The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 12, No. 335, October 11, 1828

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS

THE DANDY TRAVELLER

There is a class of travelling oddities—the dandy voyageurs of Britain, who, teeming with the proud consciousness of their excellence in comparison with the rest of human kind, swoln with self-sufficiency, float like empty bubbles on the water’s surface, and who seem as if they would break and be dissolved by contact with a vulgar touch. They contrive to swim by means of their air-blown vanity until they come into concussion with some material object, and are at once reduced to their proper level, and for ever annihilated. Their country is London; their domicile Regent-street; thence they would never travel, had they their wills,—not but they would like to see Paris, and move at Longschamps, or admire its beauties in an equipage à D’Aumont; but the horrors attendant upon such an enterprise are too formidable gratuitously to be encountered. It is only when a dip at the Fishmonger’s has been rather too often tried, or Stultz’s billets-doux have been repeated with increasing ardour on the part of the Tailor-lover until he delegates the maintenance of his baronial purse to some dandy-detesting attorney, that they feel it expedient to brave the dangers of sea and land, and, unscrewing their brass spurs, folding up their mustachios in a port-feuille, they hasten them from life and love, and London, and set them down at Meurice’s, the creatures of another element; not less new to all things around them, than all things there are new to them. It was not long since I met one at the table-d’hote of Mr. Money, the hospitable but expensive owner of Les Trois Couronnes, at Vevay, in Switzerland. A large party had assembled, composed of almost every European nation; and we had just commenced our dinner, when we were intruded upon by an Exquisite—a creature something between the human species and a man-milliner—a seven months’ child of fashion—one who had been left an orphan by manliness and taste, and no longer remembered his lost parents. Never can I forget the stare of Baron Pougens, (a Swiss by birth, but a Russian noble) as this specimen of elegance, with mincing step and gait, moved onward, something like a new member tripping it to the table to take his oaths. How he had got so far from Grange’s, I really cannot say; but he had the policy of assurance in his favour; and in his own idea, at the least, was what I heard a poor devil of a candle-snuffer once denominate George Frederic Cooke, the tragedian,—“a rare specimen of exalted humanity;” and the actor was certainly in a rare spirit of exaltation at the moment. His delicate frame was enveloped by a dandy harness, so admirably ordered and adjusted, that he moved in fear of involving his Stultz in the danger of a plait; his kid-clad fingers scarcely supported the weight of his yellow-lined Leghorn; all that was man about him, was in his spurs and mustachios; and, even with them, he seemed there a moth exposed to an Alpine blast,—some mamma’s darling, injudiciously and cruelly abandoned to the risk of cold, in a land where Savory and Moore were yet unheard of, “Beppo in London” wholly unknown, Hoby unesteemed, Gunter misprized, and where George Brummell had never, never trod. After having bestowed a wild inexpressive stare at the cannibals assembled, male and female,—depositing his Vyse, running his digits through his perfumed hair, raising his shirt-collar so as to form an angle of forty-five with his purple Gros de Naples cravat, and applying his gold-turned snuff-box to his nose, Money (who has lived long in England, and speaks its language well) ventured to address him, by demanding if he should place a cover for him. “Sar!—your—appellation—if—you please?” the drawling and affected response of the fop. “Money, Sir.” “the sign of the place—the thing—the auberge?” “The Three Crowns, Sir.” “Money of the country, I presume!—Good—stop—put that down—Mem:” and he took his tablets from his pocket. “Money—Three Crowns—Capital that—will do for Dibdin,—if not, give it Theodore Hook. And the name of your—your town, my man?” “Vevay, Sir!” “And that liquid concern I see from the windar?” “The Lake, Sir—the Lake of Geneva.” “Good gracious! all Geneva?” “Otherwise termed the Leman, Sir.” “Lemon! ha! a sort of gin-punch, I presume—acidulated blue-ruin—Vastly vulgar, by Petersham—only fit for the Cider-cellar, Three Crowns—And that—that—white thing there on the other side of the punch-bowl, Money?” “That is Gin-goulph, Sir.” “Gin-gulp! appropriate certainly, but de-ci-ded-ly—low.” “Will you please, Sir, to dine? dinner is on the table.” “Dinnar! Crockford, be good to us!—Why—why—it is scarcely more than noon, Crowns.—What would Lady Diana say?—But true! I rose at eight—so, I think, I will patronize you, my good fellar—Long journey that from Lowsan—queer name for a place so high;—Vastly bad country this of yours, Crowns.—What are all those stunted poles, like cerceau sticks, placed in the ground? What do you cultivate, Crowns?” “The vine, Sir.” “Wine! wine! dear me! never knew wine grew before. In England it is a manufactory. One moment—pardon—Mem:—Wine grows in—in—” “The Canton de Vaud, Sir.” “In the Canton de Vo,—Tell that to Carbonel and Charles Wright when I go back. Is it Port, pray?” “No, Sir, a thin white wine.” “Thin—white —wine—runs up sticks in said Vo.” “Will you permit me to help you, Sir?” demanded Money, rather impatiently. “What have you, may I ask?” “Bouilli, Sir.” “Bull, what? have you no other beef?—Mem: people living near punch-bowl eat bull beef,” “There is a very nice culotte, Sir, if you prefer it.” “Cu—what, Three Crowns? Culotte!—why, in France, that is—is—inexpressibles—Mem: eat inexpressibles roasted—Breaches of taste, by Reay—the savages!—that will do for the Bedford—mention it to Joy—the brutes!—Neither bull nor breeches, thank you inexpressibly, Money.” “A Blanquette de Veau, then, if you like, Sir.” “Blanket de Vo! a cover to lay, indeed, Crowns. Mem: inhabitants of Gin stew blankets of the country, and then eat them—the Alsatians!” “Poultry, Sir, if you desire it.” “Ah! some hopes there, Money—What is that you hold?” “A Poularde, Sir.” “Obliged, Crowns—no Pull-hard thank you, devilish tough I doubt—Mem: fowl called Pull-hard at Gin—Try again, my man.” “A Dindon and dans son jus, Sir.” “Ding dong and a dancing Jew!—sort of stewed Rothschild, I suppose—Well! if I don’t mean exactly to starve, I fear I must even venture on the Jew.—Not bad, by Long—Mem: Dancing Jews in sauce capital—mention that to young G–, of the Tenth.” The business of mastication arrested for a moment the sapient remarks of the Impayable, until our notice was again attracted by his leaping from his chair, and cutting divers capers around the room, which, if they did honour to his agility, harmonized but ill with the precisian starchness of his habiliments, the order whereof was grievously derangé by his antics.—“Water! water! Crowns.—I have emptied the vinegar cruet by mistake—Oh Lud! can scarcely breathe—Water! Crowns, water! in mercy.” “It was the Vin du Pays, I assure you, Sir,—nothing else upon my word.” “Water! water! oh—here—here I have it.” “No, Sir; I beg—that is Eau de Cerises—Kirschen-wasser—Cherry water.”—“Any—any water will do,”—and, ere Money could arrest his hand, the water-sembling but fiery fluid, the ardent spirit of the cherry, had been swallowed at a draught. He gaped and gasped for breath—he groaned and writhed in torment—and, borne out in the arms of Crowns and his men, the spirit-stirring Dandy was removed to bed, whence he arose to return, without delay, to London by the shortest possible road, even with the fear of another fieri facias before his eyes, to descant on vinous acidities, Gin Lakes, and the liver-consuming Spa of Vo.—New Monthly Mag.

