jingle-driver,
+with a packet of his peculiar tobacco. You sometimes smoke Turkish, I
+believe; do try this. Isn't it good?" And in the simplest way in the
+world I puffed a volume into his face. "I see you like it," said I, so
+coolly, that the men--and I do believe the horses--burst out laughing.
+
+He started back--choking almost, and recovered himself only to vent such
+a storm of oaths and curses that I was compelled to request Capt.
+Rawdon (the captain on duty) to take note of his lordship's words; and
+unluckily could not help adding a question which settled my business.
+"You were good enough," I said, "to ask me, my lord, from what
+blackguard I got my pipe; might I ask from what blackguard you learned
+your language?"
+
+This was quite enough. Had I said, "from what GENTLEMAN did your
+lordship learn your language?" the point would have been quite as good,
+and my Lord Martingale would have suffered in my place: as it was, I
+was so strongly recommended to sell out by his Royal Highness the
+Commander-in-Chief, that, being of a good-natured disposition, never
+knowing how to refuse a friend, I at once threw up my hopes of military
+distinction and retired into civil life.
+
+My lord was kind enough to meet me afterwards in a field in the Glanmire
+Road, where he put a ball into my leg. This I returned to him some years
+later with about twenty-three others--black ones--when he came to be
+balloted for at a club of which I have the honor to be a member.
+
+Thus by the indulgence of a simple and harmless propensity,--of a
+propensity which can inflict an injury upon no person or thing except
+the coat and the person of him who indulges in it,--of a custom honored
+and observed in almost all the nations of the world,--of a custom which,
+far from leading a man into any wickedness or dissipation to which
+youth is subject, on the contrary, begets only benevolent silence, and
+thoughtful good-humored observation--I found at the age of twenty all
+my prospects in life destroyed. I cared not for woman in those days:
+the calm smoker has a sweet companion in his pipe. I did not drink
+immoderately of wine; for though a friend to trifling potations, to
+excessively strong drinks tobacco is abhorrent. I never thought of
+gambling, for the lover of the pipe has no need of such excitement; but
+I was considered a monster of dissipation in my family, and bade fair to
+come to ruin.
+
+"Look at George," my mother-in-law said to the genteel and correct young
+Flintskinners. "He entered the world with every prospect in life, and
+see in what an abyss of degradation his fatal habits have plunged him!
+At school he was flogged and disgraced, he was disgraced and rusticated
+at the university, he was disgraced and expelled from the army! He
+might have had the living of Boodle" (her ladyship gave it to one of
+her nephews), "but he would not take his degree; his papa would have
+purchased him a troop--nay, a lieutenant-colonelcy some day, but for his
+fatal excesses. And now as long as my dear husband will listen to the
+voice of a wife who adores him--never, never shall he spend a shilling
+upon so worthless a young man. He has a small income from his mother
+(I cannot but think that the first Lady Fitz-Boodle was a weak and
+misguided person); let him live upon his mean pittance as he can, and I
+heartily pray we may not hear of him in gaol!"
+
+My brother, after he came to the estate, married the ninth daughter
+of our neighbor, Sir John Spreadeagle; and Boodle Hall has seen a new
+little Fitz-Boodle with every succeeding spring. The dowager retired to
+Scotland with a large jointure and a wondrous heap of savings. Lady Fitz
+is a good creature, but she thinks me something diabolical, trembles
+when she sees me, and gathers all her children about her, rushes into
+the nursery whenever I pay that little seminary a visit, and actually
+slapped poor little Frank's ears one day when I was teaching him to ride
+upon the back of a Newfoundland dog.
+
+"George," said my brother to me the last time I paid him a visit at the
+old hall, "don't be angry, my dear fellow, but Maria is in a--hum--in
+a delicate situation, expecting her--hum"--(the eleventh)--"and do
+you know you frighten her? It was but yesterday you met her in the
+rookery--you were smoking that enormous German pipe--and when she came
+in she had an hysterical seizure, and Drench says that in her situation
+it's dangerous. And I say, George, if you go to town you'll find a
+couple of hundred at your banker's." And with this the poor fellow shook
+me by the hand, and called for a fresh bottle of claret.
+
+Afterwards he told me, with many hesitations, that my room at Boodle
+Hall had been made into a second nursery. I see my sister-in-law in
+London twice or thrice in the season, and the little people, who have
+almost forgotten to call me uncle George.
+
+It's hard, too, for I am a lonely man after all, and my heart yearns to
+them. The other day I smuggled a couple of them into my chambers, and
+had a little feast of cream and strawberries to welcome them. But it had
+like to have cost the nursery-maid (a Swiss girl that Fitz-Boodle hired
+somewhere in his travels) her place. My step-mamma, who happened to be
+in town, came flying down in her chariot, pounced upon the poor thing
+and the children in the midst of the entertainment; and when I asked
+her, with rather a bad grace to be sure, to take a chair and a share of
+the feast--"Mr. Fitz-Boodle," said she, "I am not accustomed to sit
+down in a place that smells of tobacco like an ale-house--an ale-house
+inhabited by a SERPENT, sir! A SERPENT!--do you understand me?--who
+carries his poison into his brother's own house, and purshues his
+eenfamous designs before his brother's own children. Put on Miss Maria's
+bonnet this instant. Mamsell, ontondy-voo? Metty le bonny a mamsell. And
+I shall take care, Mamsell, that you return to Switzerland to-morrow.
+I've no doubt you are a relation of Courvoisier--oui! oui! courvoisier,
+vous comprenny--and you shall certainly be sent back to your friends."
+
+With this speech, and with the children and their maid sobbing before
+her, my lady retired; but for once my sister-in-law was on my side, not
+liking the meddlement of the elder lady.
+
+I know, then, that from indulging in that simple habit of smoking, I
+have gained among the ladies a dreadful reputation. I see that they look
+coolly upon me, and darkly at their husbands when they arrive at home in
+my company. Men, I observe, in consequence, ask me to dine much oftener
+at the club, or the "Star and Garter" at Richmond, or at "Lovegrove's,"
+than in their own houses; and with this sort of arrangement I am fain to
+acquiesce; for, as I said before, I am of an easy temper, and can at any
+rate take my cigar-case out after dinner at Blackwall, when my lady or
+the duchess is not by. I know, of course, the best MEN in town; and
+as for ladies' society, not having it (for I will have none of your
+pseudo-ladies, such as sometimes honor bachelors' parties,--actresses,
+couturieres, opera-dancers, and so forth)--as for ladies' society, I
+say, I cry pish! 'tis not worth the trouble of the complimenting, and
+the bother of pumps and black silk stockings.
+
+Let any man remember what ladies' society was when he had an opportunity
+of seeing them among themselves, as What-d'ye-call'im does in the
+Thesmophoria--(I beg pardon, I was on the verge of a classical allusion,
+which I abominate)--I mean at that period of his life when the intellect
+is pretty acute, though the body is small--namely, when a young
+gentleman is about eleven years of age, dining at his father's
+table during the holidays, and is requested by his papa to quit the
+dinner-table when the ladies retire from it.
+
+Corbleu! I recollect their whole talk as well as if it had been
+whispered but yesterday; and can see, after a long dinner, the yellow
+summer sun throwing long shadows over the lawn before the dining-room
+windows, and my poor mother and her company of ladies sailing away to
+the music-room in old Boodle Hall. The Countess Dawdley was the great
+lady in our county, a portly lady who used to love crimson satin in
+those days, and birds-of-paradise. She was flaxen-haired, and the Regent
+once said she resembled one of King Charles's beauties.
+
+When Sir John Todcaster used to begin his famous story of the exciseman
+(I shall not tell it here, for very good reasons), my poor mother
+used to turn to Lady Dawdley, and give that mystic signal at which all
+females rise from their chairs. Tufthunt, the curate, would spring
+from his seat, and be sure to be the first to open the door for the
+retreating ladies; and my brother Tom and I, though remaining stoutly in
+our places, were speedily ejected from them by the governor's invariable
+remark, "Tom and George, if you have had QUITE enough of wine, you had
+better go and join your mamma." Yonder she marches, heaven bless her!
+through the old oak hall (how long the shadows of the antlers are on the
+wainscot, and the armor of Rollo Fitz-Boodle looks in the sunset as if
+it were emblazoned with rubies)--yonder she marches, stately and tall,
+in her invariable pearl-colored tabbinet, followed by Lady Dawdley,
+blazing like a flamingo; next comes Lady Emily Tufthunt (she was Lady
+Emily Flintskinner), who will not for all the world take precedence of
+rich, vulgar, kind, good-humored Mrs. COLONEL Grogwater, as she would be
+called, with a yellow little husband from Madras, who first taught me
+to drink sangaree. He was a new arrival in our county, but paid nobly to
+the hounds, and occupied hospitably a house which was always famous
+for its hospitality--Sievely Hall (poor Bob Cullender ran through seven
+thousand a year before he was thirty years old). Once when I was a
+lad, Colonel Grogwater gave me two gold mohurs out of his desk for
+whist-markers, and I'm sorry to say I ran up from Eton and sold them
+both for seventy-three shillings at a shop in Cornhill. But to return
+to the ladies, who are all this while kept waiting in the hall, and to
+their usual conversation after dinner.
+
+Can any man forget how miserably flat it was? Five matrons sit on sofas,
+and talk in a subdued voice:--First Lady (mysteriously).--"My dear Lady
+Dawdley, do tell me about poor Susan Tuckett."
+
+Second Lady.--"All three children are perfectly well, and I assure you
+as fine babies as I ever saw in my life. I made her give them Daffy's
+Elixir the first day; and it was the greatest mercy that I had some of
+Frederick's baby-clothes by me; for you know I had provided Susan with
+sets for one only, and really--"
+
+Third Lady.--"Of course one couldn't; and for my part I think your
+ladyship is a great deal too kind to these people. A little gardener's
+boy dressed in Lord Dawdley's frocks indeed! I recollect that one at his
+christening had the sweetest lace in the world!"
+
+Fourth Lady.--"What do you think of this, ma'am--Lady Emily, I mean? I
+have just had it from Howell and James:--guipure, they call it. Isn't
+it an odd name for lace! And they charge me, upon my conscience, four
+guineas a yard!"
+
+Third Lady.--"My mother, when she came to Flintskinner, had lace upon
+her robe that cost sixty guineas a yard, ma'am! 'Twas sent from Malines
+direct by our relation, the Count d'Araignay."
+
+Fourth Lady (aside).--"I thought she would not let the evening pass
+without talking of her Malines lace and her Count d'Araignay. Odious
+people! they don't spare their backs, but they pinch their--"
+
+Here Tom upsets a coffee-cup over his white jean trousers, and another
+young gentleman bursts into a laugh, saying, "By Jove, that's a good
+'un!"
+
+"George, my dear," says mamma, "had not you and your young friend better
+go into the garden? But mind, no fruit, or Dr. Glauber must be called in
+again immediately!" And we all go, and in ten minutes I and my brother
+are fighting in the stables.
+
+If, instead of listening to the matrons and their discourse, we had
+taken the opportunity of attending to the conversation of the Misses, we
+should have heard matter not a whit more interesting.
+
+First Miss.--"They were all three in blue crape; you never saw anything
+so odious. And I know for a certainty that they wore those dresses at
+Muddlebury, at the archery-ball, and I dare say they had them in town."
+
+Second Miss.--"Don't you think Jemima decidedly crooked? And those
+fair complexions, they freckle so, that really Miss Blanche ought to be
+called Miss Brown."
+
+Third Miss.--"He, he, he!"
+
+Fourth Miss.--"Don't you think Blanche is a pretty name?"
+
+First Miss.--"La! do you think so, dear? Why, it's my second name!"
+
+Second Miss.--"Then I'm sure Captain Travers thinks it a BEAUTIFUL
+name!"
+
+Third Miss.--"He, he, he!"
+
+Fourth Miss.--"What was he telling you at dinner that seemed to interest
+you so?"
+
+First Miss.--"O law, nothing!--that is, yes! Charles--that is,--Captain
+Travers, is a sweet poet, and was reciting to me some lines that he had
+composed upon a faded violet:--
+
+          "'The odor from the flower is gone,
+          That like thy--,
+
+like thy something, I forget what it was; but his lines are sweet, and
+so original too! I wish that horrid Sir John Todcaster had not begun his
+story of the exciseman, for Lady Fitz-Boodle always quits the table when
+he begins."
+
+Third Miss.--"Do you like those tufts that gentlemen wear sometimes on
+their chins?"
+
+Second Miss.--"Nonsense, Mary!"
+
+Third Miss.--"Well, I only asked, Jane. Frank thinks, you know, that
+he shall very soon have one, and puts bear's-grease on his chin every
+night."
+
+Second Miss.--"Mary, nonsense!"
+
+Third Miss.--"Well, only ask him. You know he came to our dressing-room
+last night and took the pomatum away; and he says that when boys go to
+Oxford they always--"
+
+First Miss.--"O heavens! have you heard the news about the Lancers?
+Charles--that is, Captain Travers, told it me!"
+
+Second Miss.--"Law! they won't go away before the ball, I hope!"
+
+First Miss.--"No, but on the 15th they are to shave their moustaches! He
+says that Lord Tufto is in a perfect fury about it!"
+
+Second Miss.--"And poor George Beardmore, too!" &c.
+
+Here Tom upsets the coffee over his trousers, and the conversations end.
+I can recollect a dozen such, and ask any man of sense whether such talk
+amuses him?
+
+Try again to speak to a young lady while you are dancing--what we call
+in this country--a quadrille. What nonsense do you invariably give and
+receive in return! No, I am a woman-scorner, and don't care to own it. I
+hate young ladies! Have I not been in love with several, and has any one
+of them ever treated me decently? I hate married women! Do they not hate
+me? and, simply because I smoke, try to draw their husbands away from
+my society? I hate dowagers! Have I not cause? Does not every dowager in
+London point to George Fitz-Boodle as to a dissolute wretch whom young
+and old should avoid?
+
+And yet do not imagine that I have not loved. I have, and madly, many,
+many times! I am but eight-and-thirty,* not past the age of passion, and
+may very likely end by running off with an heiress--or a cook-maid
+(for who knows what strange freaks Love may choose to play in his own
+particular person? and I hold a man to be a mean creature who calculates
+about checking any such sacred impulse as lawful love)--I say, though
+despising the sex in general for their conduct to me, I know of
+particular persons belonging to it who are worthy of all respect and
+esteem, and as such I beg leave to point out the particular young lady
+who is perusing these lines. Do not, dear madam, then imagine that if
+I knew you I should be disposed to sneer at you. Ah, no! Fitz-Boodle's
+bosom has tenderer sentiments than from his way of life you would fancy,
+and stern by rule is only too soft by practice. Shall I whisper to you
+the story of one or two of my attachments? All terminating fatally
+(not in death, but in disappointment, which, as it occurred, I used
+to imagine a thousand times more bitter than death, but from which one
+recovers somehow more readily than from the other-named complaint)--all,
+I say, terminating wretchedly to myself, as if some fatality pursued my
+desire to become a domestic character.
+
+     * He is five-and-forty, if he is a day old.--O. Y.
+
+My first love--no, let us pass THAT over. Sweet one! thy name shall
+profane no hireling page. Sweet, sweet memory! Ah, ladies, those
+delicate hearts of yours have, too, felt the throb. And between the
+last 'ob' in the word throb and the words now written, I have passed a
+delicious period of perhaps an hour, perhaps a minute, I know not how
+long, thinking of that holy first love and of her who inspired it. How
+clearly every single incident of the passion is remembered by me!
+and yet 'twas long, long since. I was but a child then--a child at
+school--and, if the truth must be told, L--ra R-ggl-s (I would not write
+her whole name to be made one of the Marquess of Hertford's executors)
+was a woman full thirteen years older than myself; at the period of
+which I write she must have been at least five-and-twenty. She and her
+mother used to sell tarts, hard-bake, lollipops, and other such simple
+comestibles, on Wednesdays and Saturdays (half-holidays), at a private
+school where I received the first rudiments of a classical education.
+I used to go and sit before her tray for hours, but I do not think the
+poor girl ever supposed any motive led me so constantly to her little
+stall beyond a vulgar longing for her tarts and her ginger-beer. Yes,
+even at that early period my actions were misrepresented, and the
+fatality which has oppressed my whole life began to show itself,--the
+purest passion was misinterpreted by her and my school-fellows, and
+they thought I was actuated by simple gluttony. They nicknamed me
+Alicompayne.
+
+Well, be it so. Laugh at early passion ye who will; a highborn boy madly
+in love with a lowly ginger-beer girl! She married afterwards, took the
+name of Latter, and now keeps with her old husband a turnpike, through
+which I often ride; but I can recollect her bright and rosy of a sunny
+summer afternoon, her red cheeks shaded by a battered straw bonnet, her
+tarts and ginger-beer upon a neat white cloth before her, mending blue
+worsted stockings until the young gentlemen should interrupt her by
+coming to buy.
+
+Many persons will call this description low; I do not envy them their
+gentility, and have always observed through life (as, to be sure, every
+other GENTLEMAN has observed as well as myself) that it is your parvenu
+who stickles most for what he calls the genteel, and has the most
+squeamish abhorrence for what is frank and natural. Let us pass at once,
+however, as all the world must be pleased, to a recital of an affair
+which occurred in the very best circles of society, as they are called,
+viz, my next unfortunate attachment.
+
+It did not occur for several years after that simple and platonic
+passion just described: for though they may talk of youth as the season
+of romance, it has always appeared to me that there are no beings in
+the world so entirely unromantic and selfish as certain young English
+gentlemen from the age of fifteen to twenty. The oldest Lovelace about
+town is scarcely more hard-hearted and scornful than they; they ape all
+sorts of selfishness and rouerie: they aim at excelling at cricket, at
+billiards, at rowing, and drinking, and set more store by a red coat
+and a neat pair of top-boots than by any other glory. A young fellow
+staggers into college chapel of a morning, and communicates to all his
+friends that he was "so CUT last night," with the greatest possible
+pride. He makes a joke of having sisters and a kind mother at home who
+loves him; and if he speaks of his father, it is with a knowing sneer to
+say that he has a tailor's and a horse-dealer's bill that will surprise
+"the old governor." He would be ashamed of being in love. I, in common
+with my kind, had these affectations, and my perpetual custom of smoking
+added not a little to my reputation as an accomplished roue. What came
+of this custom in the army and at college, the reader has already heard.
