It was a strange ordinance of the age that made watering-places equally the resort of the sick and the fashionable, the dyspeptic and the dissipated. One cannot readily see by what magic chalybeates can minister to a mind diseased, nor how sub-carbonates and proto-chlorides may compensate to the faded spirit of anennuyéefine lady for the bygone delights of a London or a Paris season; much less, through what magnetic influence gambling and gossip can possibly alleviate affections of the liver, or roulette be made a medical agent in the treatment of chronic rheumatism.
It may be replied that much of the benefit—some would go farther, and say all—to be expected from the watering-places is derivable from change of scene and habit of living, new faces, new interests, new objects of curiosity, aided by agreeable intercourse, and what the medical folk call ‘pleasant and cheerful society.’ This, be it known, is no chance collocation of words set down at random; it is abona fidetechnical—as much so as the hardest Greek compound that ever floored an apothecary. ‘Pleasant and cheerful society!’ they speak of it as they would of the latest improvement in chemistry or the last patent medicine—a thing to be had for asking for, like opodeldoc or Morison’s pills. A line of treatment is prescribed for you, winding up in this one principle; and your physician, as he shakes your hand and says ‘good-bye,’ seems like an angel of benevolence, who, instead of consigning you to the horrors of the pharmacopoeia and a sick-bed, tells you to pack off to the Rhine, spend your summer at Ems or Wiesbaden, and, above all things, keep early hours, and ‘pleasant, cheerful society.’
Oh, why has no martyr to the miseries of a ‘liver’ or the sorrows of ‘nerves’ ever asked his M.D. where—where is this delightful intercourse to be found? or by what universal principle of application can the same tone of society please the mirthful and the melancholy, the man of depressed, desponding habit, and the man of sanguine, hopeful temperament? How can the indolent and lethargic soul be made to derive pleasure from the hustling energies of more excited natures, or the fidgety victim of instability sympathise with the delights of quiet and tranquillity? He who enjoys ‘rude health’—the phrase must have been invented by a fashionable physician; none other could have deemed such a possession an offensive quality—may very well amuse himself by the oddities and eccentricities of his fellow-men, so ludicrously exhibiteden scenebefore him. But in what way will these things appear to the individual with an ailing body and a distempered brain? It is impossible that contrarieties of temperament would ever draw men into close intimacy during illness. The very nature of a sick man’s temper is to undervalue all sufferings save his own and those resembling his. The victim of obesity has no sympathies with the martyr to atrophy; he may envy, he cannot pity him. The man who cannot eat surely has little compassion for the woes of him who has the ‘wolf,’ and must be muzzled at meal times. The result, then, is obvious. The gloomy men get together in groups, and croak in concert; each mind brings its share of affliction to the common fund, and they form a joint-stock company of misery that rapidly assists their progress to the grave; while the nervously excited ones herd together by dozens, suggesting daily new extravagances and caprices for the adoption of one another, till there is not an air-drawn dagger of the mind unfamiliar to one among them; and in this race of exaggerated sensibility they not uncommonly tumble over the narrow boundary that separates eccentricity from something worse.
This massing together of such people in hundreds must be ruinous to many, and few can resist the depressing influence which streets full of pale faces suggest, or be proof against the melancholy derivable from a whole promenade of cripples. There is something indescribably sad in these rendezvous of ailing people from all parts of Europe—north, south, east, and west; the snows of Norway and the suns of Italy; the mountains of Scotland and the steppes of Russia; comparing their symptoms and chronicling their sufferings; watching with the egotism of sickness the pallor on their neighbour’s cheek, and calculating their own chances of recovery by the progress of some other invalid.
But were this all, the aspect might suggest gloomy thoughts, but could not excite indignant ones. Unhappily, however, there is a reverse to the medal. ‘The pleasant and cheerful society,’ so confidently spoken of by your doctor has another representation than in the faces of sick people. These watering-places are the depots of continental vice, the licensed bazaars of foreign iniquity, the sanctuary of the outlaw, the home of the swindler, the last resource of the ruined debauchee, the one spot of earth beneath the feet of the banished defaulter. They are the parliaments of European blackguardism, to which Paris contributes herescrocs, England her ‘legs’ from Newmarket and Doncaster, and Poland her refugee counts—victims of Russian cruelty and barbarity.
To begin—and to understand the matter properly, you must begin by forgetting all you have been so studiously storing up as fact from the books of Head, Granville, and others, and merely regard them as the pleasant romances of gentlemen who like to indulge their own easy humours in a vein of agreeable gossip, or the more profitable occupation of collecting grand-ducal stars and snuff-boxes.
These delightful pictures of Brunnens, secluded in the recesses of wild mountain districts inaccessible save to some adventurous traveller; the peaceful simplicity of the rural life; the primitive habits of a happy peasantry; the humble but contented existence of a little community estranged from all the shocks and strife of the world; the lovely scenery; the charming intercourse with gifted and cultivated minds; the delightful reunions, where Metternich, Chateaubriand, and Humboldt are nightly to be met, mixing among the rest of the company, and chatting familiarly with every stranger; the peaceful tranquillity of the spot—an oasis in the great desert of the world’s troubles, where the exhausted mind and tired spirit may lie down in peace and take its rest, lulled by the sound of falling water or the strains of German song —these, I say, cleverly put forward, with ‘eight illustrations taken on the spot,’ make pretty books—pleasant to read, but not less dangerous to follow; while exaggerated catalogues of cures and recoveries, the restoration from sufferings of a life long, the miraculous list of sick men made sound ones through the agency of sulphurates and sub-carbonates, are still more to be guarded against as guides to the spas of Germany.
Now, I would not for a moment be supposed to throw discredit on the efficiency of Aix or Ems, Wiesbaden or Töplitz, or any of them. In some cases they have done, and will do, it may be hoped, considerable benefit to many sufferers. I would merely desire to slide in, amidst the universal paen of praise, a few words of caution respecting themoraleof these watering-places; and in doing so I shall be guided entirely by the same principle I have followed in all the notes of my ‘Loiterings,’ rather to touch follies and absurdities than to go deeper down into the strata of crimes and vices; at the same time, wherever it may be necessary for my purpose, I shall not scruple to cut into the quick if the malady need it.
