The Choice Humorous Works, Ludicrous Adventures 13

The Choice Humorous Works, Ludicrous Adventures 13

I must, however, conclude my letter, for I am hurried for Tim--Lavy

begs her best love, and says in case she is married you must write

her epitaph. Why do you not call upon Mr. R.? he will be very glad

to see you, and now that he is alone he lives, in compliment to me,

entirely upon turtle.

 

DOROTHEA J. RAMSBOTTOM.

 

 

VIII.

 

MRS. RAMSBOTTOM BACK IN LONDON.

 

TO JOHN BULL.

 

Montague Place, Friday, April 23, 1824.

 

MY DEAR MR. BULL,--I think you will be surprized at the prescription

of this letter with the P.P. mark of the two-penny post; but poor Mr.

Ramsbottom being seriously ill-disposed, we were off from Paris at a

moment's notice, for as good fortune would have it, my embargo which

I wrote about was quite removed by the use of Steers's hopalittledog

and bang shows every night.

 

Mr. R. is a little better, and has lost a good deal of what the

French call song; indeed our medical man relies very much on the

use of his lancaulet. The fact is, that the turtles is come over

from the West Hinges, and Mr. R. committed a fox paw at the King's

Head, in the Poultry, which caused our doctor (who lives in this

neighbourhood, and is lively as he is kind) to say that as Mr.

Ramsbottom nearly died by Bleaden, so bleeding must restore him.

Bleaden is the name of the gentleman who keeps the King's Head, and

bleeding, as you know, is the vulgar term for flea-bottomizing.

 

I fear you have not received my journal regular, nor do I think I

have told you of our seeing the Louver, which we did the very day

before we left Paris. I own, amongst the statutes, the Fighting

Alligator pleased me most. As for Rubens's pictures, I could not look

at them; for though Mr. Fulmer kept talking of the drapery, I saw no

drapery at all; and in one, which is of Adonass preventing Venice

from being chaste, the lady is sitting on a gold striped jacket.

Mr. Fulmer said she had got an enormous anacreonism, at which Lavy

laughed; so I suppose it had some allusion to her favourite writer,

Mr. Moore, who is called Anacreon--why, I never could understand,

unless it refers to the fashionable Maladies which he has introduced

into the best society.

 

A beautiful statute of Apollo with the Hypocrite pleased me very

much, and a Fawn which looks like a woman done by Mons. Praxytail, a

French stone-mason, is really curious.

 

A picture of The Bicknells is I suppose a family grope, but the young

women appeared tipsy, which is an odd state to be drawn in--the

statute of Manylaws is very fine, and so is Cupid and Physic,

different from the one which I noticed before.

 

Mr. Fulmer shewed us some small old black pictures, which I did not

look at much, because he told us they were Remnants, and of course

very inferior. A fine painting by Carlo my Hearty pleased me, and we

saw also something by Sall Vataraso, a lady who was somehow concerned

with the little woman I have seen at Peckham Fair in former days,

called Lady Morgan.

 

We had one dinner at Riches, a coffee-house on the Bullwards, and

curious enough, it was the very day that poor Mr. Ram overeat himself

in the City--we had some stewed Angles, and a couple of Pulls done

up in a dish of Shoe; which is much of a muchness with English fowl

and cabbage--we had afterwards an amulet of sulphur and some things

done in crumbs of bread, which they wanted to pass off upon me as

wheat-ears--but I had not lived at Brighton two seasons for nothing,

and do happen to know the difference between wheat-ears and oysters;

and so I told them.

 

Mr. Fulmer ordered a bottle of Oil of Purdry, which tasted a good

deal like Champaigne, but he said it was mouse; the girls liked it,

and Lavy laughed so loud that she quite astonished an officer of

Chindammery who was drinking cafe at the next table.

 

I have left my third and fourth daughters in Paris, to finish their

education--they will be taught every thing that girls can be taught,

and are to be regularly boarded every day (without regard to its

being Lent) for less than seventy pounds per ann.; and they learn so

many more things in France than girls do in England, that when they

return they might set up for mistresses themselves--what an advantage

there must be to a young woman, who is likely to have occasion for it

in her latter end, in a continent education--they call these schools

puncheons.

 

I desired, of course, that the Popish Prater, or priest, might have

no communication with my girls--I don't approve of what they call

the horal confession--to be sure it is a mere matter of feeling--but

I saw one young lady in Saint Surplice one day a confessing away

to a fine handsome Prater, and I thought it would have been much

better done in some more private place than a church. I understood

afterwards she was a lady who had been long married, but her husband

had no hair to his property, and she used to come every day and

confess to the Prater, and pray for a child--poor thing, she seemed

very much in earnest.