+Alas! in life it went no better with me, and many pretty chances I had
+went off in that accursed smoke.
+
+After quitting the army in the abrupt manner stated, I passed some
+short time at home, and was tolerated by my mother-in-law, because I
+had formed an attachment to a young lady of good connections and with a
+considerable fortune, which was really very nearly becoming mine. Mary
+M'Alister was the only daughter of Colonel M'Alister, late of the Blues,
+and Lady Susan his wife. Her ladyship was no more; and, indeed, of no
+family compared to ours (which has refused a peerage any time these two
+hundred years); but being an earl's daughter and a Scotchwoman, Lady
+Emily Fitz-Boodle did not fail to consider her highly. Lady Susan was
+daughter of the late Admiral Earl of Marlingspike and Baron Plumduff.
+The Colonel, Miss M'Alister's father, had a good estate, of which his
+daughter was the heiress, and as I fished her out of the water upon
+a pleasure-party, and swam with her to shore, we became naturally
+intimate, and Colonel M'Alister forgot, on account of the service
+rendered to him, the dreadful reputation for profligacy which I enjoyed
+in the county.
+
+Well, to cut a long story short, which is told here merely for the
+moral at the end of it, I should have been Fitz-Boodle M'Alister at this
+minute most probably, and master of four thousand a year, but for
+the fatal cigar-box. I bear Mary no malice in saying that she was a
+high-spirited little girl, loving, before all things, her own way; nay,
+perhaps I do not, from long habit and indulgence in tobacco-smoking,
+appreciate the delicacy of female organizations, which were oftentimes
+most painfully affected by it. She was a keen-sighted little person,
+and soon found that the world had belied poor George Fitz-Boodle; who,
+instead of being the cunning monster people supposed him to be, was a
+simple, reckless, good-humored, honest fellow, marvellously addicted to
+smoking, idleness, and telling the truth. She called me Orson, and I
+was happy enough on the 14th February, in the year 18-- (it's of no
+consequence), to send her such a pretty little copy of verses about
+Orson and Valentine, in which the rude habits of the savage man were
+shown to be overcome by the polished graces of his kind and brilliant
+conqueror, that she was fairly overcome, and said to me, "George
+Fitz-Boodle, if you give up smoking for a year, I will marry you."
+
+I swore I would, of course, and went home and flung four pounds of
+Hudson's cigars, two meerschaum pipes that had cost me ten guineas
+at the establishment of Mr. Gattie at Oxford, a tobacco-bag that Lady
+Fitz-Boodle had given me BEFORE her marriage with my father (it was the
+only present that I ever had from her or any member of the Flintskinner
+family), and some choice packets of Varinas and Syrian, into the lake
+in Boodle Park. The weapon amongst them all which I most regretted
+was--will it be believed?--the little black doodheen which had been the
+cause of the quarrel between Lord Martingale and me. However, it went
+along with the others. I would not allow my groom to have so much as a
+cigar, lest I should be tempted hereafter; and the consequence was that
+a few days after many fat carps and tenches in the lake (I must confess
+'twas no bigger than a pond) nibbled at the tobacco, and came floating
+on their backs on the top of the water quite intoxicated. My conversion
+made some noise in the county, being emphasized as it were by this fact
+of the fish. I can't tell you with what pangs I kept my resolution; but
+keep it I did for some time.
+
+With so much beauty and wealth, Mary M'Alister had of course many
+suitors, and among them was the young Lord Dawdley, whose mamma has
+previously been described in her gown of red satin. As I used to thrash
+Dawdley at school, I thrashed him in after-life in love; he put up with
+his disappointment pretty well, and came after a while and shook hands
+with me, telling me of the bets that there were in the county, where the
+whole story was known, for and against me. For the fact is, as I must
+own, that Mary M'Alister, the queerest, frankest of women, made no
+secret of the agreement, or the cause of it.
+
+"I did not care a penny for Orson," she said, "but he would go on
+writing me such dear pretty verses that at last I couldn't help saying
+yes. But if he breaks his promise to me, I declare, upon my honor, I'll
+break mine, and nobody's heart will be broken either."
+
+This was the perfect fact, as I must confess, and I declare that it was
+only because she amused me and delighted me, and provoked me, and made
+me laugh very much, and because, no doubt, she was very rich, that I had
+any attachment for her.
+
+"For heaven's sake, George," my father said to me, as I quitted home to
+follow my beloved to London, "remember that you are a younger brother
+and have a lovely girl and four thousand a year within a year's reach of
+you. Smoke as much as you like, my boy, after marriage," added the old
+gentleman, knowingly (as if HE, honest soul, after his second marriage,
+dared drink an extra pint of wine without my lady's permission!) "but
+eschew the tobacco-shops till then."
+
+I went to London resolving to act upon the paternal advice, and oh! how
+I longed for the day when I should be married, vowing in my secret soul
+that I would light a cigar as I walked out of St. George's, Hanover
+Square.
+
+Well, I came to London, and so carefully avoided smoking that I would
+not even go into Hudson's shop to pay his bill, and as smoking was not
+the fashion then among young men as (thank heaven!) it is now, I had
+not many temptations from my friends' examples in my clubs or elsewhere;
+only little Dawdley began to smoke, as if to spite me. He had never done
+so before, but confessed--the rascal!--that he enjoyed a cigar now,
+if it were but to mortify me. But I took to other and more dangerous
+excitements, and upon the nights when not in attendance upon Mary
+M'Alister, might be found in very dangerous proximity to a polished
+mahogany table, round which claret-bottles circulated a great deal
+too often, or worse still, to a table covered with green cloth and
+ornamented with a couple of wax-candles and a couple of packs of cards,
+and four gentlemen playing the enticing game of whist. Likewise, I
+came to carry a snuff-box, and to consume in secret huge quantities of
+rappee.
+
+For ladies' society I was even then disinclined, hating and despising
+small-talk, and dancing, and hot routs, and vulgar scrambles for
+suppers. I never could understand the pleasure of acting the part of
+lackey to a dowager, and standing behind her chair, or bustling through
+the crowd for her carriage. I always found an opera too long by
+two acts, and have repeatedly fallen asleep in the presence of Mary
+M'Alister herself, sitting at the back of the box shaded by the huge
+beret of her old aunt, Lady Betty Plumduff; and many a time has Dawdley,
+with Miss M'Alister on his arm, wakened me up at the close of the
+entertainment in time to offer my hand to Lady Betty, and lead the
+ladies to their carriage. If I attended her occasionally to any ball
+or party of pleasure, I went, it must be confessed, with clumsy,
+ill-disguised ill-humor. Good heavens! have I often and often thought in
+the midst of a song, or the very thick of a ball-room, can people prefer
+this to a book and a sofa, and a dear, dear cigar-box, from thy stores,
+O charming Mariana Woodville! Deprived of my favorite plant, I grew sick
+in mind and body, moody, sarcastic, and discontented.
+
+Such a state of things could not long continue, nor could Miss M'Alister
+continue to have much attachment for such a sullen, ill-conditioned
+creature as I then was. She used to make me wild with her wit and her
+sarcasm, nor have I ever possessed the readiness to parry or reply
+to those fine points of woman's wit, and she treated me the more
+mercilessly as she saw that I could not resist her.
+
+Well, the polite reader must remember a great fete that was given at
+B---- House, some years back, in honor of his Highness the Hereditary
+Prince of Kalbsbraten-Pumpernickel, who was then in London on a visit to
+his illustrious relatives. It was a fancy ball, and the poems of Scott
+being at that time all the fashion, Mary was to appear in the character
+of the "Lady of the Lake," old M'Alister making a very tall and
+severe-looking harper; Dawdley, a most insignificant Fitzjames; and your
+humble servant a stalwart manly Roderick Dhu. We were to meet at B----
+House at twelve o'clock, and as I had no fancy to drive through the town
+in my cab dressed in a kilt and philibeg, I agreed to take a seat in
+Dawdley's carriage, and to dress at his house in May Fair. At eleven
+I left a very pleasant bachelors' party, growling to quit them and the
+honest, jovial claret-bottle, in order to scrape and cut capers like a
+harlequin from the theatre. When I arrived at Dawdley's, I mounted to a
+dressing-room, and began to array myself in my cursed costume.
+
+The art of costuming was by no means so well understood in those days
+as it has been since, and mine was out of all correctness. I was made
+to sport an enormous plume of black ostrich-feathers, such as never was
+worn by any Highland chief, and had a huge tiger-skin sporran to dangle
+like an apron before innumerable yards of plaid petticoat. The tartan
+cloak was outrageously hot and voluminous; it was the dog-days, and
+all these things I was condemned to wear in the midst of a crowd of a
+thousand people!
+
+Dawdley sent up word, as I was dressing, that his dress had not arrived,
+and he took my cab and drove off in a rage to his tailor.
+
+There was no hurry, I thought, to make a fool of myself; so having put
+on a pair of plaid trews, and very neat pumps with shoe-buckles, my
+courage failed me as to the rest of the dress, and taking down one of
+his dressing-gowns, I went down stairs to the study, to wait until he
+should arrive.
+
+The windows of the pretty room were open, and a snug sofa, with
+innumerable cushions, drawn towards one of them. A great tranquil moon
+was staring into the chamber, in which stood, amidst books and all
+sorts of bachelor's lumber, a silver tray with a couple of tall Venice
+glasses, and a bottle of Maraschino bound with straw. I can see now the
+twinkle of the liquor in the moonshine, as I poured it into the glass;
+and I swallowed two or three little cups of it, for my spirits were
+downcast. Close to the tray of Maraschino stood--must I say it?--a box,
+a mere box of cedar, bound rudely together with pink paper, branded with
+the name of "Hudson" on the side, and bearing on the cover the arms of
+Spain. I thought I would just take up the box and look in it.
+
+Ah heaven! there they were--a hundred and fifty of them, in calm,
+comfortable rows: lovingly side by side they lay, with the great moon
+shining down upon them--thin at the tip, full in the waist,
+elegantly round and full, a little spot here and there shining upon
+them--beauty-spots upon the cheek of Sylvia. The house was quite quiet.
+Dawdley always smoked in his room--I had not smoked for four months and
+eleven days.
+
+*****
+
+When Lord Dawdley came into the study, he did not make any remarks; and
+oh, how easy my heart felt! He was dressed in his green and boots, after
+Westall's picture, correctly.
+
+"It's time to be off, George," said he; "they told me you were dressed
+long ago. Come up, my man, and get ready."
+
+I rushed up into the dressing-room, and madly dashed my head and arms
+into a pool of eau-de-Cologne. I drank, I believe, a tumberful of it. I
+called for my clothes, and, strange to say, they were gone. My servant
+brought them, however, saying that he had put them away--making some
+stupid excuse. I put them on, not heeding them much, for I was half
+tipsy with the excitement of the ci-- of the smo-- of what had taken
+place in Dawdley's study, and with the Maraschino and the eau-de-Cologue
+I had drunk.
+
+"What a fine odor of lavender-water!" said Dawdley, as we rode in the
+carriage.
+
+I put my head out of the window and shrieked out a laugh; but made no
+other reply.
+
+"What's the joke, George?" said Dawdley. "Did I say anything witty?"
+
+"No," cried I, yelling still more wildly; "nothing more witty than
+usual."
+
+"Don't be severe, George," said he, with a mortified air; and we drove
+on to B---- House.
+
+*****
+
+There must have been something strange and wild in my appearance, and
+those awful black plumes, as I passed through the crowd; for I observed
+people looking and making a strange nasal noise (it is called sniffing,
+and I have no other more delicate term for it), and making way as
+I pushed on. But I moved forward very fiercely, for the wine, the
+Maraschino, the eau-de-Cologne, and the--the excitement had rendered me
+almost wild; and at length I arrived at the place where my lovely Lady
+of the Lake and her Harper stood. How beautiful she looked,--all eyes
+were upon her as she stood blushing. When she saw me, however; her
+countenance assumed an appearance of alarm. "Good heavens, George!" she
+said, stretching her hand to me, "what makes you look so wild and pale?"
+I advanced, and was going to take her hand, when she dropped it with a
+scream.
+
+"Ah--ah--ah!" she said. "Mr. Fitz-Boodle, you've been smoking!"
+
+There was an immense laugh from four hundred people round about us, and
+the scoundrelly Dawdley joined in the yell. I rushed furiously out,
+and, as I passed, hurtled over the fat Hereditary Prince of
+Kalbsbraten-Pumpernickel.
+
+"Es riecht hier ungeheuer stark von Tabak!" I heard his Highness say, as
+I madly flung myself through the aides-de-camp.
+
+The next day Mary M'Alister, in a note full of the most odious good
+sense and sarcasm, reminded me of our agreement; said that she was quite
+convinced that we were not by any means fitted for one another, and
+begged me to consider myself henceforth quite free. The little wretch
+had the impertinence to send me a dozen boxes of cigars, which, she
+said, would console me for my lost love; as she was perfectly certain
+that I was not mercenary, and that I loved tobacco better than any woman
+in the world.
+
+I believe she was right, though I have never to this day been able to
+pardon the scoundrelly stratagem by which Dawdley robbed me of a wife
+and won one himself. As I was lying on his sofa, looking at the moon and
+lost in a thousand happy contemplations, Lord Dawdley, returning
+from the tailor's, saw me smoking at my leisure. On entering his
+dressing-room, a horrible treacherous thought struck him. "I must not
+betray my friend," said he; "but in love all is fair, and he shall
+betray himself." There were my tartans, my cursed feathers, my
+tiger-skin sporran, upon the sofa.
+
+He called up my groom; he made the rascal put on all my clothes, and,
+giving him a guinea and four cigars, bade him lock himself into the
+little pantry and smoke them WITHOUT TAKING THE CLOTHES OFF. John did
+so, and was very ill in consequence, and so when I came to B---- House,
+my clothes were redolent of tobacco, and I lost lovely Mary M'Alister.
+
+I am godfather to one of Lady Dawdley's boys, and hers is the only house
+where I am allowed to smoke unmolested; but I have never been able to
+admire Dawdley, a sly, sournois, spiritless, lily-livered fellow, that
+took his name off all his clubs the year he married.
+
+
+
+
+DOROTHEA.
+
+
+Beyond sparring and cricket, I do not recollect I learned anything
+useful at Slaughter-House School, where I was educated (according to an
+old family tradition, which sends particular generations of gentlemen to
+particular schools in the kingdom; and such is the force of habit, that
+though I hate the place, I shall send my own son thither too, should
+I marry any day). I say I learned little that was useful at Slaughter
+House, and nothing that was ornamental. I would as soon have thought
+of learning to dance as of learning to climb chimneys. Up to the age of
+seventeen, as I have shown, I had a great contempt for the female race,
+and when age brought with it warmer and juster sentiments, where was
+I?--I could no more dance nor prattle to a young girl than a young bear
+could. I have seen the ugliest little low-bred wretches carrying off
+young and lovely creatures, twirling with them in waltzes, whispering
+between their glossy curls in quadrilles, simpering with perfect
+equanimity, and cutting pas in that abominable "cavalier seul," until my
+soul grew sick with fury. In a word, I determined to learn to dance.
+
+But such things are hard to be acquired late in life, when the bones and
+the habits of a man are formed. Look at a man in a hunting-field who has
+not been taught to ride as a boy. All the pluck and courage in the world
+will not make the man of him that I am, or as any man who has had the
+advantages of early education in the field.
+
+In the same way with dancing. Though I went to work with immense energy,
+both in Brewer Street, Golden Square (with an advertising fellow), and
+afterwards with old Coulon at Paris, I never was able to be EASY in
+dancing; and though little Coulon instructed me in a smile, it was a
+cursed forced one, that looked like the grin of a person in extreme
+agony. I once caught sight of it in a glass, and have hardly ever smiled
+since.
+
+Most young men about London have gone through that strange secret ordeal
+of the dancing-school. I am given to understand that young snobs from
+attorneys' offices, banks, shops, and the like, make not the least
+mystery of their proceedings in the saltatory line, but trip gayly, with
+pumps in hand, to some dancing-place about Soho, waltz and quadrille it
+with Miss Greengrocer or Miss Butcher, and fancy they have had rather
+a pleasant evening. There is one house in Dover Street, where, behind
+a dirty curtain, such figures may be seen hopping every night, to a
+perpetual fiddling; and I have stood sometimes wondering in the street,
+with about six blackguard boys wondering too, at the strange contortions
+of the figures jumping up and down to the mysterious squeaking of the
+kit. Have they no shame ces gens? are such degrading initiations to be
+held in public? No, the snob may, but the man of refined mind never can
+submit to show himself in public laboring at the apprenticeship of this
+most absurd art. It is owing, perhaps, to this modesty, and the fact
+that I had no sisters at home, that I have never thoroughly been able to
+dance; for though I always arrive at the end of a quadrille (and
+thank heaven for it too!) and though, I believe, I make no mistake in
+particular, yet I solemnly confess I have never been able thoroughly
+to comprehend the mysteries of it, or what I have been about from the
+beginning to the end of the dance. I always look at the lady opposite,
+and do as she does: if SHE did not know how to dance, par hasard, it
+would be all up. But if they can't do anything else, women can dance:
+let us give them that praise at least.
+
+In London, then, for a considerable time, I used to get up at eight
+o'clock in the morning, and pass an hour alone with Mr. Wilkinson, of
+the Theatres Royal, in Golden Square;--an hour alone. It was "one, two,
+three; one, two, three--now jump--right foot more out, Mr. Smith; and if
+you COULD try and look a little more cheerful; your partner, sir, would
+like you hall the better." Wilkinson called me Smith, for the fact is,
+I did not tell him my real name, nor (thank heaven!) does he know it to
+this day.
+
+I never breathed a word of my doings to any soul among my friends; once
+a pack of them met me in the strange neighborhood, when, I am ashamed to
+say, I muttered something about a "little French milliner," and walked
+off, looking as knowing as I could.
