Part 11

_To Mary, at No 45 Mount Street Grosvenor Square._

DEAR MARY

Littel did I Think wen I advertisd in the Tims for annother Plaice of taking wan in Vandemin’s land. But so it his and Hear I am amung Kangerooses and Savidges and other Forriners. But goverment offering to Yung Wimmin to Find them in Vittles and Drink and Close and Husbands was turms not to be sneazed at, so I rit to the Outlandish Seckertary and he was so Kind as Grant.

Wen this cums to Hand go to Number 22 Pimpernel Plaice And mind and go betwixt Six and sevin For your own Sake cos then the fammilys Having Diner give my kind love to betty Housmad and Say I am safe of my Jurney to Forrin parts And I hope master as never Mist the wine and brought Them into trubble on My accounts. But I did not Like to leav for Ever And Ever without treeting my Frends and feller servents and Drinking to all their fairwells. In my Flury wen the Bell rung I forgot to take My own Key out of missis Tekaddy but I hope sum wan had the thought And it is in Good hands but shall Be obleeged to no. Lickwise thro my Loness of Sperrits my lox of Hares quite went out of My Hed as was prommist to Be giv to Gorge and Willum and the too Futmen at the too Next dores But I hop and Trust betty pacifid them with lox of Her hone as I begd to Be dun wen I rit Her from dover. O Mary wen I furst see the dover Wite clifts out of site wat with squemishnes and Felings I all most repentid givin Ingland warning And had douts if I was goin to better my self. But the stewerd was verry kind tho I could make Him no returns xcept by Dustin the ship for Him And helpin to wash up his dishes. Their was 50 moor Young Wimmin of us and By way of passing tim We agread to tell our Histris of our selves taken by Turns But they all turned out Alick we had All left on acount of Testacious masters And crustacious Mississis and becos the Wurks was too much For our Strenths but betwixt yew and Me the reel truths was beeing Flirted with and unprommist by Perfidus yung men. With sich exampils befour there Minds I wunder sum of them was unprudent enuff to Lissen to the Salers whom are coverd with Pitch but famus for Not stiking to there Wurds. has for Me the Mate chose to be verry Partickler wan nite Setting on a Skane of Rops but I giv him is Anser and lucky I did for Am infourmd he as Got too more Marred Wives in a sate of Biggamy thank Goodness wan can marry in new Wurlds without mates. Since I have bean in My pressent Sitiation I have had between too and three offers for My Hands and expex them Evry day to go to fistcufs about Me this is sum thing lick treeting Wimmin as Wimmin ought to be treetid Nun of your sarsy Buchers and Backers as brakes there Prommissis the sam as Pi Crust wen its maid Lite and shivvry And then laffs in Your face and say they can hav anny Gal they lick round the Square. I dont menshun nams but Eddard as drives the Fancy bred will no Wat I mean. As soon as ever the Botes rode to Land I dont agrivate the Truth to say their was haf a duzzin Bows apeace to Hand us out to shoar and sum go so Far as say they was offered to thro Specking Trumpits afore they left the Shipside. Be that as it May or may Not I am tould We maid a Verry pritty site all Wauking too and too in our bridle wite Gownds with the Union Jacks afore Us to pay humbel Respex to kernel Arther who behaived verry Gentlemanny and Complementid us on our