The Expedition of Humphry ClinkerSmollett, T. (Tobias)
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The Expedition of Humphry Clinker
Smollett, T. (Tobias)
Epistolary fiction; Great Britain -- Fiction; Travelers -- Fiction
We are all upon the ving--Hey for London, girl!--Fecks! we have been
long enough here; for we’re all turned tipsy turvy--Mistress has
excarded Sir Ulic for kicking of Chowder; and I have sent O Frizzle
away, with a flea in his ear--I’ve shewn him how little I minded his
tinsy and his long tail--A fellor, who would think for to go, for to
offer, to take up with a dirty trollop under my nose--I ketched him in
the very feet, coming out of the housemaids garret.--But I have gi’en
the dirty slut a siserary. O Molly! the sarvants at Bath are devils
in garnet. They lite the candle at both ends--Here’s nothing but
ginketting, and wasting, and thieving and tricking, and trigging; and
then they are never content--They won’t suffer the ‘squire and mistress
to stay any longer; because they have been already above three weeks in
the house; and they look for a couple of ginneys a-piece at our going
away; and this is a parquisite they expect every month in the season;
being as how no family has a right to stay longer than four weeks in
the same lodgings; and so the cuck swears she will pin the dish-clout to
mistress’s tail; and the house-maid vows, she’ll put cowitch in master’s
bed, if so be he don’t discamp without furder ado--I don’t blame
them for making the most of their market, in the way of vails and
parquisites; and I defy the devil to say I am a tail-carrier, or ever
brought a poor sarvant into trouble--But then they oft to have some
conscience, in vronging those that be sarvants like themselves--For you
must no, Molly, I missed three-quarters of blond lace, and a remnant
of muslin, and my silver thimble; which was the gift of true love;
they were all in my workbasket, that I left upon the table in the
sarvants-hall, when mistresses bell rung; but if they had been under
lock and kay, ‘twould have been all the same; for there are double keys
to all the locks in Bath; and they say as how the very teeth an’t
safe in your head, if you sleep with your mouth open--And so says I to
myself, them things could not go without hands; and so I’ll watch
their waters: and so I did with a vitness; for then it was I found Bett
consarned with O Frizzle. And as the cuck had thrown her slush at me,
because I had taken part with Chowder, when he fit, with the turnspit,
I resolved to make a clear kitchen, and throw some of her fat into the
fire. I ketched the chare-woman going out with her load in the morning,
before she thought I was up, and brought her to mistress with her whole
cargo--Marry, what do’st think she had got in the name of God? Her
buckets were foaming full of our best bear, and her lap was stuffed with
a cold tongue, part of a buttock of beef, half a turkey, and a swinging
lump of butter, and the matter of ten mould kandles, that had scarce
ever been lit. The cuck brazened it out, and said it was her rite to
rummage the pantry; and she was ready for to go before the mare: that
he had been her potticary many years, and would never think of hurting a
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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