The Fitz-Boodle Papers | Page 6

Rhine," was
considered a masterpiece of art, though I am not much of a judge
myself upon such matters), and he was as remarkable for his fondness
for a tuft as for his nervous antipathy to tobacco. As ill-luck would
have it, my rooms (in Tom Quad) were exactly under his; and I was
grown by this time to be a confirmed smoker. I was a baronet's son (we
are of James the First's creation), and I do believe our tutor could have
pardoned any crime in the world but this. He had seen me in a tandem,
and at that moment was seized with a violent fit of
sneezing--(sternutatory paroxysm he called it)--at the conclusion of
which I was a mile down the Woodstock Road. He had seen me in pink,
as we used to call it, swaggering in the open sunshine across a
grass-plat in the court; but spied out opportunely a servitor, one
Todhunter by name, who was going to morning chapel with his
shoestring untied, and forthwith sprung towards that unfortunate person,
to set him an imposition. Everything, in fact, but tobacco he could
forgive. Why did cursed fortune bring him into the rooms over mine?
The odor of the cigars made his gentle spirit quite furious; and one
luckless morning, when I was standing before my "oak," and chanced
to puff a great bouffee of Varinas into his face, he forgot his respect for
my family altogether (I was the second son, and my brother a sickly
creature THEN,--he is now sixteen stone in weight, and has a half-score
of children); gave me a severe lecture, to which I replied rather hotly,
as was my wont. And then came demand for an apology; refusal on my
part; appeal to the dean; convocation; and rustication of George Savage
Fitz- Boodle.
My father had taken a second wife (of the noble house of Flintskinner),
and Lady Fitz-Boodle detested smoking, as a woman of her high
principles should. She had an entire mastery over the worthy old
gentleman, and thought I was a sort of demon of wickedness. The old
man went to his grave with some similar notion,--heaven help him! and

left me but the wretched twelve thousand pounds secured to me on my
poor mother's property.
In the army, my luck was much the same. I joined the --th Lancers,
Lieut.-Col. Lord Martingale, in the year 1817. I only did duty with the
regiment for three months. We were quartered at Cork, where I found
the Irish doodheen and tobacco the pleasantest smoking possible; and
was found by his lordship, one day upon stable duty, smoking the
shortest, dearest little dumpy clay-pipe in the world.
"Cornet Fitz-Boodle," said my lord in a towering passion, "from what
blackguard did you get that pipe?"
I omit the oaths which garnished invariably his lordship's conversation.
"I got it, my lord," said I, "from one Terence Mullins, a jingle- driver,
with a packet of his peculiar tobacco. You sometimes smoke Turkish, I
believe; do try this. Isn't it good?" And in the simplest way in the world
I puffed a volume into his face. "I see you like it," said I, so coolly, that
the men--and I do believe the horses--burst out laughing.
He started back--choking almost, and recovered himself only to vent
such a storm of oaths and curses that I was compelled to request Capt.
Rawdon (the captain on duty) to take note of his lordship's words; and
unluckily could not help adding a question which settled my business.
"You were good enough," I said, "to ask me, my lord, from what
blackguard I got my pipe; might I ask from what blackguard you
learned your language?"
This was quite enough. Had I said, "from what GENTLEMAN did your
lordship learn your language?" the point would have been quite as good,
and my Lord Martingale would have suffered in my place: as it was, I
was so strongly recommended to sell out by his Royal Highness the
Commander-in-Chief, that, being of a good-natured disposition, never
knowing how to refuse a friend, I at once threw up my hopes of
military distinction and retired into civil life.
My lord was kind enough to meet me afterwards in a field in the
Glanmire Road, where he put a ball into my leg. This I returned to him
some years later with about twenty-three others--black ones-- when he
came to be balloted for at a club of which I have the honor to be a
member.
Thus by the indulgence of a simple and harmless propensity,--of a
propensity which can inflict an injury upon no person or thing except

the coat and the person of him who indulges in it,--of a custom honored
and observed in almost all the nations of the world,--of