And to begin—imagine in the first place a Grand-Duchy of such moderate proportions that its sovereign dare not take in the ‘Times’ newspaper; for if he opened it, he must intrude upon the territory of his neighbours. His little kingdom, however, having all the attributes of a real state, possesses a minister for the home and a minister for the foreign department; it has a chancellor of the exchequer and a secretary-at-war; and if there were half a mile of seaboard, would inevitably have a board of admiralty and aministre de la marine. It is also provided with a little army, something in the fashion of Bombastes Furioso’s, where each arm of the service has its one representative, or that admirable Irish corps, which, when inquired after by the General of the District, ‘Where is the Donegal Light Horse?’ was met by the answer of, ‘Here I am, yer honour!’ And though certainly nothing could possibly be more modestly devised than the whole retinue of state, though thefantassinsbe fifty, and the cavalry five, still they must be fed, clothed, and kept in tobacco—a question of some embarrassment, when it is considered that the Grand-Duchy produces little grain and less grass, has neither manufacture nor trade, nor the means of providing for other wants than those of a simple and hard-working peasantry. There is, however, a palace, with its accompaniments of grand maréchal, equerries, cooks, and scullions—a vast variety of officials of every grade and class, who must be provided for. How is this done? Simply enough, when the secret is once known—four yards of green baize, with two gentlemen armed with wooden rakes, and a box full of five-franc pieces. Nothing more is wanting. For the mere luxury of the thing, as a matter of pin-money to the grand-duchess, if there be one, you may add a roulette-table; butrouge et noirwill supply all the trumpery expedients of taxation, direct and indirect. You neither want collectors, custom-houses, nor colonies; you may snap your fingers at trade and import duties, and laugh at the clumsy contrivances by which other chancellors provide for the expenditure of other countries.
The machinery of revenue reduces itself to this: first catch a Jew. For your petty villainies any man will suffice; but for your grand schemes of wholesale plunder, there is nothing like an Israelite; besides, he has a kind of pride in his vocation. For the privilege of the gambling-table he will pay munificently, he will keep the whole grand-ducal realm in beer and beetroot the year through, and give a very respectable privy purse to the sovereign besides. To him you deliver up all the nations of the earth outside your own little frontier, none of those within it being under any pretext admitted inside the walls of the gambling-house; for, like the sick apothecary, you know better than to take anything in the shop. You give him a carte-blanche, sparing the little realm of Hesse-Homburg, to cheat the English, pigeon the Russians, ruin French, Swedes, Swiss, and Yankees to his heart’s content; you set no limits to his grand career of roguery; you deliver, bound, into his hands all travellers within your realm, to be fleeced as it may seem fit. What care you for the din of factories or the clanking hammers of the foundries? The rattle of the dice-box and the scraping of the croupier’s mace are pleasanter sounds, and fully as suggestive of wealth. You need not descend into the bowels of the earth for riches; the gold, ready stamped from the mint, comes bright and shining to your hand. Fleets may founder and argosies may sink, but your dollars come safely in the pockets of their owners, and are paid, without any cost of collection, into the treasury of the State. Manchester may glut the earth with her printed calicoes, Sheffield may produce more carving-knives than there are carvers.Yourresources can suffer no such casualties as these; you trade upon the vices of mankind, and need never dread a year of scarcity. The passion for play is more contagious than the smallpox, and unhappily the malady returns after the first access. Every gambler who leaves fifty napoleons in your territory is bound in a kind of recognisance to return next year and lose double the sum. Each loss is but an instalment of the grand total of his ruin, and you have contracted for that.
But even the winner does not escape you. A hundred temptations are provided to seduce him into extravagance and plunge him into expense—tastes are suggested, and habits of luxury inculcated, that turn out sad comforters when a reverse of fortune compels him to a more limited expenditure; so that when you extinguish the unlucky man by a summary process, you reserve a lingering death for the more fortunate one. In the language of the dock, it is only ‘a long day’ he obtains, after all.
How pleasant, besides, to reflect that the storms of political strife, which agitate other heads, never reach yours. The violence of party spirit, the rancour of the press, are hushed before the decorous silence of the gaming-table and the death-like stillness ofrouge et noir. There is no need of a censorship when there is a croupier. The literature of your realm is reduced to a card, to be pricked by the pin of a gamester; and men have no heads for the pleasures of reading, when stared in the face by ruin. Other states may occupy themselves with projects of philanthropy and benevolence, they may project schemes of public usefulness and advantage, they may advance the arts of civilisation, and promote plans of national greatness; your course is an easier path, and is never unsuccessful.
But some one may say here, How are these people to live? I agree at once with the sentiment—no one is more ready to assent to that excellent adage—‘Il faut que tout le monde vive, even grand-dukes.’ But there are a hundred ways of eking out subsistence in cheap countries, without trenching on morality. The military service of Austria, Prussia, and Russia is open to them, should their own small territories not suffice for moderate wants and wishes. In any case I am not going to trouble my head with providing for German princes, while I have a large stock of nephews and nieces little better off. All I care for at present is to point out the facts of a case, and not to speculate how they might be altered.
Now, to proceed. In proportion as vice is more prevalent, the decorum of the world would appear to increase, and internal rottenness and external decency bear a due relation to each other. People could not thus violate the outward semblance of morality, by flocking in hundreds and tens of hundreds to those gambling states, thoserouge et noirdependencies, those duchies of the dice-box. A man’s asking a passport for Baden would be a tacit averment, ‘I am going to gamble.’ Ordering post-horses for Ems would be like calling for ‘fresh cards’; and you would as soon confess to having passed a few years in Van Diemen’s Land as acknowledge a summer on the Rhine.
What, then, was to be done? It was certainly a difficulty, and might have puzzled less ingenious heads than grand-ducal advisers. They, however, soon hit upon the expedient. They are shrewd observers, and clever men of the world. They perceived that while other eras have been marked by the characteristic designation of brass, gold, or iron,this, with more propriety, might be called the age of bile. Never was there a period when men felt so much interested in their stomachs; at no epoch were mankind so deeply concerned for their livers; this passion—for it is such—not being limited to the old or feeble, to the broken and shattered constitution, but extending to all age and sex, including the veteran of a dozen campaigns and the belle of a London season, the hard-lined and seasoned features of a polar traveller, and the pale, soft cheek of beauty, the lean proportions of shrunken age, and the plump development of youthful loveliness. In the words of the song—
‘No age, no profession, no station is free.’
It is the universal mania of our century, and we may expect that one day, our vigorous pursuit of knowledge on the subject will allow us to be honourably classed with the equally intelligent seekers for the philosopher’s stone. With this great feature of the time, then, nothing was easier than to comply. The little realm of Hesse-Homburg might not have attractions of scenery or society; its climate might, like most of those north of the Alps, be nothing to boast of; its social advantages being a zero, what could it possess as a reason—a good, plausible reason, for drawing travellers to its frontier? Of course, a Spa!—something very nauseous and very foul smelling, as nearly as possible like a warm infusion of rotten eggs, thickened with red clay. Germany happily abounds in these; Nature has been kind to her, at least underground, and you have only to dig two feet in any limestone district to meet with the most sovereign thing on earth for stomachic derangements.
