Burlesques

by William Makepeace Thackeray

  NOTICE TO QUIT.

  Well, we arrived at Boulogne; and Jemmy, after making inquiries, right and left, about the Baron, found that no such person was known there; and being bent, I suppose, at all events, on marrying her daughter to a lord, she determined to set off for Paris, where, as he had often said, he possessed a magnificent —— hotel he called it;—and I remember Jemmy being mightily indignant at the idea; but hotel, we found afterwards, means only a house in French, and this reconciled her. Need I describe the road from Boulogne to Paris? or need I describe that Capitol itself? Suffice it to say, that we made our appearance there, at "Murisse's Hotel," as became the family of Coxe Tuggeridge; and saw everything worth seeing in the metropolis in a week. It nearly killed me, to be sure; but, when you're on a pleasure-party in a foreign country, you must not mind a little inconvenience of this sort.

  Well, there is, near the city of Paris, a splendid road and row of trees, which—I don't know why—is called the Shandeleezy, or Elysian Fields, in French: others, I have heard, call it the Shandeleery; but mine I know to be the correct pronunciation. In the middle of this Shandeleezy is an open space of ground, and a tent where, during the summer, Mr. Franconi, the French Ashley, performs with his horses and things. As everybody went there, and we were told it was quite the thing, Jemmy agreed that we should go too; and go we did.

  It's just like Ashley's: there's a man just like Mr. Piddicombe, who goes round the ring in a huzzah-dress, cracking a whip; there are a dozen Miss Woolfords, who appear like Polish princesses, Dihannas, Sultannas, Cachuchas, and heaven knows what! There's the fat man, who comes in with the twenty-three dresses on, and turns out to be the living skeleton! There's the clowns, the sawdust, the white horse that dances a hornpipe, the candles stuck in hoops, just as in our own dear country.

  My dear wife, in her very finest clothes, with all the world looking at her, was really enjoying this spectacle (which doesn't require any knowledge of the language, seeing that the dumb animals don't talk it), when there came in, presently, "the great Polish act of the Sarmatian horse-tamer, on eight steeds," which we were all of us longing to see. The horse-tamer, to music twenty miles an hour, rushed in on four of his horses, leading the other four, and skurried round the ring. You couldn't see him for the sawdust, but everybody was delighted, and applauded like mad. Presently, you saw there were only three horses in front: he had slipped one more between his legs, another followed, and it was clear that the consequences would be fatal, if he admitted any more. The people applauded more than ever; and when, at last, seven and eight were made to go in, not wholly, but sliding dexterously in and out, with the others, so that you did not know which was which, the house, I thought, would come down with applause; and the Sarmatian horse-tamer bowed his great feathers to the ground. At last the music grew slower, and he cantered leisurely round the ring; bending, smirking, seesawing, waving his whip, and laying his hand on his heart, just as we have seen the Ashley's people do. But fancy our astonishment when, suddenly, this Sarmatian horse-tamer, coming round with his four pair at a canter, and being opposite our box, gave a start, and a—hupp! which made all his horses stop stock-still at an instant.

  "Albert!" screamed my dear Jemmy: "Albert! Bahbahbah—baron!" The Sarmatian looked at her for a minute; and turning head over heels, three times, bolted suddenly off his horses, and away out of our sight.

  It was HIS EXCELLENCY THE BARON DE PUNTER!

  Jemmy went off in a fit as usual, and we never saw the Baron again; but we heard, afterwards, that Punter was an apprentice of Franconi's, and had run away to England, thinking to better himself, and had joined Mr. Richardson's army; but Mr. Richardson, and then London, did not agree with him; and we saw the last of him as he sprung over the barriers at the Tuggeridgeville tournament.

  "Well, Jemimarann," says Jemmy, in a fury, "you shall marry Tagrag; and if I can't have a baroness for a daughter, at least you shall be a baronet's lady." Poor Jemimarann only sighed: she knew it was of no use to remonstrate.

  Paris grew dull to us after this, and we were more eager than ever to go back to London: for what should we hear, but that that monster, Tuggeridge, of the City—old Tug's black son, forsooth!—was going to contest Jemmy's claim to the property, and had filed I don't know how many bills against us in Chancery! Hearing this, we set off immediately, and we arrived at Boulogne, and set off in that very same "Grand Turk" which had brought us to France.

