CHAPTER XI. A SWOI-REE.
Mr. Slick visited me late last night, dressed as if he had been at a party, but very cross, and, as usual when in that frame of mind, he vented his ill-humour on the English.
“Where have you been to-night, Mr. Slick?”
“Jist where the English hosses will be,” he replied, “when Old Clay comes here to this country;—no where. I have been on a stair-case, that’s where I have been; and a pretty place to see company in, ain’t it? I have been jammed to death in an entry, and what’s wus than all, I have given one gall a black eye with my elbow, tore another one’s frock off with my buttons, and near about cut a third one’s leg in two with my hat. Pretty well for one night’s work, ain’t it? and for me too, that’s so fond of the dear little critturs, I wouldn’t hurt a hair of their head, if I could help it, to save my soul alive. What a spot o’ work!
“What the plague do people mean here by askin’ a mob to their house, and invitin’ twice as many as can get into it? If they think it’s complimental, they are infarnally mistaken, that’s all: it’s an insult and nothin’ else, makin’ a fool of a body that way. Heavens and airth! I am wringing wet! I’m ready to faint! Where’s the key of your cellaret? I want some brandy and water. I’m dead; bury me quick, for I won’t be nice directly. Oh dear! how that lean gall hurt me! How horrid sharp her bones are!
“I wish to goodness you’d go to a Swoi-ree oncet, Squire, jist oncet—a grand let off, one that’s upper crust and rael jam. It’s worth seein’ oncet jist as a show, I tell you, for you have no more notion of it than a child. All Halifax, if it was swept up clean and shook out into a room, wouldn’t make one swoi-ree. I have been to three to night, and all on ‘em was mobs—regular mobs. The English are horrid fond of mobs, and I wonder at it too; for of all the cowardly, miserable, scarry mobs, that ever was seen in this blessed world, the English is the wust. Two dragoons will clear a whole street as quick as wink, any time. The instant they see ‘em, they jist run like a flock of sheep afore a couple of bull dogs, and slope off properly skeered. Lawful heart, I wish they’d send for a dragoon, all booted, and spurred, and mounted, and let him gallop into a swoi-ree, and charge the mob there. He’d clear ‘em out I know, double quick: he’d chase one quarter of ‘em down stairs head over heels, and another quarter would jump out o’ the winders, and break their confounded necks to save their lives, and then the half that’s left, would he jist about half too many for comfort.
“My first party to-night wus a conversation one; that is for them that could talk; as for me I couldn’t talk a bit, and all I could think was, ‘how infarnal hot it is! I wish I could get in!’ or, ‘oh dear, if I could only get out!’ It was a scientific party, a mob o’ men. Well, every body expected somebody would be squashed to death, and so ladies went, for they always go to executions. They’ve got a kinder nateral taste for the horrors, have women. They like to see people hanged or trod to death, when they can get a chance. It was a conversation warn’t it? that’s all. I couldn’t understand a word I heard. Trap shale Greywachy; a petrified snail, the most important discovery of modern times. Bank governor’s machine weighs sovereigns, light ones go to the right, and heavy ones to the left.
“‘Stop,’ says I, ‘if you mean the sovereign people here, there are none on ‘em light. Right and left is both monstrous heavy; all over weight, every one on ‘em. I’m squeezed to death.’
“‘Very good, Mr. Slick. Let me introduce you to ——,’ they are whipt off in the current, and I don’t see ‘em again no more. ‘A beautiful shew of flowers, Madam, at the garden: they are all in full blow now. The rhododendron—had a tooth pulled when she was asleep.’ ‘Please to let me pass, Sir.’ ‘With all my heart, Miss, if I could; but I can’t move; if I could I would down on the carpet, and you should walk over me. Take care of your feet, Miss, I am off of mine. Lord bless me! what’s this? why as I am a livin’ sinner, it’s half her frock hitched on to my coat button. Now I know what that scream meant.’