The Spa discovered, a doctor was found to analyse it, and another to write a book upon it. Nothing more were necessary. The work, translated into three or four languages, set forth all the congenial advantages of pumps and promenades, sub-carbonates, tables d’hôte, waltzing, and mineral waters. The pursuit of health no longer presented a grim goddess masquerading in rusty black and a bald forehead, but a lovely nymph, in a Parisian toilette, conversing like a Frenchwoman, and dancing like an Austrian.
Who would not be ill, I wonder? Who would not discover that Hampshire was too high and Essex too low, Devon too close and Cumberland too bracing? Who would not give up his village M.D., and all his array of bottles, with their long white cravats, for a ramble to the Rhine, where luxurious living, belles, and balls abounded, and wheresoit dit en passant, therouge et noirtable afforded the easy resource of supplying all such pleasures, so that you might grow robust and rich at once, and while imbibing iron into your blood, lay up a stock of gold with your banker? Hence the connection between Spas and gambling; hence the fashionable flocking to those healthful spots by thousands who never felt illness; hence the unblushing avowal of having been a month at Baden by those who would flinch at acknowledging an hour in a ‘hell’; and hence, more important than all, at least to one individual concerned, the source of that real alchemy by which a grand-duke, like Macheath, can
‘Turn all his lead to gold.’Well may he exclaim, with the gallant captain—‘Fill every glass!’
Were the liquor champagne or tokay, it could not be a hundredth part as profitable; and the whole thing presents a picture of ‘hocussing’ on the grandest scale ever adopted.
The fifteen glasses of abomination demand a walk of half an hour, or a sojourn in the Cursaal. The Cursaal is a hell! there is no need to mince it. The taste for play is easily imbibed—what bad taste is not?—and thus, while you are drawing the pump, the grand-duke is diving into your pocket. Here, then—I shall not add a word—is the true state of the Spas of Germany. As I believe it is customary to distinguish all writers on these ‘fountains of health’ by some mark of princely favour proportionate to their services of praise, I beg to add, if the Gross Herzog von Hesse-Homburg deems the present a suitable instance for notice, that Arthur O’Leary will receive such evidence of grand-ducal approbation with a most grateful spirit, and acknowledge the same in some future volume of his ‘Loiterings,’ only requesting to mention that when Theodore Hook—poor fellow!—was dining once with a London alderman remarkable for the display and the tedium of his dinners, he felt himself at the end of an hour and a half’s vigorous performance only in the middle of the entertainment; upon which he laid down his knife, and in a whisper uttered: ‘Eatingmore is out of the question; so I ‘ll take the rest out in money.’
I have already taken occasion to indoctrinate my reader on the subject of what I deem the most perfect species of table d’hôte. May I now beg of him, or her, if she will be kind enough, to accompany me to thetable-monstreof Wiesbaden, Ems, or Baden-Baden? We are at the Cursaal, or Shuberts, or the ‘Hof von Nassau’ at Wiesbaden. Four hundred guests are assembled, their names indicative of every land of Europe, and no small portion of America; the mixture of language giving the impression of its being a grand banquet to the ‘operatives at Babel,’ but who, not satisfied with the chances of misunderstanding afforded by speaking their own tongues to foreigners, have adventured on the more certain project of endeavouring to being totally unintelligible, by speaking languages with which they are unacquainted; while in their dress, manner, and appearance, the great object seems to be an accurate imitation of some other country than their own. Hence Frenchmen affect to seem English, English to look like Prussians, Prussians to appear Poles, Poles to be Calmucks. Your ‘elegant’ of the Boulevard de Ghent sports a ‘cut away’ like a Yorkshire squire, and rides in cords; your Londoner wears his hair on his shoulders, and his moustaches, like a Pomeranian count; Turks find their way into tight trousers and ‘Wellingtons’; and even the Yankees cannot resist the general tendency to transmutation, but take three inches off their hair behind.
Nothing is more amusing than these general congresses of European vagrancy. Characters the most original meet you at every step, and display most happily traits you never have the opportunity to inspect at home. For so it is, the very fact of leaving home with most people seems like an absolution from all the necessities of sustaining a part. They feel as though they had taken off the stage finery in which they had fretted away their hours before, and stand forth themselvesin propria. Thus your grave Chancery lawyer becomes a chatty pleasant man of the world, witty and conversable; your abstruse mathematician, leaving conic sections behind him, talks away with the harmless innocence of a child about men and politics; and even your cold ‘exclusive’ bids a temporary farewell to his ‘morgue,’ and answers his next neighbour at table without feeling shocked at his obtrusion.
There must be some secret sympathy—of whose operations we know nothing—between our trunks and our temperaments, our characters and our carpet-bags; and that by the same law which opens one to the inspection of an official at the frontier, the other must be laid bare when we pass across it. How well would it have been for us, if the analogy had been pushed a little further, that the fiscal regulations adopted in the former were but extended to the latter, and that we had applied the tariff to the morals, as well as to the manufactures, of the Continent.
It was in some such musing as this I sat in a window of the ‘Nassau,’ at Wiesbaden, during the height of the season of——. Strangers were constantly arriving, and hourly was the reply ‘no room’ given to the disconsolate travellers, who peered from their carriages with the road-sick look of a long journey. As for myself, I had been daily and nightly transferred from one quarter of the hotel to another—now sleeping in an apartment forty feet square, in a bed generally reserved for royalty, now bivouacking under the very slates; one night exposed to the incessant din of the street beside my windows, the next, in a remote wing of the building, where there were no bells in the chambers, nor any waiter was ever known to wander. In fact, I began to believe that they made use of me to air the beds of the establishment, and was seriously disposed to make a demand for some compensation in my bill; and if I might judge from the pains in my bones I contracted in ‘Lit de Parade,’ I must have saved her Majesty of Greece, who was my successor in it, a notable attack of rheumatism. To this shuttlecock state of existence the easiness of my nature made me submit tamely enough, and I never dreamed of rebellion.
