At ten minutes, therefore, before the appointed time, my uncle and I found ourselves ushered into Mrs. Henpeck’s drawing-room, where all was gaudy and profuse, while the ruddy mistress of the feast introduced us to her guests already arrived; but to give you her portrait as she met our view, I must describe her dress, which consisted of a cambric bolster-case bedizened with lace, into which she had crammed her uncouth, ill-shaped figure, a la swab; her copper-coloured neck was adorned with an enormous necklace of barley-sugar appearance; and her trout skin, morphew-wrinkled unprepossessing visage, was encircled by the straggling ringlets of a black wig, which ever and anon tormented her gooseberry-coloured crowfooted blinkers.
Mr. Henpeck was as clean scraped up and powdered as lovey could make him appear: she had plaited his frill and tied his neckcloth as nice as a new pin, and no doubt deputed his seat behind the door, where he seemed fixed like one of Punch’s puppets, till the word of command from his wife twitched the wire of liberty, and set the poor automaton in motion.
“Mr. Henpeck!” shrieked his lady, “how you sit glued to your chair, my love: why don’t you introduce the company: pray, who so proper as the master of the house.”
The placid man obeyed the mandate, and thus announced the group: “Mr. and Mrs. Coniac; Major Pea-Chick; Mr. Munchausen; Mrs. Wau-Wau; Miss Bleary Wau-Wau; Lady Flam;” he then continued—“Ladies and gentlemen, this is Mr. Tweazy, this Mr. Victor St. Alban: now, my love, I’ve done my duty,” and down he sat.
“Lord! Mr. Henpeck,” exclaimed his wife, “you’ll never be Sir Clement the Second—but what, in the name of wonder, my dear, have you resumed your seat for? why don’t you ring the bell for dinner?”
Mr. Henpeck obeyed: but somehow stumbled, and his glossy shoe, of Fawcett brilliance, coming in contact with the ancle of his clean silk stocking, left an indelible mark, and highly provoked the lady of the house.
“My God, Mr. Henpeck, you’re worse than a child: see what a condition your stocking is in, and you know I always wash them myself—I’m the most particular nice woman living—you know I am.”
“Well, well, my love, never mind,” said the timid man.
“But I do mind,” rejoined Mrs. Henpeck, “I hate to be put out of temper when I’ve my friends about me, I love peace and mildness;” then elevating her voice to a pitch of violence, “ring the bell again, Mr. Henpeck: if the servants don’t answer, ring it down, and don’t sit like a statue.”
Again Mr. Henpeck agitated the wire, and the servant appeared.
“Is dinner served?” asked Mrs. Henpeck with visible impatience.
“No, Ma’am,” said the foot-boy, “cook’s had an accidency with the fish sarse, and it’s like to have set the chimbly on fire.”
“What!” exclaimed Mrs. Henpeck, “all my rich lobster sauce wasted—a nasty careless hussy!” and up she jumped, like an enraged tygress, to bolt off to the scene of action.
“You can’t get into the kitchen, ma’am,” continued the boy, “it’s all of a swim of water in trying to put the fire out, and cook’s washing the soot off the ducks.”
“Gracious heaven! I shall run mad,” cried Mrs. Henpeck, darting out of the room, without any interruption from her quiet husband, who knew he did not dare interfere in kitchen fracas, till his wife’s sonorous squall from the bottom of the stairs roused his obedience in the following words:
“Mr. Henpeck! Mr. Henpeck! put on my pattens, and come down into the floating kitchen, this moment.”
“Dear me,” said Lady Flam, “I hope the chimney is not on fire: the very idea makes me tremble.”
“Never fear, madam,” replied Mr. Munchausen, “there’s plenty of us to put it out; now I entertain no fears of conflagration, for I have very often a fire in every room in the house at my Staffordshire villa, and I think we compute fifteen rooms, en suite, three stories high—for it’s a d—d cold place, I do assure you, in the hunting season; why, would your ladyship believe it, that the poultry and spring chickens in my hennery, to the tune of about 750 of them, were actually so cramped with cold, that I was compelled to erect a Buzaglo stove in the centre, guarded with gold wire work to prevent accident, and have a large turkey carpet to cover the floor, so that you’ll observe, they could use exercise over their woollen parterre, or huddle round the fire at pleasure; and then as to my pigs, no man so particular! Why it cost me 75 guineas in chestnuts for them last winter, beside a hundred weight of Pistachio nuts! I assure you my expences are not trifling.”