Hansom apearances and Purlitely sed he Wisht us All in the United States. The Salers was so gallaunt as giv three chears wen We left there Ship and sed if so be they had not Bean without Canons they Wood have salutid us all round. Servents mite live Long enuff in Lonnon without Being sich persons of Distinkshun. For my hone Part, cumming amung strangers and Pig in Pokes, prudence Dicktatid not to be askt out At the verry furst cumming in howsumever All is setteld And the match is aproved off by Kernel Arther and the Brightish goverment, who as agread to giv me away. thems wat I call Honners as we used to Say at wist. Wan thing in My favers was my voice and my noing the song of the Plane Gould Ring witch the Van Demons had never Herd afore I wood recummend all as meens curnming to Bring as menny of the fashingable Songs and Ballets as they Can--and to get sum nolliges of music as fortnately for me I was Abel to by meens of praxtising on Missis Piney Forty wen the fammily Was at ramsgit. of Coarse you and betty Will xpect Me to indulge in Pearsonallitis about my intendid to tell Yew wat he is lick he is Not at All lick Eddard as driv the Faney bred and Noboddy else yew No. I wood send yew His picter Dun by himself only its no more lick Him then Chork is to Cheas. In spit of the Short Tim for Luv to take Roots I am convinst he is verry Passionet of coarse As to his temper I cant Speek As yet as I hav not Tride it. O mary littel did I think too Munth ago of sending yew Brid Cake and Weddin favers wen I say this I am only Figgering in speach for Yew must Not look for sich Things from this Part of the Wurld I dont mean this by Way of discurridgement Wat I meen to say is this If so be Yung Wimmin prefers a state of Silly Bessy they Had better remane ware they was Born but as far as Reel down rite Coarting and no nonsens is concarnd This is the Plaice for my Munny a Gal has only to cum out hear And theirs duzzens will jump at her like Cox at Gusberris. it will be a reel kindnes to say as Much to Hannah at 48 and Hester Brown and Peggy Oldfield and partickler poor Charlotte they needent Fear about being Plane for Yew may tell Them in this land Faces dont make stumblin Blox and if the Hole cargo was as uggly As sin Lots wood git marrid. Deer Mary if so Be you feel disposed to cum Out of Your self I will aford evry Falicity towards your hapiness. I dont want to hurt your Felines but since the Cotchman as giv yew up I dont think Yew have annother String to your Bo to say nothink of Not being so young As yew was Ten Yeer ago and faces Will ware out as well as scrubbin brushes. theirs a verry nice yung man is quit a Willin to offer to Yew providid you cum the verry Next vessle for He has Maid up his mind not to Wait beyond the Kupid and Sikey. as the ship is on the Pint of Saling I cant rite Moor at pressent xcept for them has as shily shalying sweat harts to Thretten with cumming to Vandemins And witch will soon sho wether its Cubbard love or true Love I hay seen Enuff of Bows droping in at supertime and falling out the next morning after borrowin Wans wags. Wen yew see anny Frends giv my Distant love to Them and say My being Gone to annother wurld dont impear my Memmery but I often Thinks of Number 22 and the two Next Dores. yew may Disclose my matterymonial Prospex to betty as we hav always had a Deal of Confidens. And I remane with the Gratest asurance