I was sitting conning over to myself the recollections of some faces I had seen before, when the head waiter appeared before me, with a request that I would be kind enough to give up my place at the table, which was No. 14, to a gentleman lately arrived, and who desired to sit near his friends in that vicinity. ‘To be sure,’ said I at once; ‘I have no acquaintance here, and 114 will do me as well as 14—place me where you like.’ At the same time, it rather puzzled me to learn what the individual could be like who conceived such a violent desire to be in the neighbourhood of some Hamburg Jews—for such were the party around me—when the waiter began to make room for a group that entered the room, and walked up to the end of that table. A glance told they were English. There was an elderly man, tall and well-looking, with the air ‘gentleman’ very legibly written on his quiet, composed features; the carriage of his head, and a something in his walk, induced me to believe him military. A lady leaned on his arm, some thirty years his junior—he was about sixty-six or seven—whose dress and style were fashionable, and at the same time they had not that perfect type of unpretending legitimacy that belongs essentially to but one class. She was, in fact,trop bien misefor a table d’hote; for although only a morning costume, there was a display about it which was faulty in its taste; her features, without being handsome, were striking, as much for the carriage of her head as anything in themselves. There was an air of good looks, as though to say, ‘If you don’t think me handsome, the fault is yours.’ Her eyes were of a bluish grey, large and full, with lightly arched brows; but the mouth was the most characteristic feature—it was firm and resolute-looking, closely compressed, and with a slight protrusion of the lower lip, that said as plainly as words could say it, ‘I will, and that’s enough.’ In walking, she took some pains to display her foot, which, with all the advantages of a Parisian shoe, was scarcely as pretty as she conceived it, but on the whole was well formed, and rather erring on the score of size than symmetry.
They were followed by three or four young men, of whom I could only remark that they wore the uniform appearance of young Englishmen of good class, very clean-looking faces, well-brushed hair, and well-fitting frock-coats. One sported a moustache of a dirty-yellow colour, and whiskers to match, and by his manner, and a certain half-shut-eye kind of glance, proclaimed himself the knowing man of the party.
While they were taking their places, which they did at once on entering, I heard a general burst of salutations break from them in very welcome accent: ‘Oh, here he is, here he comes. Ah, I knew we should see him.’ At the same instant, a tall, well-dressed fellow leaned over the table and shook hands with them all in succession.
‘When did you arrive?’ said he, turning to the lady.
‘Only an hour ago; Sir Marmaduke would stay at Frankfort yesterday, to see Duvernet dance, and so we were detained beyond our time.’
The old gentleman half blushed at this charge, and while a look of pleasure showed that he did not dislike the accusation, he said—
‘No, no; I stayed to please Calthorpe.’
‘Indeed!’ said the lady, turning a look of very peculiar, but unmistakable, anger at him of the yellow moustache. ‘Indeed, my lord!’
‘Oh yes, that is a weakness of mine,’ said he, in an easy tone of careless banter, which degenerated to a mutter, heard only by the lady herself.
‘I ought to have a place somewhere here about,’ said the tall man. ‘Number 14 or 15, the waiter said. Hallo,garçon——-’
At this he turned round, and I saw the well-remembered face of my fellow-traveller, the Honourable Jack Smallbranes. He looked very hard at me, as if he were puzzled to remember where or when we had met, and then, with a cool nod, said, ‘How d’ye do?—over in England lately?’
‘Not since I had the pleasure of meeting you at Rotterdam. Did you go far with the alderman’s daughters?’
A very decided wink and a draw down of the brows cautioned me to silence on that subject; but not before the lady had heard my question, and looked up in his face with an expression that said—‘I’ll hear more of that affair before long.’
‘Monsieur has given you his place, sir,’ said the waiter, arranging a chair at No. 14. ‘I have putyouat 83.’
‘All right,’ replied Jack, as if no recognition were called for on his part, and that he was not sorry to be separated from one with an unpleasant memory.
‘I am shocked, sir,’ said the lady, addressing me in her blandest accents, ‘at our depriving you of your place, but Mr. Carrisbrook will, I ‘m sure, give you his.’
While I protested against such a surrender, and Mr. Carrisbrook looked very much annoyed at the proposal, the lady only insisted the more, and it ended in Mr. Carrisbrook—one of the youths already mentioned—being sent down to 83, while I took up my position in front of the party in his place.
I knew to what circumstance I was indebted for this favourable notice; she looked up to me as a kind of king’s evidence, whenever the Honourable Jack should be called up for trial, and already I had seen a great deal into the history and relative position of all parties. Such was the state of matters when the soup appeared.
And now, to impart to my readers, as is my wont, such information as I possessed afterwards, and not to keep them waiting for the order in which I obtained it: the party before me consisted of Sir Marmaduke Lonsdall and his lady—he, an old general officer of good family and connections, who, with most unexceptionable manners and courtly address, had contrived to spend a very easy, good-for-nothing existence, without ever seeing an hour’s service, his clubs and his dinner-parties filling up life tolerably well, with the occasional excitement arising from who was in and who was out, to season the whole. Sometimes a Lord of the Treasury, with a seat for a Government borough, and sometimes patriotically sitting among the opposition when his friends were out, he was looked upon as a very honourable, straightforward person, who could not be ‘overlooked’ when his party were distributing favours.
My Lady Lonsdall was asoi-disantheiress, the daughter of some person unknown in the city, the greater part of whose fortune was unhappily embarked in Poyais Scrip—a fact only ascertained when too late, and, consequently, though discoursing most eloquently in a prospectus about mines of gold and silver, strata of pearl necklaces, and diamond ear-rings, all ready to put on, turned out an unfortunate investment, and only realised an article in theTimes, headed ‘another bubble speculation.’ Still, however, she was reputed very rich, and Sir Marmaduke received the congratulations of his club on the event with the air of a conqueror. She married him simply because, having waited long and impatiently for a title, she was fain to put up at last with a baronet. Her ambition was to be in the fashionable world; to be among that sect of London elect who rule at Almack’s and dictate at the West End; to occupy her portion of theMorning Post, and to have her name circulated among the illustrious few who entertain royalty, and receive archdukes at luncheon. If the Poyais investment, in its result, denied the means of these extravagances, it did not, unhappily, obliterate the taste for them; and my lady’s ambition to be fashionable was never at a higher spring-tide than when her fortunes were at the ebb. Now, certes, there are two ways to London distinction—rank and wealth. A fair union of both will do much, but, without either, the pursuit is utterly hopeless. There is but one course, then, for these unfortunate aspirants of celebrity—it is to change the venue and come abroad. They may not, it is true, have the rank and riches which give position at home. Still, they are better off than most foreigners: they have not the wealth of the aristocracy, yet they can imitate their wickedness; their habits may be costly, but their vices are cheap; and thus they can assert their high position and their fashionable standing by displaying the abandonment which is unhappily the distinctive feature of a certain set in the high world of London.