“Bless me,” said Lady Flam, “I’m astonished—I really never heard of such things as carpets in a hennery, and pigs fed on a Pistachio nuts.”
“My dear lady,” resumed Mr. Munchausen, “perhaps you have never visited Italy?”
“Never,” replied her ladyship.
“Ah! then I don’t wonder at your surprise; because it’s a very common thing with people of distinction in Italy to give their choice pigs Pistachio’s,” replied the bombastic narrator; “my sow, for instance, was a present to me from the emperor of China, for some trivial services I had rendered myself conspicuous in at his court, and a most valuable beautiful creature she is—she was one of five and thirty at a litter! and, therefore, as I before said, no man in England possessing such a sow as myself, I don’t mind what expence I incur to maintain her.”
“What a shame, Mr. Munchausen,” cried Miss Bleary Wau Wau, (hanging her head on one shoulder, and leering her non-descript eye in every direction of vacancy towards the object addressed) “what an extravagant creature to feed pigs with such delicious rarities—’pon honour, I don’t believe it.”
“’Pon honor, Miss Bleary,” replied he, turning his eye in the exact direction of her’s, “you really, my dear young lady, expose your want of knowledge very much; I, who have visited the Continent, and been in most parts of the known world, must know what I’m talking about; as well you might deny, that when I was in France, the dog that was made me a present at the Palais Royale, did’nt have a dish of Ortolans every day provided for his dinner.”
“Oh, monstrous!” exclaimed the ladies.
“Pray, Sir,” said Major Pea-Chick (with his white pig-tail, and his scarlet rimmed eyes, who wished to play off a little of his witty artillery), “pray, Sir, where may this famous sow of yours be? I should like mightily to see her munch the Pistachio’s: I suppose she has a peculiar method of cracking them—or do you crack for her?”
Mr. Munchausen aware of the little military punster’s sarcasm, replied, “he occasionally employed an old disabled soldier to crack them.”—This silenced the witticism which no one could parry more adroitly than Munchausen, the pupil of effrontery, who secretly determined to retaliate on the Major the first opportunity.
“What colour is your famous sow, Mr. Munchausen?” drawled Mrs. Wau Wau, through her nose.
“It’s brindle, ma’am,” replied he, “with a short curly white tail, about the length of Major Pea-Chick’s queue.”
“I should rather have expected to hear it was nine yards long, like the Bengal tyger’s that attacked a friend of mine, who positively swore to the dimension,” cried the Major, bursting into a teh he!
“I presume,” said my uncle, very gravely, “your friend stretched it to that length in his way home—it was an elastic tail, I imagine.”
“Exactly so,” replied the Major, “for after we had roasted it well, it shrunk to a common size.”
“Do you keep pigeons, Sir?” resumed Miss Bleary.
“No, ma’am, not always—I occasionally make them keep me.”
“What, you make them into pies,” I suppose, snuffled Mrs. Wau-Wau; “we are very fond of pigeons at our house.”
“So am I, ma’am,” replied Mr. Munchausen, with a very serious face, “I generally pot all pigeons—its an excellent way, I assure you.”
“You’ve a peculiar receipt, perhaps, for the article,” cried Major Pea-Chick, “though potted pigeons are no great rarity now, as they used to be.”
“When you was in the Turkey-line, you mean,” replied Munchausen; “d—me how you cropped and scragged them; I remember it well, though I was but a lad—aye! aye! you’ve been the sort, Major, you tamed your pigeons into goldfinches, netted them snug, and then turned over a new leaf.”
“Where, I believe, you’ll find few blots,” interrupted the little Major, reddening with passion, till his ears looked like the scarlet wattles of a dunghill cock; at which moment of snip-snap, Mr. Henpeck re-entered the room, announcing dinner on the table, which quietly ended the controversy.