Your affexionat Frend Susan Gale--as his to be Simco.

P.S. Deer mary my Furst Match beeing broke off short hope Yew will not take it Ill but I have Marrid the yung Man as was to Hav waited for Yew but As yew hav never seen one Annother trusts yew will Not take Him to hart or abrade by Return of Postesses he has behaved Perfickly honnerable And has got a verry United frend of his Hone to be atacht to Yew in lew of Him. adew.

SONNET.

Allegory--A moral vehicle.--DICTIONARY.

I had a Gig-Horse, and I called him Pleasure, Because on Sundays, for a little jaunt, He was so fast and showy, quite a treasure; Although he sometimes kicked, and spied aslant. I had a Chaise, and christened it Enjoyment, With yellow body, and the wheels of red, Because ’twas only used for one employment, Namely, to go wherever Pleasure led. I had a wife, her nickname was Delight; A son called Frolic, who was never still: Alas! how often dark succeeds to bright! Delight was thrown, and Frolic had a spill, Enjoyment was upset and shattered quite, And Pleasure fell a splitter on _Paine’s Hill_!

A SERIO-COMIC REMINISCENCE.

It seems but the other day--instead of nearly ten years ago--that my drawing-room door opened, and the female servant, with a very peculiar expression of countenance, announced a memorable visitor. Shakspeare has enquired “What is there in a name?” But most assuredly he would have withdrawn the question could he have seen the effect of a patronymic on our Sarah’s risible muscles. To render the phenomenon more striking, she was a maiden little addicted to the merry mood: on the contrary, she was rather more sedate than her age warranted. Her face was of a cast decidedly serious--quiet brow--steady eyes--sober nose--precise mouth, and solemn chin, which she doubled by drawing it in demurely against her neck. The habitual expression of her physiognomy was as grave, short of actual sadness, as human face could assume, reminding you of those set, solid, composed, very decorous visages, that indifferent persons put on for the day at a funeral: her very complexion was uniformly colourless--pale yet not clear--that _slack-baked_ look which forbids the idea of levity. When she smiled, which was rarely, and in cases where most females of her years would have indulged in a titter, or excusable laugh, it was the faintest possible approach to hilarity--the corners of her mouth curving, if anything a little downwards. Nothing, in fact, less than galvanism, which “sets corpses a-grinning,” seemed likely to shock her features into any broad demonstration of jocularity, and yet, lo! there she was, her face shortened by half its length--her mouth stretching from ear to ear, and hardly able, for a suppressed giggle, to articulate its brief announcement.

I have always considered the above physiognomical miracle--the lighting up of that seemingly impracticable countenance--as the best criticism I have ever _seem_ of the performances of the great Pan of Pantomime:--a most eloquent retrospective review of the triumphs of his genius. It was a glorious illustration of the Pleasures of Memory, to behold that face so like the stain a dead calm on a dull day burst suddenly into ripples and radiance, like the brook that laughs in the sun. What recollections of exquisite fooling must have rushed into her fancy to convert that Quakerly maiden, as by a stage metamorphosis, into a perfect figure of fun! What grotesque fantastic shapes must have come tumbling, rolling, crawling, dangling, dancing, prancing, floundering, flopping, striding, sliding, ambling, shambling, scrambling, stumbling, bundling, and trundling into her mind’s eye, to so startle her features from their propriety! What face-making faces, with telegraphic brows--rolling, reeling, goggling, ogling, hard-winking, and soft-blinking eyes--and grinning, gaping, pinching, puckering mouths must have grimaced at her to put her steady countenance so out of countenance! What is there in a name? Why magic! A serious, quiet, decrepid man had but to announce himself, and Presto! Prestissimo! before an engineer could cry “Ease her! stop her! back her!” our Sarah had retraced her course up the stream of time to the bright wintry gallery nights at the Lane, or the Garden, or the Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Wells. Talk of magnetisers! when did Baron Dupotet, or any of his sect, without pass or manipulation, thus throw a sedate, orderly maiden, into an ecstasy, and set her looking through the back of her head at the pantomimical experiences of the past? Talk of Laughing Gas! when was there a facetious fluid so potent that the mere sight of the empty bottle--(for such, alas! the ex-clown was become)--could throw the ticklesome muscles into merry convulsions?

I have often speculated since on Sarah’s deportment, when, having ushered “Mr. Grimaldi, alias Joe,” into the drawing-room, she returned to her kitchen. Of course, in the first flutter and frisk of her animal spirits, she postponed all domestic duties; or, at best, obliviously broke the eggs into the flower tub, popped the lump of butter into the oven, and secured the rolling-pin in the safe. More probably she dropped herself into the first chair that offered; and throwing her apron over her head to shut out the daylight, indulged in a lamplight vision of the drolleries of Mother Goose, or the Sleeping Beauty; when the frolics of funny Joe had cheated her for awhile of the sorrows of servitude, low wages, a crustaceous mistress, a _perfidus_ young man, and a hard place, with perhaps the bodily pains of a recent scald, a bad bruise, and tight shoes. No doubt it had been one of her wishes, born of wonder and curiosity, to see the popular Motley off the stage “in his habit as he lived;” and lo! beyond her hope, she had met him face to face without his paint, and been on speaking terms with that marvellous voice, so sparingly heard, even on the stage.

