The Choice Humorous Works, Ludicrous Adventures 17

The Choice Humorous Works, Ludicrous Adventures 17

My son-in-law has bought a beautiful picture, a Remnant undoubted;

it is as black as your hat, and shines like a tea tray, and is

considered, as indeed it is, what the French call, a _shade over_

of that great master; he has also bought a jem of considerable

vallew; he says it is an antic of a dancing fawn, but it looks to me

like a man with a tail, a jumping. He has got several very curious

things at shops here; but he goes poking his nose into all the oles

and corners for curiosities, and sometimes gets into sad scrapes;

he is a French Mounsheer, you recollect; and at one of the sails

he scraped acquaintance with a young dandy-looking man with dark

musquitos on his lips, which we had seen every morning a drinking

the waters regularly, and so we let him walk and talk with us; and

at last we was told that he was no better than he should be, and had

been convicted of purgery, which I did not think so great a crime,

considering where we was; however, he is gone away, which I am glad

of.

 

I told you my son-in-law was a French Mounsheer, but I did not know

till the other day that he was in the army, for he has been so sly

as never to mention it; but I saw one of his letters from his elder

brother, and in the direction he called him Cadet, which after all is

no very high rank, you know. I should, however, have very much liked

to have seen the boys from the Miliary Asslum march to the Surrey

Theatre; it must have been a beautiful site; I suppose they got leave

through the Egerton General's office.

 

Have you read Lord Normandy's _Yes or No_, or Mr. Liston's _Herbert

Lacy_? I should think it must be very droll, he is such a droll

cretur himself; and pray tell me if you have heard any news from

Portingal of the Don. Major Macpherson calls him Don _M'Gill_, and

Captain O'Dogherty calls him Don _My jewel_--how do you pronounce

it? I am told Lord Doodley used to call him, while he was in London,

_My gull_.

 

There is not much stirring here; the good effect of the waters is

quite aperient in our family; we are all mending, and exorcise

ourselves for four hours at a time on what is called the well walk,

which is a different place from the sick walk, which is entirely for

the innphaleeds. Lavinia has got hold of a book called _Bookarchy_,

containing the lives of a hundred Knights, she says; but she won't

shew it to her sisters as is not yet marred; it is translated out of

a foren tongue by a Mr. D. Cameron; all the Scotch is very clever.

 

Mr. Fulmer is going to Hauksvut next term, to be made a Doctor of

Laws. He says he shall be away only two days, but I doubt its being

over so soon, because he told me himself it must be done by degrees.

After he is made a Doctor, he says he means to practise; but I told

him I thought he had better practise first, in order to understand

what he has to do afterwards. A friend of his came here to see him

from Hauksvut College, who I thought was a clergyman by his dress;

but I found out, by what Mr. Fulmer told me, that it was an old lady

in disguise, for he said she was Margaret Professor, and he even

went so far as to call her a Divinity, which to me did seem uncommon

strange. However, there is no understanding these scholars; for it is

not more than a fortnight since, that Fulmer told me he expected a

brazen-nosed man to dinner, and when the gentleman came, his nose was

just like other people's: so I suppose it was to surprise Lavinia,

who was reading a work on Nosology at the very time.

 

You will be pleased to hear that I have let my house in Montague

Place, unfurnished with conveniences, for three hundred and

twenty pounds a-year, besides taxis; and I have skewered a very

nice residence in the Regent's Park, within ten doors of the

Call-and-see-um where the portrait of St. Paul is to be exhibited,

and where I hope you will visit us; my two youngest, which is

a-shooten up, is uncommon anxious to know you, now they have made

their debutt into saucyity. The young one is a feline cretur as ever

trod shoe leather. The other is more of an orty crackter, with very

high spirts. They are indeed quite Theliar and Molpomona of the

Ramsbottoms.

 

If you should run down here before we leave for town, pray come and

take pot-luck, which is all we can offer you at Cheltenham. You must

take us as you find us: we are all in the family way, and, as you

know, delighted to see our friends, without any ceremony.

 

Do right, dear B., and send us the noose; for really the old Engines

who are here for their health look so billyus, that without something

to enliven us, we should get worse instead of better.

 

Ajew, ever yours,

D. L. RAMSBOTTOM.

 

 

XVIII.

 

HASTINGS AGAIN.

 

TO JOHN BULL.

 

Hastings, July 8, 1828.

 

DEAR B.,--Here we are, after a short tower to Dip in France, in the

esteem packet the _Tarbut_--my fourth has been mylad, as the French

say, and was recommended a little voyage, and she picked up an old

bow, which talked to her in French, and called her a belley spree,

which I thought was impotence, but Lavinia said no, and reminded me

of judy spree, which is another gallowsism, as they style them--but

why they call this place green and young Hastings, which is old and

brown, I don't know--they are going, however, to move it about a mile

nearer Bexhill, to the stone where William the Third landed when he

had conquered the Normans--our old bow said it was a capital sight

for a town; but as yet I couldn't see much, although everybody is

taking the houses before they are built.