  If you look in the bills, you will see that the steamers leave London on Saturday morning, and Boulogne on Saturday night; so that there is often not an hour between the time of arrival and departure. Bless us! bless us! I pity the poor Captain that, for twenty-four hours at a time, is on a paddle-box, roaring out, "Ease her! Stop her!" and the poor servants, who are laying out breakfast, lunch, dinner, tea, supper;—breakfast, lunch, dinner, tea, supper again;—for layers upon layers of travellers, as it were; and most of all, I pity that unhappy steward, with those unfortunate tin-basins that he must always keep an eye over. Little did we know what a storm was brooding in our absence; and little were we prepared for the awful, awful fate that hung over our Tuggeridgeville property.

  Biggs, of the great house of Higgs, Biggs, and Blatherwick, was our man of business: when I arrived in London I heard that he had just set off to Paris after me. So we started down to Tuggeridgeville instead of going to Portland Place. As we came through the lodge-gates, we found a crowd assembled within them; and there was that horrid Tuggeridige on horseback, with a shabby-looking man, called Mr. Scapgoat, and his man of business, and many more. "Mr. Scapgoat," says Tuggeridge, grinning, and handing him over a sealed paper, "here's the lease; I leave you in possession, and wish you good morning."

  "In possession of what?" says the rightful lady of Tuggeridgeville, leaning out of the carriage-window. She hated black Tuggeridge, as she called him, like poison: the very first week of our coming to Portland Place, when he called to ask restitution of some plate which he said was his private property, she called him a base-born blackamoor, and told him to quit the house. Since then there had been law squabbles between us without end, and all sorts of writings, meetings, and arbitrations.

  "Possession of my estate of Tuggeridgeville, madam," roars he, "left me by my father's will, which you have had notice of these three weeks, and know as well as I do."

  "Old Tug left no will," shrieked Jemmy; "he didn't die to leave his estates to blackamoors—to negroes—to base-born mulatto story-tellers; if he did may I be ——-"

  "Oh, hush! dearest mamma," says Jemimarann. "Go it again, mother!" says Tug, who is always sniggering.

  "What is this business, Mr. Tuggeridge?" cried Tagrag (who was the only one of our party that had his senses). "What is this will?"

  "Oh, it's merely a matter of form," said the lawyer, riding up. "For heaven's sake, madam, be peaceable; let my friends, Higgs, Biggs, and Blatherwick, arrange with me. I am surprised that none of their people are here. All that you have to do is to eject us; and the rest will follow, of course."

  "Who has taken possession of this here property?" roars Jemmy, again.

  "My friend Mr. Scapgoat," said the lawyer.—Mr. Scapgoat grinned.

  "Mr. Scapgoat," said my wife, shaking her fist at him (for she is a woman of no small spirit), "if you don't leave this ground I'll have you pushed out with pitchforks, I will—you and your beggarly blackamoor yonder." And, suiting the action to the word, she clapped a stable fork into the hands of one of the gardeners, and called another, armed with a rake, to his help, while young Tug set the dog at their heels, and I hurrahed for joy to see such villany so properly treated.

  "That's sufficient, ain't it?" said Mr. Scapgoat, with the calmest air in the world. "Oh, completely," said the lawyer. "Mr. Tuggeridge, we've ten miles to dinner. Madam, your very humble servant." And the whole posse of them rode away.

  LAW LIFE ASSURANCE.

  We knew not what this meant, until we received a strange document from Higgs, in London—which begun,
"Middlesex to wit. Samuel Cox, late of Portland Place, in the city of Westminster, in the said county, was attached to answer Samuel Scapgoat, of a plea, wherefore, with force and arms, he entered into one messuage, with the appurtenances, which John Tuggeridge, Esq., demised to the said Samuel Scapgoat, for a term which is not yet expired, and ejected him." And it went on to say that "we, with force of arms, viz, with swords, knives, and staves, had ejected him." Was there ever such a monstrous falsehood? when we did but stand in defence of our own; and isn't it a sin that we should have been turned out of our rightful possessions upon such a rascally plea?