+
+In Paris, two Cambridge-men and myself, who happened to be staying at
+a boarding-house together, agreed to go to Coulon, a little creature of
+four feet high with a pigtail. His room was hung round with glasses. He
+made us take off our coats, and dance each before a mirror. Once he was
+standing before us playing on his kit the sight of the little master
+and the pupil was so supremely ridiculous, that I burst into a yell of
+laughter, which so offended the old man that he walked away abruptly,
+and begged me not to repeat my visits. Nor did I. I was just getting
+into waltzing then, but determined to drop waltzing, and content myself
+with quadrilling for the rest of my days.
+
+This was all very well in France and England; but in Germany what was
+I to do? What did Hercules do when Omphale captivated him? What did
+Rinaldo do when Armida fixed upon him her twinkling eyes? Nay, to cut
+all historical instances short, by going at once to the earliest, what
+did Adam do when Eve tempted him? He yielded and became her slave; and
+so I do heartily trust every honest man will yield until the end of the
+world--he has no heart who will not. When I was in Germany, I say, I
+began to learn to WALTZ. The reader from this will no doubt expect
+that some new love-adventures befell me--nor will his gentle heart be
+disappointed. Two deep and tremendous incidents occurred which shall be
+notified on the present occasion.
+
+The reader, perhaps, remembers the brief appearance of his Highness the
+Duke of Kalbsbraten-Pumpernickel at B---- House, in the first part of
+my Memoirs, at that unlucky period of my life when the Duke was led
+to remark the odor about my clothes, which lost me the hand of Mary
+M'Alister. I somehow found myself in his Highness's territories, of
+which anybody may read a description in the Almanach de Gotha. His
+Highness's father, as is well known, married Emilia Kunegunda Thomasina
+Charleria Emanuela Louisa Georgina, Princess of Saxe-Pumpernickel, and a
+cousin of his Highness the Duke. Thus the two principalities were united
+under one happy sovereign in the person of Philibert Sigismund Emanuel
+Maria, the reigning Duke, who has received from his country (on
+account of the celebrated pump which he erected in the marketplace
+of Kalbsbraten) the well-merited appellation of the Magnificent. The
+allegory which the statues round about the pump represent, is of a very
+mysterious and complicated sort. Minerva is observed leading up Ceres to
+a river-god, who has his arms round the neck of Pomona; while Mars (in
+a full-bottomed wig) is driven away by Peace, under whose mantle two
+lovely children, representing the Duke's two provinces, repose. The
+celebrated Speck is, as need scarcely be said, the author of this
+piece; and of other magnificent edifices in the Residenz, such as the
+guard-room, the skittle-hall Grossherzoglich Kalbsbratenpumpernickelisch
+Schkittelspielsaal, &c., and the superb sentry-boxes before the
+Grand-Ducal Palace. He is Knight Grand Cross of the Ancient Kartoffel
+Order, as, indeed, is almost every one else in his Highness's dominions.
+
+The town of Kalbsbraten contains a population of two thousand
+inhabitants, and a palace which would accommodate about six times
+that number. The principality sends three and a half men to the
+German Confederation, who are commanded by a General (Excellency), two
+Major-Generals, and sixty-four officers of lower grades; all noble, all
+knights of the Order, and almost all chamberlains to his Highness the
+Grand Duke. An excellent band of eighty performers is the admiration of
+the surrounding country, and leads the Grand-Ducal troops to battle in
+time of war. Only three of the contingent of soldiers returned from the
+Battle of Waterloo, where they won much honor; the remainder was cut to
+pieces on that glorious day.
+
+There is a chamber of representatives (which, however, nothing can
+induce to sit), home and foreign ministers, residents from neighboring
+courts, law presidents, town councils, &c., all the adjuncts of a big
+or little government. The court has its chamberlains and marshals, the
+Grand Duchess her noble ladies in waiting, and blushing maids of honor.
+Thou wert one, Dorothea! Dost remember the poor young Englander? We
+parted in anger; but I think--I think thou hast not forgotten him.
+
+The way in which I have Dorothea von Speck present to my mind is this:
+not as I first saw her in the garden--for her hair was in bandeaux
+then, and a large Leghorn hat with a deep ribbon covered half her fair
+face,--not in a morning-dress, which, by the way, was none of the newest
+nor the best made--but as I saw her afterwards at a ball at the pleasant
+splendid little court, where she moved the most beautiful of the
+beauties of Kalbsbraten. The grand saloon of the palace is lighted--the
+Grand Duke and his officers, the Duchess and her ladies, have passed
+through. I, in my uniform, of the --th, and a number of young
+fellows (who are evidently admiring my legs and envying my distingue
+appearance), are waiting round the entrance-door, where a huge Heyduke
+is standing, and announcing the titles of the guests as they arrive.
+
+"HERR OBERHOF- UND BAU-INSPEKTOR VON SPECK!" shouts the Heyduke; and
+the little Inspector comes in. His lady is on his arm huge, in towering
+plumes, and her favorite costume of light blue. Fair women always dress
+in light blue or light green; and Frau von Speck is very fair and stout.
+
+But who comes behind her? Lieber Himmel! It is Dorothea! Did earth,
+among all the flowers which have sprung from its bosom, produce ever one
+more beautiful? She was none of your heavenly beauties, I tell you. She
+had nothing ethereal about her. No, sir; she was of the earth earthy,
+and must have weighed ten stone four or five, if she weighed an ounce.
+She had none of your Chinese feet, nor waspy, unhealthy waists, which
+those may admire who will. No: Dora's foot was a good stout one; you
+could see her ankle (if her robe was short enough) without the aid of
+a microscope; and that envious little, sour, skinny Amalia von
+Mangelwurzel used to hold up her four fingers and say (the two girls
+were most intimate friends of course), "Dear Dorothea's vaist is so much
+dicker as dis." And so I have no doubt it was.
+
+But what then? Goethe sings in one of his divine epigrams:--
+
+"Epicures vaunting their taste, entitle me vulgar and savage, Give them
+their Brussels-sprouts, but I am contented with cabbage."
+
+
+I hate your little women--that is, when I am in love with a tall one;
+and who would not have loved Dorothea?
+
+Fancy her, then, if you please, about five feet four inches high--fancy
+her in the family color of light blue, a little scarf covering the most
+brilliant shoulders in the world; and a pair of gloves clinging close
+round an arm that may, perhaps, be somewhat too large now, but that
+Juno might have envied then. After the fashion of young ladies on the
+continent, she wears no jewels or gimcracks: her only ornament is a
+wreath of vine-leaves in her hair, with little clusters of artificial
+grapes. Down on her shoulders falls the brown hair, in rich liberal
+clusters; all that health, and good-humor, and beauty can do for her
+face, kind nature has done for hers. Her eyes are frank, sparkling, and
+kind. As for her cheeks, what paint-box or dictionary contains pigments
+or words to describe their red? They say she opens her mouth and smiles
+always to show the dimples in her cheeks. Psha! she smiles because she
+is happy, and kind, and good-humored, and not because her teeth are
+little pearls.
+
+All the young fellows crowd up to ask her to dance, and, taking from her
+waist a little mother-of-pearl remembrancer, she notes them down. Old
+Schnabel for the polonaise; Klingenspohr, first waltz; Haarbart, second
+waltz; Count Hornpieper (the Danish envoy), third; and so on. I have
+said why I could not ask her to waltz, and I turned away with a pang,
+and played ecarte with Colonel Trumpenpack all night.
+
+In thus introducing this lovely creature in her ball-costume, I have
+been somewhat premature, and had best go back to the beginning of the
+history of my acquaintance with her.
+
+Dorothea, then, was the daughter of the celebrated Speck before
+mentioned. It is one of the oldest names in Germany, where her father's
+and mother's houses, those of Speck and Eyer, are loved wherever they
+are known. Unlike his warlike progenitor, Lorenzo von Speck, Dorothea's
+father, had early shown himself a passionate admirer of art; had
+quitted home to study architecture in Italy, and had become celebrated
+throughout Europe, and been appointed Oberhofarchitect and Kunst- und
+Bau-inspektor of the united principalities. They are but four miles
+wide, and his genius has consequently but little room to play. What art
+can do, however, he does. The palace is frequently whitewashed under
+his eyes; the theatre painted occasionally; the noble public buildings
+erected, of which I have already made mention.
+
+I had come to Kalbsbraten, scarce knowing whither I went; and having, in
+about ten minutes, seen the curiosities of the place (I did not care
+to see the King's palace, for chairs and tables have no great charm for
+me), I had ordered horses, and wanted to get on I cared not whither,
+when Fate threw Dorothea in my way. I was yawning back to the hotel
+through the palace-garden, a valet-de-place at my side, when I saw a
+young lady seated under a tree reading a novel, her mamma on the same
+bench (a fat woman in light blue) knitting a stocking, and two officers,
+choked in their stays, with various orders on their spinach-colored
+coats, standing by in first attitudes: the one was caressing the
+fat-lady-in-blue's little dog; the other was twirling his own moustache,
+which was already as nearly as possible curled into his own eye.
+
+I don't know how it is, but I hate to see men evidently intimate with
+nice-looking women, and on good terms with themselves. There's something
+annoying in their cursed complacency--their evident sunshiny happiness.
+I've no woman to make sunshine for ME; and yet my heart tells me that
+not one, but several such suns, would do good to my system.
+
+"Who are those pert-looking officers," says I, peevishly, to the guide,
+"who are talking to those vulgar-looking women?"
+
+"The big one, with the epaulets, is Major von Schnabel; the little one,
+with the pale face, is Stiefel von Klingenspohr."
+
+"And the big blue woman?"
+
+"The Grand-Ducal Pumpernickelian-court-architectress and
+Upper-Palace-and-building-inspectress Von Speck, born V. Eyer," replied
+the guide. "Your well-born honor has seen the pump in the market-place;
+that is the work of the great Von Speck."
+
+"And yonder young person?"
+
+"Mr. Court-architect's daughter; the Fraulein Dorothea."
+
+*****
+
+Dorothea looked up from her novel here, and turned her face towards
+the stranger who was passing, and then blushing turned it down again.
+Schnabel looked at me with a scowl, Klingenspohr with a simper, the dog
+with a yelp, the fat lady in blue just gave one glance, and seemed, I
+thought, rather well pleased. "Silence, Lischen!" said she to the dog.
+"Go on, darling Dorothea," she added, to her daughter, who continued her
+novel.
+
+Her voice was a little tremulous, but very low and rich. For some reason
+or other, on getting back to the inn, I countermanded the horses, and
+said I would stay for the night.
+
+I not only stayed that night, but many, many afterwards; and as for the
+manner in which I became acquainted with the Speck family, why it was
+a good joke against me at the time, and I did not like then to have
+it known; but now it may as well come out at once. Speck, as everybody
+knows, lives in the market-place, opposite his grand work of art, the
+town pump, or fountain. I bought a large sheet of paper, and having a
+knack at drawing, sat down, with the greatest gravity, before the pump,
+and sketched it for several hours. I knew it would bring out old Speck
+to see. At first he contented himself by flattening his nose against the
+window-glasses of his study, and looking what the Englander was about.
+Then he put on his gray cap with the huge green shade, and sauntered
+to the door: then he walked round me, and formed one of a band of
+street-idlers who were looking on: then at last he could restrain
+himself no more, but, pulling off his cap, with a low bow, began to
+discourse upon arts, and architecture in particular.
+
+"It is curious," says he, "that you have taken the same view of which a
+print has been engraved."
+
+"That IS extraordinary," says I (though it wasn't, for I had traced my
+drawing at a window off the very print in question). I added that I was,
+like all the world, immensely struck with the beauty of the edifice;
+heard of it at Rome, where it was considered to be superior to any of
+the celebrated fountains of that capital of the fine arts; finally,
+that unless perhaps the celebrated fountain of Aldgate in London
+might compare with it, Kalbsbraten building, EXCEPT in that case, was
+incomparable.
+
+This speech I addressed in French, of which the worthy Hofarchitect
+understood somewhat, and continuing to reply in German, our conversation
+grew pretty close. It is singular that I can talk to a man and pay him
+compliments with the utmost gravity, whereas, to a woman, I at once lose
+all self-possession, and have never said a pretty thing in my life.
+
+My operations on old Speck were so conducted, that in a quarter of an
+hour I had elicited from him an invitation to go over the town with
+him, and see its architectural beauties. So we walked through the huge
+half-furnished chambers of the palace, we panted up the copper pinnacle
+of the church-tower, we went to see the Museum and Gymnasium, and coming
+back into the market-place again, what could the Hofarchitect do but
+offer me a glass of wine and a seat in his house? He introduced me
+to his Gattinn, his Leocadia (the fat woman in blue), "as a young
+world-observer, and worthy art-friend, a young scion of British Adel,
+who had come to refresh himself at the Urquellen of his race, and see
+his brethren of the great family of Hermann."
+
+I saw instantly that the old fellow was of a romantic turn, from this
+rodomontade to his lady; nor was she a whit less so; nor was Dorothea
+less sentimental than her mamma. She knew everything regarding the
+literature of Albion, as she was pleased to call it; and asked me news
+of all the famous writers there. I told her that Miss Edgeworth was one
+of the loveliest young beauties at our court; I described to her Lady
+Morgan, herself as beautiful as the wild Irish girl she drew; I promised
+to give her a signature of Mrs. Hemans (which I wrote for her that very
+evening); and described a fox-hunt, at which I had seen Thomas Moore
+and Samuel Rogers, Esquires; and a boxing-match, in which the athletic
+author of "Pelham" was pitched against the hardy mountain bard,
+Wordsworth. You see my education was not neglected, for though I have
+never read the works of the above-named ladies and gentlemen, yet I knew
+their names well enough.
+
+Time passed away. I, perhaps, was never so brilliant in conversation as
+when excited by the Asmanshauser and the brilliant eyes of Dorothea that
+day. She and her parents had dined at their usual heathen hour; but I
+was, I don't care to own it, so smitten, that for the first time in my
+life I did not even miss the meal, and talked on until six o'clock, when
+tea was served. Madame Speck said they always drank it; and so placing
+a teaspoonful of bohea in a cauldron of water, she placidly handed out
+this decoction, which we took with cakes and tartines. I leave you to
+imagine how disgusted Klingenspohr and Schnabel looked when they stepped
+in as usual that evening to make their party of whist with the Speck
+family! Down they were obliged to sit; and the lovely Dorothea, for that
+night, declined to play altogether, and--sat on the sofa by me.
+
+What we talked about, who shall tell? I would not, for my part, break
+the secret of one of those delicious conversations, of which I and every
+man in his time have held so many. You begin, very probably, about the
+weather--'tis a common subject, but what sentiments the genius of Love
+can fling into it! I have often, for my part, said to the girl of my
+heart for the time being, "It's a fine day," or "It's a rainy morning!"
+in a way that has brought tears to her eyes. Something beats in your
+heart, and twangle! a corresponding string thrills and echoes in
+hers. You offer her anything--her knitting-needles, a slice of
+bread-and-butter--what causes the grateful blush with which she accepts
+the one or the other? Why, she sees your heart handed over to her upon
+the needles, and the bread-and-butter is to her a sandwich with love
+inside it. If you say to your grandmother, "Ma'am, it's a fine day,"
+or what not, she would find in the words no other meaning than their
+outward and visible one; but say so to the girl you love, and she
+understands a thousand mystic meanings in them. Thus, in a word, though
+Dorothea and I did not, probably, on the first night of our meeting,
+talk of anything more than the weather, or trumps, or some subjects
+which to such listeners as Schnabel and Klingenspohr and others might
+appear quite ordinary, yet to US they had a different signification, of
+which Love alone held the key.
+
+Without further ado then, after the occurrences of that evening, I
+determined on staying at Kalbsbraten, and presenting my card the next
+day to the Hof-Marshal, requesting to have the honor of being presented
+to his Highness the Prince, at one of whose court-balls my Dorothea
+appeared as I have described her.
+
+It was summer when I first arrived at Kalbsbraten. The little court was
+removed to Siegmundslust, his Highness's country-seat: no balls were
+taking place, and, in consequence, I held my own with Dorothea pretty
+well. I treated her admirer, Lieutenant Klingenspohr, with perfect
+scorn, had a manifest advantage over Major Schnabel, and used somehow
+to meet the fair one every day, walking in company with her mamma in
+the palace garden, or sitting under the acacias, with Belotte in her
+mother's lap, and the favorite romance beside her. Dear, dear Dorothea!
+what a number of novels she must have read in her time! She confesses to
+me that she had been in love with Uncas, with Saint Preux, with Ivanhoe,
+and with hosts of German heroes of romance; and when I asked her if
+she, whose heart was so tender towards imaginary youths, had never had
+a preference for any one of her living adorers, she only looked, and
+blushed, and sighed, and said nothing.
+
+You see I had got on as well as man could do, until the confounded court
+season and the balls began, and then--why, then came my usual luck.
+
+Waltzing is a part of a German girl's life. With the best will in the
+world--which, I doubt not, she entertains for me, for I never put the
+matter of marriage directly to her--Dorothea could not go to balls and
+not waltz. It was madness to me to see her whirling round the room
+with officers, attaches, prim little chamberlains with gold keys and
+embroidered coats, her hair floating in the wind, her hand reposing upon
+the abominable little dancer's epaulet, her good-humored face lighted up
+with still greater satisfaction. I saw that I must learn to waltz too,
+and took my measures accordingly.
+
+The leader of the ballet at the Kalbsbraten theatre in my time was
+Springbock, from Vienna. He had been a regular zephyr once, 'twas said,
+in his younger days; and though he is now fifteen stone weight, I can,
+helas! recommend him conscientiously as a master; and I determined to
+take some lessons from him in the art which I had neglected so foolishly
+in early life.
+
+It may be said, without vanity, that I was an apt pupil, and in the
+course of half a dozen lessons I had arrived at very considerable
+agility in the waltzing line, and could twirl round the room with him
+at such a pace as made the old gentleman pant again, and hardly left him
+breath enough to puff out a compliment to his pupil. I may say, that in
+a single week I became an expert waltzer; but as I wished, when I came
+out publicly in that character, to be quite sure of myself, and as I had
+hitherto practised not with a lady, but with a very fat old man, it was
+agreed that he should bring a lady of his acquaintance to perfect me,
+and accordingly, at my eighth lesson, Madame Springbock herself came to
+the dancing-room, and the old zephyr performed on the violin.
