The Choice Humorous Works, Ludicrous Adventures, Bons Mots, Puns, and Hoaxes of Theodore HookHook, Theodore Edward
General
The Choice Humorous Works, Ludicrous Adventures, Bons Mots, Puns, and Hoaxes of Theodore Hook
Hook, Theodore Edward
English wit and humor
Do you know, Mr. Bull, that I have found out one very surprising
thing, the French ridicule the English in everything; they have
got a farce which they call "Anglase poor rear," which is quite
scandalous, and every thing they have, they nick-name after us; they
call a note Billy, and a book Tom; a pie they have christened Patty;
they call the mob a fool; any thing that is very shameful they call
Hunt, but whether they mean John, Henry, Joseph, or Leigh, I cannot
discover--they call the winter a heaver--the autumn Old Tom, and the
summer they call Letty.
I think the French must have been originally Irish, for they say
crame for cream, and suprame for supreme, and so on: but I will
endeavour to find out more about this.
I went to see a vealyard (that is, an old man), who had been a sort
of anchor-wright or hermit many years ago; he had been put into the
dungeons of the Inquisition in furs, and suffered what they call the
piano-forte and door of that terrible place--if we go to Room we
shall see the buildings in which he was confined, and I dare say we
shall go there, and from that to Naples, and into the Gulp of Venus,
and so to Cecily, which I shall very much like whoever she may be,
because I knew a namesake of her's down in Dorsetshire.
I must, however, conclude my letter, for I am hurried for Tim--Lavy
begs her best love, and says in case she is married you must write
her epitaph. Why do you not call upon Mr. R.? he will be very glad
to see you, and now that he is alone he lives, in compliment to me,
entirely upon turtle.
DOROTHEA J. RAMSBOTTOM.
VIII.
MRS. RAMSBOTTOM BACK IN LONDON.
TO JOHN BULL.
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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