Followed, then, by a train of admirers, she paraded about the Continent, her effrontery exalted into beauty, her cold insolence assumed to be high breeding; her impertinence to women was merely exclusiveness, and her condescending manner to men the simple acknowledgment of that homage to which she was so unquestionably entitled.
Of her suite, they were animated by different motives. Some were young enough to be in love with any woman who, a great deal older than themselves, would deign to notice them. The noble lord, who accompanied her always, was a ruined baron, whose own wife had deserted him for another; he had left his character and his fortune at Doncaster and Epsom; and having been horsewhipped as a defaulter, and outlawed for debt, was of course in no condition to face his acquaintances in England. Still he was a lord—there was no denying that; Debrett and Burke had chronicled his baptism, and the eighth baron from Hugo de Colbrooke, who carried the helmet of his sovereign at Agincourt, was unquestionably of the best blood of the peerage. Like your true white feather, he wore a mostfaroucheexterior; his moustaches seemed to bristle with pugnacity, and the expression of his eye was indescribably martial; he walked as if he was stepping out the ground, and in his salute he assumed the cold politeness with which a second takes off his hat to the opposite principal in a duel; even his valet seemed to favour the illusion, as he ostentatiously employed himself cleaning his master’s pistols, and arranging the locks, as though there was no knowing at what moment of the day he might not be unexpectedly called to shoot somebody.
This noble lord, I say, was a part of the household. Sir Marmaduke finding his society rather agreeable, and the lady regarding him as the cork-jacket on which she was to swim into the ocean of fashion at some remote period or other of her existence.
As for the Honourable Jack Smallbranes, who was he not in love with— or rather who was not in love with him? Poor fellow! he was born, in his own estimation, to be the destroyer of all domestic peace; he was created to be the ruin to all female happiness. Such a destiny might well have filled any one with sadness and depression; most men would have grieved over a lot which condemned them to be the origin of suffering. Not so, Jack; he felt he couldn’t help it—that it was no affair of his if he were the best-looking fellow in the world. The thing was so palpable; women ought to take care of themselves; he sailed under no false flag. No, there he was, the most irresistible, well-dressed, and handsomest fellow to be met with; and if they didn’t escape—or, to use his own expression, ‘cut their lucky’ in time—the fault was all their own. If queens smiled and archduchesses looked kind upon him, let kings and archdukes look to it. He took no unfair or underhand advantages; he made no secret attacks, no dark advances—he carried every fortress by assault, and in noonday. Some malicious people— the world abounds in such—used to say that Jack’s gallantries were something like Falstaff’s deeds of prowess, and that his victims were all ‘in buckram.’ But who could believe it? Did not victory sit on his very brow; were not his looks the signs of conquest; and, better than all, who that ever knew him had not the assurance from his own lips? With what a happy mixture of nonchalance and self-satisfaction would he make these confessions! How admirably blended was the sense of triumph with the consciousness of its ease! How he would shake his ambrosial curls, and throw himself into a pose of elegance, as though to say, ‘’Twas thus I did it; ain’t I a sad dog?’
Well, if these conquests were illusions, they were certainly the pleasantest ever a man indulged in. They consoled him at heart for the loss of fortune, country, and position; they were his recompense for all the lost glories of Crockford’s and the ‘Clarendon.’ Never was there such a picture of perfect tranquillity and unclouded happiness. Oh, let moralists talk as they will about the serenity of mind derivable alone from a pure conscience, the peaceful nature that flows from a source of true honour, and then look abroad upon the world and count the hundreds whose hairs are never tinged with grey, whose cheeks show no wrinkles, whose elastic steps suffer no touch of age, and whose ready smile and cheerful laugh are the ever-present signs of their contentment—let them look on these, and reflect that of such are nine-tenths of those who figure in lists of outlawry, whose bills do but make the stamps they are written on of no value, whose creditors are legion and whose credit is at zero, and say which seem the happier. To see them one would opine that there must be some secret good in cheating a coachmaker, or some hidden virtue in tricking a jeweller; that hotel-keepers are a natural enemy to mankind, and that a tailor has not a right even to a decimal fraction of honesty. Never was Epicurean philosophy like theirs; they have a fine liberal sense of the blackguardisms that a man may commit, and yet not forfeit his position in society. They know the precise condition in life when he may practise dishonesty; and they also see when he must be circumspect. They have one rule for the city and another for the club; and, better than all, they have stored their minds with sage maxims and wise reflections, which, like the philosophers of old, they adduce on every suitable occasion; and many a wounded spirit has been consoled by that beautiful sentiment, so frequent in their mouths, of—
‘Go ahead! for what’s the odds so long as you ‘re happy?’
Such, my reader, was the clique in which, strangely enough, I now found myself; and were it not that such characters abound in every part of the Continent, that they swarm at spas and infest whole cities, I would scruple to introduce you to such company. It is as well, however, that you should be put on your guard against them, and that any amusement you may derive from the study of eccentricity should not be tarnished with the recollection of your being imposed upon.
There happened, on the day I speak of, to be a man of some rank at table, with whom I had a slight, a very slight acquaintance; but in passing from the room he caught my eye, came over and conversed with me for a few minutes. From that moment Lady Lonsdall’s manners underwent a great change in my regard. Not only did she venture to look at me without expressing any air of supercilious disdain, but even vouchsafed the ghost of a smile; and, as we rose from table, I overheard her ask the Honourable Jack for my name. I could not hear the first part of his reply, but the last was couched in that very classic slang, expressive of my unknown condition—
‘I take it, he hain’t got no friends!’
Notwithstanding this Foundling-hospital sentence, Sir Marmaduke was instructed to invite me to take coffee—an honour which, having declined, we separated, as do people who are to speak when next they meet.
Meditating on the unjust impression foreigners must conceive of England and the English by the unhappy specimens we ‘grind for exportation,’ I sat alone at a little table in the park. It was a sad subject, and it led me further than I wished or knew of. I thought I could trace much of the animosity of foreign journals to English policy in their mistaken notions of national character, and could well conceive how dubiously they must receive our claim to being high-spirited and honourable, when their own experiences would incline to a different conclusion; for, after all, the Fleet Prison, however fashionable its inmates, would scarcely be a flattering specimen of England, nor do I think Horsemonger Lane ought to be taken as a fair sample of the country. It is vain to assure foreigners that these people are not known nor received at home, neither held in credit nor estimation; their conclusive reply is, ‘How is it, then, that they are admitted to the tables of your ambassadors, and presented at our courts? Is it possible you would dare to introduce to our sovereigns those whom you could not present to your own?’ This answer is a fatal one. The fact is so; the most rigid censor of morals leaves his conscience at the Ship Hotel at Dover; he has no room for it on a voyage, or perhaps he thinks it might be detained by a revenue-officer. Whatever the cause, he will know at Baden—ay, and walk with—the man he would cut in Bond Street, and drive with the party at Brussels he would pass to-morrow if he met in Hyde Park.