  Higgs, Biggs, and Blatherwick had evidently been bribed; for would you believe it?—they told us to give up possession at once, as a will was found, and we could not defend the action. My Jemmy refused their proposal with scorn, and laughed at the notion of the will: she pronounced it to be a forgery, a vile blackamoor forgery; and believes, to this day, that the story of its having been made thirty years ago, in Calcutta, and left there with old Tug's papers, and found there, and brought to England, after a search made by order of Tuggeridge junior, is a scandalous falsehood.

  Well, the cause was tried. Why need I say anything concerning it? What shall I say of the Lord Chief Justice, but that he ought to be ashamed of the wig he sits in? What of Mr. —— and Mr. ——, who exerted their eloquence against justice and the poor? On our side, too, was no less a man than Mr. Serjeant Binks, who, ashamed I am, for the honor of the British bar, to say it, seemed to have been bribed too: for he actually threw up his case! Had he behaved like Mr. Mulligan, his junior—and to whom, in this humble way, I offer my thanks—all might have been well. I never knew such an effect produced, as when Mr. Mulligan, appearing for the first time in that court, said, "Standing here upon the pidestal of secred Thamis; seeing around me the arnymints of a profission I rispict; having before me a vinnerable judge, and an enlightened jury—the counthry's glory, the netion's cheap defender, the poor man's priceless palladium: how must I thrimble, my lard, how must the blush bejew my cheek—" (somebody cried out, "O CHEEKS!" In the court there was a dreadful roar of laughing; and when order was established, Mr. Mulligan continued:)—"My lard, I heed them not; I come from a counthry accustomed to opprission, and as that counthry—yes, my lard, THAT IRELAND—(do not laugh, I am proud of it)—is ever, in spite of her tyrants, green, and lovely, and beautiful: my client's cause, likewise, will rise shuperior to the malignant imbecility—I repeat, the MALIGNANT IMBECILITY—of those who would thrample it down; and in whose teeth, in my client's name, in my counthry's—ay, and MY OWN—I, with folded arrums, hurl a scarnful and eternal defiance!"

  "For heaven's sake, Mr. Milligan"—("MULLIGAN, ME LARD," cried my defender)—"Well, Mulligan, then, be calm, and keep to your brief."

  Mr. Mulligan did; and for three hours and a quarter, in a speech crammed with Latin quotations, and unsurpassed for eloquence, he explained the situation of me and my family; the romantic manner in which Tuggeridge the elder gained his fortune, and by which it afterwards came to my wife; the state of Ireland; the original and virtuous poverty of the Coxes—from which he glanced passionately, for a few minutes (until the judge stopped him), to the poverty of his own country; my excellence as a husband, father, landlord; my wife's, as a wife, mother, landlady. All was in vain—the trial went against us. I was soon taken in execution for the damages; five hundred pounds of law expenses of my own, and as much more of Tuggeridge's. He would not pay a farthing, he said, to get me out of a much worse place than the Fleet. I need not tell you that along with the land went the house in town, and the money in the funds. Tuggeridge, he who had thousands before, had it all. And when I was in prison, who do you think would come and see me? None of the Barons, nor Counts, nor Foreign Ambassadors, nor Excellencies, who used to fill our house, and eat and drink at our expense,—not even the ungrateful Tagrag!

  I could not help now saying to my dear wife, "See, my love, we have been gentlefolks for exactly a year, and a pretty life we have had of it. In the first place, my darling, we gave grand dinners, and everybody laughed at us."

  "Yes, and recollect how ill they made you," cries my daughter.

  "We asked great company, and they insulted us."

  "And spoilt mamma's temper," said Jemimarann.

  "Hush! Miss," said her mother; "we don't want YOUR advice."

  "Then you must make a country gentleman of me."

  "And send Pa into dunghills," roared Tug.

  "Then you must go to operas, and pick up foreign Barons and Counts."

  "Oh, thank heaven, dearest papa, that we are rid of them," cries my little Jemimarann, looking almost happy, and kissing her old pappy.

  "And you must make a fine gentleman of Tug there, and send him to a fine school."

  "And I give you my word," says Tug, "I'm as ignorant a chap as ever lived."

  "You're an insolent saucebox," says Jemmy; "you've learned that at your fine school."

  "I've learned something else, too, ma'am; ask the boys if I haven't," grumbles Tug.

  "You hawk your daughter about, and just escape marrying her to a swindler."

  "And drive off poor Orlando," whimpered my girl.

  "Silence! Miss," says Jemmy, fiercely.

