Burlesques

by William Makepeace Thackeray

  "Anatole. You would not think he was sixty-three years old, he's as active as a man of twenty."

  "HE!" shrieked out my wife; "what, is that there a man? For shame! Munseer. Jemimarann, dear, get your cloak, and come along; and I'll thank you, my dear, to call our people, and let us go home."

  You wouldn't think, after this, that my Jemmy, who had shown such a horror at the bally, as they call it, should ever grow accustomed to it; but she liked to hear her name shouted out in the crush-room, and so would stop till the end of everything; and, law bless you! in three weeks from that time, she could look at the ballet as she would at a dancing-dog in the streets, and would bring her double-barrelled opera-glass up to her eyes as coolly as if she had been a born duchess. As for me, I did at Rome as Rome does; and precious fun it used to be, sometimes.

  My friend the Baron insisted one night on my going behind the scenes; where, being a subscriber, he said I had what they call my ONTRAY. Behind, then, I went; and such a place you never saw nor heard of! Fancy lots of young and old gents of the fashion crowding round and staring at the actresses practising their steps. Fancy yellow snuffy foreigners, chattering always, and smelling fearfully of tobacco. Fancy scores of Jews, with hooked-noses and black muzzles, covered with rings, chains, sham diamonds, and gold waistcoats. Fancy old men dressed in old nightgowns, with knock-knees, and dirty flesh-colored cotton stockings, and dabs of brick-dust on their wrinkled old chops, and tow-wigs (such wigs!) for the bald ones, and great tin spears in their hands mayhap, or else shepherds' crooks, and fusty garlands of flowers made of red and green baize. Fancy troops of girls giggling, chattering, pushing to and fro, amidst old black canvas, Gothic halls, thrones, pasteboard Cupids, dragons, and such like. Such dirt, darkness, crowd, confusion and gabble of all conceivable languages was never known!

  If you COULD but have seen Munseer Anatole! Instead of looking twenty, he looked a thousand. The old man's wig was off, and a barber was giving it a touch with the tongs; Munseer was taking snuff himself, and a boy was standing by with a pint of beer from the public-house at the corner of Charles Street.

  I met with a little accident during the three-quarters of an hour which they allow for the entertainment of us men of fashion on the stage, before the curtain draws up for the bally, while the ladies in the boxes are gaping, and the people in the pit are drumming with their feet and canes in the rudest manner possible, as though they couldn't wait.

  Just at the moment before the little bell rings and the curtain flies up, and we scuffle off to the sides (for we always stay till the very last moment), I was in the middle of the stage, making myself very affable to the fair figgerantys which was spinning and twirling about me, and asking them if they wasn't cold, and such like politeness, in the most condescending way possible, when a bolt was suddenly withdrawn, and down I popped, through a trap in the stage, into the place below. Luckily I was stopped by a piece of machinery, consisting of a heap of green blankets and a young lady coming up as Venus rising from the sea. If I had not fallen so soft, I don't know what might have been the consequence of the collusion. I never told Mrs. Coxe, for she can't bear to hear of my paying the least attention to the fair sex.

  STRIKING A BALANCE.

  Next door to us, in Portland Place, lived the Right Honorable the Earl of Kilblazes, of Kilmacrasy Castle, County Kildare, and his mother the Dowager Countess. Lady Kilblazes had a daughter, Lady Juliana Matilda MacTurk, of the exact age of our dear Jemimarann; and a son, the Honorable Arthur Wellington Anglesea Blucher Bulow MacTurk, only ten months older than our boy Tug.

  My darling Jemmy is a woman of spirit, and, as become her station, made every possible attempt to become acquainted with the Dowager Countess of Kilblazes, which her ladyship (because, forsooth, she was the daughter of the Minister, and Prince of Wales's great friend, the Earl of Portansherry) thought fit to reject. I don't wonder at my Jemmy growing so angry with her, and determining, in every way, to put her ladyship down. The Kilblazes' estate is not so large as the Tuggeridge property by two thousand a year at least; and so my wife, when our neighbors kept only two footmen, was quite authorized in having three; and she made it a point, as soon as ever the Kilblazes' carriage-and-pair came round, to have out her own carriage-and-four.

  Well, our box was next to theirs at the Opera; only twice as big. Whatever masters went to Lady Juliana, came to my Jemimarann; and what do you think Jemmy did? she got her celebrated governess, Madame de Flicflac, away from the Countess, by offering a double salary. It was quite a treasure, they said, to have Madame Flicflac: she had been (to support her father, the Count, when he emigrated) a FRENCH dancer at the ITALIAN Opera. French dancing, and Italian, therefore, we had at once, and in the best style: it is astonishing how quick and well she used to speak—the French especially.