“‘How do you do, Mr. Slick? When did you come?’ ‘Why I came—’ he is turned round, and shoved out o’ hearin.’ ‘Xanthian marbles at the British Museum are quite wonderful; got into his throat, the doctor turned him upside down, stood him on his head, and out it came—his own tunnel was too small.’ ‘Oh, Sir, you are cuttin’ me.’ ‘Me, Miss! Where had I the pleasure of seein’ you before, I never cut a lady in my life, could’nt do so rude a thing. Havn’t the honour to recollect you.’ ‘Oh, Sir, take it away, it cuts me.’ Poor thing, she is distracted, I don’t wonder. She’s drove crazy, though I think she must have been mad to come here at all. ‘Your hat, Sir.’ ‘Oh, that cussed French hat is it? Well, the rim is as stiff and as sharp as a cleaver, that’s a fact, I don’t wonder it cut you.’ ‘Eddis’s pictur—capital painting, fell out of the barge, and was drowned.’ ‘Having been beat on the shillin’ duty; they will attach him on the fourpence, and thimble rigg him out of that.’ ‘They say Sugden is in town, hung in a bad light, at the Temple Church.’——‘Who is that?’ ‘Lady Fobus; paired off for the Session; Brodie operated.’——Lady Francis; got the Life Guards; there will be a division to-night.’——That’s Sam Slick; I’ll introduce you; made a capital speech in the House of Lords, in answer to Brougham—Lobelia—voted for the bill—The Duchess is very fond of——Irish Arms—’
“Oh! now I’m in the entry. How tired I am! It feels shockin’ cold here, too, arter comin’ out o’ that hot room. Guess I’ll go to the grand musical party. Come, this will do; this is Christian-like, there is room here; but the singin’ is in next room, I will go and hear them. Oh! here they are agin; it’s a proper mob this. Cuss, these English, they can’t live out of mobs. Prince Albert is there in that room; I must go and see him. He is popular; he is a renderin’ of himself very agreeable to the English, is Prince: he mixes with them as much as he can; and shews his sense in that. Church steeples are very pretty things: that one to Antwerp is splendiriferous; it’s everlastin’ high, it most breaks your neck layin’ back your head to look at it; bend backward like a hoop, and stare at it once with all your eyes, and you can’t look up agin, you are satisfied. It tante no use for a Prince to carry a head so high as that, Albert knows this; he don’t want to be called the highest steeple, cause all the world knows he is about the top loftiest; but he want’s to descend to the world we live in.
“With a Queen all men love, and a Prince all men like, royalty has a root in the heart here. Pity, too, for the English don’t desarve to have a Queen; and such a Queen as they have got too, hang me if they do. They ain’t men, they hante the feelin’s or pride o’ men in ‘em; they ain’t what they used to be, the nasty, dirty, mean-spirited, sneakin’ skunks, for if they had a heart as big as a pea—and that ain’t any great size, nother—cuss ‘em, when any feller pinted a finger at her to hurt her, or even frighten her, they’d string him right up on the spot, to the lamp post. Lynch him like a dog that steals sheep right off the reel, and save mad-doctors, skary judges, and Chartist papers all the trouble of findin’ excuses. And, if that didn’t do, Chinese like, they’d take the whole crowd present and sarve them out. They’d be sure to catch the right one then. I wouldn’t shed blood, because that’s horrid; it shocks all Christian people, philosophisin’ legislators, sentimental ladies, and spooney gentlemen. It’s horrid barbarous that, is sheddin’ blood; I wouldn’t do that, I’d jist hang him. A strong cord tied tight round his neck would keep that precious mixtur, traitor’s blood, all in as close as if his mouth was corked, wired, and white-leaded, like a champagne bottle.
“Oh dear! these are the fellers that come out a travellin’ among us, and sayin’ the difference atween you and us is ‘the absence of loyalty.’ I’ve heard tell a great deal of that loyalty, but I’ve seen precious little of it, since I’ve been here, that’s a fact. I’ve always told you these folks ain’t what they used to be, and I see more and more, on ‘em every day. Yes, the English are like their hosses, they are so fine bred, there is nothin’ left of ‘em now but the hide, hair, and shoes.