+
+If any man ventures the least sneer with regard to this lady, or dares
+to insinuate anything disrespectful to her or myself, I say at once that
+he is an impudent calumniator. Madame Springbock is old enough to be my
+grandmother, and as ugly a woman as I ever saw; but, though old, she was
+passionnee pour la danse, and not having (on account, doubtless, of her
+age and unprepossessing appearance) many opportunities of indulging in
+her favorite pastime, made up for lost time by immense activity
+whenever she could get a partner. In vain, at the end of the hour, would
+Springbock exclaim, "Amalia, my soul's blessing, the time is up!" "Play
+on, dear Alphonso!" would the old lady exclaim, whisking me round: and
+though I had not the least pleasure in such a homely partner, yet for
+the sake of perfecting myself I waltzed and waltzed with her, until we
+were both half dead with fatigue.
+
+At the end of three weeks I could waltz as well as any man in Germany.
+
+At the end of four weeks there was a grand ball at court in honor of H.
+H. the Prince of Dummerland and his Princess, and THEN I determined
+I would come out in public. I dressed myself with unusual care and
+splendor. My hair was curled and my moustache dyed to a nicety; and
+of the four hundred gentlemen present, if the girls of Kalbsbraten DID
+select one who wore an English hussar uniform, why should I disguise the
+fact? In spite of my silence, the news had somehow got abroad, as news
+will in such small towns,--Herr von Fitz-Boodle was coming out in a
+waltz that evening. His Highness the Duke even made an allusion to the
+circumstance. When on this eventful night, I went, as usual, and made
+him my bow in the presentation, "Vous, monsieur," said he--"vous qui
+etes si jeune, devez aimer la danse." I blushed as red as my trousers,
+and bowing, went away.
+
+I stepped up to Dorothea. Heavens! how beautiful she looked! and how
+archly she smiled as, with a thumping heart, I asked her hand for a
+WALTZ! She took out her little mother-of-pearl dancing-book, she wrote
+down my name with her pencil: we were engaged for the fourth waltz, and
+till then I left her to other partners.
+
+Who says that his first waltz is not a nervous moment? I vow I was
+more excited than by any duel I ever fought. I would not dance any
+contre-danse or galop. I repeatedly went to the buffet and got glasses
+of punch (dear simple Germany! 'tis with rum-punch and egg-flip thy
+children strengthen themselves for the dance!) I went into the ball-room
+and looked--the couples bounded before me, the music clashed and rung
+in my ears--all was fiery, feverish, indistinct. The gleaming white
+columns, the polished oaken floors in which the innumerable tapers were
+reflected--all together swam before my eyes, and I was in a pitch of
+madness almost when the fourth waltz at length came. "WILL YOU DANCE
+WITH YOUR SWORD ON?" said the sweetest voice in the world. I blushed,
+and stammered, and trembled, as I laid down that weapon and my cap, and
+hark! the music began!
+
+Oh, how my hand trembled as I placed it round the waist of Dorothea!
+With my left hand I took her right--did she squeeze it? I think she
+did--to this day I think she did. Away we went! we tripped over the
+polished oak floor like two young fairies. "Courage, monsieur," said
+she, with her sweet smile. Then it was "Tres bien, monsieur." Then I
+heard the voices humming and buzzing about. "Il danse bien, l'Anglais."
+"Ma foi, oui," says another. On we went, twirling and twisting, and
+turning and whirling; couple after couple dropped panting off. Little
+Klingenspohr himself was obliged to give in. All eyes were upon us--we
+were going round ALONE. Dorothea was almost exhausted, when
+
+* * * * *
+
+I have been sitting for two hours since I marked the asterisks,
+thinking--thinking. I have committed crimes in my life--who hasn't? But
+talk of remorse, what remorse is there like THAT which rushes up in a
+flood to my brain sometimes when I am alone, and causes me to blush when
+I'm a-bed in the dark?
+
+I fell, sir, on that infernal slippery floor. Down we came like shot; we
+rolled over and over in the midst of the ballroom, the music going
+ten miles an hour, 800 pairs of eyes fixed upon us, a cursed shriek of
+laughter bursting out from all sides. Heavens! how clear I heard it, as
+we went on rolling and rolling! "My child! my Dorothea!" shrieked out
+Madame Speck, rushing forward, and as soon as she had breath to do
+so, Dorothea of course screamed too; then she fainted, then she was
+disentangled from out my spurs, and borne off by a bevy of tittering
+women. "Clumsy brute!" said Madame Speck, turning her fat back upon me.
+I remained upon my seant, wild, ghastly, looking about. It was all up
+with me--I knew it was. I wished I could have died there, and I wish so
+still.
+
+Klingenspohr married her, that is the long and short; but before that
+event I placed a sabre-cut across the young scoundrel's nose, which
+destroyed HIS beauty for ever.
+
+O Dorothea! you can't forgive me--you oughtn't to forgive me; but I love
+you madly still.
+
+My next flame was Ottilia: but let us keep her for another number; my
+feelings overpower me at present.
+
+
+
+
+OTTILIA.
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+THE ALBUM--THE MEDITERRANEAN HEATH.
+
+
+Travelling some little time back in a wild part of Connemara, where
+I had been for fishing and seal-shooting, I had the good luck to get
+admission to the chateau of a hospitable Irish gentleman, and to procure
+some news of my once dear Ottilia.
+
+Yes, of no other than Ottilia v. Schlippenschlopp, the Muse of
+Kalbsbraten-Pumpernickel, the friendly little town far away in
+Sachsenland,--where old Speck built the town pump, where Klingenspohr
+was slashed across the nose,--where Dorothea rolled over and over in
+that horrible waltz with Fitz-Boo--Psha!--away with the recollection;
+but wasn't it strange to get news of Ottilia in the wildest corner of
+Ireland, where I never should have thought to hear her gentle name?
+Walking on that very Urrisbeg Mountain under whose shadow I heard
+Ottilia's name, Mackay, the learned author of the "Flora Patlandica,"
+discovered the Mediterranean heath,--such a flower as I have often
+plucked on the sides of Vesuvius, and as Proserpine, no doubt, amused
+herself in gathering as she strayed in the fields of Enna. Here it
+is--the self-same flower, peering out at the Atlantic from Roundstone
+Bay; here, too, in this wild lonely place, nestles the fragrant memory
+of my Ottilia!
+
+In a word, after a day on Ballylynch Lake (where, with a brown fly and
+a single hair, I killed fourteen salmon, the smallest twenty-nine pounds
+weight, the largest somewhere about five stone ten), my young friend
+Blake Bodkin Lynch Browne (a fine lad who has made his continental tour)
+and I adjourned, after dinner, to the young gentleman's private room,
+for the purpose of smoking a certain cigar; which is never more pleasant
+than after a hard day's sport, or a day spent in-doors, or after a good
+dinner, or a bad one, or at night when you are tired, or in the morning
+when you are fresh, or of a cold winter's day, or of a scorching
+summer's afternoon, or at any other moment you choose to fix upon.
+
+What should I see in Blake's room but a rack of pipes, such as are to
+be found in almost all the bachelors' rooms in Germany, and amongst them
+was a porcelain pipe-head bearing the image of the Kalbsbraten pump!
+There it was: the old spout, the old familiar allegory of Mars, Bacchus,
+Apollo virorum, and the rest, that I had so often looked at from
+Hofarchitect Speck's window, as I sat there, by the side of Dorothea.
+The old gentleman had given me one of these very pipes; for he had
+hundreds of them painted, wherewith he used to gratify almost every
+stranger who came into his native town.
+
+Any old place with which I have once been familiar (as, perhaps, I have
+before stated in these "Confessions"--but never mind that) is in some
+sort dear to me: and were I Lord Shootingcastle or Colonel Popland,
+I think after a residence of six months there I should love the Fleet
+Prison. As I saw the old familiar pipe, I took it down, and crammed it
+with Cavendish tobacco, and lay down on a sofa, and puffed away for an
+hour wellnigh, thinking of old, old times.
+
+"You're very entertaining to-night, Fitz," says young Blake, who had
+made several tumblers of punch for me, which I had gulped down without
+saying a word. "Don't ye think ye'd be more easy in bed than snorting
+and sighing there on my sofa, and groaning fit to make me go hang
+myself?"
+
+"I am thinking, Blake," says I, "about Pumpernickel, where old Speck
+gave you this pipe."
+
+"'Deed he did," replies the young man; "and did ye know the old Bar'n?"
+
+"I did," said I. "My friend, I have been by the banks of the Bendemeer.
+Tell me, are the nightingales still singing there, and do the roses
+still bloom?"
+
+"The HWHAT?" cries Blake. "What the divvle, Fitz, are you growling
+about? Bendemeer Lake's in Westmoreland, as I preshume; and as for roses
+and nightingales, I give ye my word it's Greek ye're talking to me." And
+Greek it very possibly was, for my young friend, though as good across
+country as any man in his county, has not the fine feeling and tender
+perception of beauty which may be found elsewhere, dear madam.
+
+"Tell me about Speck, Blake, and Kalbsbraten, and Dorothea, and
+Klingenspohr her husband."
+
+"He with the cut across the nose, is it?" cries Blake. "I know him well,
+and his old wife."
+
+"His old what, sir!" cries Fitz-Boodle, jumping up from his seat.
+"Klingenspohr's wife old!--is he married again?--Is Dorothea, then,
+d-d-dead?"
+
+"Dead!--no more dead than you are, only I take her to be
+five-and-thirty. And when a woman has had nine children, you know,
+she looks none the younger; and I can tell ye that when she trod on my
+corruns at a ball at the Grand Juke's, I felt something heavier than a
+feather on my foot."
+
+"Madame de Klingenspohr, then," replied I, hesitating somewhat, "has
+grown rather--rather st-st-out?" I could hardly get out the OUT, and
+trembled I don't know why as I asked the question.
+
+"Stout, begad!--she weighs fourteen stone, saddle and bridle. That's
+right, down goes my pipe; flop! crash falls the tumbler into the fender!
+Break away, my boy, and remember, whoever breaks a glass here pays a
+dozen."
+
+The fact was, that the announcement of Dorothea's changed condition
+caused no small disturbance within me, and I expressed it in the abrupt
+manner mentioned by young Blake.
+
+Roused thus from my reverie, I questioned the young fellow about his
+residence at Kalbsbraten, which has been always since the war a favorite
+place for our young gentry, and heard with some satisfaction that
+Potzdorff was married to the Behrenstein, Haabart had left the dragoons,
+the Crown Prince had broken with the ---- but mum! of what interest are
+all these details to the reader, who has never been at friendly little
+Kalbsbraten?
+
+Presently Lynch reaches me down one of the three books that formed his
+library (the "Racing Calendar" and a book of fishing-flies making up
+the remainder of the set). "And there's my album," says he. "You'll
+find plenty of hands in it that you'll recognize, as you are an old
+Pumpernickelaner." And so I did, in truth: it was a little book after
+the fashion of German albums, in which good simple little ledger every
+friend or acquaintance of the owner inscribes a poem or stanza from some
+favorite poet or philosopher with the transcriber's own name, as thus:--
+
+"To the true house-friend, and beloved Irelandish youth.
+
+"'Sera nunquam est ad bonos mores via.'
+
+"WACKERBART, Professor at the Grand-Ducal Kalbsbraten-Pumpernickelisch
+Gymnasium."
+
+
+Another writes,--
+
+"'Wander on roses and forget me not.'
+
+"AMALIA v. NACHTMUTZE,
+
+"GEB. v. SHALAFROCK,"
+
+
+with a flourish, and the picture mayhap of a rose. Let the reader
+imagine some hundreds of these interesting inscriptions, and he will
+have an idea of the book.
+
+Turning over the leaves I came presently on DOROTHEA'S hand. There
+it was, the little neat, pretty handwriting, the dear old up-and-down
+strokes that I had not looked at for many a long year,--the
+Mediterranean heath, which grew on the sunniest banks of Fitz-Boodle's
+existence, and here found, dear, dear little sprig! in rude Galwagian
+bog-lands.
+
+"Look at the other side of the page," says Lynch, rather sarcastically
+(for I don't care to confess that I kissed the name of "Dorothea v.
+Klingenspohr, born v. Speck" written under an extremely feeble passage
+of verse). "Look at the other side of the paper!"
+
+I did, and what do you think I saw?
+
+I saw the writing of five of the little Klingenspohrs, who have all
+sprung up since my time.
+
+*****
+
+"Ha! ha! haw!" screamed the impertinent young Irishman, and the story
+was all over Connemara and Joyce's Country in a day after.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+OTTILIA IN PARTICULAR.
+
+
+Some kind critic who peruses these writings will, doubtless, have the
+goodness to point out that the simile of the Mediterranean heath is
+applied to two personages in this chapter--to Ottilia and Dorothea, and
+say, Psha! the fellow is but a poor unimaginative creature not to be
+able to find a simile apiece at least for the girls; how much better
+would WE have done the business!
+
+Well, it is a very pretty simile. The girls were rivals, were beautiful,
+I loved them both,--which should have the sprig of heath? Mr. Cruikshank
+(who has taken to serious painting) is getting ready for the exhibition
+a fine piece, representing Fitz-Boodle on the Urrisbeg Mountain, county
+Galway, Ireland, with a sprig of heath in his hand, hesitating, like
+Paris, on which of the beauties he should bestow it. In the background
+is a certain animal between two bundles of hay; but that I take to
+represent the critic, puzzled to which of my young beauties to assign
+the choice.
+
+If Dorothea had been as rich as Miss Coutts, and had come to me the next
+day after the accident at the ball and said, "George, will you marry
+me?" it must not be supposed I would have done any such thing. THAT
+dream had vanished for ever: rage and pride took the place of love; and
+the only chance I had of recovering from my dreadful discomfiture was
+by bearing it bravely, and trying, if possible, to awaken a little
+compassion in my favor. I limped home (arranging my scheme with great
+presence of mind, as I actually sat spinning there on the ground)--I
+limped home, sent for Pflastersticken, the court-surgeon, and addressed
+him to the following effect: "Pflastersticken," says I, "there has been
+an accident at court of which you will hear. You will send in leeches,
+pills, and the deuce knows what, and you will say that I have dislocated
+my leg: for some days you will state that I am in considerable danger.
+You are a good fellow and a man of courage I know, for which very reason
+you can appreciate those qualities in another; so mind, if you breathe a
+word of my secret, either you or I must lose a life."
+
+Away went the surgeon, and the next day all Kalbsbraten knew that I was
+on the point of death: I had been delirious all night, had had eighty
+leeches, besides I don't know how much medicine; but the Kalbsbrateners
+knew to a scruple. Whenever anybody was ill, this little kind society
+knew what medicines were prescribed. Everybody in the town knew what
+everybody had for dinner. If Madame Rumpel had her satin dyed ever so
+quietly, the whole society was on the qui vive; if Countess Pultuski
+sent to Berlin for a new set of teeth, not a person in Kalbsbraten but
+what was ready to compliment her as she put them on; if Potzdorff paid
+his tailor's bill, or Muffinstein bought a piece of black wax for his
+moustaches, it was the talk of the little city. And so, of course, was
+my accident. In their sorrow for my misfortune, Dorothea's was quite
+forgotten, and those eighty leeches saved me. I became interesting; I
+had cards left at my door; and I kept my room for a fortnight, during
+which time I read every one of M. Kotzebue's plays.
+
+At the end of that period I was convalescent, though still a little
+lame. I called at old Speck's house and apologized for my clumsiness,
+with the most admirable coolness; I appeared at court, and stated calmly
+that I did not intend to dance any more; and when Klingenspohr grinned,
+I told that young gentleman such a piece of my mind as led to his
+wearing a large sticking-plaster patch on his nose: which was split as
+neatly down the middle as you would split an orange at dessert. In a
+word what man could do to repair my defeat, I did.
+
+There is but one thing now of which I am ashamed--of those killing
+epigrams which I wrote (mon Dieu! must I own it?--but even the fury of
+my anger proves the extent of my love!) against the Speck family.
+They were handed about in confidence at court, and made a frightful
+sensation:
+
+                   "IS IT POSSIBLE?"
+
+          "There happened at Schloss P-mp-rn-ckel,
+           A strange mishap our sides to tickle,
+             And set the people in a roar;--
+           A strange caprice of Fortune fickle:
+           I never thought at Pumpernickel
+             To see a SPECK UPON THE FLOOR!"
+
+
+       LA PERFIDE ALBION; OR, A CAUTION TO WALTZERS.
+
+          "'Come to the dance,' the Briton said,
+           And forward D-r-th-a led,
+             Fair, fresh, and three-and-twenty!
+           Ah, girls; beware of Britons red!
+           What wonder that it TURNED HER HEAD?
+             SAT VERBUM SAPIENTI."
+
+
+          "REASONS FOR NOT MARRYING.
+
+          "'The lovely Miss S.
+           Will surely say "yes,"
+           You've only to ask and try;'
+           'That subject we'll quit;'
+           Says Georgy the wit,
+           'I'VE A MUCH BETTER SPEC IN MY EYE!'"
+
+This last epigram especially was voted so killing that it flew
+like wildfire; and I know for a fact that our Charge-d'Affaires at
+Kalbsbraten sent a courier express with it to the Foreign Office in
+England, whence, through our amiable Foreign Secretary, Lord P-lm-rston,
+it made its way into every fashionable circle: nay, I have reason to
+believe caused a smile on the cheek of R-y-lty itself. Now that Time has
+taken away the sting of these epigrams, there can be no harm in giving
+them; and 'twas well enough then to endeavor to hide under the lash of
+wit the bitter pangs of humiliation: but my heart bleeds now to think
+that I should have ever brought a tear on the gentle cheek of Dorothea.
+
+Not content with this--with humiliating her by satire, and with wounding
+her accepted lover across the nose--I determined to carry my revenge
+still farther, and to fall in love with somebody else. This person was
+Ottilia v. Schlippenschlopp.