Here we found Mrs. Henpeck seated, with a face like scarlet, with passion and culinary exertions, apologizing to her company for the carelessness of her cook in destroying the fish sauce, and spoiling the delicious ducks—add to which, the baker had broke her a fine pigeon pye, which from its mutilated state could not make its appearance, and the fruit tarts were scorched to a cinder; “but here does not end my perplexity,” continued the auditress (who looked the picture of Medusa, with black snakes hanging over her fiery cheek) “for my beautiful blamange swan has entirely melted into a mass of cream owing to the heat of the weather.”
“Never mind, madam, here’s a very good dinner still left to gratify our appetites,” said Munchausen.
“I think so, too,” cried little Mr. Coniac, leering his sneaking eyes all round the table, and biting his spite-puckered lips, “we’d a pig of the same sow at our house the other day.”
“No such a thing, Mr. Coniac,” replied his contradicting wife, “you know nothing of the matter; I beg you’ll never trouble your head with my domestic concerns for the pleasure of retailing them in company; I want no mol-codling husband at my heels—I always chose to be directress of my own house, from the garret to the cellar.”
“No, my dear, no;” replied Mr. Coniac, “not directress of the cellar neither, that is my department, Mrs. Coniac, women have no business in cellars for fear of ——” and he winked his eye at Mr. Henpeck.
“Aye, for fear of the rats,” interrupted Mr. Munchausen, “d—n the rats—I had one in my cellar the other day as big as a rabbit, gnawed me a dozen of Madeira corks; but, as luck would have it, never touched those of a pipe of port I had just bottled and laid down.”
“Aye, well,” continued Mr. Coniac, “I don’t know how it is, but I’d rather have four-legged rats than two-legged ones; there’s no vermin in our cellars, but a devilish lot of spirits, that vanish whenever the door opens; it matters not who turns the key, for when you come to look, egad they are all off.”
“Lord! Mr. Coniac,” exclaimed his wife, foaming at the mouth with anchovy froth, “your disagreeable conversation is quite brutal and disgusting.”
“Don’t quarrel with fish-bones in your mouth, Mrs. Coniac,” replied her aggravating husband, “take a little drop of brandy, my dear, or you’ll be sick presently.”
“Not I, indeed,” replied Mrs. Coniac, tossing her head in a terrible rage.
“Aye, do, madam,” cried Mr. Henpeck, “and I’ll pledge you—fish is very apt to rise in my stomach.”
“Then I’m sure fish is likely to fall in your stomach,” replied Mrs. Henpeck—“Good God, Mr. Henpeck, touch a drop of brandy if you dare—what would Dr. Tonic say? hemph, brandy indeed! I’ll take some with Mrs. Coniac, with pleasure; but as to you, it’s out of the question.”
She then ordered the servant to fill out four thimbles full, one of which was handed to Lady Flam, another to Mrs. Wau Wau (who always sat with her mouth open for the ready convenience of any consequences that might arise from a surcharge) a third to Mrs. Coniac, (who never used such small glasses at home), and the remaining one she tossed off herself.
“What a pretty dance, ‘Drops of Brandy’ is,” said Miss Bleary Wau Wau.
“Yes,” replied the Baron’s great-grandson, alias Mr. Munchausen, “I have seen many capital reels danced to that tune.”
“Ma’r and I are very fond of reels,” continued Miss Bleary.
“Not brandy reels, I hope,” whispered Munchausen.
“O you brute! no, to be sure;” answered she, “I mean Scotch reels, danced with skipping-ropes; you should see my Ma’r skip: Commodore Grapple, Captain Flash pan, and Lieutenant Powder-proof, all India folks of our acquaintance, declared she skipped scientifically, about two or three years ago, when it was such a fashionable amusement.”
“Nar, now, Bleary, now! you make a body blush; consider I’m an old duman, you should not talk about such nonsense now,” drawled the lady mother, grinning like a turnip-ghost upon the head of a mischievous school-boy’s crab stick, decked in the Eastern presents of Messrs. Grapple, Flash-pan, and Powder-proof, ornamented by Indian pigeon feathers, highly perfumed: while Miss Bleary, a mere composition of musk and otto, was the quintessence of affectation.