This ‘sliding scale’ of morality has great disadvantages; none greater than the injury it inflicts on national character, and the occasion it offers for our disparagement at the hands of other people. It is in vain that liberal and enlightened measures mark our government, or that philanthropy and humanity distinguish our institutions, we only get credit for hypocrisy so long as we throw a mantle over our titled swindlers and dishonourable defaulters. If Napoleon found little difficulty in making the sobriquet of ‘La Perfide Albion’ popular in France, we owe it much more to the degraded characters of our refugee English than to any justice in the charge against the nation. In a word, I have never met a foreigner commonly fair in his estimate of English character, who had not travelled in England; and I never met one unjust in all that regarded national good faith, honesty, and uprightness, who had visited our shores. The immunity from arrest would seem to suggest to our runaways an immunity from all the ties of good conduct and character of our countrymen, who, under that strange delusion of the ‘immorality of France,’ seem to think that a change of behaviour should be adopted in conformity with foreign usage; and as they put on less clothing, so they might dispense with a little virtue also.
These be unpleasant reflections, Arthur, and I fear the coffee or the maraschino must have been amiss; in any case, away with them, and now for a stroll in the Cursaal!
Englishmen keep their solemnity and respectful deportment for a church; foreigners reserve theirs for a gambling-table. Never was I more struck than by the decorous stillness and well-bred quietness of the room in which the highest play went forward. All the animation of French character, all the bluntness of German, all the impetuosity of the Italian or the violent rashness of the Russian, were calmed down and subdued beneath the influence of the great passion; and it seemed as though the Devil would not accept the homage of his votaries if not rendered with the well-bred manners of true gentlemen. It was not enough that men should be ruined—they should be ruined with easy propriety and thorough good-breeding. Whatever their hearts might feel, their faces should express no discomfiture; though their head should ache and their hand should tremble, the lip must be taught to say ‘rouge’ or ‘noir’ without any emotion.
I do not scruple to own that all this decorum was more dreadful than any scene of wild violence or excitement The forced calmness, the pent-up passion, might be kept from any outbreak of words; but no training could completely subdue the emotions which speak by the bloodshot eye, the quivering cheek, the livid lip.
No man’s heart is consecrated so entirely to one passion as a gambler’s. Hope with him usurps the place of every other feeling. Hope, however rude the shocks it meets from disappointment, however beaten and baffled, is still there; the flame may waste down to a few embers, but a single spark may live amid the ashes, yet it is enough to kindle up into a blaze before the breath of fortune. At first he lives but for moments like these; all his agonies, all his sufferings, all the torturings of a mind verging on despair are repaid by such brief intervals of luck. Yet each reverse of fate is telling on him heavily; the many disappointments to his wishes are sapping by degrees his confidence in fortune. His hope is dashed with fear; and now commences within him that struggle which is the most fearful man’s nature can endure. The fickleness of chance, the waywardness of fortune, fill his mind with doubts and hesitations. Sceptical on the sources of his great passion, he becomes a doubter on every subject; he has seen his confidence so often at fault that he trusts nothing, and at last the ruling feature of his character is suspicion. When this rules paramount, he is a perfect gambler; from that moment he has done with the world and all its pleasures and pursuits; life offers to him no path of ambition, no goal to stimulate his energies. With a mock stoicism he affects to be superior to the race which other men are running, and laughs at the collisions of party and the contests of politics. Society, art, literature, love itself, have no attractions for him then; all excitements are feeble compared with the alternations of the gaming-table; and the chances of fortune in real life are too tame and too tedious for the impatience of a gambler.
I have no intention of winding up these few remarks by any moral episode of a gambler’s life, though my memory could supply me with more than one such—when the baneful passion became the ruin, not of a thoughtless, giddy youth, inexperienced and untried, but of one who had already won golden opinions from the world, and stood high in the ranks which lead to honour and distinction. These stories have, unhappily, a sameness which mars the force of their lesson; they are listened to like the refrain of an old song, and from their frequency are disregarded. No; I trust in the fact that education and the tastes that flow from it are the best safeguards against a contagion of a heartless, soulless passion, and would rather warn my young countrymen at this place against the individuals than the system.
‘Am I in your way, sir?’ said a short, somewhat overdressed man, with red whiskers, as he made room for me to approach the play-table, with a politeness quite remarkable—‘am I in your way, sir?’
‘Not in the least; I beg you ‘ll not stir.’
‘Pray take my seat; I request you will.’
‘By no means, sir; I never play. I was merely looking on.’
‘Nor I either—or at least very rarely,’ said he, rising with the air of a man who felt no pleasure in what was going forward. ‘You don’t happen to know that young gentleman in the light-blue frock and white vest yonder?’
‘No, I never saw him before.’
‘I ‘m sorry for it,’ said he in a whisper; ‘he has just lost seventy thousand francs, and is going the readiest way to treble the sum by his play. I ‘m certain he is English by his look and appearance, and it is a cruel thing, a very cruel thing, not to give him a word of caution here.’
The words, spoken with a tone of feeling, interested me much in the speaker, and already I was angry with myself for having conceived a dislike to his appearance and a prejudice against his style of dress.
‘I see,’ continued he, after a few seconds’ pause—‘I see you agree with me. Let us try if we can’t find some one who may know him. If Wycherley is here—you know Sir Harry, I suppose?’
‘I have not that honour.’
‘Capital fellow—the best in the world. He’s in the Blues, and always about Windsor or St. James’s. He knows everybody; and if that young fellow be anybody, he’s sure to know him. Ah, how d’ye do, my lord?’ continued he, with an easy nod, as Lord Colebrook passed.
‘Eh, Crotty, how goes it?’ was the reply.
‘You don’t happen to know that gentleman yonder, my lord, do you?’
‘Not I; who is he?’
‘This gentleman and I were both anxious to learn who he is; he is losing a deal of money.’
‘Eh, dropping his tin, is he? And you ‘d rather save him, Crotty? All right and sportsmanlike,’ said his lordship, with a knowing wink, and walked on.
‘A very bad one, indeed, I fear,’ said Crotty, looking after him; ‘but I didn’t think him so heartless as that. Let us take a turn, and look out for Wycherley.’