  Master Arthur MacTurk was at the famous school of the Reverend Clement Coddler, along with a hundred and ten other young fashionables, from the age of three to fifteen; and to this establishment Jemmy sent our Tug, adding forty guineas to the hundred and twenty paid every year for the boarders. I think I found out the dear soul's reason; for, one day, speaking about the school to a mutual acquaintance of ours and the Kilblazes, she whispered to him that "she never would have thought of sending her darling boy at the rate which her next-door neighbors paid; THEIR lad, she was sure, must be starved: however, poor people, they did the best they could on their income!"

  Coddler's, in fact, was the tip-top school near London: he had been tutor to the Duke of Buckminster, who had set him up in the school, and, as I tell you, all the peerage and respectable commoners came to it. You read in the bill, (the snopsis, I think, Coddler called it,) after the account of the charges for board, masters, extras, &c.—"Every young nobleman (or gentleman) is expected to bring a knife, fork, spoon, and goblet of silver (to prevent breakage), which will not be returned; a dressing-gown and slippers; toilet-box, pomatum, curling-irons, &c. &c. The pupil must on NO ACCOUNT be allowed to have more than ten guineas of pocket-money, unless his parents particularly desire it, or he be above fifteen years of age. WINE will be an extra charge; as are warm, vapor, and douche baths. CARRIAGE EXERCISE will be provided at the rate of fifteen guineas per quarter. It is EARNESTLY REQUESTED that no young nobleman (or gentleman) be allowed to smoke. In a place devoted to THE CULTIVATION OF POLITE LITERATURE, such an ignoble enjoyment were profane.

  "CLEMENT CODDLER, M. A.,

  "Chaplain and late tutor to his Grace the Duke of Buckminster.

  "MOUNT PARNASSUS, RICHMOND, SURREY."

  To this establishment our Tug was sent. "Recollect, my dear," said his mamma, "that you are a Tuggeridge by birth, and that I expect you to beat all the boys in the school; especially that Wellington MacTurk, who, though he is a lord's son, is nothing to you, who are the heir of Tuggeridgeville."

  Tug was a smart young fellow enough, and could cut and curl as well as any young chap of his age: he was not a bad hand at a wig either, and could shave, too, very prettily; but that was in the old time, when we were not great people: when he came to be a gentleman, he had to learn Latin and Greek, and had a deal of lost time to make up for, on going to school.

  However, we had no fear; for the Reverend Mr. Coddler used to send monthly accounts of his pupil's progress, and if Tug was not a wonder of the world, I don't know who was. It was

  General behavior......excellent. English...............very good. French................tres bien. Latin.................optime.

  And so on:—he possessed all the virtues, and wrote to us every month for money. My dear Jemmy and I determined to go and see him, after he had been at school a quarter; we went, and were shown by Mr. Coddler, one of the meekest, smilingest little men I ever saw, into the bedrooms and eating-rooms (the dromitaries and refractories he called them), which were all as comfortable as comfortable might be. "It is a holiday, today," said Mr. Coddler; and a holiday it seemed to be. In the dining-room were half a dozen young gentlemen playing at cards ("All tip-top nobili
ty," observed Mr. Coddler);—in the bedrooms there was only one gent: he was lying on his bed, reading novels and smoking cigars. "Extraordinary genius!" whispered Coddler. "Honorable Tom Fitz-Warter, cousin of Lord Byron's; smokes all day; and has written the SWEETEST poems you can imagine. Genius, my dear madam, you know—genius must have its way." "Well, UPON my word," says Jemmy, "if that's genius, I had rather that Master Tuggeridge Coxe Tuggeridge remained a dull fellow."

  "Impossible, my dear madam," said Coddler. "Mr. Tuggeridge Coxe COULDN'T be stupid if he TRIED."

  Just then up comes Lord Claude Lollypop, third son of the Marquis of Allycompane. We were introduced instantly: "Lord Claude Lollypop, Mr. and Mrs. Coxe." The little lord wagged his head, my wife bowed very low, and so did Mr. Coddler; who, as he saw my lord making for the playground, begged him to show us the way.—"Come along," says my lord; and as he walked before us, whistling, we had leisure to remark the beautiful holes in his jacket, and elsewhere.

  About twenty young noblemen (and gentlemen) were gathered round a pastry-cook's shop at the end of the green. "That's the grub-shop," said my lord, "where we young gentlemen wot has money buys our wittles, and them young gentlemen wot has none, goes tick."