“So Prince Albert is there in that room; I must get in there and see him, for I have never sot eyes on him since I’ve been here, so here goes. Onder, below there, look out for your corns, hawl your feet in, like turtles, for I am a comin’. Take care o’ your ribs, my old ‘coons, for my elbows are crooked. Who wants to grow? I’ll squeeze you out as a rollin’-pin does dough, and make you ten inches taller. I’ll make good figures of you, my fat boys and galls, I know. Look out for scaldin’s there. Here I am: it’s me, Sam Slick, make way, or I’ll walk right over you, and cronch you like lobsters. ‘Cheap talkin’, or rather thinkin’, sais I; for in course I couldn’t bawl that out in company here; they don’t understand fun, and would think it rude, and ongenteel. I have to be shockin’ cautious what I say here, for fear I might lower our great nation in the eyes of foreigners. I have to look big and talk big the whole blessed time, and I am tired of it. It ain’t nateral to me; and, besides braggin’ and repudiatin’ at the same time, is most as bad as cantin’ and swearin’. It kinder chokes me. I thought it all though, and said it all to myself. ‘And,’ sais I, ‘take your time, Sam; you can’t do it, no how, you can fix-it. You must wait your time, like other folks. Your legs is tied, and your arms is tied down by the crowd, and you can’t move an inch beyond your nose. The only way is, watch your chance, wait till you can get your hands up, then turn the fust two persons that’s next to you right round, and slip between them like a turn stile in the park, and work your passage that way. Which is the Prince? That’s him with the hair carefully divided, him with the moustaches. I’ve seed him; a plaguy handsum man he is, too. Let me out now. I’m stifled, I’m choked. My jaws stick together, I can’t open ‘em no more; and my wind won’t hold out another minute.
“I have it now, I’ve got an idea. See if I don’t put the leake into ‘em. Won’t I do them, that’s all? Clear the way there, the Prince is a comin’, and so is the Duke. And a way is opened: waves o’ the sea roll hack at these words, and I walks right out, as large as life, and the fust Egyptian that follers is drowned, for the water has closed over him. Sarves him right, too, what business had he to grasp my life-preserver without leave. I have enough to do to get along by my own wit, without carry in’ double.
“‘Where is the Prince? Didn’t they say he was a comin’? Who was that went out? He don’t look like the Prince; he ain’t half so handsum, that feller, he looks, like a Yankee.’ ‘Why, that was Sam Slick.’ ‘Capital, that! What a droll feller he is; he is always so ready! He desarves credit for that trick.’ Guess I do; but let old Connecticut alone; us Slickville boys always find a way to dodge in or out embargo or no embargo, blockade or no blockade, we larnt that last war.
“Here I am in the street agin; the air feels handsum. I have another invitation to-night, shall I go? Guess I will. All the world is at these two last places, I reckin there will be breathin’ room at the next; and I want an ice cream to cool my coppers, shockin’ bad.—Creation! It is wus than ever; this party beats t’other ones all holler. They ain’t no touch to it. I’ll jist go and make a scrape to old uncle and aunty, and then cut stick; for I hante strength to swiggle my way through another mob.
“‘You had better get in fust, though, hadn’t you, Sam? for here you are agin wracked, by gosh, drove right slap ashore atween them two fat women, and fairly wedged in and bilged. You can’t get through, and can’t get out, if you was to die for it.’ ‘Can’t I though? I’ll try; for I never give in, till I can’t help it. So here’s at it. Heave off, put all steam on, and back out, starn fust, and then swing round into the stream. That’s the ticket, Sam.’ It’s done; but my elbow has took that lady that’s two steps furder down on the stairs, jist in the eye, and knocked in her dead light. How she cries! how I apologize, don’t I? And the more I beg pardon, the wus she carries on. But it’s no go; if I stay, I must fust fight somebody, and then marry her; for I’ve spiled her beauty, and that’s the rule here, they tell me.’
“So I sets studen sail booms, and cracks on all sail, and steers for home, and here I am once more; at least what’s left of me, and that ain’t much more nor my shader. Oh dear! I’m tired, shockin’ tired, almost dead, and awful thirsty; for Heaven’s sake, give me some lignum vitae, for I am so dry, I’ll blow away in dust.
“This is a Swoi-ree, Squire, this is London society; this is rational enjoyment, this is a meeting of friends, who are so infarnal friendly they are jammed together so they can’t leave each other. Inseparable friends; you must choke ‘em off, or you can’t part ‘em. Well, I ain’t jist so thick and intimate with none o’ them in this country as all that comes to nother. I won’t lay down my life for none on ‘em; I don’t see no occasion for it, do you?
“I’ll dine with you, John Bull, if you axe me; and I ain’t nothin’ above particular to do, and the cab hire don’t cost more nor the price of a dinner; but hang me if ever I go to a Swoi-ree agin. I’ve had enough of that, to last me my life, I know. A dinner I hante no objection to, though that ain’t quite so bright as a pewter button nother, when you don’t know you’re right and left, hand man. And an evenin’ party, I wouldn’t take my oath I wouldn’t go to, though I don’t know hardly what to talk about, except America; and I’ve bragged so much about that, I’m tired of the subject. But a Swoi-ree is the devil, that’s a fact.”