For my own part, I confess to have been somewhat unsettled as well as the bewildered maid by pantomimical associations. Slowly and seriously as my visitor advanced, and with a decided stoop, I could not forget that I had seen the same personage come in with two odd eyebrows, a pair of right-and-left eyes, a wry nose, a crooked mouth, two wrong arms, two left legs, and a free and easy body without a bone in it, or apparently any centre of gravity. I was half prepared to hear that rare voice break forth smart as the smack of a waggoner’s whip, or richly stick and chuckling, like the utterance of a boy laughing, talking, and eating custard, all at once, but a short interval sufficed to dispel the pleasant illusion, and convinced me that the Grimaldi was a total wreck.

“Alas! how changed from him, The life of humour, and the soul of whim.”

The lustre of his bright eye was gone--his eloquent face was passive and looked thrown out of work--and his frame was bowed down by no feigned decrepitude. His melancholy errand to me related to a Farewell Address, which at the invitation of his staunch friend Miss Kelly--for it did not require a request--I had undertaken to indite. He pleaded earnestly that it might be brief, being, he said, “a bad study,” as well as distrustful of his bodily strength. Of his sufferings he spoke with a sad but resigned tone, expressed deep regret at quitting a profession he delighted in, and partly attributed the sudden breaking down of his health to the superior size of one particular stage, which required of him a jump extra in getting off. That additional bound, like the bittock at the end of a Scotch mile, had, he thought, overtasked his strength. His whole deportment and conversation impressed me with the opinion that he was a simple, sensible, warm-hearted being, such indeed as he appears in his Memoirs--a Joseph after Parson Adams’s own heart. We shook hands heartily, parted, and I never saw him again. He was a rare practical humorist, and I never look into Rabelais, with its huge-mouthed Gargantua and his enormous appetite for “plenty of links, chitterlings, and puddings,” in their season, without thinking that in Grimaldi and _his_ pantomime I have lost my best set of illustrations of that literary extravaganza.

EPICUREAN REMINISCENCES OF A SENTIMENTALIST.

“My _Tables_! _Meat_ it is, _I set it_ down!”--HAMLET

I think it was Spring but--not certain I am-- When my passion began first to work; But I know we were certainly looking for lamb, And the season was over for pork.

’Twas at Christmas, I think, when I met with Miss Chase, Yes,--for Morris had asked me to dine,-- And I thought I had never beheld such a face, Or so noble a turkey and chine.

Placed close by her side, it made others quite wild, With sheer envy to witness my luck; How she blushed as I gave her some turtle, and smiled As I afterwards offered some duck.

I looked and I languished, alas, to my cost, Through three courses of dishes and meats; Getting deeper in love--but my heart was quite lost, When it came to the trifle and sweets!

With a rent-roll that told of my houses and land, To her parents I told my designs-- And then to herself I presented my hand, With a very fine pottle of pines!

I asked her to have me for weal or for woe, And she did not object in the least;-- I can’t tell the date--but we married, I know, Just in time to have game at the feast.

We went to ----, it certainly was the sea-side; For the next, the most blessed of morns, I remember how fondly I gazed at my bride, Sitting down to a plateful of prawns.

Oh! never may mem’ry lose sight of that year, But still hallow the time as it ought; That season the “grass” was remarkably dear, And the peas at a guinea a quart.

So happy, like hours all our days seemed to haste, A fond pair, such as poets have drawn, So united in heart--so congenial in taste, We were both of us partial to brawn!

A long life I looked for of bliss with my bride, But then Death--I ne’er dreamt about that! Oh! there’s nothing is certain in life, as I cried When my turbot eloped with the cat!

My dearest took ill at the turn of the year, But the cause no physician could nab; But something it seemed like consumption, I fear; It was just after supping on crab.

In vain she was doctored, in vain she was dosed, Still her strength and her appetite pined; She lost relish for what she had relished the most. Even salmon she deeply declined!

For months still I lingered in hope and in doubt, While her form it grew wasted and thin! But the last dying spark of existence went out, As the oysters were just coming in!

