The Choice Humorous Works, Ludicrous Adventures 11
"He said to the master of our ship, that owing to the Prince Leopold
having run foul of the Duchess of Kent while she was in stays, the
Duchess had missed Deal. By which I conclude it was a dispute at
cards--however, I want to know nothing of state secrets, or I might
have heard a great deal more, because it appeared that the Duchess's
head was considerably injured in the scuffle.
"I was very much distressed to see that a fat gentleman who was
in the ship, had fallen into a fit of perplexity by over-reaching
himself--he lay prostituted upon the floor, and if it had not
been that we had a doctor in the ship, who immediately opened his
temporary artery and his jocular vein, with a lancelot which he had
in his pocket, I think we should have seen his end.
"It was altogether a most moving spectacle--he thought himself dying,
and all his anxiety in the midst of his distress was to be able to
add a crocodile to his will, in favour of his niece, about whom he
appeared very sanguinary.
"It was quite curious to see the doctor fleabottomize the patient,
which he did without any accident, although it blew a perfect harrico
at the time. I noticed two little children, who came out of the boat,
with hardly any clothes on them, speaking French like anything--a
proof of the superior education given to the poor in France, to that
which they get in England from Dr. Bell of Lancaster.
"When we landed at Callous, we were extremely well received, and I
should have enjoyed the sight very much, but Mr. Fulmer, and another
gentleman in the batto, kept talking of nothing but how turkey and
grease disagreed with each other, which, in the then state of my
stomach, was far from agreeable.
"We saw the print of the foot of Louis Desweet, the French King,
where he first stopped when he returned to his country--he must be a
prodigious heavy man to have left such a deep mark in the stone--we
were surrounded by Commissioners, who were so hospitable as to press
us to go to their houses without any ceremony. Mr. Fulmer showed our
pass-ports to a poor old man, with a bit of red ribband tied to his
button-hole, and we went before the Mayor, who is no more like a
Mayor than my foot-boy.
"Here they took a subscription of our persons, and one of the men
said that Lavinia had a jolly manton, at which the clerks laughed,
and several of them said she was a jolly feel, which I afterwards
understood meant a pretty girl--I misunderstood it for fee, which,
being in a public office, was a very natural mistake.
"We went then to a place they call the Do-Anne, where they took away
the pole of my baruch--I was very angry at this, but they told me we
were to travel in Lemonade with a biddy, which I did not understand,
but Mr. Fulmer was kind enough to explain it to me as we went to
the hotel, which is in a narrow street, and contains a garden and
court-yard.
"I left it to Mr. Fulmer to order dinner, for I felt extremely
piquant, as the French call it, and a very nice dinner it was--we had
a purey, which tasted very like soup--one of the men said it was made
from leather, at least so I understood, but it had quite the flavour
of hare; I think it right here to caution travellers against the fish
at this place, which looks very good, but which I have reason to
believe is very unwholesome, for one of the waiters called it poison
while speaking to the other--the fish was called marine salmon, but
it looked like veal cutlets.
"They are so fond of Buonaparte still that they call the table-cloths
Naps, in compliment to him--this I remarked to myself, but said
nothing about it to anybody else, for fear of consequences.
"One of the waiters, who spoke English, asked me if I would have a
little Bergami, which surprised me, till Mr. Fulmer said it was the
wine he was handing about, when I refused it, preferring to take a
glass of Bucephalus.
"When we had dined we had some coffee, which is here called
cabriolet; after which Mr. Fulmer asked if we would have a chasse,
which I thought meant a hunting party, and said I was afraid of going
out into the fields at that time of night--but I found chasse was a
lickure called _cure a sore_ (from its healing qualities, I suppose),
and very nice it was--after we had taken this, Mr. Fulmer went out
to look at the jolly feels in the shops of Callous, which I thought
indiscreet in the cold air; however, I am one as always overlooks
the little piccadillies of youth.
"When we went to accoucher at night, I was quite surprised in not
having a man for a chambermaid; and if it had not been for the entire
difference of the style of furniture, the appearance of the place,
and the language and dress of the attendants, I never should have
discovered that we had changed our country in the course of the day.
"In the morning early we left Callous with the Lemonade, which is
Shafts, with a very tall post-boy, in a violet-coloured jacket,
trimmed with silver; he rode a little horse, which is called a biddy,
and wore a nobbed tail, which thumped against his back like a patent
self-acting knocker. We saw, near Bullion, Buonaparte's conservatory,
out of which he used to look at England in former days.