+
+Otho Sigismund Freyherr von Schlippenschlopp, Knight Grand Cross of
+the Ducal Order of the Two-Necked Swan of Pumpernickel, of the
+Porc-et-Siflet of Kalbsbraten, Commander of the George and Blue-Boar of
+Dummerland, Excellency, and High Chancellor of the United Duchies, lived
+in the second floor of a house in the Schwapsgasse; where, with his
+private income and his revenues as Chancellor, amounting together to
+some 300L. per annum, he maintained such a state as very few other
+officers of the Grand-Ducal Crown could exhibit. The Baron is married to
+Marie Antoinette, a Countess of the house of Kartoffelstadt, branches
+of which have taken root all over Germany. He has no sons, and but one
+daughter, the Fraulein OTTILIA.
+
+The Chancellor is a worthy old gentleman, too fat and wheezy to preside
+at the Privy Council, fond of his pipe, his ease, and his rubber. His
+lady is a very tall and pale Roman-nosed Countess, who looks as gentle
+as Mrs. Robert Roy, where, in the novel, she is for putting Baillie
+Nicol Jarvie into the lake, and who keeps the honest Chancellor in the
+greatest order. The Fraulein Ottilia had not arrived at Kalbsbraten when
+the little affair between me and Dorothea was going on; or rather had
+only just come in for the conclusion of it, being presented for the
+first time that year at the ball where I--where I met with my accident.
+
+At the time when the Countess was young, it was not the fashion in her
+country to educate the young ladies so highly as since they have been
+educated; and provided they could waltz, sew, and make puddings, they
+were thought to be decently bred; being seldom called upon for algebra
+or Sanscrit in the discharge of the honest duties of their lives. But
+Fraulein Ottilia was of the modern school in this respect, and came back
+from the pension at Strasburg speaking all the languages, dabbling in
+all the sciences: an historian, a poet,--a blue of the ultramarinest
+sort, in a word. What a difference there was, for instance, between
+poor, simple Dorothea's love of novel reading and the profound
+encyclopaedic learning of Ottilia!
+
+Before the latter arrived from Strasburg (where she had been under the
+care of her aunt the canoness, Countess Ottilia of Kartoffeldstadt, to
+whom I here beg to offer my humblest respects), Dorothea had passed for
+a bel esprit in the little court circle, and her little simple stock
+of accomplishments had amused us all very well. She used to sing "Herz,
+mein Herz" and "T'en souviens-tu," in a decent manner (ONCE, before
+heaven, I thought her singing better than Grisi's), and then she had a
+little album in which she drew flowers, and used to embroider slippers
+wonderfully, and was very merry at a game of loto or forfeits, and had
+a hundred small agremens de societe! which rendered her an acceptable
+member of it.
+
+But when Ottilia arrived, poor Dolly's reputation was crushed in a
+month. The former wrote poems both in French and German; she painted
+landscapes and portraits in real oil; and she twanged off a rattling
+piece of Listz or Kalkbrenner in such a brilliant way, that Dora
+scarcely dared to touch the instrument after her, or ventured, after
+Ottilia had trilled and gurgled through "Una voce," or "Di piacer"
+(Rossini was in fashion then), to lift up her little modest pipe in a
+ballad. What was the use of the poor thing going to sit in the park,
+where so many of the young officers used ever to gather round her? Whir!
+Ottilia went by galloping on a chestnut mare with a groom after her, and
+presently all the young fellows who could buy or hire horseflesh were
+prancing in her train.
+
+When they met, Ottilia would bounce towards her soul's darling, and
+put her hands round her waist, and call her by a thousand affectionate
+names, and then talk of her as only ladies or authors can talk of one
+another. How tenderly she would hint at Dora's little imperfections of
+education!--how cleverly she would insinuate that the poor girl had no
+wit! and, thank God, no more she had. The fact is, that do what I will I
+see I'm in love with her still, and would be if she had fifty children;
+but my passion blinded me THEN, and every arrow that fiery Ottilia
+discharged I marked with savage joy. Dolly, thank heaven, didn't mind
+the wit much; she was too simple for that. But still the recurrence of
+it would leave in her heart a vague, indefinite feeling of pain, and
+somehow she began to understand that her empire was passing away,
+and that her dear friend hated her like poison; and so she married
+Klingenspohr. I have written myself almost into a reconciliation with
+the silly fellow; for the truth is, he has been a good, honest husband
+to her, and she has children, and makes puddings, and is happy.
+
+Ottilia was pale and delicate. She wore her glistening black hair in
+bands, and dressed in vapory white muslin. She sang her own words to
+her harp, and they commonly insinuated that she was alone in the
+world,--that she suffered some inexpressible and mysterious heart-pangs,
+the lot of all finer geniuses,--that though she lived and moved in the
+world she was not of it, that she was of a consumptive tendency and
+might look for a premature interment. She even had fixed on the spot
+where she should lie: the violets grew there, she said, the river went
+moaning by; the gray willow whispered sadly over her head, and her heart
+pined to be at rest. "Mother," she would say, turning to her parent,
+"promise me--promise me to lay me in that spot when the parting hour has
+come!" At which Madame de Schlippenschlopp would shriek, and grasp her
+in her arms; and at which, I confess, I would myself blubber like a
+child. She had six darling friends at school, and every courier from
+Kalbsbraten carried off whole reams of her letter-paper.
+
+In Kalbsbraten, as in every other German town, there are a vast number
+of literary characters, of whom our young friend quickly became the
+chief. They set up a literary journal, which appeared once a week, upon
+light-blue or primrose paper, and which, in compliment to the lovely
+Ottilia's maternal name, was called the Kartoffelnkranz. Here are a
+couple of her ballads extracted from the Kranz, and by far the most
+cheerful specimen of her style. For in her songs she never would
+willingly let off the heroines without a suicide or a consumption.
+She never would hear of such a thing as a happy marriage, and had an
+appetite for grief quite amazing in so young a person. As for her dying
+and desiring to be buried under the willow-tree, of which the first
+ballad is the subject, though I believed the story then, I have at
+present some doubts about it. For, since the publication of my Memoirs,
+I have been thrown much into the society of literary persons (who admire
+my style hugely), and egad! though some of them are dismal enough in
+their works, I find them in their persons the least sentimental class
+that ever a gentleman fell in with.
+
+     "THE WILLOW-TREE.
+
+
+     "Know ye the willow-tree
+       Whose gray leaves quiver,
+     Whispering gloomily
+       To yon pale river?
+     Lady, at even-tide
+       Wander not near it,
+     They say its branches hide
+       A sad, lost spirit!
+
+     "Once to the willow-tree
+       A maid came fearful,
+     Pale seemed her cheek to be,
+       Her blue eye tearful;
+     Soon as she saw the tree,
+       Her step moved fleeter,
+     No one was there--ah me!
+       No one to meet her!
+
+     "Quick beat her heart to hear
+       The far bell's chime
+     Toll from the chapel-tower
+       The trysting time:
+     But the red sun went down
+       In golden flame,
+     And though she looked round,
+       Yet no one came!
+
+     "Presently came the night,
+       Sadly to greet her,--
+     Moon in her silver light,
+       Stars in their glitter.
+     Then sank the moon away
+       Under the billow,
+     Still wept the maid alone--
+       There by the willow!
+
+     "Through the long darkness,
+       By the stream rolling,
+     Hour after hour went on
+       Tolling and tolling.
+     Long was the darkness,
+       Lonely and stilly;
+     Shrill came the night-wind,
+       Piercing and chilly.
+
+     "Shrill blew the morning breeze,
+       Biting and cold,
+     Bleak peers the gray dawn
+       Over the wold.
+     Bleak over moor and stream
+       Looks the grey dawn,
+     Gray, with dishevelled hair,
+     Still stands the willow there--
+
+
+      THE MAID IS GONE!
+
+     "Domine, Domine!
+       Sing we a litany,--
+      Sing for poor maiden-hearts broken and
+          weary;
+       Domine, Domine!
+     Sing we a litany,
+       Wail we and weep we a wild Miserere!"
+
+One of the chief beauties of this ballad (for the translation of which I
+received some well-merited compliments) is the delicate way in which the
+suicide of the poor young woman under the willow-tree is hinted at; for
+that she threw herself into the water and became one among the lilies
+of the stream, is as clear as a pikestaff. Her suicide is committed some
+time in the darkness, when the slow hours move on tolling and tolling,
+and is hinted at darkly as befits the time and the deed.
+
+But that unromantic brute, Van Cutsem, the Dutch Charge-d'Affaires, sent
+to the Kartoffelnkranz of the week after a conclusion of the ballad,
+which shows what a poor creature he must be. His pretext for writing it
+was, he said, because he could not bear such melancholy endings to poems
+and young women, and therefore he submitted the following lines:--
+
+     I.
+
+     "Long by the willow-trees
+       Vainly they sought her,
+     Wild rang the mother's screams
+       O'er the gray water:
+     'Where is my lovely one?
+       Where is my daughter?
+
+     II.
+
+     "'Rouse thee, sir constable--
+       Rouse thee and look;
+     Fisherman, bring your net,
+       Boatman your hook.
+     Beat in the lily-beds,
+       Dive in the brook!'
+
+     III.
+
+     "Vainly the constable
+       Shouted and called her;
+     Vainly the fisherman
+       Beat the green alder;
+     Vainly he flung the net,
+       Never it hauled her!
+
+     IV.
+
+     "Mother beside the fire
+       Sat, her nightcap in;
+     Father, in easy chair,
+       Gloomily napping;
+     When at the window-sill
+       Came a light tapping!
+
+     V.
+
+     "And a pale countenance
+       Looked through the casement.
+     Loud beat the mother's heart,
+       Sick with amazement,
+     And at the vision which
+       Came to surprise her,
+     Shrieked in an agony--
+       'Lor! it's Elizar!'
+
+     VI
+
+     "Yes, 'twas Elizabeth--
+       Yes, 'twas their girl;
+     Pale was her cheek, and her
+       Hair out of curl.
+     'Mother!' the loving one,
+       Blushing, exclaimed,
+     'Let not your innocent
+       Lizzy be blamed.
+
+     VII.
+
+     "'Yesterday, going to aunt
+       Jones's to tea,
+     Mother, dear mother, I
+       FORGOT THE DOOR-KEY!
+     And as the night was cold,
+       And the way steep,
+     Mrs. Jones kept me to
+       Breakfast and sleep.'
+
+     VIII.
+
+     "Whether her Pa and Ma
+       Fully believed her,
+     That we shall never know,
+       Stern they received her;
+     And for the work of that
+       Cruel, though short, night,
+     Sent her to bed without
+       Tea for a fortnight.
+
+     IX.
+
+            "MORAL
+
+     "Hey diddle diddlety,
+       Cat and the Fiddlety,
+     Maidens of England take caution by she!
+       Let love and suicide
+       Never tempt you aside,
+     And always remember to take the door-key!"
+
+Some people laughed at this parody, and even preferred it to the
+original; but for myself I have no patience with the individual who
+can turn the finest sentiments of our nature into ridicule, and make
+everything sacred a subject of scorn. The next ballad is less gloomy
+than that of the willow-tree, and in it the lovely writer expresses her
+longing for what has charmed us all, and, as it were, squeezes the whole
+spirit of the fairy tale into a few stanzas:--
+
+     "FAIRY DAYS.
+
+     "Beside the old hall-fire--upon my nurse's knee,
+     Of happy fairy days--what tales were told to me!
+     I thought the world was once--all peopled with princesses,
+     And my heart would beat to hear--their loves and their distresses;
+     And many a quiet night,--in slumber sweet and deep,
+     The pretty fairy people--would visit me in sleep.
+
+     "I saw them in my dreams--come flying east and west,
+     With wondrous fairy gifts--the new-born babe they bless'd;
+     One has brought a jewel--and one a crown of gold,
+     And one has brought a curse--but she is wrinkled and old.
+     The gentle queen turns pale--to hear those words of sin,
+     But the king he only laughs--and bids the dance begin.
+
+     "The babe has grown to be--the fairest of the land
+     And rides the forest green--a hawk upon her hand.
+     An ambling palfrey white--a golden robe and crown;
+     I've seen her in my dreams--riding up and down;
+     And heard the ogre laugh--as she fell into his snare,
+     At the little tender creature--who wept and tore her hair!
+
+     "But ever when it seemed--her need was at the sorest
+     A prince in shining mail--comes prancing through the forest.
+     A waving ostrich-plume--a buckler burnished bright;
+     I've seen him in my dreams--good sooth! a gallant knight.
+     His lips are coral red--beneath a dark moustache;
+     See how he waves his hand--and how his blue eyes flash!
+
+     "'Come forth, thou Paynim knight!'--he shouts in accents clear.
+     The giant and the maid--both tremble his voice to hear.
+     Saint Mary guard him well!--he draws his falchion keen,
+     The giant and the knight--are fighting on the green.
+     I see them in my dreams--his blade gives stroke on stroke,
+     The giant pants and reels--and tumbles like an oak!
+
+     "With what a blushing grace--he falls upon his knee
+     And takes the lady's hand--and whispers, 'You are free!'
+     Ah! happy childish tales--of knight and faerie!
+     I waken from my dreams--but there's ne'er a knight for me;
+     I waken from my dreams--and wish that I could be
+     A child by the old hall-fire--upon my nurse's knee."
+
+Indeed, Ottilia looked like a fairy herself: pale, small, slim, and
+airy. You could not see her face, as it were, for her eyes, which were
+so wild, and so tender, and shone so that they would have dazzled an
+eagle, much more a poor goose of a Fitz-Boodle. In the theatre, when she
+sat on the opposite side of the house, those big eyes used to pursue me
+as I sat pretending to listen to the "Zauberflote," or to "Don Carlos,"
+or "Egmont," and at the tender passages, especially, they would have
+such a winning, weeping, imploring look with them as flesh and blood
+could not bear.
+
+Shall I tell how I became a poet for the dear girl's sake? 'Tis surely
+unnecessary after the reader has perused the above versions of her
+poems. Shall I tell what wild follies I committed in prose as well as
+in verse? how I used to watch under her window of icy evenings, and with
+chilblainy fingers sing serenades to her on the guitar? Shall I tell
+how, in a sledging-party, I had the happiness to drive her, and of
+the delightful privilege which is, on these occasions, accorded to the
+driver?
+
+Any reader who has spent a winter in Germany perhaps knows it. A large
+party of a score or more of sledges is formed. Away they go to some
+pleasure-house that has been previously fixed upon, where a ball and
+collation are prepared, and where each man, as his partner descends, has
+the delicious privilege of saluting her. O heavens and earth! I may grow
+to be a thousand years old, but I can never forget the rapture of that
+salute.
+
+"The keen air has given me an appetite," said the dear angel, as we
+entered the supper-room; and to say the truth, fairy as she was, she
+made a remarkably good meal--consuming a couple of basins of white
+soup, several kinds of German sausages, some Westphalia ham, some white
+puddings, an anchovy-salad made with cornichons and onions, sweets
+innumerable, and a considerable quantity of old Steinwein and rum-punch
+afterwards. Then she got up and danced as brisk as a fairy; in which
+operation I of course did not follow her, but had the honor, at the
+close of the evening's amusement, once more to have her by my side in
+the sledge, as we swept in the moonlight over the snow.
+
+Kalbsbraten is a very hospitable place as far as tea-parties are
+concerned, but I never was in one where dinners were so scarce. At the
+palace they occurred twice or thrice in a month; but on these occasions
+spinsters were not invited, and I seldom had the opportunity of seeing
+my Ottilia except at evening-parties.
+
+Nor are these, if the truth must be told, very much to my taste. Dancing
+I have forsworn, whist is too severe a study for me, and I do not like
+to play ecarte with old ladies, who are sure to cheat you in the course
+of an evening's play.
+
+But to have an occasional glance at Ottilia was enough; and many and
+many a napoleon did I lose to her mamma, Madame de Schlippenschlopp, for
+the blest privilege of looking at her daughter. Many is the tea-party
+I went to, shivering into cold clothes after dinner (which is my
+abomination) in order to have one little look at the lady of my soul.
+
+At these parties there were generally refreshments of a nature more
+substantial than mere tea punch, both milk and rum, hot wine, consomme,
+and a peculiar and exceedingly disagreeable sandwich made of a mixture
+of cold white puddings and garlic, of which I have forgotten the name,
+and always detested the savor.
+
+Gradually a conviction came upon me that Ottilia ATE A GREAT DEAL.
+
+I do not dislike to see a woman eat comfortably. I even think that an
+agreeable woman ought to be friande, and should love certain little
+dishes and knick-knacks. I know that though at dinner they commonly take
+nothing, they have had roast-mutton with the children at two, and laugh
+at their pretensions to starvation.
+
+No! a woman who eats a grain of rice, like Amina in the "Arabian
+Nights," is absurd and unnatural; but there is a modus in rebus: there
+is no reason why she should be a ghoul, a monster, an ogress, a horrid
+gormandizeress--faugh!
+
+It was, then, with a rage amounting almost to agony, that I found
+Ottilia ate too much at every meal. She was always eating, and always
+eating too much. If I went there in the morning, there was the horrid
+familiar odor of those oniony sandwiches; if in the afternoon, dinner
+had been just removed, and I was choked by reeking reminiscences of
+roast-meat. Tea we have spoken of. She gobbled up more cakes than any
+six people present; then came the supper and the sandwiches again, and
+the egg-flip and the horrible rum-punch.
+
+She was as thin as ever--paler if possible than ever:--but, by heavens!
+HER NOSE BEGAN TO GROW RED!
+
+Mon Dieu! how I used to watch and watch it! Some days it was purple,
+some days had more of the vermilion--I could take an affidavit that
+after a heavy night's supper it was more swollen, more red than before.
+
+I recollect one night when we were playing a round game (I had been
+looking at her nose very eagerly and sadly for some time), she of
+herself brought up the conversation about eating, and confessed that she
+had five meals a day.
+
+"THAT ACCOUNTS FOR IT!" says I, flinging down the cards, and springing
+up and rushing like a madman out of the room. I rushed away into the
+night, and wrestled with my passion. "What! Marry," said I, "a woman who
+eats meat twenty-one times in a week, besides breakfast and tea? Marry a
+sarcophagus, a cannibal, a butcher's shop?--Away!" I strove and strove.