She died, and she left me the saddest of men To indulge in a widower’s moan; Oh! I felt all the power of solitude then, As I ate my first natives alone!

But when I beheld Virtue’s friends in their cloaks, And with sorrowful crape on their hats, Oh! my grief poured a flood; and the out-of-door folks Were all crying--I think it was sprats!

SAINT MARK’S EVE.

A TALE OF THE OLDEN TIME.

“The Devil choke thee with un!”--as Master Giles, the Yeoman, said this, he banged down a hand in size and colour like a ham, on the old-fashioned oak table;--“I do say the Devil choke thee with un!”

The Dame made no reply: she was choking with passion and a fowl’s liver--the original cause of the dispute. A great deal has been said and sung of the advantage of congenial tastes amongst married people, but true it is, the variances of our Kentish couple arose from this very coincidence in gusto. They were both fond of the little delicacy in question, but the Dame had managed to secure the morsel for herself, and this was sufficient to cause a storm of very high words--which properly understood, signifies very low language. Their mealtimes seldom passed over without some contention of the sort,--as sure as the knives and forks clashed, so did they--being in fact equally greedy and disagreedy--and when they did pick a quarrel--they picked it to the bone.

It was reported, that on some occasions they had not even contented themselves with hard speeches, but they had come to scuffling--he taking to boxing, and she to pinching--though in a far less amicable manner than is practised by the takers of snuff. On the present difference, however, they were satisfied with “wishing each other dead with all their hearts”--and there seemed little doubt of the sincerity of the aspiration, on looking at their malignant faces,--for they made a horrible picture in this frame of mind.

Now it happened that this quarrel took place on the morning of St. Mark,--a Saint who was supposed on that Festival to favour his Votaries with a peep into the Book of Fate. For it was the popular belief in those days, that if a person should keep watch towards midnight, beside the church, the apparitions of all those of the parish who were to be taken by Death before the next anniversary, would be seen entering the porch. The Yeoman, like his neighbours, believed most devoutly in this superstition--and in the very moment that he breathed the unseemly aspiration aforesaid, it occurred to him, that the Even was at hand, when by observing the rite of St. Mark, he might know to a certainty whether this unchristian wish was to be one of those that bear fruit. Accordingly, a little before midnight he stole quietly out of the house, and in something of a Sexton-like spirit set forth on his way to the Church.

In the mean time the Dame called to mind the same ceremonial; and having the like motive for curiosity with her husband, she also put on her cloak and calash, and set out, though by a different path, on the same errand.

The night of the Saint was as dark and chill as the mysteries he was supposed to reveal, the moon throwing but a short occasional glance, as the sluggish masses of cloud were driven slowly across her face. Thus it fell out that our two adventurers were quite unconscious of being in company, till a sudden glimpse of moonlight showed them to each other, only a few yards apart; both, through a natural panic, as pale as Ghosts, and both making eagerly towards the church porch. Much as they had just wished for this vision, they could not help quaking and stopping on the spot, as if turned to a pair of tombstones, and in this position the dark again threw a sudden curtain over them, and they disappeared from each other.

It will be supposed the two came only to one conclusion, each conceiving that St. Mark had marked the other to himself. With this comfortable knowledge, the widow and widower elect hied home again by the roads they came; and as their custom was to sit apart after a quarrel, they repaired, each ignorant of the other’s excursion, to separate chambers.

By-and-by, being called to supper, instead of sulking as aforetime, they came down together, each being secretly in the best humour, though mutually suspected of the worst: and amongst other things on the table, there was a calf’s sweetbread, being one of those very dainties that had often set them together by the ears. The Dame looked and longed, but she refrained from its appropriation, thinking within herself that she could give up sweetbreads _for one year_: and the Farmer made a similar reflection. After pushing the dish to and fro several times, by a common impulse they divided the treat; and then having supped, they retired amicably to rest, whereas until then, they had never gone to bed without falling out. The truth was, each looked upon the other as being already in the church-yard mould, or quite “moulded to their wish.”