The Poetical Works of Thomas Moore Collected by Himself. In Ten Volumes |
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| III, IV. |
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| VI, VII. |
| VIII, IX. |
| X. |
 | The Poetical Works of Thomas Moore |  |
LETTER X. FROM MISS BIDDY FUDGE TO MISS DOROTHY ---.
But don't you go laugh, now—there's nothing to quiz in't—
For grandeur of air and for grimness of feature,
He might be a King, Doll, though, hang him, he isn't.
At first, I felt hurt, for I wish'd it, I own,
If for no other cause but to vex Miss Malone,—
(The great heiress, you know, of Shandangan, who's here,
Showing off with such airs, and a real Cashmere ,
While mine's but a paltry, old rabbit-skin, dear!)
But Pa says, on deeply consid'ring the thing,
“I am just as well pleas'd it should not be the King;
“Whose charms may their price in an honest way fetch,
“That a Brandenburgh”—(what is a Brandenburgh, Dolly?)—
“Would be, after all, no such very great catch.
“If the R*g---t indeed—” added he, looking sly—
(You remember that comical squint of his eye)
But I stopp'd him with “La, Pa, how can you say so,
“When the R*g---t loves none but old women, you know!”
Which is fact, my dear Dolly—we, girls of eighteen,
And so slim—Lord, he'd think us not fit to be seen;
And would like us much better as old—ay, as old
As that Countess of Desmond, of whom I've been told
That she liv'd to much more than a hundred and ten,
And was kill'd by a fall from a cherry-tree then!
What a frisky old girl! but—to come to my lover,
Who, though not a King, is a hero I'll swear,—
You shall hear all that's happen'd, just briefly run over,
Since that happy night, when we whisk'd through the air!
From that evening I date the first dawn of my bliss;
When we both rattled off in that dear little carriage,
Whose journey, Bob says, is so like Love and Marriage,
“Beginning gay, desperate, dashing, down-hilly,
“And ending as dull as a six-inside Dilly!”
Well, scarcely a wink did I sleep the night through;
And, next day, having scribbled my letter to you,
With a heart full of hope this sweet fellow to meet,
I set out with Papa, to see Louis Dix-huit
Make his bow to some half-dozen women and boys,
Who get up a small concert of shrill Vive le Rois—
And how vastly genteeler, my dear, even this is,
Than vulgar Pall-Mall's oratorio of hisses!
The gardens seem'd full—so, of course, we walk'd o'er 'em,
'Mong orange-trees, clipp'd into town-bred decorum,
And daphnes, and vases, and many a statue
There staring, with not ev'n a stitch on them, at you!
To contemplate the play of those pretty gold fishes—
“Live bullion,” says merciless Bob, “which, I think,
“Would, if coin'd, with a little mint sauce, be delicious!”
Or gold fishes, to her that's in search of her love?
In vain did I wildly explore every chair
Where a thing like a man was—no lover sate there!
In vain my fond eyes did I eagerly cast
At the whiskers, mustachios, and wigs that went past,
To obtain, if I could, but a glance at that curl,—
A glimpse of those whiskers, as sacred, my girl,
As the lock that, Pa says , is to Mussulmen giv'n,
For the angel to hold by that “lugs them to heaven!”
Alas, there went by me full many a quiz,
And mustachios in plenty, but nothing like his!
Disappointed, I found myself sighing out “well-a-day,”—
Thought of the words of T*m M---re's Irish Melody,
(Which, you know, Captain Macintosh sung to us one day):
Ah Dolly, my “spot” was that Saturday night,
And its verdure, how fleeting, had wither'd by Sunday!
We din'd at a tavern—La, what do I say?
If Bob was to know!—a Restaurateur's, dear;
Where your properest ladies go dine every day,
And drink Burgundy out of large tumblers, like beer.
Fine Bob (for he's really grown super-fine)
Condescended, for once, to make one of the party;
Of course, though but three, we had dinner for nine,
And in spite of my grief, love, I own I eat hearty.
Indeed, Doll, I know not how 'tis, but, in grief,
I have always found eating a wond'rous relief;
And Bob, who's in love, said he felt the same, quite—
“My sighs,” said he, “ceas'd with the first glass I drank you;
“And—now that all's o'er—why, I'm—pretty well, thank you!”
For Bobby and Pa had a furious debate
About singing and cookery—Bobby, of course,
Standing up for the latter Fine Art in full force ;
And Pa saying, “God only knows which is worst,
“The French Singers or Cooks, but I wish us well over it—
“What with old Laïs and Véry, I'm curst
“If my head or my stomach will ever recover it!”