“Pray,” said Mr. Coniac, sneeringly, “who might be the upholsterer that furnished your Staffordshire villa?”
“Who,” replied Munchausen, “why that stilish dog George Oakley to be sure, one of the most tasty fellows in England; I left it all to his management: even the carpet and curtain of the buttery were his choice; every suite of rooms carries you into a different country, we have the Chinese, the Grecian, the Parisian, and the Russian costume, with transparent blinds attached, to correspond, with the scenery of the various countries; so that I can breakfast in China, dine at Paris, and drink tea in Russia, every day of my life; and then there’s the grounds, the successive houses, the forcing tables for my nectarine and peaches, where you may sit round, and by taking the trouble to raise the leaf, every person has the pleasure to pluck his own fruit. I mean to take Mrs. Munchausen, and my family, down, in the course of a fortnight, with a few select friends; for, to say the truth, I can’t well go earlier on account of my new landau-barouche, the springs of which are so infernal stiff, that I have lent it to a friend to give it a fortnight’s rattle; but, observe you, I don’t lend him my set of greys—no, no, they are training in high condition—cost me a cool five hundred, and four more for the barouche—I’m a sad extravagant dog, but I can’t help it: it’s a knack I was born with.”
“Well,” cried the Major, “I can content myself with my humble marine cottage.”
“It’s according to the taste you possess, or was bred up in, probably,” replied Munchausen, “for my part, a Pleb cottage would have nothing but the horrors for me; I should imagine myself transported to a Dyot-street attic, where the pigs, poultry, jack-asses, family and Co. independent of the live-stock they enjoy gratis, all exist in the same enclosure, graced with a garden of wall-flowers, stuck in a broken tea-pot to conceal the ventilator of the shattered crockery casement, and make it look rural: or, what think you, by way of a cooler prospect, of a canal in a red dish full of tittle-bats.”
The company set up a loud laugh; but Mr. Munchausen did not smile: it was no laughing matter, in his opinion, for he had visited such scenes, and coloured them to the life.
“Talking of fish-ponds,” resumed he, “I have some of the first in England: I sent down three waggons of Portland stone to dam the banks with—one I have fitted up in a peculiar style of elegance for gold-fish, where, by this time, I suppose I have about five hundred brace under the good management of my steward, who has stocked two extensive canals with every description of curious and delicious fish, reserving a certain snug corner for the accommodation of a pair of turtles during their appropriate residence in this country, according to the statute of their existence, that they may enjoy their lives, and I their deaths, devoting an elegy to their perfection from the pen of the jaw-worker’s company, some men of taste belonging to which I should invite for the express purpose.”
“What a funny man you are,” exclaimed Miss Bleary; “is it possible you can ever be grave, blessed with such a share of spirits as you possess.”
“Indeed,” replied Munchausen, “I should have no objection to become possessor of a much more eminent share of spirits, and make you my pretty bar-maid, the cordial drops you would retail would revive every expiring cockle in a poissard’s basket, and then the world would be justified in calling me a rum fellow, while your situation would be constituted the mart of universal comfort, supported by men and women of taste.”
“But I should not be thought a girl of taste—I thank you kindly, Sir,” answered Miss Bleary with much resentment, “I’d have you to know, Sir, my ideas soar to a palanquin.”
“Oh! the sweetest lounge upon earth—don’t mention such an uncomattable luxury: I’ve been carried in the most superb stile in one the emperor lent me, covered with musical bells, that played fifty different successive tunes; the mattrass was eider down, covered with pink embroidered silk, and the curtains were fringed with gold—and, egad, the slaves scampered along with me at the rate of ten miles an hour!”
“Delightful,” exclaimed Lady Flam, “how I should like a trip to the East, to be waited on by slaves, and actually lulled to repose in the cradle of luxury, if my time was to come over again.”
“Aye, madam,” replied Major Pea-Chick, “but you and I e’ent chick-a-biddies now.”
“D——n it,” said Munchausen, “you can’t forget trade, the old Guinea-hen concern seems to stick in your stomach; I’ll thank you to amputate me a limb of that duck—ah, if you could see my Staffordshire duckery, you’d say they exceeded all the ’Change-alley waddlers, for we hatch them in such abundance, that half an acre which I ordered to be sowed with onions and sage, is not sufficient to season them with, so that my cottagers and menials are literally gorged with them.”