+I drank, I groaned, I wrestled and fought with my love--but it overcame
+me: one look of those eyes brought me to her feet again. I yielded
+myself up like a slave; I fawned and whined for her; I thought her nose
+was not so VERY red.
+
+Things came to this pitch that I sounded his Highness's Minister to know
+whether he would give me service in the Duchy; I thought of purchasing
+an estate there. I was given to understand that I should get a
+chamberlain's key and some post of honor did I choose to remain, and
+I even wrote home to my brother Tom in England, hinting a change in my
+condition.
+
+At this juncture the town of Hamburg sent his Highness the Grand Duke
+(apropos of a commercial union which was pending between the two States)
+a singular present: no less than a certain number of barrels of oysters,
+which are considered extreme luxuries in Germany, especially in the
+inland parts of the country, where they are almost unknown.
+
+In honor of the oysters and the new commercial treaty (which arrived
+in fourgons despatched for the purpose), his Highness announced a grand
+supper and ball, and invited all the quality of all the principalities
+round about. It was a splendid affair: the grand saloon brilliant with
+hundreds of uniforms and brilliant toilettes--not the least beautiful
+among them, I need not say, was Ottilia.
+
+At midnight the supper-rooms were thrown open and we formed into little
+parties of six, each having a table, nobly served with plate, a lackey
+in attendance, and a gratifying ice-pail or two of champagne to egayer
+the supper. It was no small cost to serve five hundred people on silver,
+and the repast was certainly a princely and magnificent one.
+
+I had, of course, arranged with Mademoiselle de Schlippenschlopp.
+Captains Frumpel and Fridelberger of the Duke's Guard, Mesdames de
+Butterbrod and Bopp, formed our little party.
+
+The first course, of course, consisted of THE OYSTERS. Ottilia's eyes
+gleamed with double brilliancy as the lackey opened them. There were
+nine apiece for us--how well I recollect the number!
+
+I never was much of an oyster-eater, nor can I relish them in
+naturalibus as some do, but require a quantity of sauces, lemons,
+cayenne peppers, bread and butter, and so forth, to render them
+palatable.
+
+By the time I had made my preparations, Ottilia, the Captains, and the
+two ladies, had wellnigh finished theirs. Indeed Ottilia had gobbled up
+all hers, and there were only my nine in the dish.
+
+I took one--IT WAS BAD. The scent of it was enough,--they were all bad.
+Ottilia had eaten nine bad oysters.
+
+I put down the horrid shell. Her eyes glistened more and more; she could
+not take them off the tray.
+
+"Dear Herr George," she said, "WILL YOU GIVE ME YOUR OYSTERS?"
+
+*****
+
+She had them all down--before--I could say--Jack--Robinson!
+
+I left Kalbsbraten that night, and have never been there since.
+
+
+
+
+
+FITZ-BOODLE'S PROFESSIONS.
+
+BEING APPEALS TO THE UNEMPLOYED YOUNGER SONS OF THE NOBILITY.
+
+
+
+
+FIRST PROFESSION.
+
+
+The fair and honest proposition in which I offered to communicate
+privately with parents and guardians, relative to two new and lucrative
+professions which I had discovered, has, I find from the publisher,
+elicited not one single inquiry from those personages, who I can't but
+think are very little careful of their children's welfare to allow
+such a chance to be thrown away. It is not for myself I speak, as my
+conscience proudly tells me; for though I actually gave up Ascot in
+order to be in the way should any father of a family be inclined to
+treat with me regarding my discoveries, yet I am grieved, not on my own
+account, but on theirs, and for the wretched penny-wise policy that has
+held them back.
+
+That they must feel an interest in my announcement is unquestionable.
+Look at the way in which the public prints of all parties have noticed
+my appearance in the character of a literary man! Putting aside my
+personal narrative, look at the offer I made to the nation,--a choice
+of no less than two new professions! Suppose I had invented as many new
+kinds of butcher's meat; does any one pretend that the world, tired as
+it is of the perpetual recurrence of beef, mutton, veal, cold beef, cold
+veal, cold mutton, hashed ditto, would not have jumped eagerly at the
+delightful intelligence that their old, stale, stupid meals were about
+to be varied at last?
+
+Of course people would have come forward. I should have had deputations
+from Mr. Gibletts and the fashionable butchers of this world; petitions
+would have poured in from Whitechapel salesmen; the speculators panting
+to know the discovery; the cautious with stock in hand eager to bribe me
+to silence and prevent the certain depreciation of the goods which
+they already possessed. I should have dealt with them, not greedily or
+rapaciously, but on honest principles of fair barter. "Gentlemen," I
+should have said, or rather, "Gents"--which affectionate diminutive
+is, I am given to understand, at present much in use among commercial
+persons--"Gents, my researches, my genius, or my good fortune, have
+brought me to the valuable discovery about which you are come to treat.
+Will you purchase it outright, or will you give the discoverer an honest
+share of the profits resulting from your speculation? My position in the
+world puts ME out of the power of executing the vast plan I have formed,
+but 'twill be a certain fortune to him who engages in it; and why should
+not I, too, participate in that fortune?"
+
+Such would have been my manner of dealing with the world, too, with
+regard to my discovery of the new professions. Does not the world want
+new professions? Are there not thousands of well-educated men panting,
+struggling, pushing, starving, in the old ones? Grim tenants of
+chambers looking out for attorneys who never come?--wretched physicians
+practising the stale joke of being called out of church until people no
+longer think fit even to laugh or to pity? Are there not hoary-headed
+midshipmen, antique ensigns growing mouldy upon fifty years' half-pay?
+Nay, are there not men who would pay anything to be employed rather
+than remain idle? But such is the glut of professionals, the horrible
+cut-throat competition among them, that there is no chance for one in a
+thousand, be he ever so willing, or brave, or clever: in the great ocean
+of life he makes a few strokes, and puffs, and sputters, and sinks, and
+the innumerable waves overwhelm him and he is heard of no more.
+
+Walking to my banker's t'other day--and I pledge my sacred honor this
+story is true--I met a young fellow whom I had known attache to an
+embassy abroad, a young man of tolerable parts, unwearied patience, with
+some fortune too, and, moreover, allied to a noble Whig family, whose
+interest had procured him his appointment to the legation at Krahwinkel,
+where I knew him. He remained for ten years a diplomatic character;
+he was the working-man of the legation; he sent over the most diffuse
+translations of the German papers for the use of the Foreign Secretary;
+he signed passports with most astonishing ardor; he exiled himself
+for ten long years in a wretched German town, dancing attendance at
+court-balls and paying no end of money for uniforms. And what for? At
+the end of the ten years--during which period of labor he never received
+a single shilling from the Government which employed him (rascally
+spendthrift of a Government, va!),--he was offered the paid attacheship
+to the court of H. M. the King of the Mosquito Islands, and refused that
+appointment a week before the Whig Ministry retired. Then he knew that
+there was no further chance for him, and incontinently quitted the
+diplomatic service for ever, and I have no doubt will sell his uniform
+a bargain. The Government had HIM a bargain certainly; nor is he by any
+means the first person who has been sold at that price.
+
+Well, my worthy friend met me in the street and informed me of these
+facts with a smiling countenance,--which I thought a masterpiece of
+diplomacy. Fortune had been belaboring and kicking him for ten whole
+years, and here he was grinning in my face: could Monsieur de Talleyrand
+have acted better? "I have given up diplomacy," said Protocol, quite
+simply and good-humoredly, "for between you and me, my good fellow, it's
+a very slow profession; sure, perhaps, but slow. But though I gained
+no actual pecuniary remuneration in the service, I have learned all
+the languages in Europe, which will be invaluable to me in my new
+profession--the mercantile one--in which directly I looked out for a
+post I found one."
+
+"What! and a good pay?" said I.
+
+"Why, no; that's absurd, you know. No young men, strangers to business,
+are paid much to speak of. Besides, I don't look to a paltry clerk's
+pay. Some day, when thoroughly acquainted with the business (I shall
+learn it in about seven years), I shall go into a good house with my
+capital and become junior partner."
+
+"And meanwhile?"
+
+"Meanwhile I conduct the foreign correspondence of the eminent house of
+Jam, Ram, and Johnson; and very heavy it is, I can tell you. From nine
+till six every day, except foreign post days, and then from nine till
+eleven. Dirty dark court to sit in; snobs to talk to,--great change, as
+you may fancy."
+
+"And you do all this for nothing?"
+
+"I do it to learn the business." And so saying Protocol gave me a
+knowing nod and went his way.
+
+Good heavens! I thought, and is this a true story? Are there hundreds
+of young men in a similar situation at the present day, giving away the
+best years of their youth for the sake of a mere windy hope of something
+in old age, and dying before they come to the goal? In seven years he
+hopes to have a business, and then to have the pleasure of risking his
+money? He will be admitted into some great house as a particular favor,
+and three months after the house will fail. Has it not happened to a
+thousand of our acquaintance? I thought I would run after him and tell
+him about the new professions that I have invented.
+
+"Oh! ay! those you wrote about in Fraser's Magazine. Egad! George,
+Necessity makes strange fellows of us all. Who would ever have thought
+of you SPELLING, much more writing?"
+
+"Never mind that. Will you, if I tell you of a new profession that, with
+a little cleverness and instruction from me, you may bring to a most
+successful end--will you, I say, make me a fair return?"
+
+"My dear creature," replied young Protocol, "what nonsense you talk!
+I saw that very humbug in the Magazine. You say you have made a great
+discovery--very good; you puff your discovery--very right; you ask money
+for it--nothing can be more reasonable; and then you say that you intend
+to make your discovery public in the next number of the Magazine. Do you
+think I will be such a fool as to give you money for a thing which I can
+have next month for nothing? Good-by, George my boy; the NEXT discovery
+you make I'll tell you how to get a better price for it." And with this
+the fellow walked off, looking supremely knowing and clever.
+
+This tale of the person I have called Protocol is not told without a
+purpose, you may be sure. In the first place, it shows what are the
+reasons that nobody has made application to me concerning the new
+professions, namely, because I have passed my word to make them known
+in this Magazine, which persons may have for the purchasing, stealing,
+borrowing, or hiring, and, therefore, they will never think of applying
+personally to me. And, secondly, his story proves also my assertion,
+viz, that all professions are most cruelly crowded at present, and that
+men will make the most absurd outlay and sacrifices for the smallest
+chance of success at some future period. Well, then, I will be a
+benefactor to my race, if I cannot be to one single member of it, whom
+I love better than most men. What I have discovered I will make known;
+there shall be no shilly-shallying work here, no circumlocution, no
+bottle-conjuring business. But oh! I wish for all our sakes that I had
+had an opportunity to impart the secret to one or two persons only; for,
+after all, but one or two can live in the manner I would suggest. And
+when the discovery is made known, I am sure ten thousand will try. The
+rascals! I can see their brass-plates gleaming over scores of doors.
+Competition will ruin my professions, as it has all others.
+
+It must be premised that the two professions are intended for gentlemen,
+and gentlemen only--men of birth and education. No others could support
+the parts which they will be called upon to play.
+
+And, likewise, it must be honestly confessed that these professions
+have, to a certain degree, been exercised before. Do not cry out at this
+and say it is no discovery! I say it IS a discovery. It is a discovery
+if I show you--a gentleman--a profession which you may exercise without
+derogation, or loss of standing, with certain profit, nay, possibly with
+honor, and of which, until the reading of this present page, you never
+thought but as of a calling beneath your rank and quite below your
+reach. Sir, I do not mean to say that I create a profession. I cannot
+create gold; but if, when discovered, I find the means of putting it in
+your pocket, do I or do I not deserve credit?
+
+I see you sneer contemptuously when I mention to you the word
+AUCTIONEER. "Is this all," you say, "that this fellow brags and
+prates about? An auctioneer forsooth! he might as well have 'invented'
+chimney-sweeping!"
+
+No such thing. A little boy of seven, be he ever so low of birth, can do
+this as well as you. Do you suppose that little stolen Master
+Montague made a better sweeper than the lowest-bred chummy that yearly
+commemorates his release? No, sir. And he might have been ever so much
+a genius or gentleman, and not have been able to make his trade
+respectable.
+
+But all such trades as can be rendered decent the aristocracy has
+adopted one by one. At first they followed the profession of arms,
+flouting all others as unworthy, and thinking it ungentlemanlike to
+know how to read or write. They did not go into the church in very early
+days, till the money to be got from the church was strong enough to
+tempt them. It is but of later years that they have condescended to
+go to the bar, and since the same time only that we see some of them
+following trades. I know an English lord's son, who is, or was, a
+wine-merchant (he may have been a bankrupt for what I know). As for
+bankers, several partners in banking-houses have four balls to their
+coronets, and I have no doubt that another sort of banking, viz, that
+practised by gentlemen who lend small sums of money upon deposited
+securities, will be one day followed by the noble order, so that they
+may have four balls on their coronets and carriages, and three in front
+of their shops.
+
+Yes, the nobles come peoplewards as the people, on the other hand, rise
+and mingle with the nobles. With the plebs, of course, Fitz-Boodle, in
+whose veins flows the blood of a thousand kings, can have nothing to do;
+but, watching the progress of the world, 'tis impossible to deny that
+the good old days of our race are passed away. We want money still as
+much as ever we did; but we cannot go down from our castles with horse
+and sword and waylay fat merchants--no, no, confounded new policemen
+and the assize-courts prevent that. Younger brothers cannot be pages
+to noble houses, as of old they were, serving gentle dames without
+disgrace, handing my lord's rose-water to wash, or holding his stirrup
+as he mounted for the chase. A page, forsooth! A pretty figure would
+George Fitz-Boodle or any other man of fashion cut, in a jacket covered
+with sugar-loafed buttons, and handing in penny-post notes on a silver
+tray. The plebs have robbed us of THAT trade among others: nor, I
+confess, do I much grudge them their trouvaille. Neither can we collect
+together a few scores of free lances, like honest Hugh Calverly in the
+Black Prince's time, or brave Harry Butler of Wallenstein's dragoons,
+and serve this or that prince, Peter the Cruel or Henry of Trastamare,
+Gustavus or the Emperor, at our leisure; or, in default of service,
+fight and rob on our own gallant account, as the good gentlemen of old
+did. Alas! no. In South America or Texas, perhaps, a man might have a
+chance that way; but in the ancient world no man can fight except in the
+king's service (and a mighty bad service that is too), and the lowest
+European sovereign, were it Baldomero Espartero himself, would think
+nothing of seizing the best-born condottiere that ever drew sword, and
+shooting him down like the vulgarest deserter.
+
+What, then, is to be done? We must discover fresh fields of
+enterprise--of peaceable and commercial enterprise in a peaceful and
+commercial age. I say, then, that the auctioneer's pulpit has never yet
+been ascended by a scion of the aristocracy, and am prepared to prove
+that they might scale it, and do so with dignity and profit.
+
+For the auctioneer's pulpit is just the peculiar place where a man of
+social refinement, of elegant wit, of polite perceptions, can bring
+his wit, his eloquence, his taste, and his experience of life, most
+delightfully into play. It is not like the bar, where the better and
+higher qualities of a man of fashion find no room for exercise. In
+defending John Jorrocks in an action of trespass, for cutting down a
+stick in Sam Snooks's field, what powers of mind do you require?--powers
+of mind, that is, which Mr. Serjeant Snorter, a butcher's son with a
+great loud voice, a sizar at Cambridge, a wrangler, and so forth,
+does not possess as well as yourself? Snorter has never been in decent
+society in his life. He thinks the bar-mess the most fashionable
+assemblage in Europe, and the jokes of "grand day" the ne plus ultra of
+wit. Snorter lives near Russell Square, eats beef and Yorkshire-pudding,
+is a judge of port-wine, is in all social respects your inferior.
+Well, it is ten to one but in the case of Snooks v. Jorrocks, before
+mentioned, he will be a better advocate than you; he knows the law of
+the case entirely, and better probably than you. He can speak long,
+loud, to the point, grammatically--more grammatically than you, no
+doubt, will condescend to do. In the case of Snooks v. Jorrocks he is
+all that can be desired. And so about dry disputes, respecting real
+property, he knows the law; and, beyond this, has no more need to be
+a gentleman than my body-servant has--who, by the way, from constant
+intercourse with the best society, IS almost a gentleman. But this is
+apart from the question.
+
+Now, in the matter of auctioneering, this, I apprehend, is not the case,
+and I assert that a high-bred gentleman, with good powers of mind and
+speech, must, in such a profession, make a fortune. I do not mean in all
+auctioneering matters. I do not mean that such a person should be called
+upon to sell the good-will of a public-house, or discourse about the
+value of the beer-barrels, or bars with pewter fittings, or the beauty
+of a trade doing a stroke of so many hogsheads a week. I do not ask a
+gentleman to go down and sell pigs, ploughs, and cart-horses, at Stoke
+Pogis; or to enlarge at the Auction-Rooms, Wapping, upon the beauty of
+the "Lively Sally" schooner. These articles of commerce or use can be
+better appreciated by persons in a different rank of life to his.
+
+But there are a thousand cases in which a gentleman only can do justice
+to the sale of objects which the necessity or convenience of the genteel
+world may require to change hands. All articles properly called of taste
+should be put under his charge. Pictures,--he is a travelled man, has
+seen and judged the best galleries of Europe, and can speak of them as
+a common person cannot. For, mark you, you must have the confidence
+of your society, you must be able to be familiar with them, to plant a
+happy mot in a graceful manner, to appeal to my lord or the duchess in
+such a modest, easy, pleasant way as that her grace should not be hurt
+by your allusion to her--nay, amused (like the rest of the company) by
+the manner in which it was done.
+
+What is more disgusting than the familiarity of a snob? What more
+loathsome than the swaggering quackery of some present holders of the
+hammer? There was a late sale, for instance, which made some noise in
+the world (I mean the late Lord Gimcrack's, at Dilberry Hill). Ah! what
+an opportunity was lost there! I declare solemnly that I believe, but
+for the absurd quackery and braggadocio of the advertisements, much
+more money would have been bid; people were kept away by the vulgar
+trumpeting of the auctioneer, and could not help thinking the things
+were worthless that were so outrageously lauded.
