Montague Place, Friday, April 23, 1824.
My dear Mr. Bull,—I think you will be surprized at the prescription of this letter with the P.P. mark of the two-penny post; but poor Mr. Ramsbottom being seriously ill-disposed, we were off from Paris at a moment's notice, for as good fortune would have it, my embargo which I wrote about was quite removed by the use of Steers's hopalittledog and bang shows every night.
Mr. R. is a little better, and has lost a good deal of what the French call song; indeed our medical man relies very much on the use of his lancaulet. The fact is, that the turtles is come over from the West Hinges, and Mr. R. committed a fox paw at the King's Head, in the Poultry, which caused our doctor (who lives in this neighbourhood, and is lively as he is kind) to say that as Mr. Ramsbottom nearly died by Bleaden, so bleeding must restore him. Bleaden is the name of the gentleman who keeps the King's Head, and bleeding, as you know, is the vulgar term for flea-bottomizing.
I fear you have not received my journal regular, nor do I think I have told you of our seeing the Louver, which we did the very day before we left Paris. I own, amongst the statutes, the Fighting Alligator pleased me most. As for Rubens's pictures, I could not look at them; for though Mr. Fulmer kept talking of the drapery, I saw no drapery at all; and in one, which is of Adonass preventing Venice from being chaste, the lady is sitting on a gold striped jacket. Mr. Fulmer said she had got an enormous anacreonism, at which Lavy laughed; so I suppose it had some allusion to her favourite writer, Mr. Moore, who is called Anacreon—why, I never could understand, unless it refers to the fashionable Maladies which he has introduced into the best society.
A beautiful statute of Apollo with the Hypocrite pleased me very much, and a Fawn which looks like a woman done by Mons. Praxytail, a French stone-mason, is really curious.
A picture of The Bicknells is I suppose a family grope, but the young women appeared tipsy, which is an odd state to be drawn in—the statute of Manylaws is very fine, and so is Cupid and Physic, different from the one which I noticed before.
Mr. Fulmer shewed us some small old black pictures, which I did not look at much, because he told us they were Remnants, and of course very inferior. A fine painting by Carlo my Hearty pleased me, and we saw also something by Sall Vataraso, a lady who was somehow concerned with the little woman I have seen at Peckham Fair in former days, called Lady Morgan.
We had one dinner at Riches, a coffee-house on the Bullwards, and curious enough, it was the very day that poor Mr. Ram overeat himself in the City—we had some stewed Angles, and a couple of Pulls done up in a dish of Shoe; which is much of a muchness with English fowl and cabbage—we had afterwards an amulet of sulphur and some things done in crumbs of bread, which they wanted to pass off upon me as wheat-ears—but I had not lived at Brighton two seasons for nothing, and do happen to know the difference between wheat-ears and oysters; and so I told them.
Mr. Fulmer ordered a bottle of Oil of Purdry, which tasted a good deal like Champaigne, but he said it was mouse; the girls liked it, and Lavy laughed so loud that she quite astonished an officer of Chindammery who was drinking cafe at the next table.
I have left my third and fourth daughters in Paris, to finish their education—they will be taught every thing that girls can be taught, and are to be regularly boarded every day (without regard to its being Lent) for less than seventy pounds per ann.; and they learn so many more things in France than girls do in England, that when they return they might set up for mistresses themselves—what an advantage there must be to a young woman, who is likely to have occasion for it in her latter end, in a continent education—they call these schools puncheons.
I desired, of course, that the Popish Prater, or priest, might have no communication with my girls—I don't approve of what they call the horal confession—to be sure it is a mere matter of feeling—but I saw one young lady in Saint Surplice one day a confessing away to a fine handsome Prater, and I thought it would have been much better done in some more private place than a church. I understood afterwards she was a lady who had been long married, but her husband had no hair to his property, and she used to come every day and confess to the Prater, and pray for a child—poor thing, she seemed very much in earnest.
The onion of Lavy with Mr. Fulmer is postponed; his ant is dead, and it would not be respectful to be married while the dool (as the French call it) continues; I am driven to the last moment, as Lavy and her sister are analyzing themselves to go to see the great picture of Pompey, in the Strand—Lavy means to write to you next week herself. —Your's truly,
Dorothea J. Ramsbottom.
IX.
MRS. RAMSBOTTOM ANNOUNCES THE DEATH OF HER HUSBAND AND DESCRIBES HER VISIT TO ROME.
To John Bull.
Montague Place, Jan. 6, 1825.
Dear Mr. Bull,—Why don't you write to us—or call? We are all of us well, and none of us no more, as perhaps you may suppose, except poor Mr. Ram.—of course you know of his disease, it was quite unexpected, with a spoonful of turtle in his mouth—the real gallipot as they call it. However, I have no doubt he is gone to heaven, and my daughters are gone to Bath, except Lavy, who is my pet, and never quits me.
The physicians paid great attention to poor Mr. Ram., and he suffered nothing—at least that I know of. It was a very comfortable thing that I was at home shay new, as the French say, when he went, because it is a great pleasure to see the last of one's relations and friends.
You know we have been to Room since you heard from us—the infernal city as it is called—the seat of Poopery, and where the Poop himself lives. He was one of the Carnals, and was elected just before we was there: he has changed his name, not choosing to disgrace his family. He was formerly Doctor Dallyganger, but he now calls himself Leo, which the Papists reverse, and call him Ole or Oleness. He is a fine cretur, and was never married, but he has published a Bull in Room, which is to let people commit all kind of sin without impunity, which is different from your Bull, which shoes up them as does any crime. He is not Poop this year, for he has proclaimed Jew Billy in his place, which is very good, considering the latter gentleman is a general, and not of his way of thinking.
Oh, Mr. Bull, Room is raley a beautiful place.—We entered it by the Point of Molly, which is just like the Point and Sally at Porchmouth, only they call Sally there Port, which is not known in Room. The Tiber is not a nice river, it looks yellow; but it does the same there as the Tames does here. We hired a carry-letty and a cocky-olly, to take us to the Church of Salt Peter, which is prodigious big:—in the center of the pizarro there is a basilisk very high—on the right and left two handsome foundlings; and the farcy, as Mr. Fulmer called it, is ornamented with collateral statutes of some of the Apostates.
There is a great statute of Salt Peter himself, but Mr. Fulmer thinks it to be Jew Peter, which I think likely too—there were three brothers of the same name, as of course you know—Jew Peter the fortuitous, the capillary, and toenails; and it is curos that it must be him, for his toes are kissed away by the piety of the religious debauchees who visit his shin and shrine—Besides, I think it is Jew Peter, because why should not he be worshipped as well as Jew Billy?—Mr. Fulmer made a pun, Lavy told me, and said the difference between the two Jew Billies was, that one drew all the people to the sinagog, and the other set all the people agog to sin—I don't conceive his meaning, which I am afraid is a Dublin tender.
There was a large quire of singers, but they squeaked too much to please me—and played on fiddles, so I suppose they have no organs;—the priests pass all their time in dissolving sinners by oracular confusion, which, like transmogrification, is part of their doctoring—the mittens in the morning, and whispers at night, is just equally the same as at Paris.
Next to Salt Peter's Church is the Church of Saint John the Latter end, where the Poop always goes when he is first made—there is another basilisk here covered with highro-griffins.