The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green | Page 3

their names to little bills,
merely for form's and friendship's sake. The Vavasour Verdant Green,
with the slashed velvet doublet and point-lace fall, who (having a
well-stocked purse) was among the favoured courtiers of the Merry
Monarch, and who allowed that monarch in his merriness to borrow his
purse, with the simple I.O.U. of "Odd's fish! you shall take mine
to-morrow!" and who never (of course) saw the sun rise on the day of
repayment, was but the prototype of the Verdant Greens in the
full-bottomed wigs, and buckles and shorts of George I's day, who were
nearly beggared by the bursting of the Mississippi Scheme and
South-Sea Bubble; and these, in their turn, were duly represented by
their successors. And thus the family character was handed down with
the family nose, until they both re-appeared (according to the veracious
chronicle of Burke, to which we have referred) in "VERDANT
GREEN, of the Manor Green, Co. Warwick, Gent., who married Mary,
only surviving child of Samuel Sappey, Esq., of Sapcot Hall, Co. Salop;
by whom he has issue, one son, and three daughters:
Mary,-VERDANT,-Helen,-Fanny."
Mr. Burke is unfeeling enough to give the dates when this bunch of
Greens first made their appearance in the world; but these dates we
withhold, from a delicate regard to personal feelings, which will be

duly appreciated by those who have felt the sacredness of their
domestic hearth to be tampered with by the obtrusive impertinences of
a census-paper.
It is sufficient for our purpose to say, that our hero, Mr. Verdant Green,
junior, was born much in the same way as other folk. And although
pronounced by Mrs. Toosypegs his nurse, when yet in the first crimson
blush of his existence, to be "a perfect progidy, mum, which I ought to
be able to pronounce, 'avin nuss'd a many parties through their trouble,
and being aweer of what is doo to a Hinfant," - yet we are not aware
that his ~debut~ on the stage of life, although thus applauded
[AN OXFORD FRESHMAN 9]
by such a ~clacqueur~ as the indiscriminating Toosypegs, was
announced to the world at large by any other means than the notices in
the county papers, and the six-shilling advertisement in the ~Times~.
"Progidy" though he was, even as a baby, yet Mr. Verdant Green's
nativity seems to have been chronicled merely in this everyday manner,
and does not appear to have been accompanied by any of those more
monstrous phenomena, which in earlier ages attended the production of
a ~genuine~ prodigy. We are not aware that Mrs. Green's favourite
Alderney spoke on that occasion, or conducted itself otherwise than as
unaccustomed to public speaking as usual. Neither can we verify the
assertion of the intelligent Mr. Mole the gardener, that the plaster
Apollo in the Long Walk was observed to be bathed in a profuse
perspiration, either from its feeling compelled to keep up the good old
classical custom, or because the weather was damp. Neither are we
bold enough to entertain an opinion that the chickens in the
poultry-yard refused their customary food; or that the horses in the
stable shook with trembling fear; or that any thing, or any body, saving
and excepting Mrs. Toosypegs, betrayed any consciousness that a real
and genuine prodigy had been given to the world.
However, during the first two years of his life, which were passed
chiefly in drinking, crying, and sleeping, Mr. Verdant Green met with
as much attention, and received as fair a share of approbation, as

usually falls to the lot of the most favoured of infants. Then Mrs.
Toosypegs again took up her position in the house, and his reign was
over. Faithful to her mission, she pronounced the new baby to be ~the~
"progidy," and she was believed. But thus it is all through life; the new
baby displaces the old; the second love supplants the first; we find fresh
friends to shut out the memories of former ones; and in nearly
everything we discover that there is a Number 2 which can put out of
joint the nose of Number 1.
Once more the shadow of Mrs. Toosypegs fell upon the walls of Manor
Green; and then her mission being accomplished, she passed away for
ever; and our hero was left to be the sole son and heir, and the prop and
pride of the house of Green.
And if it be true that the external forms of nature exert a hidden but
powerful sway over the dawning perceptions of the mind, and shape its
thoughts to harmony with the things around, then most certainly ought
Mr. Verdant Green to have been born a poet; for he grew up amid those
scenes whose immortality is, that they inspired the soul of Shakespeare
with his deathless fancies!
The