  Then we passed a poor red-haired usher sitting on a bench alone. "That's Mr. Hicks, the Husher, ma'am," says my lord. "We keep him, for he's very useful to throw stones at, and he keeps the chaps' coats when there's a fight, or a game at cricket.—Well, Hicks, how's your mother? what's the row now?" "I believe, my lord," said the usher, very meekly, "there is a pugilistic encounter somewhere on the premises—the Honorable Mr. Mac—"

  "Oh! COME along," said Lord Lollypop, "come along: this way, ma'am! Go it, ye cripples!" And my lord pulled my dear Jemmy's gown in the kindest and most familiar way, she trotting on after him, mightily pleased to be so taken notice of, and I after her. A little boy went running across the green. "Who is it, Petitoes?" screams my lord. "Turk and the barber," pipes Petitoes, and runs to the pastry-cook's like mad. "Turk and the ba—," laughs out my lord, looking at us. "HURRA! THIS way, ma'am!" And turning round a corner, he opened a door into a court-yard, where a number of boys were collected, and a great noise of shrill voices might be heard. "Go it, Turk!" says one. "Go it, barber!" says another. "PUNCH HITH LIFE OUT!" roars another, whose voice was just cracked, and his clothes half a yard too short for him!

  Fancy our horror when, on the crowd making way, we saw Tug pummelling away at the Honorable Master MacTurk! My dear Jemmy, who don't understand such things, pounced upon the two at once, and, with one hand tearing away Tug, sent him spinning back into the arms of his seconds, while, with the other, she clawed hold of Master MacTurk's red hair, and, as soon as she got her second hand free, banged it about his face and ears like a good one.

  "You nasty—wicked—quarrelsome—aristocratic" (each word was a bang)—"aristocratic—oh! oh! oh!"—Here the words stopped; for what with the agitation, maternal solicitude, and a dreadful kick on the shins which, I am ashamed to say, Master MacTurk administered, my dear Jemmy could bear it no longer, and sunk fainting away in my arms.

  DOWN AT BEULAH.

  Although there was a regular cut between the next-door people and us, yet Tug and the Honorable Master MacTurk kept up their acquaintance over the back-garden wall, and in the stables, where they were fighting, making friends, and playing tricks from morning to night, during the holidays. Indeed, it was from young Mac that we first heard of Madame de Flicflac, of whom my Jemmy robbed Lady Kilblazes, as I before have related. When our friend the Baron first saw Madame, a very tender greeting passed between them; for they had, as it appeared, been old friends abroad. "Sapristie," said the Baron, in his lingo, "que fais-tu ici, Amenaide?" "Et toi, mon pauvre Chicot," says she, "est-ce qu'on t'a mis a la retraite? Il parait que tu n'es plus General chez Franco—" "CHUT!" says the Baron, putting his finger to his lips.

  "What are they saying, my dear?" says my wife to Jemimarann, who had a pretty knowledge of the language by this time.

  "I don't know what 'Sapristie' means, mamma; but the Baron asked Madame what she was doing here? and Madame said, 'And you, Chicot, you are no more a General at Franco.'—Have I not translated rightly, Madame?"

  "Oui, mon chou, mon ange. Yase, my angel, my cabbage, quite right. Figure yourself, I have known my dear Chicot dis twenty years."

  "Chicot is my name of baptism," says the Baron; "Baron Chicot de Punter is my name."

  "And being a General at Franco," says Jemmy, "means, I suppose, being a French General?"

  "Yes, I vas," said he, "General Baron de Punter—n'est 'a pas, Amenaide?"

  "Oh, yes!" said Madame Flicflac, and laughed; and I and Jemmy laughed out of politeness: and a pretty laughing matter it was, as you shall hear.

  About this time my Jemmy became one of the Lady-Patronesses of that admirable institution, "The Washerwoman's-Orphans' Home;" Lady de Sudley was the great projector of it; and the manager and chaplain, the excellent and Reverend Sidney Slopper. His salary, as chaplain, and that of Doctor Leitch, the physician (both cousins of her ladyship's), drew away five hundred pounds from the six subscribed to the Charity: and Lady de Sudley thought a fete at Beulah Spa, with the aid of some of the foreign princes who were in town last year, might bring a little more money into its treasury. A tender appeal was accordingly drawn up, and published in all the papers:—

  "APPEAL.

  "BRITISH WASHERWOMAN'S-ORPHANS' HOME.