 

We was a-staying with a couzen of mine near Lewis, before we crossed

the sea--he is married, and has a firm hornee, which his wife calls

a Russen hurby, it is so close to the town, and yet so uncommon

rural--the sheep he has, is called marinos, because it is near the

sea; and their wool is so fine that they fold them up every night,

which I had no notion of--they have two sorts of them, one, which

they call the fine weather mutton, stays out all night, I believe,

and the other doesn't. But the march of intellect is agoing on, for

the dirty boys about the farm-yard, they told me, are sent to Harrow,

and the sheep themselves have their pens found them every night; what

to do I don't know, and I never like to ask--at Battle, where there

is an old abbé living--we did not see him--they have built a large

chapel for the Unicorns; I scarcely know what sex they are--I know

the Whistling Methodists, because when Mr. Ram and I was young we

used to go to the meetin, and hear them preach like anything--there's

a great deal of religion in Sussex of one sort and another.

 

My eldest, Mrs. Fulmer, has come here for her a-coach-man--Fulmer

wishes it may be a mail, because what they have already is all gurls;

if it hadn't been for that, I should have gone to Mrs. Grimsditch's

soreye at Hackney last week, when I was to have been done out as

Alderman Wenables, but I was obliged to be stationary here. I was

so sorry to see in the noosepapers that when the Lord High Admiral

exhibited his feet on the 18th of June, Maria Wood was dressed up so

strange; they said that after she had been painted, and some part of

her scraped clean from duck weed, they tied flags to her stays, and

put a Jack into her head, which I think quite wrong, because them

Jacks is uncommon insinuating.

 

I see that in Portingal Don Myjewel has got three estates, but they

cannot be very grand ones, if they produces only a crown; however,

I don't know what they mean in that country, only as they call him

real, I suppose he is the rightful king--I don't henvy him, Mr.

B.--there's many happier than them as sets upon thorns, though they

be gilded ones.

 

We met one of the Engines here from Cheltenham--he talks of returning

to some friend of his in Hingy, I think he called him Ben Gall. I

know he spoke very familiar of him. He has been at Stinkomalee, in

Sealong, and at the Island of Malicious, where a gentleman of the

name of Paul killed himself with Virginia. Our Engine said he was

at Malicious and at Bonbon at the time of the Conquest, which my

Trusler's Crononhotonthologos tells me was in the year 1072, which

makes his old appearance not surprising--he is very antick indeed--he

says he shall go out in a China ship, which sounds to me very

venturesome, but I suppose he knows what he is about--he is going to

Bombay, he tells us, to buy cotton, but that, between you and me, is

nonsense, because if that was all, why could he not go to Flint's, in

Newport-market, where they sells every sort of cotton, all done up in

nice boxes ready for use?

 

One thing I heard about hunting while I was at the Firm Hornee which

I thought shocking. There is a Squire Somebody which keeps a pack of

beadles, and there is ever so many of them--and they sleep in the

kennell every night, and a man is paid to whip them into it--but that

is not the worst--they feed them upon humane flesh. You would not

scarce credit this, but I heard my cousin say that he wondered this

hot weather did not hurt the dogs, for that they had nothing to feed

on but the Graves.--Do just touch them up for this--I am sure they

deserve it.

 

That selection for member of Parliament in Clare is very strange,

isn't it? Our old bow tells us that O'Connell can't take his place

because he won't swear against transportation, for he says it is one

thing for a Papist to stand and another for him to sit, which _enter

noo_ I could have told _him_--however, he says he thinks O'Connell

will go to the Pigeon House strait from the selection. Of course I

did not like to ask what he wanted to do in such a place as a Pigeon

House, and so the conversation dropped; indeed, the bow (as we call

him) told us such a strange story about Mr. O'Connell's getting to

the top of a pole the first day, and keeping up there for four days

afterwards, that I begin to think he tells tarrydiddles sometimes.

He is very agreeable though, and I believe he is rich, which is the

mane point when one has gurls to settle. He is always a making French

puns, which he calls cannon balls,[15] but I never shall be much of a

parley vous, I did not take to it early enough.

 

We expect the Duke of Clarence to review the Blockhead service on

this coast, which will make us uncommon gay. He will visit the

_Ramlees_, which Captain Piggut commands, at Deal, and the _Epergne_,

Captain Maingay's ship, at New Haven. I should like to go to

Brighton, but Fulmer is afraid of movin his better half while she is

so illdisposed, and expectin every minute; however, when that is over

we shall, I dare say, go to London, and hope to see you in our new

house. If you come here we shall delight in seeing you; but I believe

you like London, and never leaves the bills of morality, if you can

help it. Adoo, dear B. They all sends their loves.

 

Yours,

LAVINIA D. RAMSBOTTOM.

 

P.S.--You write sometimes about the Niggers, and abuse them--depend

upon it they are uncommon mischievous even here; for my couzen told

me that the Blacks had got all his beans--I only gives this as an int.