 

The onion of Lavy with Mr. Fulmer is postponed; his ant is dead,

and it would not be respectful to be married while the dool (as

the French call it) continues; I am driven to the last moment, as

Lavy and her sister are analyzing themselves to go to see the great

picture of Pompey, in the Strand--Lavy means to write to you next

week herself. --Your's truly,

 

DOROTHEA J. RAMSBOTTOM.

 

 

IX.

 

MRS. RAMSBOTTOM ANNOUNCES THE DEATH OF HER HUSBAND AND DESCRIBES HER

VISIT TO ROME.

 

TO JOHN BULL.

 

Montague Place, Jan. 6, 1825.

 

DEAR MR. BULL,--Why don't you write to us--or call? We are all of

us well, and none of us no more, as perhaps you may suppose, except

poor Mr. Ram.--of course you know of his disease, it was quite

unexpected, with a spoonful of turtle in his mouth--the real gallipot

as they call it. However, I have no doubt he is gone to heaven, and

my daughters are gone to Bath, except Lavy, who is my pet, and never

quits me.

 

The physicians paid great attention to poor Mr. Ram., and he suffered

nothing--at least that I know of. It was a very comfortable thing

that I was at home shay new, as the French say, when he went, because

it is a great pleasure to see the last of one's relations and friends.

 

You know we have been to Room since you heard from us--the infernal

city as it is called--the seat of Poopery, and where the Poop himself

lives. He was one of the Carnals, and was elected just before we was

there: he has changed his name, not choosing to disgrace his family.

He was formerly Doctor Dallyganger, but he now calls himself Leo,

which the Papists reverse, and call him Ole or Oleness. He is a fine

cretur, and was never married, but he has published a Bull in Room,

which is to let people commit all kind of sin without impunity,

which is different from your Bull, which shoes up them as does any

crime. He is not Poop this year, for he has proclaimed Jew Billy in

his place, which is very good, considering the latter gentleman is a

general, and not of his way of thinking.

 

Oh, Mr. Bull, Room is raley a beautiful place.--We entered it by

the Point of Molly, which is just like the Point and Sally at

Porchmouth, only they call Sally there Port, which is not known in

Room. The Tiber is not a nice river, it looks yellow; but it does

the same there as the Tames does here. We hired a carry-letty and

a cocky-olly, to take us to the Church of Salt Peter, which is

prodigious big:--in the center of the pizarro there is a basilisk

very high--on the right and left two handsome foundlings; and the

farcy, as Mr. Fulmer called it, is ornamented with collateral

statutes of some of the Apostates.

 

There is a great statute of Salt Peter himself, but Mr. Fulmer thinks

it to be Jew Peter, which I think likely too--there were three

brothers of the same name, as of course you know--Jew Peter the

fortuitous, the capillary, and toenails; and it is curos that it must

be him, for his toes are kissed away by the piety of the religious

debauchees who visit his shin and shrine--Besides, I think it is

Jew Peter, because why should not he be worshipped as well as Jew

Billy?--Mr. Fulmer made a pun, Lavy told me, and said the difference

between the two Jew Billies was, that one drew all the people to the

_sinagog_, and the other set all the people _agog to sin_--I don't

conceive his meaning, which I am afraid is a Dublin tender.

 

There was a large quire of singers, but they squeaked too much

to please me--and played on fiddles, so I suppose they have no

organs;--the priests pass all their time in dissolving sinners by

oracular confusion, which, like transmogrification, is part of their

doctoring--the mittens in the morning, and whispers at night, is just

equally the same as at Paris.

 

Next to Salt Peter's Church is the Church of Saint John the Latter

end, where the Poop always goes when he is first made--there is

another basilisk here covered with highro-griffins.

 

I assure you the Colocynth is a beautiful ruin--it was built for

fights, and Mr. Fulmer said that Hell of a gabbler, an Emperor,

filled his theatre with wine--what a sight of marvels Mr. B. oh, so

superb!--the carraway, and paring, and the jelly and tea-cup, which

are all very fine indeed.

 

The Veteran[10] (which I used foolishly to call the Vacuum till I

had been there), is also filled with statutes--one is the body of

the angel Michael, which has been ripped to pieces, and is therefore

said to be Tore-so--but I believe this to be a poetical fixture:--the

statute of the Racoon is very moving, its tail is prodigious long,

and goes round three on 'em--the Antipodes is also a fine piece of execution.