“I wish I was your neighbour,” cried Mr. Henpeck, “for ducks are a terrible price in London.”
“Pray, Mr. Henpeck, hold your tongue; you’ve no business, my dear, to trouble yourself with market expences; we a’nt going to exact so much a-head from our friends after dinner, as to explain the various prizes like an inn-keeper,” said the indignant Mrs. Henpeck, seizing a beautiful bowl of sallad, which she unmercifully devoured before any of the company had partaken of it; and after having half bolted it down, observing it to be an article in much requisition, she actually re-called the servant, and returned the remaining particles off her plate into the bowl, pro bono publico, which vegetable was not again demanded at table, for Mr. Munchausen observing the circumstance, immediately enlarged on the qualities of his spring cucumbers.
“My gardiner,” said he, “cut me six brace of patagonian cucumbers last Valentine’s day.”
“Natives of Brodinag, I presume,” replied Major Pea-Chick, “for I’ll be bound they were the only ones in England at that period of the season.”
My uncle, who had been a mere eating automaton during the retaliating snip-snap of Messrs. Munchausen and Pea-Chick, and who well knew the rhodomontade principles of the former, proposed a general bumper of Madeira, to wash down the patagonian cucumbers, which caused another laugh at the expence of the credulous.
“You shall not drink Madeira, Mr. Henpeck, I assure you,” exclaimed his observant wife, just as he had raised the bewitching glass to his lips, the contents of which he, with a brisk mechanical chuck, gulped down, before the sentence of forbearance reached his ears, the lady not having been quick enough in her commands, which were never delivered in the mildest terms.
This breach of non-conformity encreased Mrs. Henpeck’s anger. “If you choose to kill yourself, Mr. Henpeck, I have no fears of getting a third husband, depend upon it—there are men who would take my advice, and value it too: so play your own game, and see who’ll suffer for it in the end.”
“Madam,” cried Mr. Munchausen, “it was only an accidental slip over the tongue, I declare Mr. Henpeck was making full charge, when your mandate to halt vibrated on his ear, and had he stopped at the moment, strangulation had made you a widow in the midst of your gala.”
“Aye, you’re a good hand to help a lame dog over a stile, we well know,” replied Mrs. Henpeck, helping the floating remains of her vanished blamange swan, which so reminded Lady Flam of a dish of cream, that she asked Mr. Munchausen if he kept cows?
“O, yes, ma’am,” replied he, “and some extraordinary bulls of my own breed; I have likewise half a score choice buffalos, about five and twenty couple of deer, and three score of Merino sheep, all the children of liberty in my park.”
“Oh, the lovely brebi’s,” exclaimed Lady Flam; then turning to Mrs. Coniac, “Oh how I doat on the brebi’s.”
“The what?” enquired Mrs. Coniac, to whom Mrs. Flam might as well have talked Greek or French: “the what, did your ladyship say?”
“The brebi’s, the petite agneau’s.”
Mrs. Coniac shook her head in non-comprehension.
“What, don’t you know what I mean?” resumed her pedantic ladyship.
“No,” said Mrs. Coniac, very ignorantly.
Lady Flam, astonished, drew up her lips to the dimension of a buttonhole, exclaiming, “impossible!” then dilating them on equal stretch, and curving her arched eye brows into a frown of incredulity, “incroya’ble,” continued she, staring Mrs. Coniac from head to foot.
“He! he! he!” sniggered Mr. Coniac, “my wife don’t understand the parley-woo’s—she don’t understand French but when I order soup and bully of a washing-day. Mrs. Coniac never loved school, though she was at it the first twenty years of her life, but somehow she could never learn French.”
“No, not I,” answered Mrs. Coniac (with cheek of scarlet indignation, who, well knowing the origin of Lady Flam was no other than an Abcedarian at a London school, from whence she eloped in the character of chere amie to Lord Flam, who afterwards married her). “As I was neither bred, or intended for a teacher, it was a science of no consequence where my livelihood was not dependant upon my abilities.”
