Jorrocks' Jaunts and JollitiesSurtees, Robert Smith
General
Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities
Surtees, Robert Smith
England -- Fiction; Fox hunting -- Fiction; Hunting stories
A bright Sunday dawned, and the beach at an early hour was crowded with
men in dressing-gowns of every shape, hue, and material, with buff
slippers--the "regulation Margate shoeing," both for men and women. As
the hour of eleven approached, and the church bells began to ring, the
town seemed to awaken suddenly from a trance, and bonnets the most
superb, and dresses the most extravagant, poured forth from lodgings
the most miserable. Having shaved and dressed himself with more than
ordinary care and attention, Mr. Jorrocks walked his friends off to
church, assuring them that no one need hope to prosper throughout the
week who did not attend it on the Sunday, and he marked his own devotion
throughout the service by drowning the clerk's voice with his responses.
After this spiritual ablution Mr. Jorrocks bethought himself of having a
bodily one in the sea; and the day being excessively hot, and the tide
about the proper mark, he pocketed a couple of towels out of his bedroom
and went away to bathe, leaving Green and the Yorkshireman to amuse
themselves at the "White Hart."
This house, as we have already stated, faces the harbour, and is a
corner one, running a considerable way up the next street, with a side
door communicating, as well as the front one, with the coffee-room.
This room differs from the generality of coffee-rooms, inasmuch as the
windows range the whole length of the room, and being very low they
afford every facility for the children and passers-by to inspect the
interior. Whether this is done to show the Turkey carpet, the pea-green
cornices, the bright mahogany slips of tables, the gay trellised
geranium-papered room, or the aristocratic visitors who frequent it, is
immaterial--the description is as accurate as if George Robins had drawn
it himself. In this room then, as the Yorkshireman and Green were lying
dozing on three chairs apiece, each having fallen asleep to avoid the
trouble of talking to the other, they were suddenly roused by loud yells
and hootings at the side door, and the bursting into the coffee-room of
what at first brush they thought must be a bull. The Yorkshireman jumped
up, rubbed his eyes, and lo! before him stood Mr. Jorrocks, puffing like
a stranded grampus, with a bunch of sea-weed under his arm and the
dress in which he had started, with the exception of the dark blue
stocking-net pantaloons, the place of which were supplied by a flowing
white linen kilt, commonly called a shirt, in the four corners of which
were knotted a few small pebbles--producing, with the Hessian boots and
one thing and another, the most laughable figure imaginable. The blood
of the Jorrockses was up, however, and throwing his hands in the air, he
thus delivered himself. "Oh gentlemen! gentlemen!--here's a lamentable
occurrence--a terrible disaster--oh dear! oh dear!--I never thought I
should come to this. You know, James Green," appealing to Jemmy, "that
I never was the man to raise a blush on the cheek of modesty; I have
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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