The Choice Humorous Works, Ludicrous Adventures, Bons Mots, Puns, and Hoaxes of Theodore Hook. Theodore Edward Hook

II.

       MISS LAVINIA RAMSBOTTOM.

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      April 27, 1823.

      The following is from no less a personage than our fair favourite, Miss Lavinia Ramsbottom:—

      "Ma' desires me to write to you, to say that you are quite out in your reckoning as to dry-salters and citizens going to the Opera in hackney-coaches, and she hopes you will correct your calumny about our being in the straw. A friend of Pa's, who lives in the Minories, who is a great friend of Mr. Broom's, the Queen's lawyer, says that you are very malicious, and that, after all your pretended kindness last year, in putting in Ma's account of our party gratis for nothing, you only did it to quiz us; and Ma' says she shall continue to go to the Opera as long as she pleases, and she does not care whether the people have any clothes on, or none, so long as her betters countenances it.

      "P.S.—Pa's young men play at Cardinal Puff, with table-beer, after supper every night,—so you see we have got that from the West End."

III.

       MISS LAVINIA'S LETTER FROM PARIS, FORWARDING HER MOTHER'S JOURNAL IN ENGLAND AND FRANCE.

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      To John Bull.

      Paris, Dec. 10, 1823.

      My dear Mr. B.,—The kindness with which you put in the account of our party last year, induces my Mamma to desire me to write to you again, to know if you would like to insert a journal of her travels.

      My Papa has retired from business; he has left the shop in the Minories, and has taken a house in Montague Place—a beautiful street very far west, and near the British Museum—and my two younger sisters have been sent over here, to improve their education and their morals, and Mamma and I came over last week to see them, and if they had got polish enough, to take them home again. Papa would not come with us, because, when he was quite a youth, he got a very great alarm in Chelsea Reach, because the waterman would put up a sail, and from that time to this he never can be prevailed upon to go to sea; so we came over under the care of Mr. Fulmer, the banker's son, who was coming to his family.

      Mamma has not devoted much of her time to the study of English, and does not understand French at all, and therefore perhaps her journal will here and there appear incorrect, but she is a great etymologist, and so fond of you, that although I believe Mr. Murray, the great bookseller in Albemarle Street, would give her, I do not know how many thousand pounds for her book, if she published it "all in the lump," as Papa says, she prefers sending it to you piecemeal, and so you will have it every now and then, as a portion of it is done. I have seen Mr. Fulmer laugh sometimes when she has been reading it; but I see nothing to laugh at, except the hard words she uses, and the pains she takes to find out meanings for things. She says if you do not like to print it, you may let Murray have it—but that, of course, she would prefer your doing it.

      I enclose a portion—more shall come soon. Papa, I believe, means to ask you to dinner when we get back to town; he says you are a terrible body, and as he has two or three weak points in his character, he thinks it better to be friends with you than foes. I know of but one fault he has—yes, perhaps two—but I will not tell you what they are till I see whether you publish Mamma's journal.

      Adieu! I was very angry with you for praising little Miss M. at the Lord Mayor's Dinner; I know her only by sight: we are not quite in those circles yet, but I think when we get into Montague Place we may see something of life. She is a very pretty girl, and very amiable, and that is the truth of it, but you had no business to say so, you fickle monster.

      Yours truly,

      Lavinia Higginbottom.

      

      We proceeded, after reading this letter, to open the enclosure, and found what follows. We do not presume to alter one word, but when any trifling difficulty occurs, arising from the depth of Mrs. Higginbottom's research, we have ventured to insert a note. The title of the manuscript is

      ENGLAND AND FRANCE,

      By Dorothea Julia Higginbottom.

      And thus, gentle reader, it ran:—

      "Having often heard travellers lament not having put down what they call the memorybillious of their journies, I was determined while I was on my tower, to keep a dairy (so called from containing the cream of one's information), and record everything which recurred to me—therefore I begin with my departure from London.

      "Resolving to take time by the firelock, we left Mountague Place at seven o'clock by Mr. Fulmer's pocket thermometer, and proceeded over Westminster-bridge to explode the European continent.

      "I never pass Whitehall without dropping a tear to the memory of Charles the Second, who was decimated after the rebellion of 1745 opposite the Horse-Guards—his memorable speech to Archbishop Caxon rings in my ears whenever I pass the spot—I reverted my head, and affected to look to see what o'clock it was by the dial, on the opposite side of the way.

      "It is quite impossible not to notice the improvements in this part of the town; the beautiful view which one gets of Westminster Hall, and its curious roof, after which, as everybody knows, its builder was called William Roofus.

      "Amongst the lighter specimens of modern architecture, is Ashley's Ampletheatre, on your right, as you cross the bridge, (which was built, Mr. Fulmer told me, by the Court of Arches and the House of Peers). In this ampletheatre there are equestrian performances, so called because they are exhibeted nightly—during the season.

      "It is quite impossible to quit this 'mighty maze,' as Lady Hopkins emphatically calls London, in her erudite 'Essay upon Granite,' without feeling a thousand powerful sensations—so much wealth, so much virtue, so much vice, such business as is carried on, within its precincts, such influence as its inhabitants possess in every part of the civilized world—it really exalts the mind from meaner things, and casts all minor considerations far behind one.

      "The toll at the Marsh-gate is ris since we last come through—it was here we were to have taken up Lavinia's friend, Mr. Smith, who had promised to go with us to Dover, but we found his servant instead of himself, with a billy, to say he was sorry he could not come, because his friend, Sir John somebody, wished him to stay and go down to Poll at Lincoln. I have no doubt this Poll, whoever she may be, is a very respectable young woman, but mentioning her, by her Christian name only, in so abrupt a manner, had a very unpleasant appearance at any rate.

      "Nothing remarkable occurred till we reached the Obstacle in St. George's Fields, where our attention was arrested by those great institutions, the 'School for the Indignant Blind,' and the 'Misanthropic Society' for making shoes, both of which claim the gratitude of the nation.

      "At the corner of the lane leading to Peckham, I saw that they had removed the Dollygraph which used to stand up on the declivity to the right of the road—the dollygraphs are all to be superseded by Serampores.

      "When we came to the Green Man at Blackheath we had an opportunity of noticing the errors of former travellers, for the heath is green, and the man is black; Mr. Fulmer endeavoured to account for this, by saying that Mr. Colman has discovered that Moors being black, and Heaths being a kind of Moor, he looks upon the confusion of words as the cause of the mistake.

      "N.B. Colman is the eminent Itinerary Surgeon, who constantly resides at St. Pancras.

      "As we went near Woolwich we saw at a distance the artillery officers on a common, a firing away with their bombs in mortars like any thing.

      "At Dartford they make gunpowder; here we changed horses, at the inn we saw a most beautiful Rhoderick Random in a pot, covered with flowers, it is the finest I ever saw, except those at