"Nothing remarkable occurred till we met a courier a travelling,
Mr. Fulmer said, with despatches; these men were called couriers
immediately after the return of the Bonbons, in compliment to the
London newspaper, which always wrote in their favour. At Montrule,
Mr. Fulmer shewed me Sterne's Inn, and there I saw Mr. Sterne
himself, a standing at the door, with a French cocked hat upon his
head, over a white night-cap. Mr. Fulmer asked if he had any becauses
in his house; but he said no: what they were I do not know to this
moment.
"It is no use describing the different places on our rout, because
Paris is the great object of all travellers, and therefore I shall
come to it at once--it is reproached by a revenue of trees; on the
right of which you see a dome, like that of St. Paul's, but not so
large. Mr. Fulmer told me it was an invalid, and it did certainly
look very yellow in the distance; on the left you perceive Mont
Martyr, so called from the number of windmills upon it.
"I was very much surprised at the height of the houses, and the noise
of the carriages in Paris: and was delighted when we got to our
hotel, which is Wag Ram; why I did not like to enquire; it is just
opposite the Royal Timber-yard, which is a fine building, the name of
which is cut in stone.--_Timbre Royal._
"The hotel which I have mentioned is in the Rue de la Pay, so called
from its being the dearest part of the town. At one end of it is the
place Fumdum, where there is a pillow as high as the Trojan's Pillow
at Rome, or the pompous pillow in Egypt; this is a beautiful object,
and is made of all the guns, coats, waistcoats, hats, boots and
belts, which belonged to the French who were killed by the cold in
Prussia at the fire of Moscow.
"At the top of the pillow is a small apartment, which they call
a pavillion, and over that a white flag, which I concluded to
be hoisted as a remembrance of Buonaparte, being very like the
table-cloths I noticed at Callous.
"We lost no time in going into the gardens of the Tooleries, where we
saw the statutes at large in marvel--here we saw Mr. Backhouse and
Harry Edney, whoever they might be, and a beautiful grope of Cupid
and Physic, together with several of the busks which Lavy has copied,
the original of which is in the Vacuum at Rome, which was formerly an
office for government thunder, but is now reduced to a stable where
the Pope keeps his bulls.
"Travellers like us, who are mere birds of prey, have no time to
waste, and therefore we determined to see all we could in each day,
so we went to the great church, which is called Naughty Dam, where
we saw a priest doing something at an altar. Mr. Fulmer begged me
to observe the knave of the church, but I thought it too hard to
call the man names in his own country, although Mr. Fulmer said he
believed he was exercising the evil spirits in an old lady in a black
cloak.
"It was a great day at this church, and we staid for mass, so called
from the crowd of people who attend it--the priest was very much
incensed--we waited out the whole ceremony, and heard Tedium sung,
which occupied three hours.
"We returned over the Pont Neuf, so called from being the north
bridge in Paris, and here we saw a beautiful image of Henry Carter;
it is extremely handsome, and quite green--I fancied I saw a likeness
to the Carters of Portsmouth, but if it is one of his family, his
posteriors are very much diminished in size and figure.
"Mr. Fulmer proposed that we should go and dine at a tavern called
Very--because every thing is very good there; and accordingly we
went, and I never was so malapropos in my life--there were two or
three ladies quite in nubibus; but when I came to look at the bill of
fare, I was quite anileated, for I perceived that Charlotte de Pommes
might be sent for for one shilling and twopence, and Patty de Veau
for half-a-crown. I desired Mr. Fulmer to let us go; but he convinced
me there was no harm in the place, by shewing me a dignified
clergyman of the Church of England and his wife, a eating away like
any thing.
"We had a voulez vous of fowl, and some sailor's eels, which were
very nice, and some pieces of crape, so disguised by the sauce that
nobody who had not been told what it was would have distinguished
them from pancakes--after the sailor's eels we had some pantaloon
cutlets, which were savoury--but I did not like the writing
paper--however, as it was a French custom, I eat every bit of
it--they call sparrow-grass here asperge, I could not find out why.
"If I had not seen what wonderful men the French cooks are, who
actually stew up shoes with partridges, and make very nice dishes
too, I never could have believed the influence they have in the
politics of the country--everything is now decided by the cooks, who
make no secret of their feelings, and the party who are still for
Buonaparte call themselves traitors, while those who are partizans of
the Bonbons are termed Restaurateurs, or friends of the Restoration.
"After dinner a French monsheur, who I thought was a waiter, for he
had a bit of red ribbon at his button-hole, just the same as one of
the waiters had, began to talk to Mr. Fulmer, and it was agreed we
should go to the play--they talked of Racing and Cornhill, which
made me think the mounsheur had been in England--however, it was
arranged that we were to go and see Andrew Mackay at the Francay, or
Jem Narse, or the Bullvards; but at last it was decided unanimously,
crim. con. that we should go to see Jem Narse, and so we went--but I never saw the man himself after all.
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