ENCOMIUM MORIÆ, OR THE PRAISE OF FOLLY

 
If from our purse all coin we spurn
But gold, we may from mart return.
Nor purchase what we’re seeking;
And if in parties we must talk
Nothing but sterling wit, we balk
All interchange of speaking.
Small talk is like small change; it flows
A thousand different ways, and throws
Thoughts into circulation,
Of trivial value each, but which
Combin’d, make social converse rich
In cheerful animation.
As bows unbent recruit their force.
Our minds by frivolous discourse
We strengthen and embellish,
“Let us be wise,” said Plato once,
When talking nonsense—“yonder dunce
For folly has no relish.”
The solemn bore, who holds that speech
Was given us to prose and preach,
And not for lighter usance,
Straight should be sent to Coventry;
Or omnium concensu, be
Indicted as a nuisance.
Though dull the joke, ‘tis wise to laugh,
Parch’d be the tongue that cannot quaff
Save from a golden chalice;
Let jesters seek no other plea,
Than that their merriment be free
From bitterness and malice.
Silence at once the ribald clown.
And check with an indignant frown
The scurrilous backbiter;
But speed good-humour as it runs,
Be even tolerant of puns,
And every mirth-exciter.
The wag who even fails may claim
Indulgence for his cheerful aim;
We should applaud, not hiss him;
This is a pardon which we grant,
(The Latin gives the rhime I want,)
“Et petimus vicissim.”
 

Ibid.

 
Your love is like the gnats, John,
That hum at close of day:
That sting, and leave a scar behind,
Then sing and fly away.
 

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