Part 5

"I heard Mr. Fulmer say he was a son of Marr's; he spoke it as if every body knew his father, so I suppose he must be the son of the poor gentleman, who was so barbarously murdered some years ago, near Ratcliffe Highway: if he is, he is uncommon genteel.

"At twelve o'clock we got into a boat and rowed to the packet; it was very fine and clear for the season, and Mr. Fulmer said he should not dislike pulling Lavinia about, all the morning: this I believe was a naughtycal phrase, which I did not rightly comprehend, because Mr. F. never offered to talk in that way on shore, to either of us.

"The packet is not a parcel as I imagined, in which we were to be made up for exportation, but a boat of considerable size; it is called a cutter--why, I do not know, and did not like to ask. It was very curious to see how it rolled about--however I felt quite mal-apropos, and instead of exciting any of the soft sensibilities of the other sex, a great unruly man, who held the handle of the ship, bid me lay hold of a companion, and when I sought his arm for protection, he introduced me to a ladder, down which I ascended into the cabin, one of the most curious places I ever beheld, where ladies and gentlemen are put upon shelves like books in a library, and where tall men are doubled up like boot-jacks, before they can be put away at all.

"A gentleman in a hairy cap without his coat, laid me perpendicularly on a mattress, with a basin by my side, and said that was my birth; I thought it would have been my death, for I never was so indisposed in all my life. I behaved extremely ill to a very amiable middle-aged gentleman with a bald head, who had the misfortune to be attending upon his wife, in the little hole under me.

"There was no symphony to be found among the tars, (so called from their smell) for just before we went off I heard them throw a painter overboard, and directly after, they called out to one another to hoist up an ensign. I was too ill to enquire what the poor young gentleman had done, but after I came up stairs I did not see his body hanging anywhere, so I conclude they had cut him down; I hope it was not young Mr. Marr a venturing after my Lavy.

"I was quite shocked to find what democrats the sailors are--they seem to hate the nobility, and especially the law lords: the way I discovered this apathy of theirs to the nobility, was this--the very moment we lost sight of England and were close to France, they began, one and all, to swear first at the peer, and then at the bar, in such gross terms as made my very blood run cold.

"I was quite pleased to see Lavinia sitting with Mr. Fulmer in the travelling carriage on the outside of the packet. But Lavinia afforded great proofs of her good bringing up, by commanding her feelings--it is curious what could have agitated the billiary ducks of my stomach, because I took every precaution which is recommended in different books to prevent ill-disposition. I had some mutton chops at breakfast, some Scotch marmalade on bread and butter, two eggs, two cups of coffee and three of tea, besides toast, a little fried whiting, some potted charr, and a few shrimps, and after breakfast I took a glass of warm white wine negus, and a few oysters, which lasted me till we got into the boat, when I began eating gingerbread nuts, all the way to the packet, and then was persuaded to take a glass of bottled porter to keep every thing snug and comfortable."

* * * * *

And here ends our present communication. We are mightily obliged to Miss Higginbottom, and shall with great pleasure continue the journal, whenever we are presented with it.

IV.

HIGGINBOTTOM AND RAMSBOTTOM.

TO JOHN BULL.

Montague Place, Dec. 24, 1823.

SIR,--I never wished either my wife or daughter to turn authoresses, as I think ladies which write books are called, and I should have set my face against the publication of my wife's Journal of her Tour if I had been consulted; but the truth is, they seldom ask me anything as to what is to be done, until they have first done it themselves.

Now I like you, because you have done the West Indians a good turn, and also because you try to put down the papishes; but there _is_ a thing which under all the circumstances vexes me, because, as you may remember, Mr. Burke said, "anything which is worth doing is worth doing well." What I quarrel with you for is, that you put my wife's name and my daughter's name as Mrs. and Miss Higginbottom, whereas our name is Ramsbottom, and whether it be the stupidity of your printers, or that my daughter, who has been three years at an uncommon fine school at Hackney, cannot write plain, I do not pretend to say; but I do not like it, because, since every tub should stand on its own bottom, I think the Higginbottoms should not have the credit of doing what the Ramsbottoms actually do.

Perhaps you will correct this little error: it hurts me, because, as I said before, I like you very much, and I have got a few cases of particular champagne, a wine which my friend Rogers tells me, you are extremely fond of, and which he says is better than all the "real pain" in the world--(nobody ever said it before); and when the women return from over the horrid sea, I hope you will come and drink some of it; so pray just make an _erratum_, as the booksellers say, and put our right names in your paper, by doing which you will really oblige, your's,

HUMPHREY RAMSBOTTOM.

P.S.--My second daughter is a very fine girl, and I think as clever as Lavy, and writes a much clearer hand--you shall see her when you come to M---- Place.

V.

MISS LAVINIA RAMSBOTTOM FORWARDS THE CONTINUATION OF HER MOTHER'S DIARY.

TO JOHN BULL.

Paris, Dec. 28, 1823.

DEAR MR. B.,--I never was so surprised in my life as when we got your paper here, to see that your printing people had called Ma' and me Higginbottom--I was sure, and I told Ma' so, that it could not be your fault, because you could not have made such a mistake in my handwriting, nor could you have forgotten me so much as to have done such a thing; but I suppose you were so happy and comfortable with your friends (for judging by the number of your enemies you must have a host of them) at this merry season, that you did not pay so much attention to your correspondents as usual. I forgive you, my dear Mr. B.--Christmas comes but once a-year, and I assure you we had a small lump of roast beef (_portion pour deux_) from M. Godeau's, over the way, to keep up our national custom--the man actually asked Ma' whether she would have a _rost-bif de mouton_; so little do they know anything about it. I send another portion of Ma's diary--you spelt it "dairy" in the paper--I don't know whether Ma' put it so herself--she is quite pleased at seeing it published, and Mr. Fulmer called and said it was capital.