Now, although I neither knew Wycherley nor his friend Crotty, I felt it a case where one might transgress a little on etiquette, and probably save a young man—he didn’t look twenty—from ruin; and so, without more ado, I accompanied my new acquaintance through the crowded salons, elbowing and pushing along amid the hundreds that thronged there. Crotty seemed to know almost every one of a certain class; and as he went, it was a perpetual ‘Comment ça va,’ prince, count, or baron; or, ‘How d’ye do, my lord?’ or, ‘Eh, Sir Thomas, you here?’ etc; when at length, at the side of a doorway leading into the supper-room, we came upon the Honourable Jack, with two ladies leaning upon his arms. One glance was enough; I saw they were the alderman’s daughters. Sir Peter himself, at a little distance off, was giving directions to the waiter for supper.
‘Eh, Crotty, what are you doing to-night?’ said Jack, with a triumphant look at his fair companions; ‘any mischief going forward, eh?’
‘Nothing half so dangerous as your doings,’ said Crotty, with a very arch smile; ‘have you seen Wycherley? Is he here?’
‘Can’t possibly say,’ yawned out Jack; then leaning over to me, he said in a whisper, ‘Is the Princess Von Hohenstauvenof in the rooms?’
‘I really don’t know; I ‘m quite a stranger.’
‘By Jove, if she is,’ said he, without paying any attention to my reply, ‘I ‘m floored, that’s all. Lady Maude Beverley has caught me already. I wish you ‘d keep the Deverington girls in talk, will you?’
‘You forget, perhaps, I have no acquaintance here.’
‘Oh yes, by Jove, so I did! Glorious fun you must have of it! What a pace I ‘d go along if I wasn’t known, eh! wouldn’t I?’
‘There’s Wycherley—there he is,’ said Crotty, taking me by the arm as he spoke, and leading me forward. ‘Do me the favour to give me your name; I should like you to know Wycherley’—and scarcely had I pronounced it, when I found myself exchanging greetings with a large, well-built, black-whiskered and moustached man of about forty. He was dressed in deep mourning, and looked in his manner and air very much the gentleman.
‘Have you got up the party yet, Crotty?’ said he, after our first salutations were over, and with a half-glance towards me.
‘No, indeed,’ said Crotty slowly; ‘the fact is, I wasn’t thinking of it. There’s a poor young fellow yonder losing very heavily, and I wanted to see if you knew him; it would be only fair to——’
‘So it would; where is he?’ interrupted the baronet, as he pushed through the crowd towards the play-room.
‘I told you he was a trump,’ said Crotty, as we followed him—‘the fellow to do a good-natured thing at any moment.
While we endeavoured to get through after him, we passed close beside a small supper-table, where sat the alderman and his two pretty daughters, the Honourable Jack between them. It was evident from his boisterous gaiety that he had triumphed over all his fears of detection by any of the numerous fair ones he spoke of—his great object at this instant appearing to be the desire to attract every one’s attention towards him, and to publish his triumph to all beholders. For this, Jack conversed in a voice audible at some distance off, surveying his victims from time to time with the look of the Great Mogul; while they, poor girls, only imagined themselves regarded for their own attractions, which were very considerable, and believed that the companionship of the distinguished Jack was the envy of every woman about them. As for the father, he was deep in the mysteries of avol-au-vent, and perfectly indifferent to such insignificant trifles as Jack’s blandishments and the ladies’ blushes.
Poor girls! no persuasion in life could have induced them to such an exhibition in their own country, and in company with one their equal in class. But the fact of its being Germany, and the escort being an Honourable, made all the difference in the world; and they who would have hesitated with maiden coyness at the honourable proposals of one of their own class, felt no scruple at compromising themselves before hundreds, to indulge the miserable vanity of a contemptible coxcomb. I stood for a second or two beside the table, and thought within myself, ‘Is not this as much a case to call for the interference of friendly caution as that of the gambler yonder?’ But then, how was it possible?
We passed on and reached the play-table, where we found Sir Harry Wycherley in low and earnest conversation with the young gentleman. I could only catch a stray expression here and there, but even they surprised me—the arguments advanced to deter him from gambling being founded on the inconsiderate plan of his game, rather than on the immorality and vice of the practice itself.
‘Don’t you see,’ said Sir Harry, throwing his eye over the card all dotted with pinholes—‘don’t you see it’s a run, a dead run; that you may bet on red, if you like, a dozen times, and only win once or twice?’ The youth blushed and said nothing.
‘I ‘ve seen forty thousand francs lost that way in less than an hour.’
‘I’ve lostseventythousand!’ muttered the young man, with a shudder like one who felt cold all over.
‘Seventy!—not to-night, surely?’
‘Yes, to-night,’ replied he. ‘I won fourteen hundred naps here when I came first, and didn’t play for three weeks afterwards; but unfortunately I strolled in here a few nights ago, and lost the whole back, as well as some hundreds besides; but this evening I came bent on winning back—that was all I desired—winning back my own.’
As he said these words, I saw Sir Harry steal a glance at Crotty. The thing was as quick as lightning, but never did a glance reveal more; he caught my eye upon him, and looking round fully at me said, in a deep, ominous voice—
‘That’s the confounded part of it; it’s so hard to stop when you ‘re losing.’
‘Hard!—impossible!’ cried the youth, whose eyes were now riveted on the table, following every card that fell from the banker’s hands, and flushing and growing pale with every alternation of the game. ‘See now, for all you’ve said, look if the red has not won four times in succession?’
‘So it has,’ replied the baronet coolly; ‘but the previous run on black would have left your purse rather shallow, or you must have a devilish deep one, that’s all.’
He took up a pencil as he spoke, and began to calculate on the back of the card; then holding it over, he said, ‘There’s what you ‘d have lost if you went on betting.’
‘What!—two hundred and eighty thousand francs?’
‘Exactly! Look here’; and he went over the figures carefully before him.
‘Don’t you think you’ve had enough of it to-night?’ said Crotty, with an insinuating smile; ‘what say you if we all go and sup together in the Saal?’
‘Agreed,’ said Sir Harry, rising at once. ‘Crotty, will you look at the carte and do the needful? You may trust him, gentlemen,’ continued he, turning towards us with a smile; ‘old Crotty has a most unexceptionable taste in all that regardscuisineandcave; save a slight leaning towards expense, he has not a fault!’
I mumbled out something of an apology, which was unfortunately supposed by the baronet to have reference to his last remark. I endeavoured to explain away the mistake, and ended like a regular awkward man by complying with a request I had previously resolved to decline. The young man had already given his consent, and so we arose and walked through the rooms, while Crotty inspected the bill of fare and gave orders about the wine.