And in vain did I look 'mong the street Macaronis,
That some angel might take the dear man to Tortoni's
We enter'd—and, scarcely had Bob, with an air,
For a grappe à la jardinière call'd to the waiters,
When, oh Doll! I saw him—my hero was there
(For I knew his white small-clothes and brown leather gaiters),
A group of fair statues from Greece smiling o'er him ,
And lots of red currant-juice sparkling before him!
Oh Dolly, these heroes—what creatures they are;
In the boudoir the same as in fields full of slaughter!
As cool in the Beaujon's precipitous car,
As when safe at Tortoni's, o'er ic'd currant water!
He join'd us—imagine, dear creature, my ecstasy—
Join'd by the man I'd have broken ten necks to see!
Bob wish'd to treat him with Punch à la glace,
But the sweet fellow swore that my beauté, my grace,
Were, to him, “on de top of all Ponch in de vorld.”—
How pretty!—though oft (as, of course, it must be)
Both his French and his English are Greek, Doll, to me.
But, in short, I felt happy as ever fond heart did;
And happier still, when 'twas fix'd, ere we parted,
That, if the next day should be pastoral weather,
We all would set off, in French buggies, together,
To see Montmorency—that place which, you know,
Is so famous for cherries and Jean Jacques Rousseau.
His card then he gave us—the name, rather creas'd—
But 'twas Calicot—something—a Colonel, at least!
After which—sure there never was hero so civil—he
Saw us safe home to our door in Rue Rivoli,
Where his last words, as, at parting, he threw
A soft look o'er his shoulders, were—“How do you do!”
Montmorency must now, love, be kept for my next.
And—so providential!—was looking my best;
Such a sweet muslin gown, with a flounce—and my frills,
You've no notion how rich—(though Pa has by the bills)
And you'd smile had you seen, when we sat rather near,
Colonel Calicot eyeing the cambric, my dear.
Then the flow'rs in my bonnet—but, la, it's in vain—
So, good-by, my sweet Doll—I shall soon write again.
Your Papa in particular—how is his gout?
In your next you must tell me, (now do, Dolly, pray,
For I hate to ask Bob, he's so ready to quiz,)
What sort of a thing, dear, a Brandenburgh is.
See Lady Morgan's “France” for the anecdote, told her by Madame de Genlis, of the young gentleman whose love was cured by finding that his mistress wore a shawl “peau de lapin.”
Mr. Bob need not be ashamed of his cookery jokes, when he is kept in countenance hy such men as Cicero, St. Augustine, and that jovial bishop, Venantius Fortunatus. The pun of the great orator upon the “jus Verrinum,” which he calls bad hogbroth, from a play upon both the words, is well known; and the Saint's puns upon the conversion of Lot's wife into salt are equally ingenious:—“In salem conversa hominibus fidelibus quoddam præstitit condimentum, quo sapiant aliquid, unde illud caveatur exemplum.”—De Civitat. Dei, lib. xvi. cap. 30. —The jokes of the pious favourite of Queen Radagunda, the convivial Bishop Venantius, may be found among his poems, in some lines against a cook who had robbed him. The following is similar to Cicero's pun:—
See his poems, Corpus Poetar. Latin. tom. ii. p. 1732.— Of the same kind was Montmaur's joke, when a dish was spilt over him—“summum jus, summa injuria;” and the same celebrated parasite, in ordering a sole to be placed before him, said,—
The reader may likewise see, among a good deal of kitchen erudition, the learned Lipsius's jokes on cutting up a capon in his Saturnal. Sermon. lib. ii. cap. 2.
For this scrap of knowledge “Pa” was, I suspect, indebted to a note upon Volney's Ruins; a book which usually forms part of a Jacobin's library, and with which Mr. Fudge must have been well acquainted at the time when he wrote his “Down with Kings,” &c. The note in Volney is as follows: —“It is by this tuft of hair (on the crown of the head), worn by the majority of Mussulmans, that the Angel of the Tomb is to take the elect and carry them to Paradise.”
The young lady, whose memory is not very correct, must allude, I think, to the following lines:—
Which First Love traced;
Still it ling'ring haunts the greenest spot
On Memory's waste!
Cookery has been dignified by the researches of a Bacon; (see his Natural History, Receipts, &c.) and takes its station as one of the Fine Arts in the following passage of Mr. Dugald Stewart:—“Agreeably to this view of the subject, sweet may be said to be intrinsically pleasing, and bitter to be relatively pleasing; which both are, in many cases, equally essential to those effects, which, in the art of cookery, correspond to that composite beauty, which it is the object of the painter and of the poet to create.” —Philosophical Essays.
| The Poetical Works of Thomas Moore | |