We have just come from the Ambassador's chapel, and are going to see St. Cloud directly, so I cannot write much myself, but must say adieu.--Always believe me, dear Mr. B., yours truly,

LAVINIA RAMSBOTTOM.

ENGLAND AND FRANCE,

BY DOROTHEA JULIA RAMSBOTTOM.

(_Continued._)

"When we came near the French shore, a batto (which is much the same as a boat in England) came off to us, and, to my agreeable surprise, an Englishman came into our ship; and I believe he was a man of great consequence, for I overheard him explaining some dreadful quarrel which had taken place in our Royal Family.

"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.

"A very droll person, with long legs and a queer face, sung a song which pleased me very much, because I understood the end of it perfectly--it was 'tal de lal de lal de lal,' and sounded quite like English--after he had done, although every body laughed, the whole house called out 'beast, beast,' and the man, notwithstanding, was foolish enough to sing it over again."

VI.

ADVENTURES AT PARIS.

TO MR. BULL.

Paris, January 28, 1824.

SIR,--As my daughter Lavy, who acts as my amaranthus, is ill-disposed with a cold and guittar, contracted by visiting the Hecatombs last week, I send this without her little billy which she usually sends; my second daughter has sprained her tender hercules in crossing one of the roues, and my third daughter has got a military fever, which, however, I hope, by putting her through a regiment, and giving her a few subterfuges, will soon abate. I am, however, a good deal _embracée_, as the French say, with so many invalids.

Since I wrote last, I have visited the Hullaballoo, or cornmarket, so called from the noise made in it; Mr. Fulmer told me I should see the flower of the French nation there, but I only saw a crowd of old men and old women; here is a pillow made for judicious astronomy, but which looks like a sun-dial.

We went, on Tuesday, to the symetery of the Chaise-and-pair, as they call it, where the French and English are miscellaneously interred, and I amused myself by copying the epigrams on the tombstones--one of them, which looked like a large bath, Mr. Fulmer told me was a sark of a goose, which I had previously heard my friend Mr. Rogers call Mr. Hume's shirt.

In the afternoon we went to dine at Beau Villiers's--not the Mr. Villiers who owes our Government so much money--but the smell of the postillions which were burning in the rooms quite overpowered me. I got better in the evening, and as the girls were not with us, Mr. Fulmer took me round the Palais Royal, which is a curious place indeed. We saw several Russian war houses, and went into the "Caffee de Milk alone," so called because, when Bonypart confisticated the cargoes from the West Indies, and propagated the use of coffee, the lady who kept this place made a mixture with milk alone, which answered all the purpose of coffee. The room is surrounded by looking-glasses, so that the people are always multiplying who go there: the lady herself was very beautiful, but Mr. Fulmer told me she was constantly reflected upon. Mr. F. took some melted glass, upon which I did not like to venture, but contented myself with a tumbler of caterpillar and water.

Wednesday we went to the Shampdemars (which is opposite to the Pere Elisée), and saw a review of the Queerasses of the Royal Guard. The sister of the late Dolphin was present--the Dolphin of France is the same as the Prince of Whales in England. The Duke of Anglehome came by, from hunting, just at the time; I am told he is quite a Ramrod in the chace. The troops performed their revolutions with decision, and having manured all over the ground, fired a fille de joy, and returned to their quarters.

We went yesterday to what is their Parliament House, and while were a waiting in the antic-room, I saw a picture of Lewes de Sweet himself, in a large purple robe, lined with vermin and covered with fleur de lice. Being a stranger, I was allowed to look into the chamber; it is not quite what I expected: there seemed to be a man in a bar, with a bell before him, and the men who were speaking spoke all in French, and looked very shabby and mean; to be sure, they were only the deputies--it would have been more lucky if we had seen the members themselves.

Lavy, I think, has got a puncheon for Mr. Fulmer, and I am afraid is a fretting about it, but this is quite cet a dire between us, Mr. B. He says her figure is like the Venus de Medicine, which is no doubt owing to the pulling down she has had of late. We are going next week to Sanclew again, but we travel in such an odd carriage, that I cannot prevail upon myself to mention its name.

You must excuse a short letter to-day. I was determined to write, else I thought our friends in Westminster might be disappointed. You shall hear more at large by the next opportunity.

Always yours, D. J. RAMSBOTTOM.

If you see Mr. R., tell him Mr. Fulmer has bought him two pictures; one of Ten Years, the other of Old Beans; I am no judge, but they are very black, and shine beautifully--they are considered shift doovers in these parts.

VII.

FURTHER ADVENTURES AT PARIS.

Paris, March 15, 1824.

MY DEAR BULL,--I believe I shall soon have to announce that Mr. Fulmer has led my Lavy to the halter--but I am unwilling to be too sanguinary; should that happen, however, we shall extend our tower, and proceed to the Pay de Veau and finally to Room, where Mr. Fulmer is to explain all the antics, what you so well know are collected there.

We have been to-day to see the Hotel de Veal, so called, I believe, from being situated in the Calf-market; it is now styled the Place de Grave, because all the malefactors who are decimated by the gulleting (an instrument so called from its cutting the sufferer's throat) are buried there. We crossed over the Pont Neuf, in order to go again to see the Mass. As we went along, I purchased two beautiful sieve jars, with covers, on purpose to keep Popery in.