+
+They say that sort of Bartholomew-fair advocacy (in which people
+are invited to an entertainment by the medium of a hoarse yelling
+beef-eater, twenty-four drums, and a jack-pudding turning head over
+heels) is absolutely necessary to excite the public attention. What an
+error! I say that the refined individual so accosted is more likely to
+close his ears, and, shuddering, run away from the booth. Poor Horace
+Waddlepoodle! to think that thy gentle accumulation of bricabrac should
+have passed away in such a manner! by means of a man who brings down
+a butterfly with a blunderbuss, and talks of a pin's head through a
+speaking-trumpet! Why, the auctioneer's very voice was enough to crack
+the Sevres porcelain and blow the lace into annihilation. Let it be
+remembered that I speak of the gentleman in his public character merely,
+meaning to insinuate nothing more than I would by stating that Lord
+Brougham speaks with a northern accent, or that the voice of Mr. Shell
+is sometimes unpleasantly shrill.
+
+Now the character I have formed to myself of a great auctioneer is this.
+I fancy him a man of first-rate and irreproachable birth and fashion. I
+fancy his person so agreeable that it must be a pleasure for ladies to
+behold and tailors to dress it. As a private man he must move in the
+very best society, which will flock round his pulpit when he mounts
+it in his public calling. It will be a privilege for vulgar people to
+attend the hall where he lectures; and they will consider it an honor to
+be allowed to pay their money for articles the value of which is stamped
+by his high recommendation. Nor can such a person be a mere fribble; nor
+can any loose hanger-on of fashion imagine he may assume the character.
+The gentleman auctioneer must be an artist above all, adoring his
+profession; and adoring it, what must he not know? He must have a good
+knowledge of the history and language of all nations; not the knowledge
+of the mere critical scholar, but of the lively and elegant man of
+the world. He will not commit the gross blunders of pronunciation that
+untravelled Englishmen perpetrate; he will not degrade his subject by
+coarse eulogy or sicken his audience with vulgar banter. He will know
+where to apply praise and wit properly; he will have the tact only
+acquired in good society, and know where a joke is in place, and how far
+a compliment may go. He will not outrageously and indiscriminately laud
+all objects committed to his charge, for he knows the value of praise;
+that diamonds, could we have them by the bushel, would be used as coals;
+that above all, he has a character of sincerity to support; that he
+is not merely the advocate of the person who employs him, but that the
+public is his client too, who honors him and confides in him. Ask him
+to sell a copy of Raffaelle for an original; a trumpery modern Brussels
+counterfeit for real old Mechlin; some common French forged crockery for
+the old delightful, delicate, Dresden china; and he will quit you with
+scorn, or order his servant to show you the door of his study.
+
+Study, by the way,--no, "study" is a vulgar word; every word is vulgar
+which a man uses to give the world an exaggerated notion of himself or
+his condition. When the wretched bagman, brought up to give evidence
+before Judge Coltman, was asked what his trade was, and replied that "he
+represented the house of Dobson and Hobson," he showed himself to be
+a vulgar, mean-souled wretch, and was most properly reprimanded by his
+lordship. To be a bagman is to be humble, but not of necessity vulgar.
+Pomposity is vulgar, to ape a higher rank than your own is vulgar, for
+an ensign of militia to call himself captain is vulgar, or for a bagman
+to style himself the "representative" of Dobson and Hobson. The honest
+auctioneer, then, will not call his room his study; but his "private
+room," or his office, or whatever may be the phrase commonly used among
+auctioneers.
+
+He will not for the same reason call himself (as once in a momentary
+feeling of pride and enthusiasm for the profession I thought he
+should)--he will not call himself an "advocate," but an auctioneer.
+There is no need to attempt to awe people by big titles: let each man
+bear his own name without shame. And a very gentlemanlike and agreeable,
+though exceptional position (for it is clear that there cannot be more
+than two of the class,) may the auctioneer occupy.
+
+He must not sacrifice his honesty, then, either for his own sake or his
+clients', in any way, nor tell fibs about himself or them. He is by no
+means called upon to draw the long bow in their behalf; all that his
+office obliges him to do--and let us hope his disposition will lead him
+to do it also--is to take a favorable, kindly, philanthropic view of the
+world; to say what can fairly be said by a good-natured and ingenious
+man in praise of any article for which he is desirous to awaken public
+sympathy. And how readily and pleasantly may this be done! I will take
+upon myself, for instance, to write an eulogium upon So-and-So's last
+novel, which shall be every word of it true; and which work, though
+to some discontented spirits it might appear dull, may be shown to be
+really amusing and instructive,--nay, IS amusing and instructive,--to
+those who have the art of discovering where those precious qualities
+lie.
+
+An auctioneer should have the organ of truth large; of imagination and
+comparison, considerable; of wit, great; of benevolence, excessively
+large.
+
+And how happy might such a man be, and cause others to be! He should go
+through the world laughing, merry, observant, kind-hearted. He should
+love everything in the world, because his profession regards everything.
+With books of lighter literature (for I do not recommend the genteel
+auctioneer to meddle with heavy antiquarian and philological works) he
+should be elegantly conversant, being able to give a neat history of
+the author, a pretty sparkling kind criticism of the work, and an
+appropriate eulogium upon the binding, which would make those people
+read who never read before; or buy, at least, which is his first
+consideration. Of pictures we have already spoken. Of china, of jewelry,
+of gold-headed canes, valuable arms, picturesque antiquities, with what
+eloquent entrainement might he not speak! He feels every one of these
+things in his heart. He has all the tastes of the fashionable world. Dr.
+Meyrick cannot be more enthusiastic about an old suit of armor than
+he; Sir Harris Nicolas not more eloquent regarding the gallant times in
+which it was worn, and the brave histories connected with it. He takes
+up a pearl necklace with as much delight as any beauty who was sighing
+to wear it round her own snowy throat, and hugs a china monster with
+as much joy as the oldest duchess could do. Nor must he affect these
+things; he must feel them. He is a glass in which all the tastes of
+fashion are reflected. He must be every one of the characters to whom
+he addresses himself--a genteel Goethe or Shakspeare, a fashionable
+world-spirit.
+
+How can a man be all this and not be a gentleman; and not have had an
+education in the midst of the best company--an insight into the most
+delicate feelings, and wants, and usages? The pulpit oratory of such a
+man would be invaluable; people would flock to listen to him from
+far and near. He might out of a single teacup cause streams of
+world-philosophy to flow, which would be drunk in by grateful thousands;
+and draw out of an old pincushion points of wit, morals, and experience,
+that would make a nation wise.
+
+Look round, examine THE ANNALS OF AUCTIONS, as Mr. Robins remarks,
+and (with every respect for him and his brethren) say, is there in the
+profession SUCH A MAN? Do we want such a man? Is such a man likely or
+not likely to make an immense fortune? Can we get such a man except out
+of the very best society, and among the most favored there?
+
+Everybody answers "No!" I knew you would answer no. And now, gentlemen
+who have laughed at my pretension to discover a profession, say, have
+I not? I have laid my finger upon the spot where the social deficit
+exists. I have shown that we labor under a want; and when the world
+wants, do we not know that a man will step forth to fill the vacant
+space that Fate has left for him? Pass we now to the--
+
+
+
+
+SECOND PROFESSION.
+
+
+This profession, too, is a great, lofty and exceptional one, and
+discovered by me considering these things, and deeply musing upon the
+necessities of society. Nor let honorable gentlemen imagine that I am
+enabled to offer them in this profession, more than any other, a promise
+of what is called future glory, deathless fame, and so forth. All that
+I say is, that I can put young men in the way of making a comfortable
+livelihood, and leaving behind them, not a name, but what is better, a
+decent maintenance to their children. Fitz-Boodle is as good a name as
+any in England. General Fitz-Boodle, who, in Marlborough's time, and
+in conjunction with the famous Van Slaap, beat the French in the
+famous action of Vischzouchee, near Mardyk, in Holland, on the 14th of
+February, 1709, is promised an immortality upon his tomb in Westminster
+Abbey; but he died of apoplexy, deucedly in debt, two years afterwards:
+and what after that is the use of a name?
+
+No, no; the age of chivalry is past. Take the twenty-four first men who
+come into the club, and ask who they are, and how they made their money?
+There's Woolsey-Sackville: his father was Lord Chancellor, and sat
+on the woolsack, whence he took his title; his grandfather dealt in
+coal-sacks, and not in woolsacks,--small coal-sacks, dribbling out
+little supplies of black diamonds to the poor. Yonder comes Frank
+Leveson, in a huge broad-brimmed hat, his shirt-cuffs turned up to his
+elbows. Leveson is as gentlemanly a fellow as the world contains, and if
+he has a fault, is perhaps too finikin. Well, you fancy him related to
+the Sutherland family: nor, indeed, does honest Frank deny it; but entre
+nous, my good sir, his father was an attorney, and his grandfather
+a bailiff in Chancery Lane, bearing a name still older than that of
+Leveson, namely, Levy. So it is that this confounded equality grows and
+grows, and has laid the good old nobility by the heels. Look at that
+venerable Sir Charles Kitely, of Kitely Park: he is interested about the
+Ashantees, and is just come from Exeter Hall. Kitely discounted bills
+in the City in the year 1787, and gained his baronetcy by a loan to the
+French princes. All these points of history are perfectly well known;
+and do you fancy the world cares? Psha! Profession is no disgrace to
+a man: be what you like, provided you succeed. If Mr. Fauntleroy could
+come to life with a million of money, you and I would dine with him: you
+know we would; for why should we be better than our neighbors?
+
+Put, then, out of your head the idea that this or that profession is
+unworthy of you: take any that may bring you profit, and thank him that
+puts you in the way of being rich.
+
+The profession I would urge (upon a person duly qualified to undertake
+it) has, I confess, at the first glance, something ridiculous about
+it; and will not appear to young ladies so romantic as the calling of a
+gallant soldier, blazing with glory, gold lace, and vermilion coats;
+or a dear delightful clergyman, with a sweet blue eye, and a
+pocket-handkerchief scented charmingly with lavender-water. The
+profession I allude to WILL, I own, be to young women disagreeable, to
+sober men trivial, to great stupid moralists unworthy.
+
+But mark my words for it, that in the religious world (I have once or
+twice, by mistake no doubt, had the honor of dining in "serious" houses,
+and can vouch for the fact that the dinners there are of excellent
+quality)--in the serious world, in the great mercantile world, among the
+legal community (notorious feeders), in every house in town (except some
+half-dozen which can afford to do without such aid), the man I propose
+might speedily render himself indispensable.
+
+Does the reader now begin to take? Have I hinted enough for him that
+he may see with eagle glance the immense beauty of the profession I am
+about to unfold to him? We have all seen Gunter and Chevet; Fregoso, on
+the Puerta del Sol (a relation of the ex-Minister Calomarde), is a good
+purveyor enough for the benighted olla-eaters of Madrid; nor have I any
+fault to find with Guimard, a Frenchman, who has lately set up in the
+Toledo, at Naples, where he furnishes people with decent food. It has
+given me pleasure, too, in walking about London--in the Strand,
+in Oxford Street, and elsewhere, to see fournisseurs and
+comestible-merchants newly set up. Messrs. Morel have excellent articles
+in their warehouses; Fortnum and Mason are known to most of my readers.
+
+But what is not known, what is wanted, what is languished for in England
+is a DINNER-MASTER,--a gentleman who is not a provider of meat or wine,
+like the parties before named, who can have no earthly interest in
+the price of truffled turkeys or dry champagne beyond that legitimate
+interest which he may feel for his client, and which leads him to see
+that the latter is not cheated by his tradesmen. For the dinner-giver is
+almost naturally an ignorant man. How in mercy's name can Mr. Serjeant
+Snorter, who is all day at Westminster, or in chambers, know possibly
+the mysteries, the delicacy, of dinner-giving? How can Alderman Pogson
+know anything beyond the fact that venison is good with currant jelly,
+and that he likes lots of green fat with his turtle? Snorter knows
+law, Pogson is acquainted with the state of the tallow-market; but what
+should he know of eating, like you and me, who have given up our time
+to it? (I say ME only familiarly, for I have only reached so far in
+the science as to know that I know nothing.) But men there are, gifted
+individuals, who have spent years of deep thought--not merely
+intervals of labor, but hours of study every day--over the gormandizing
+science,--who, like alchemists, have let their fortunes go, guinea by
+guinea, into the all-devouring pot,--who, ruined as they sometimes are,
+never get a guinea by chance but they will have a plate of pease in May
+with it, or a little feast of ortolans, or a piece of Glo'ster salmon,
+or one more flask from their favorite claret-bin.
+
+It is not the ruined gastronomist that I would advise a person to select
+as his TABLE-MASTER; for the opportunities of peculation would be too
+great in a position of such confidence--such complete abandonment of
+one man to another. A ruined man would be making bargains with the
+tradesmen. They would offer to cash bills for him, or send him opportune
+presents of wine, which he could convert into money, or bribe him in one
+way or another. Let this be done, and the profession of table-master is
+ruined. Snorter and Pogson may almost as well order their own dinners,
+as be at the mercy of a "gastronomic agent" whose faith is not beyond
+all question.
+
+A vulgar mind, in reply to these remarks regarding the gastronomic
+ignorance of Snorter and Pogson, might say, "True, these gentlemen know
+nothing of household economy, being occupied with other more important
+business elsewhere. But what are their wives about? Lady Pogson in
+Harley Street has nothing earthly to do but to mind her poodle, and her
+mantua-maker's and housekeeper's bills. Mrs. Snorter in Belford Place,
+when she has taken her drive in the Park with the young ladies, may
+surely have time to attend to her husband's guests and preside over
+the preparations of his kitchen, as she does worthily at his hospitable
+mahogany." To this I answer, that a man who expects a woman to
+understand the philosophy of dinner-giving, shows the strongest evidence
+of a low mind. He is unjust towards that lovely and delicate creature,
+woman, to suppose that she heartily understands and cares for what she
+eats and drinks. No: taken as a rule, women have no real appetites.
+They are children in the gormandizing way; loving sugar, sops, tarts,
+trifles, apricot-creams, and such gewgaws. They would take a sip of
+Malmsey, and would drink currant-wine just as happily, if that accursed
+liquor were presented to them by the butler. Did you ever know a
+woman who could lay her fair hand upon her gentle heart and say on her
+conscience that she preferred dry sillery to sparkling champagne? Such
+a phenomenon does not exist. They are not made for eating and drinking;
+or, if they make a pretence to it, become downright odious. Nor can
+they, I am sure, witness the preparations of a really great repast
+without a certain jealousy. They grudge spending money (ask guards,
+coachmen, inn-waiters, whether this be not the case). They will give
+their all, heaven bless them to serve a son, a grandson, or a
+dear relative, but they have not the heart to pay for small things
+magnificently. They are jealous of good dinners, and no wonder. I have
+shown in a former discourse how they are jealous of smoking, and other
+personal enjoyments of the male. I say, then, that Lady Pogson or Mrs.
+Snorter can never conduct their husbands' table properly. Fancy either
+of them consenting to allow a calf to be stewed down into gravy for one
+dish, or a dozen hares to be sacrificed to a single puree of game, or
+the best Madeira to be used for a sauce, or half a dozen of champagne to
+boil a ham in. They will be for bringing a bottle of Marsala in place of
+the old particular, or for having the ham cooked in water. But of
+these matters--of kitchen philosophy--I have no practical or theoretic
+knowledge; and must beg pardon if, only understanding the goodness of a
+dish when cooked, I may have unconsciously made some blunder regarding
+the preparation.
+
+Let it, then, be set down as an axiom, without further trouble of
+demonstration, that a woman is a bad dinner-caterer; either too great
+and simple for it, or too mean--I don't know which it is; and gentlemen,
+according as they admire or contemn the sex, may settle that matter
+their own way. In brief, the mental constitution of lovely woman is such
+that she cannot give a great dinner. It must be done by a man. It can't
+be done by an ordinary man, because he does not understand it. Vain
+fool! and he sends off to the pastry-cook in Great Russell Street or
+Baker Street, he lays on a couple of extra waiters (green-grocers in the
+neighborhood), he makes a great pother with his butler in the cellar,
+and fancies he has done the business.
+
+Bon Dieu! Who has not been at those dinners?--those monstrous
+exhibitions of the pastry-cook's art? Who does not know those made
+dishes with the universal sauce to each: fricandeaux, sweet-breads, damp
+dumpy cutlets, &c., seasoned with the compound of grease, onions, bad
+port-wine, cayenne pepper, curry-powder (Warren's blacking, for what
+I know, but the taste is always the same)--there they lie in the old
+corner dishes, the poor wiry Moselle and sparkling Burgundy in the
+ice-coolers, and the old story of white and brown soup, turbot, little
+smelts, boiled turkey, saddle-of-mutton, and so forth? "Try a little of
+that fricandeau," says Mrs. Snorter, with a kind smile. "You'll find
+it, I think, very nice." Be sure it has come in a green tray from Great
+Russell Street. "Mr. Fitz-Boodle, you have been in Germany," cries
+Snorter, knowingly; "taste the hock, and tell me what you think of
+THAT."
+
+How should he know better, poor benighted creature; or she, dear
+good soul that she is? If they would have a leg-of-mutton and
+an apple-pudding, and a glass of sherry and port (or simple
+brandy-and-water called by its own name) after dinner, all would be very
+well; but they must shine, they must dine as their neighbors. There
+is no difference in the style of dinners in London; people with five
+hundred a year treat you exactly as those of five thousand. They WILL
+have their Moselle or hock, their fatal side-dishes brought in the green
+trays from the pastry-cook's.
+
+Well, there is no harm done; not as regards the dinner-givers at least,
+though the dinner-eaters may have to suffer somewhat; it only shows
+that the former are hospitably inclined, and wish to do the very best in
+their power,--good honest fellows! If they do wrong, how can they help
+it? they know no better.
+
+And now, is it not as clear as the sun at noonday, that A WANT exists
+in London for a superintendent of the table--a gastronomic agent--a
+dinner-master, as I have called him before? A man of such a profession
+would be a metropolitan benefit; hundreds of thousands of people of the
+respectable sort, people in white waistcoats, would thank him daily.