  "The 'Washerwoman's-Orphans' Home' has now been established seven years: and the good which it has effected is, it may be confidently stated, INCALCULABLE. Ninety-eight orphan children of Washerwomen have been lodged within its walls. One hundred and two British Washerwomen have been relieved when in the last state of decay. ONE HUNDRED AND NINETY-EIGHT THOUSAND articles of male and female dress have been washed, mended, buttoned, ironed, and mangled in the Establishment. And, by an arrangement with the governors of the Foundling, it is hoped that THE BABY-LINEN OF THAT HOSPITAL will be confided to the British Washerwoman's Home!

  "With such prospects before it, is it not sad, is it not lamentable to think, that the Patronesses of the Society have been compelled to reject the applications of no less than THREE THOUSAND EIGHT HUNDRED AND ONE BRITISH WASHERWOMEN, from lack of means for their support? Ladies of England! Mothers of England! to you we appeal. Is there one of you that will not respond to the cry in behalf of these deserving members of our sex?

  "It has been determined by the Ladies-Patronesses to give a fete at Beulah Spa, on Thursday, July 25; which will be graced with the first foreign and native TALENT; by the first foreign and native RANK; and where they beg for the attendance of every WASHERWOMAN'S FRIEND."

  Her Highness the Princess of Schloppenzollernschwigmaringen, the Duke of Sacks-Tubbingen, His Excellency Baron Strumpff, His Excellency Lootf-Allee-Koolee-Bismillah-Mohamed-Rusheed-Allah, the Persian Ambassador, Prince Futtee-Jaw, Envoy from the King of Oude, His Excellency Don Alonzo di Cachachero-y-Fandango-y-Castanete, the Spanish Ambassador, Count Ravioli, from Milan, the Envoy of the Republic of Topinambo, and a host of other fashionables, promised to honor the festival: and their names made a famous show in the bills. Besides these, we had the celebrated band of Moscow-musiks, the seventy-seven Transylvanian trumpeters, and the famous Bohemian Minnesingers; with all the leading artists of London, Paris, the Continent, and the rest of Europe.

  I leave you to fancy what a splendid triumph for the British Washerwoman's Home was to come off on that day. A beautiful tent was erected, in which the Ladies-Patronesses were to meet: it was hung round with specimens of the skill of the washerwomen's orphans; ninety-six of whom were to be feasted in the gardens, and waited on by the Ladies-Patronesses.

  Well, Jemmy and my daughter, Madame de Flicflac, myself, the Count, Baron Punter, Tug, and Tagrag, all went down in the chariot and barouche-and-four, quite eclipsing poor Lady Kilblazes and her carriage-and-two.

  There was a fine cold collation, to which the friends of the Ladies-Patron
esses were admitted; after which, my ladies and their beaux went strolling through the walks; Tagrag and the Count having each an arm of Jemmy; the Baron giving an arm apiece to Madame and Jemimarann. Whilst they were walking, whom should they light upon but poor Orlando Crump, my successor in the perfumery and hair-cutting.

  "Orlando!" says Jemimarann, blushing as red as a label, and holding out her hand.

  "Jemimar!" says he, holding out his, and turning as white as pomatum.

  "SIR!" says Jemmy, as stately as a duchess.

  "What! madam," says poor Crump, "don't you remember your shopboy?"

  "Dearest mamma, don't you recollect Orlando?" whimpers Jemimarann, whose hand he had got hold of.

  "Miss Tuggeridge Coxe," says Jemmy, "I'm surprised of you. Remember, sir, that our position is altered, and oblige me by no more familiarity."

  "Insolent fellow!" says the Baron, "vat is dis canaille?"

  "Canal yourself, Mounseer," says Orlando, now grown quite furious: he broke away, quite indignant, and was soon lost in the crowd. Jemimarann, as soon as he was gone, began to look very pale and ill; and her mamma, therefore, took her to a tent, where she left her along with Madame Flicflac and the Baron; going off herself with the other gentlemen, in order to join us.

  It appears they had not been seated very long, when Madame Flicflac suddenly sprung up, with an exclamation of joy, and rushed forward to a friend whom she saw pass.

  The Baron was left alone with Jemimarann; and, whether it was the champagne, or that my dear girl looked more than commonly pretty, I don't know; but Madame Flicflac had not been gone a minute, when the Baron dropped on his knees, and made her a regular declaration.

  Poor Orlando Crump had found me out by this time, and was standing by my side, listening, as melancholy as possible, to the famous Bohemian Minnesingers, who were singing the celebrated words of the poet Gothy:—