The Fitz-Boodle Papers | Page 9

Tom upsets a coffee-cup over his white jean trousers, and another young gentleman bursts into a laugh, saying, "By Jove, that's a good 'un!"
"George, my dear," says mamma, "had not you and your young friend better go into the garden? But mind, no fruit, or Dr. Glauber must be called in again immediately!" And we all go, and in ten minutes I and my brother are fighting in the stables.
If, instead of listening to the matrons and their discourse, we had taken the opportunity of attending to the conversation of the Misses, we should have heard matter not a whit more interesting.
First Miss.--"They were all three in blue crape; you never saw anything so odious. And I know for a certainty that they wore those dresses at Muddlebury, at the archery-ball, and I dare say they had them in town."
Second Miss.--"Don't you think Jemima decidedly crooked? And those fair complexions, they freckle so, that really Miss Blanche ought to be called Miss Brown."
Third Miss.--"He, he, he!"
Fourth Miss.--"Don't you think Blanche is a pretty name?"
First Miss.--"La! do you think so, dear? Why, it's my second name!"
Second Miss.--"Then I'm sure Captain Travers thinks it a BEAUTIFUL name!"
Third Miss.--"He, he, he!"
Fourth Miss.--"What was he telling you at dinner that seemed to interest you so?"
First Miss.--"O law, nothing!--that is, yes! Charles--that is,-- Captain Travers, is a sweet poet, and was reciting to me some lines that he had composed upon a faded violet:--
"'The odor from the flower is gone, That like thy--,
like thy something, I forget what it was; but his lines are sweet, and so original too! I wish that horrid Sir John Todcaster had not begun his story of the exciseman, for Lady Fitz-Boodle always quits the table when he begins."
Third Miss.--"Do you like those tufts that gentlemen wear sometimes on their chins?"
Second Miss.--"Nonsense, Mary!"
Third Miss.--"Well, I only asked, Jane. Frank thinks, you know, that he shall very soon have one, and puts bear's-grease on his chin every night."
Second Miss.--"Mary, nonsense!"
Third Miss.--"Well, only ask him. You know he came to our dressing-room last night and took the pomatum away; and he says that when boys go to Oxford they always--"
First Miss.--"O heavens! have you heard the news about the Lancers? Charles--that is, Captain Travers, told it me!"
Second Miss.--"Law! they won't go away before the ball, I hope!"
First Miss.--"No, but on the 15th they are to shave their moustaches! He says that Lord Tufto is in a perfect fury about it!"
Second Miss.--"And poor George Beardmore, too!" &c.
Here Tom upsets the coffee over his trousers, and the conversations end. I can recollect a dozen such, and ask any man of sense whether such talk amuses him?
Try again to speak to a young lady while you are dancing--what we call in this country--a quadrille. What nonsense do you invariably give and receive in return! No, I am a woman-scorner, and don't care to own it. I hate young ladies! Have I not been in love with several, and has any one of them ever treated me decently? I hate married women! Do they not hate me? and, simply because I smoke, try to draw their husbands away from my society? I hate dowagers! Have I not cause? Does not every dowager in London point to George Fitz-Boodle as to a dissolute wretch whom young and old should avoid?
And yet do not imagine that I have not loved. I have, and madly, many, many times! I am but eight-and-thirty,* not past the age of passion, and may very likely end by running off with an heiress--or a cook-maid (for who knows what strange freaks Love may choose to play in his own particular person? and I hold a man to be a mean creature who calculates about checking any such sacred impulse as lawful love)--I say, though despising the sex in general for their conduct to me, I know of particular persons belonging to it who are worthy of all respect and esteem, and as such I beg leave to point out the particular young lady who is perusing these lines. Do not, dear madam, then imagine that if I knew you I should be disposed to sneer at you. Ah, no! Fitz-Boodle's bosom has tenderer sentiments than from his way of life you would fancy, and stern by rule is only too soft by practice. Shall I whisper to you the story of one or two of my attachments? All terminating fatally (not in death, but in disappointment, which, as it occurred, I used to imagine a thousand times more bitter than death, but from which one recovers somehow more readily than from the other-named complaint)--all, I say, terminating wretchedly to myself, as if some fatality pursued my desire to become a domestic character.
* He is five-and-forty, if he is a day old.--O. Y.
My first