PREFACE.* house when Monsieur and his suite arrived; and among those were the present King of France and his two brothers, the Duc de Montpensier, and the Comte de Beaujolais. I was in the true holiday mood, when a dear | grants were already staying on a visit in the friend, with whose name is associated some of the brightest and pleasantest hours of my past lifet, kindly offered me a seat in his carriage for a short visit to Paris. This proposal I, of course, most gladly accepted; and, in the autumn of the year 1817, found myself, for the first time, in that gay capital. As the restoration of the Bourbon dynasty was still of too recent a date for any amalgamation to have yet taken place between the new and ancient order of things, all the most prominent features of both régimes were just then brought, in their fullest relief, into juxtaposition; and, accordingly, the result was such as to suggest to an unconcerned spectator quite as abundant matter for ridicule as for grave political consideration. It would be difficult, indeed, to convey to those who had not themselves seen the Paris of that period, any clear notion of the anomalous aspect, both social and political, which it then presented. It was as if, in the days succeeding the deluge, a small coterie of antediluvians had been suddenly evoked from out of the deep to take the command of a new and freshly starting world. To me, the abundant amusement and interest which such a scene could not but afford was a good deal heightened by my having, in my youthful days, been made acquainted with some of those personages who were now most interested in the future success of the Legitimate cause. The Comte D'Artois, or Monsieur, I had met in the year 1802-3, at Donington Park, the seat of the Earl of Moira, under whose princely roof I used often and long, in those days, to find a most hospitable home. A small party of distinguished French emi Some doubt and uneasiness had, I remember, been felt by the two latter brothers, as to the reception they were likely to encounter from the new guest; and as, in those times, a cropped and unpowdered head was regarded generally as a symbol of Jacobinism, the Comte Beaujolais, who, like many other young men, wore his hair in this fashion, thought it, on the present occasion, most prudent, in order to avoid all risk of offence, not only to put powder in his hair, but also to provide himself with an artificial queue. This measure of precaution, however, led to a slight incident after dinner, which, though not very royal or dignified, was at least creditable to the social good-humour of the future Charles X. On the departure of the ladies from the dining-room, we had hardly seated ourselves in the old-fashioned style, round the fire, when Monsieur, who had happened to place himself next to Beaujolais, caught a glimpse of the ascititious tail, — which, having been rather carelessly put on, had a good deal straggled out of its place. With a sort of scream of jocular pleasure, as if delighted at the discovery, Monsieur seized the stray appendage, and, bringing it round into full view, to the great amusement of the whole company, popped it into poor grinning Beaujolais' mouth. On one of the evenings of this short visit of Monsieur, I remember Curran arriving unexpectedly, on his way to London; and, having come too late for dinner, he joined our party in the evening. As the foreign portion of the company was then quite new to him, I was [From the Preface to the seventh volume of the collected able to be useful, by informing him of the names, rank, and other particulars of the party edition of 1841, 1842.] + Mr. Rogers. he found assembled, from Monsieur himself, down to the old Duc de Lorge and the Baron de Rolle. When I had gone through the whole list, "Ah, poor fellows!" he exclaimed, with a mixture of fun and pathos in his look, truly Irish, "Poor fellows, all dismounted cavalry!" On the last evening of Monsieur's stay, I was made to sing for him, among other songs, "Farewell Bessy!" one of my earliest attempts at musical composition. As soon as I had finished, he paid me the compliment of reading aloud the words as written under the music; and most royal havoc did he make, as to this day I well remember, of whatever little sense or metre they could boast. Among my earlier poetic writings, more than one grateful memorial may be found of the happy days I passed in this hospitable mansion*, Of all my sunny morns and moonlight nights On Donington's green lawns and breezy heights. But neither verse nor prose could do any justice to the sort of impression I still retain of those long-vanished days. The library at Donington wast extensive and valuable; and through the privilege kindly granted to me of retiring thither for study, even when the family were absent, I frequently passed whole weeks alone in that fine library, indulging in all the first airy castle-building of authorship. The various projects, indeed, of future works that used then to pass in fruitless succession through my mind, can be compared only to the waves as described by the poet, "And one no sooner touch'd the shore, and died, Lady Adelaide Forbes‡; for it was there that this truly noble lady, then in the first dawn of her beauty, used to sit for that picture; while in another part of the library, the Duke of Orleans,-engaged generally at that time with a volume of Clarendon, -was by such studies unconsciously preparing himself for the high and arduous destiny, which not only the Good Genius of France, but his own sagacious and intrepid spirit, had early marked out for him. I need hardly say how totally different were all the circumstances under which Monsieur himself and some of his followers were again seen by me in the year 1817;- the same actors, indeed, but with an entirely new change of scenery and decorations. Among the variety of aspects presented by this change, the ridiculous certainly predominated; nor could a satirist who, like Philoctetes, was smitten with a fancy for shooting at geese §, ask any better supply of such game than the high places, in France, at that period, both lay and ecclesiastical, afforded. Not being versed, however, sufficiently in French politics to venture to meddle with them, even in sport, I found a more ready conductor of laughter - for which I was then much in the mood in those groups of ridiculous English who were at that time swarming in all directions throughout Paris, and of all whose various forms of cockneyism and nonsense I endeavoured, in the personages of the Fudge Family, to collect the concentrated essence. The result, as usual, fell very far short of what I had myself precorceived and intended. But, making its appearance at such a crisis, the work brought with it that best seasoning of all such jeux-d'esprit, the à-propos of the moment; and, accordingly, i in the race of successive editions, Lalla Rookh | was, for some time, kept pace with by Miss Biddy Fudge. ORIGINAL PREFACE. Is what manner the following Epistles came into Whether Mr. FUDGE, himself, has yet made any discoveries, does not appear from the following pages. But much may be expected from a person of his zeal and sagacity, and, indeed, to kim, Lord S-DM-TH, and the Greenland-bound ships, the eyes of all lovers of discoveries are now most anxiously directed. I regret much that I have been obliged to omit Mr. BOB FUDGE's Third Letter, concluding the adventures of his Day with the Dinner, Opera, &c. &c.; - but in consequence of some remarks upon Marinette's thin drapery, which, it was thought, might give offence to certain well-meaning persons, the manuscript was sent back to Paris for his revision, and had not returned when the last sheet was put to press. It will not, I hope, be thought presumptuous if I take this opportunity of complaining of a very serious injustice I have suffered from the public. Dr. KING wrote a treatise to prove that BENTLEY was not the author of his own book," and a similar absurdity has been asserted of me, in almost all the best-informed literary circles. With the name of the real author staring them in the face, they have yet persisted in attributing my works to other people; and the fame of the Twopenny Post-Bag- such as it is- having hovered doubtfully over various persons, has at last settled upon the head of a certain little gentleman, who wears it, I understand, as complacently as if it actually belonged to him; without even the honesty of avowing, with his own favourite author, (he will excuse the pun) Εγω δ' 'Ο ΜΩΡΟΣ αρας I can only add, that if any lady or gentleman, curious in such matters, will take the trouble of calling at my lodgings, 245, Piccadilly, I shall have the honour of assuring them, in propriâ personâ, that I am his, or her, Very obedient And very humble Servant, THOMAS BROWN, THE YOUNGER. April 17, 1818. |