Wycherley seemed to know and be known by every one, and as he interchanged greetings with the groups that passed, declined several pressing invitations to sup. ‘The fact is,’ said he to one of his most anxious inviters, ‘the fact is’—and the words were uttered in a whisper I could just hear—‘there’s a poor young fellow here who has been getting it rather sharp at the gold table, and I mustn’t lose sight of him to-night, or he’ll inevitably go back there.’
These few words dispelled any uneasiness I had already laboured under from finding myself so unexpectedly linked with two strangers. It was quite clear that Sir Harry was a fine-hearted fellow, and that his manly, frank countenance was no counterfeit. As we went along, Wycherley amused us with his anecdotes of the company, with whose private history he was conversant in its most minute details; and truly, low as had been my estimate of the society at first, it fell considerably lower as I listened to the private memoirs with which he favoured us.
Some were the common narratives of debt and desertion, protested bills, and so forth; others were the bit-by-bit details of extravagant habits pushed beyond all limits, and ending in expatriation for ever. There were faithless husbands, outraging all decency by proclaiming their bad conduct; there were as faithless wives, parading about in all the effrontery of wickedness. At one side sat the roué companion of George the Fourth, in his princely days, now a mere bloated debauchee, with rouged cheeks and dyed whiskers, living on the hackneyed anecdotes of his youthful rascality, and earning his daily bread by an affected epicurism and a Sybarite pretension, which flattered the vulgar vanity of those who fed him; while the lion of the evening was a newly arrived earl, whose hunters were that very day sold at Tattersall’s, and whose beautiful countess, horror-stricken at the ruin so unexpectedly come upon them, was lying dangerously ill at her father’s house in London. The young peer, indeed, bore up with a fortitude that attracted the highest encomiums, and from an audience the greater portion of which knew in their own persons most of the ills he suffered. He exchanged an easy nod or a familiar shake of the hand with several acquaintances, not seen before for many a day, and seemed to think that the severest blow fortune had dealt him was the miserable price his stud would fetch at such a time of the year.
‘The old story,’ said Wycherley, as he shook him by the hand, and told him his address—‘the old story; he thought twenty thousand a year would do anything, but it won’t though. If men will keep a house in town, and another in Gloucestershire, with a pack of fox-hounds, and have four horses in training at Doncaster—not to speak of a yacht at Cowes and some other fooleries—they must come to the Jews; and when they come to the Jews, the pace is faster than for the Derby itself. Two hundred per cent, is sharp practice, and I can tell you not uncommon either; and then when a man does begin to topple, his efforts to recover always ruin him. It’s like a fall from your horse—make a struggle, and you ‘re sure to break your leg or your collar-bone; take it kindly, and the chances are that you get up all right again, after the first shock.’
I did not like either the tone or the morality of my companion; but I well knew both were the conventional coinage of his set, and I suffered him to continue without interruption.
‘There’s Mosely Cranmer,’ said he, pointing to a slight, effeminate-looking young man, with a most girlish softness about his features. He was dressed in the very extreme of fashion, and displayed all that array of jewelry in pins, diamond vest-buttons, and rings, so frequently assumed by modern dandyism. His voice was a thin reedy treble, scarcely deep enough for a child.
‘Who is he, and what is he doing here?’ asked I.
‘He is the heir to about eighty thousand per annum, to begin with,’ said Wycherley, ‘which he has already dipped beyond redemption. So far for his property. As to what he is doing here, you may have seen in theTimeslast week that he shot an officer of the Guards in a duel—killed him on the spot. The thing was certain—Cranmer’s the best pistol-shot in England.’
‘Ah, Wycherley, how goes it, old fellow?’ said the youth, stretching out two fingers of his well-gloved hand. ‘You see Edderdale is come over. Egad! we shall have all England here soon—leave the island to the Jews, I think!’
Sir Harry laughed heartily at the conceit, and invited him to join our party at supper; but he was already, I was rejoiced to find, engaged to the Earl of Edderdale, who was entertaining a select few at his hotel, in honour of his arrival.
A waiter now came to inform us that Mr. Crotty was waiting for us, to order supper, and we immediately proceeded to join him in the Saal.
The baronet’s eulogium on his friend’s taste ingourmandisewas well and justly merited. The supper was admirable—the ‘potage printanière’ seasoned to perfection, the ‘salmi des perdreaux, aux points d’asperges,’ delicious, and the ‘ortolans à la provençale’ a dish for the gods; while the wines were of thatcruand flavour that only favoured individuals ever attained to at the hands of a landlord. Asplatsucceededplat, each admirably selected in the order of succession to heighten the enjoyment and gratify the palate of the guest, the conversation took its natural turn to matters gastronomic, and where, I must confess, I can dally with as sincere pleasure as in the discussion of any other branch of the fine arts. Mr. Crotty’s forte seemed essentially to lie in the tact of ordering and arranging a very admirable repast. Wycherley, however, took a higher walk; he was historicallygastronome, and had a store of anecdotes about the dishes and their inventors, from Clovis to Louis Quatorze. He knew the favourite meats of many illustrious personages, and told his stories about them with an admirable blending of seriousness and levity.
There are excellent people, Arthur, who will call you sensualist for all this—good souls, who eat like Cossacks and drink like camels in the desert; before whose masticatory powers joints become beautifully less in shortest space of time, and who while devouring in greedy silence think nothing too severe to say of him who, with more cultivated palate and discriminating taste, eats sparingly but choicely, making the nourishment of his body the nutriment of his mind, and while he supports nature, can stimulate his imagination and invigorate his understanding. The worthy votaries of boiled mutton and turnips, of ribs and roasts, believe themselves temperate and moderate eaters, while consuming at a meal the provender sufficient for a family; and when, after an hour’s steady performance, they sit with hurried breathing and half-closed eyelids, sullen, stupid, and stertorous, drowsy and dull, saturated with stout and stuffed with Stilton, they growl out a thanksgiving that they are not like other men—epicures and wine-bibbers. Out upon them, I say! Let me have my light meal, be its limits a cress, and the beverage that ripples from the rock beside me; but be it such, that, while eating, there is no transfusion of the beast devoured into the man, nor, when eaten, the semi-apoplectic stupor of a gorged boa!
Sir Harry did the honours of the table, and sustained the burden of the conversation, to which Crotty contributed but little, the young man and myself being merely noneffectives; nor did we separate until thegarçoncame to warn us that the Saal was about to close for the night.