Lady Flam, who felt the retort uncourteous, instantly replied, “it was very fortunate where people’s bread was ready buttered to their appetites, particularly if they were deficient in ability to earn it.”
“Aye, aye,” replied little Coniac, “We’ve plenty of bread well buttered in my wife’s family cupboard: but the lock’s rusty at present, and the hinges are creaky, so you see we only take a peep through the keyhole.”
“Yes, yes,” cried the vulgar pleb Major, “we all know you fell with your nose in a butter-tub when you married.”
“To be sure I did,” replied Mr. Coniac, “but I took care not to butter my fingers as some folks do.”
The Major coloured from the effect of his private feelings on that score, but made no reply.
“Egad,” said Munchausen, “I should have no objection to fall with my nose into a tub of tallow, but the chance is gone by I believe; I’ve played many harlequin manœuvres in my time, skipped out of the frying-pan into the fire, leaped from thence on to the grid-iron, and been soaked in boiling-water, by way of stewing out my troubles, have been roasted like a red-herring on a fork, and picked to pieces, so that all the grease I ever possessed, melted away in torrents like a pound of rush-lights in the dog-days, and now the sweat of my brow must make up for’t, that’s all I know—I must look sharp after my Staffordshire tenantry, and save my bacon—yes, yes, they sha’nt gammon me.”
“Do you play back gammon?” asked Lady Flam.
“Oh, yes, frequently,” replied Munchausen.
“He is an adept, madam, I assure you,” said the Major, “and more particularly in the science of face gammon: may be that’s a game you never heard of, if you are not very intimate with Mr. Munchausen.”
“La! what is face gammon?” cried Miss Bleary.
“A very deep game, I assure you,” replied Munchausen; “extremely difficult to attain, because there are one hundred different ways of playing it, there being no established rule or prescription, so that each party plays it according to his own judgment and benefit.”
“Is it played with cards or dice?” enquired Mrs. Coniac, (whose husband was a dab at back gammon in more senses of the word than one.)
“Madam,” replied Munchausen gravely, “it is played only with brass instruments, such as arrows, lancets, shuttlecocks, &c.; in short, it’s by no means a lady’s game, tho’ I have seen some attempt it.”
“Well, I can’t comprehend it,” replied Mrs. Coniac.
“I can only say, it’s a pity you should, madam—it ill suits your sex,” answered Munchausen, laughing in her face.
“Come, come,” cried Mrs. Henpeck, “you gentlemen seem to be at cross purposes—pray don’t measure swords, while we ladies adjourn to make your coffee. Mr. Henpeck, my dear, remember your restrictions: help your friends liberally, but don’t exceed three glasses yourself—now mind what I say, don’t play the baby in my absence—we shall expect you in the drawing-room to cards in half an hour;” so saying, the ladies following in train, withdrew.
Mr. Henpeck assumed his wife’s chair, requesting Mr. Munchausen to officiate as vice-president: no one better calculated to push the bottle, fabricate a story, or confound an argument as long as a Chancery suit; and, suffice it to say, he completely kept the company in a roar, till Mrs. Henpeck’s patience being quite exhausted, her card table all arranged, and her coffee cold, rushed into the room like an unexpected hurricane, insisting Mr. Henpeck was an invalid, and should drink no longer.
“Mr. Vice,” cried she, “pray oblige me by doing the duties of the chair, and supplying every gentleman’s glass—but as to my dear Mr. Henpeck, he shall not take poison before my face—he must and shall retire with me to the drawing-room,” saying which, she linked her arm within his, and led the placid soul out of the room in triumph, thereby setting an example we all felt compelled to follow; and, therefore, as he had marched off under the flying colours of petticoat government, we had only to bring up the rear, which we immediately did, each digesting his own opinion upon the transaction.
Coffee having been cleared away, Mrs. Henpeck arranged us at the card-table, as follows:
My uncle and Lady Flam, with Mrs. Coniac and Munchausen; Mr. Coniac and Mrs. Wau-Wau, versus Major Pea-Chick and Mrs. Henpeck. Miss Bleary and Mr. Henpeck, and myself, were seated at three handed cribbage.