  "You insult the man whose father's property you inherited, and bring me into this prison, without hope of leaving it: for he never can help us after all your bad language." I said all this very smartly; for the fact is, my blood was up at the time, and I determined to rate my dear girl soundly.

  "Oh! Sammy," said she, sobbing (for the poor thing's spirit was quite broken), "it's all true; I've been very, very foolish and vain, and I've punished my dear husband and children by my follies, and I do so, so repent them!" Here Jemimarann at once burst out crying, and flung herself into her mamma's arms, and the pair roared and sobbed for ten minutes together. Even Tug looked queer: and as for me, it's a most extraordinary thing, but I'm blest if seeing them so miserable didn't make me quite happy.—I don't think, for the whole twelve months of our good fortune, I had ever felt so gay as in that dismal room in the Fleet, where I was locked up.

  Poor Orlando Crump came to see us every day; and we, who had never taken the slightest notice of him in Portland Place, and treated him so cruelly that day at Beulah Spa, were only too glad of his company now. He used to bring books for my girl, and a bottle of sherry for me; and he used to take home Jemmy's fronts and dress them for her; and when locking-up time came, he used to see the ladies home to their little three-pair bedroom in Holborn, where they slept now, Tug and all. "Can the bird forget its nest?" Orlando used to say (he was a romantic young fellow, that's the truth, and blew the flute and read Lord Byron incessantly, since he was separated from Jemimarann). "Can the bird, let loose in eastern climes, forget its home? Can the rose cease to remember its beloved bulbul?—Ah, no! Mr. Cox, you made me what I am, and what I hope to die—a hairdresser. I never see a curling-irons before I entered your shop, or knew Naples from brown Windsor. Did you not make over your house, your furniture, your emporium of perfumery, and nine-and-twenty shaving customers, to me? Are these trifles? Is Jemimarann a trifle? if she would allow me to call her so. Oh, Jemimarann, your Pa found me in the workhouse, and made me what I am. Conduct me to my grave, and I never, never shall be different!" When he had said this, Orlando was so much affected, that he rushed suddenly on his hat and quitted the room.

  Then Jemimarann began to cry too. "Oh, Pa!" said she, "isn't he—isn't he a nice young man?"

  "I'm HANGED if he ain't," says Tug. "What do you think of his giving me eighteenpence yesterday, and a bottle of lavender-water for Mimarann?"

  "He might as well offer to give you back the shop at any rate," says Jemmy.

  "What! to pay Tuggeridge's damages? My dear, I'd sooner die than give Tuggeridge the chance."

  FAMILY BUSTLE.

  Tuggeridge vowed that I should finish my days there, when he put me in prison. It appears that we both had reason to be ashamed of ourselves;
and were, thank God! I learned to be sorry for my bad feelings toward him, and he actually wrote to me to say—

  "SIR,—I think you have suffered enough for faults which, I believe, do not lie with you, so much as your wife; and I have withdrawn my claims which I had against you while you were in wrongful possession of my father's estates. You must remember that when, on examination of my father's papers, no will was found, I yielded up his property, with perfect willingness, to those who I fancied were his legitimate heirs. For this I received all sorts of insults from your wife and yourself (who acquiesced in them); and when the discovery of a will, in India, proved MY just claims, you must remember how they were met, and the vexatious proceedings with which you sought to oppose them.

  "I have discharged your lawyer's bill; and, as I believe you are more fitted for the trade you formerly exercised than for any other, I will give five hundred pounds for the purchase of a stock and shop, when you shall find one to suit you.

  "I enclose a draft for twenty pounds to meet your present expenses. You have, I am told, a son, a boy of some spirit: if he likes to try his fortune abroad, and go on board an Indiaman, I can get him an appointment; and am, Sir, your obedient servant,

  "JOHN TUGGERIDGE"

  It was Mrs. Breadbasket, the housekeeper, who brought this letter, and looked mighty contemptuous as she gave it.

  "I hope, Breadbasket, that your master will send me my things at any rate," cries Jemmy. "There's seventeen silk and satin dresses, and a whole heap of trinkets, that can be of no earthly use to him."

  "Don't Breadbasket me, mem, if you please, mem. My master says that them things is quite obnoxious to your sphere of life. Breadbasket, indeed!" And so she sailed out.