+Calculate how many dinners are given in the City of London, and
+calculate the numbers of benedictions that "the Agency" might win.
+
+And as no doubt the observant man of the world has remarked that the
+freeborn Englishman of the respectable class is, of all others, the most
+slavish and truckling to a lord; that there is no fly-blown peer but he
+is pleased to have him at his table, proud beyond measure to call him
+by his surname (without the lordly prefix); and that those lords whom he
+does not know, he yet (the freeborn Englishman) takes care to have their
+pedigrees and ages by heart from his world-bible, the "Peerage:" as
+this is an indisputable fact, and as it is in this particular class of
+Britons that our agent must look to find clients, I need not say it is
+necessary that the agent should be as high-born as possible, and that he
+should be able to tack, if possible, an honorable or some other handle
+to his respectable name. He must have it on his professional card--
+
+           THE HONORABLE GEORGE GORMAND GOBBLETON,
+
+               Apician Chambers, Pall Mall.
+
+
+     Or,
+
+
+            SIR AUGUSTUS CARVER CRAMLEY CRAMLEY,
+
+         Amphitryonic Council Office, Swallow Street.
+
+or, in some such neat way, Gothic letters on a large handsome
+crockeryware card, with possibly a gilt coat-of-arms and supporters, or
+the blood-red hand of baronetcy duly displayed. Depend on it plenty of
+guineas will fall in it, and that Gobbleton's supporters will support
+him comfortably enough.
+
+For this profession is not like that of the auctioneer, which I take to
+be a far more noble one, because more varied and more truthful; but in
+the Agency case, a little humbug at least is necessary. A man cannot be
+a successful agent by the mere force of his simple merit or genius in
+eating and drinking. He must of necessity impose upon the vulgar to a
+certain degree. He must be of that rank which will lead them naturally
+to respect him, otherwise they might be led to jeer at his profession;
+but let a noble exercise it, and bless your soul, all the "Court Guide"
+is dumb!
+
+He will then give out in a manly and somewhat pompous address what has
+before been mentioned, namely, that he has seen the fatal way in which
+the hospitality of England has been perverted hitherto, accapare'd by
+a few cooks with green trays. (He must use a good deal of French in his
+language, for that is considered very gentlemanlike by vulgar people.)
+He will take a set of chambers in Canton Gardens, which will be richly
+though severely furnished, and the door of which will be opened by
+a French valet (he MUST be a Frenchman, remember), who will say, on
+letting Mr. Snorter or Sir Benjamin Pogson in, that "MILOR is at
+home." Pogson will then be shown into a library furnished with massive
+bookcases, containing all the works on cookery and wines (the titles
+of them) in all the known languages in the world. Any books, of course,
+will do, as you will have them handsomely bound, and keep them under
+plate-glass. On a side-table will be little sample-bottles of wine, a
+few truffles on a white porcelain saucer, a prodigious strawberry or
+two, perhaps, at the time when such fruit costs much money. On the
+library will be busts marked Ude, Careme, Bechamel, in marble (never
+mind what heads, of course); and, perhaps, on the clock should be a
+figure of the Prince of Conde's cook killing himself because the fish
+had not arrived in time: there may be a wreath of immortelles on the
+figure to give it a more decidedly Frenchified air. The walls will be of
+a dark rich paper, hung round with neat gilt frames, containing plans
+of menus of various great dinners, those of Cambaceres, Napoleon,
+Louis XIV., Louis XVIII., Heliogabalus if you like, each signed by the
+respective cook.
+
+After the stranger has looked about him at these things, which he does
+not understand in the least, especially the truffles, which look like
+dirty potatoes, you will make your appearance, dressed in a dark dress,
+with one handsome enormous gold chain, and one large diamond ring; a
+gold snuff-box, of course, which you will thrust into the visitor's paw
+before saying a word. You will be yourself a portly grave man, with
+your hair a little bald and gray. In fact, in this, as in all other
+professions, you had best try to look as like Canning as you can.
+
+When Pogson has done sneezing with the snuff, you will say to him,
+"Take a fauteuil. I have the honor of addressing Sir Benjamin Pogson, I
+believe?" And then you will explain to him your system.
+
+This, of course, must vary with every person you address. But let us
+lay down a few of the heads of a plan which may be useful, or may
+be modified infinitely, or may be cast aside altogether, just as
+circumstances dictate. After all I am not going to turn gastronomic
+agent, and speak only for the benefit perhaps of the very person who is
+reading this:--
+
+"SYNOPSIS OF THE GASTRONOMIC AGENCY OF THE HONORABLE GEORGE GOBBLETON.
+
+"The Gastronomic Agent having traversed Europe, and dined with the best
+society of the world, has been led naturally, as a patriot, to turn
+his thoughts homeward, and cannot but deplore the lamentable ignorance
+regarding gastronomy displayed in a country for which Nature has done
+almost everything.
+
+"But it is ever singularly thus. Inherent ignorance belongs to man; and
+The Agent, in his Continental travels, has always remarked, that the
+countries most fertile in themselves were invariably worse tilled than
+those more barren. The Italians and the Spaniards leave their fields to
+Nature, as we leave our vegetables, fish, and meat. And, heavens! what
+richness do we fling away, what dormant qualities in our dishes do
+we disregard,--what glorious gastronomic crops (if the Agent may
+be permitted the expression)--what glorious gastronomic crops do we
+sacrifice, allowing our goodly meats and fishes to lie fallow! 'Chance,'
+it is said by an ingenious historian, who, having been long a secretary
+in the East India House, must certainly have had access to the best
+information upon Eastern matters--'Chance,' it is said by Mr.
+Charles Lamb, 'which burnt down a Chinaman's house, with a litter of
+sucking-pigs that were unable to escape from the interior, discovered to
+the world the excellence of roast-pig.' Gunpowder, we know, was invented
+by a similar fortuity." [The reader will observe that my style in the
+supposed character of a Gastronomic Agent is purposely pompous and
+loud.] "So, 'tis said, was printing,--so glass.--We should have drunk
+our wine poisoned with the villanous odor of the borachio, had not
+some Eastern merchants, lighting their fires in the Desert, marked the
+strange composition which now glitters on our sideboards, and holds the
+costly produce of our vines.
+
+"We have spoken of the natural riches of a country. Let the reader think
+but for one moment of the gastronomic wealth of our country of England,
+and he will be lost in thankful amazement as he watches the astonishing
+riches poured out upon us from Nature's bounteous cornucopia! Look at
+our fisheries!--the trout and salmon tossing in our brawling streams;
+the white and full-breasted turbot struggling in the mariner's net; the
+purple lobster lured by hopes of greed into his basket-prison, which
+he quits only for the red ordeal of the pot. Look at whitebait, great
+heavens!--look at whitebait, and a thousand frisking, glittering,
+silvery things besides, which the nymphs of our native streams bear
+kindly to the deities of our kitchens--our kitchens such as they are.
+
+"And though it may be said that other countries produce the
+freckle-backed salmon and the dark broad-shouldered turbot; though trout
+frequent many a stream besides those of England, and lobsters sprawl
+on other sands than ours; yet, let it be remembered, that our native
+country possesses these altogether, while other lands only know them
+separately; that, above all, whitebait is peculiarly our country's--our
+city's own! Blessings and eternal praises be on it, and, of course, on
+brown bread and butter! And the Briton should further remember, with
+honest pride and thankfulness, the situation of his capital, of London:
+the lordly turtle floats from the sea into the stream, and from the
+stream to the city; the rapid fleets of all the world se donnent
+rendezvous in the docks of our silvery Thames; the produce of our coasts
+and provincial cities, east and west, is borne to us on the swift lines
+of lightning railroads. In a word--and no man but one who, like The
+Agent, has travelled Europe over, can appreciate the gift--there is no
+city on earth's surface so well supplied with fish as London!
+
+"With respect to our meats, all praise is supererogatory. Ask the
+wretched hunter of chevreuil, the poor devourer of rehbraten, what they
+think of the noble English haunch, that, after bounding in the Park of
+Knole or Windsor, exposes its magnificent flank upon some broad silver
+platter at our tables? It is enough to say of foreign venison, that THEY
+ARE OBLIGED TO LARD IT. Away! ours is the palm of roast; whether of the
+crisp mutton that crops the thymy herbage of our downs, or the noble ox
+who revels on lush Althorpian oil-cakes. What game is like to ours? Mans
+excels us in poultry, 'tis true; but 'tis only in merry England that the
+partridge has a flavor, that the turkey can almost se passer de truffes,
+that the jolly juicy goose can be eaten as he deserves.
+
+"Our vegetables, moreover, surpass all comment; Art (by the means of
+glass) has wrung fruit out of the bosom of Nature, such as she grants to
+no other clime. And if we have no vineyards on our hills, we have gold
+to purchase their best produce. Nature, and enterprise that masters
+Nature, have done everything for our land.
+
+"But, with all these prodigious riches in our power, is it not painful
+to reflect how absurdly we employ them? Can we say that we are in the
+habit of dining well? Alas, no! and The Agent, roaming o'er foreign
+lands, and seeing how, with small means and great ingenuity and
+perseverance, great ends were effected, comes back sadly to his own
+country, whose wealth he sees absurdly wasted, whose energies are
+misdirected, and whose vast capabilities are allowed to lie idle. . . ."
+[Here should follow what I have only hinted at previously, a vivid and
+terrible picture of the degradation of our table.] ". . . Oh, for a
+master spirit, to give an impetus to the land, to see its great power
+directed in the right way, and its wealth not squandered or hidden, but
+nobly put out to interest and spent!
+
+"The Agent dares not hope to win that proud station--to be the destroyer
+of a barbarous system wallowing in abusive prodigality--to become a
+dietetic reformer--the Luther of the table.
+
+"But convinced of the wrongs which exist, he will do his humble endeavor
+to set them right, and to those who know that they are ignorant (and
+this is a vast step to knowledge) he offers his counsels, his active
+co-operation, his frank and kindly sympathy. The Agent's qualifications
+are these:-- '1. He is of one of the best families in England; and has
+in himself, or through his ancestors, been accustomed to good living
+for centuries. In the reign of Henry V., his maternal
+great-great-grandfather, Roger de Gobylton' [the name may be varied, of
+course, or the king's reign, or the dish invented], 'was the first
+who discovered the method of roasting a peacock whole, with his
+tail-feathers displayed; and the dish was served to the two kings at
+Rouen. Sir Walter Cramley, in Elizabeth's reign, produced before
+her Majesty, when at Killingworth Castle, mackerel with the famous
+GOOSEBERRY SAUCE, &c.'
+
+"2. He has, through life, devoted himself to no other study than that of
+the table: and has visited to that end the courts of all the monarchs of
+Europe: taking the receipts of the cooks, with whom he lives on terms of
+intimate friendship, often at enormous expense to himself.
+
+"3. He has the same acquaintance with all the vintages of the Continent;
+having passed the autumn of 1811 (the comet year) on the great Weinberg
+of Johannisberg; being employed similarly at Bordeaux, in 1834; at
+Oporto, in 1820; and at Xeres de la Frontera, with his excellent
+friends, Duff, Gordon and Co., the year after. He travelled to India and
+back in company with fourteen pipes of Madeira (on board of the Samuel
+Snob' East Indiaman, Captain Scuttler), and spent the vintage season in
+the island, with unlimited powers of observation granted to him by the
+great houses there.
+
+"4. He has attended Mr. Groves of Charing Cross, and Mr. Giblett of
+Bond Street, in a course of purchases of fish and meat; and is able at
+a glance to recognize the age of mutton, the primeness of beef, the
+firmness and freshness of fish of all kinds.
+
+"5. He has visited the parks, the grouse-manors, and the principal
+gardens of England, in a similar professional point of view."
+
+
+The Agent then, through his subordinates, engages to provide gentlemen
+who are about to give dinner-parties--"1. With cooks to dress the
+dinners; a list of which gentlemen he has by him, and will recommend
+none who are not worthy of the strictest confidence.
+
+"2. With a menu for the table, according to the price which the
+Amphitryon chooses to incur.
+
+"3. He will, through correspondence, with the various fournisseurs of
+the metropolis, provide them with viands, fruit, wine, &c., sending to
+Paris, if need be, where he has a regular correspondence with Messrs.
+Chevet.
+
+"4. He has a list of dexterous table-waiters (all answering to the name
+of John for fear of mistakes, the butler's name to be settled according
+to pleasure), and would strongly recommend that the servants of the
+house should be locked in the back-kitchen or servants' hall during the
+time the dinner takes place.
+
+"5. He will receive and examine all the accounts of the
+fournisseurs,--of course pledging his honor as a gentleman not to
+receive one shilling of paltry gratification from the tradesmen he
+employs, but to see that the bills are more moderate, and their goods of
+better quality, than they would provide to any person of less experience
+than himself.
+
+"6. His fee for superintending a dinner will be five guineas: and The
+Agent entreats his clients to trust ENTIRELY to him and his subordinates
+for the arrangement of the repast,--NOT TO THINK of inserting dishes
+of their own invention, or producing wine from their own cellars, as
+he engages to have it brought in the best order, and fit for immediate
+drinking. Should the Amphitryon, however, desire some particular dish
+or wine, he must consult The Agent in the first case by writing, in the
+second, by sending a sample to The Agent's chambers. For it is manifest
+that the whole complexion of a dinner may be altered by the insertion
+of a single dish; and, therefore, parties will do well to mention their
+wishes on the first interview with The Agent. He cannot be called upon
+to recompose his bill of fare, except at great risk to the ensemble of
+the dinner and enormous inconvenience to himself.
+
+"7. The Agent will be at home for consultation from ten o'clock until
+two, earlier if gentlemen who are engaged at early hours in the City
+desire to have an interview: and be it remembered, that a PERSONAL
+INTERVIEW is always the best: for it is greatly necessary to know not
+only the number but the character of the guests whom the Amphitryon
+proposes to entertain,--whether they are fond of any particular wine or
+dish, what is their state of health, rank, style, profession, &c.
+
+"8. At two o'clock, he will commence his rounds; for as the metropolis is
+wide, it is clear that he must be early in the field in some districts.
+From 2 to 3 he will be in Russell Square and the neighborhood; 3 to 3
+3/4, Harley Street, Portland Place, Cavendish Square, and the environs;
+3 3/4 to 4 1/4, Portman Square, Gloucester Place, Baker Street, &c.;
+4 1/4 to 5, the new district about Hyde Park Terrace; 5 to 5 3/4, St.
+John's Wood and the Regent's Park. He will be in Grosvenor Square by 6,
+and in Belgrave Square, Pimlico, and its vicinity, by 7. Parties there
+are requested not to dine until 8 o'clock; and The Agent, once for all,
+peremptorily announces that he will NOT go to the palace, where it is
+utterly impossible to serve a good dinner."
+
+"TO TRADESMEN.
+
+"Every Monday evening during the season the Gastronomic Agent proposes
+to give a series of trial-dinners, to which the principal gormands of
+the metropolis, and a few of The Agent's most respectable clients, will
+be invited. Covers will be laid for TEN at nine o'clock precisely. And
+as The Agent does not propose to exact a single shilling of profit from
+their bills, and as his recommendation will be of infinite value to
+them, the tradesmen he employs will furnish the weekly dinner gratis.
+Cooks will attend (who have acknowledged characters) upon the same
+terms. To save trouble, a book will be kept where butchers, poulterers,
+fishmongers, &c. may inscribe their names in order, taking it by turns
+to supply the trial-table. Wine-merchants will naturally compete every
+week promiscuously, sending what they consider their best samples, and
+leaving with the hall-porter tickets of the prices. Confectionery to
+be done out of the house. Fruiterers, market-men, as butchers and
+poulterers. The Agent's maitre-d'hotel will give a receipt to each
+individual for the articles he produces; and let all remember that The
+Agent is a VERY KEEN JUDGE, and woe betide those who serve him or his
+clients ill!
+
+"GEORGE GORMAND GOBBLETON.
+
+"CARLTON GARDENS, June 10, 1842."
+
+
+Here I have sketched out the heads of such an address as I conceive a
+gastronomic agent might put forth; and appeal pretty confidently to the
+British public regarding its merits and my own discovery. If this be not
+a profession--a new one--a feasible one--a lucrative one,--I don't
+know what is. Say that a man attends but fifteen dinners daily, that
+is seventy-five guineas, or five hundred and fifty pounds weekly, or
+fourteen thousand three hundred pounds for a season of six months: and
+how many of our younger sons have such a capital even? Let, then, some
+unemployed gentleman with the requisite qualifications come forward. It
+will not be necessary that he should have done all that is stated in the
+prospectus; but, at any rate, let him SAY he has: there can't be much
+harm in an innocent fib of that sort; for the gastronomic agent must be
+a sort of dinner-pope, whose opinions cannot be supposed to err.
+
+And as he really will be an excellent judge of eating and drinking, and
+will bring his whole mind to bear upon the question, and will speedily
+acquire an experience which no person out of the profession can possibly
+have; and as, moreover, he will be an honorable man, not practising upon
+his client in any way, or demanding sixpence beyond his just fee, the
+world will gain vastly by the coming forward of such a person,--gain in
+good dinners, and absolutely save money: for what is five guineas for a
+dinner of sixteen? The sum may be gaspille by a cook-wench, or by one of
+those abominable before-named pastry-cooks with their green trays.
+
+If any man take up the business, he will invite me, of course, to the
+Monday dinners. Or does ingratitude go so far as that a man should
+forget the author of his good fortune? I believe it does. Turn we away
+from the sickening theme!
+
+
+And now, having concluded my professions, how shall I express my
+obligations to the discriminating press of this country for the
+unanimous applause which hailed my first appearance? It is the more
+wonderful, as I pledge my sacred word, I never wrote a document before
+much longer than a laundress's bill, or the acceptance of an invitation
+to dinner. But enough of this egotism: thanks for praise conferred sound
+like vanity; gratitude is hard to speak of, and at present it swells the
+full heart of
+
+GEORGE SAVAGE FITZ-BOODLE.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Fitz-Boodle Papers, by 
+William Makepeace Thackeray
+
+*** 
\ No newline at end of file