WIT WITHOUT MONEY:
OR, HOW TO LIVE UPON NOTHING.
BY VAMPYRE HORSELEECH, ESQ
CHAPTER II.
“A clever fellow, that Horseleech!” “When Vampyre is once drawn out, what a great creature it is!” These, and similar ecstatic eulogiums, have I frequently heard murmured forth from muzzy mouths into tinged and tingling ears, as I have been leaving a company of choice spirits. There never was a greater mistake. Horseleech, to be candid, far from being a clever fellow, is one of the most barren rascals on record. Vampyre, whether drawn out or held in, is a poor creature, not a great creature—opaque, not luminous—in a word, by nature, a very dull dog indeed.
But you see the necessity of appearing otherwise.—Hunger may be said to be a moral Mechi, which invents a strop upon which the bluntest wits are sharpened to admiration. Believe me, by industry and perseverance—which necessity will inevitably superinduce—the most dreary dullard that ever carried timber between his shoulders in the shape of a head, may speedily convert himself into a seeming Sheridan—a substitutional Sydney Smith—a second Sam Rogers, without the drawback of having written Jacqueline.
Take it for granted that no professed diner-out ever possessed a particle of native wit. His stock-in-trade, like that of Field-lane chapmen, is all plunder. Not a joke issues from his mouth, but has shaken sides long since quiescent. Whoso would be a diner-out must do likewise.
The real diner-out is he whose card-rack or mantelpiece (I was going to say groans, but) laughingly rejoices in respectful well-worded invitations to luxuriously-appointed tables. I count not him, hapless wretch! as one who, singling out “a friend,” drops in just at pudding-time, and ravens horrible remnants of last Tuesday’s joint, cognizant of curses in the throat of his host, and of intensest sable on the brows of his hostess. No struggle there, on the part of the children, “to share the good man’s knee;” but protruded eyes, round as spectacles, and almost as large, fixed alternately upon his flushed face and that absorbing epigastrium which is making their miserable flesh-pot to wane most wretchedly.
To be jocose is not the sole requisite of him who would fain be a universal diner-out. Lively with the light—airy with the sparkling—brilliant with the blithe, he must also be grave with the serious—heavy with the profound—solemn with the stupid. He must be able to snivel with the sentimental—to condole with the afflicted—to prove with the practical—to be a theorist with the speculative.
To be jocose is his most valuable acquisition. As there is a tradition that birds may be caught by sprinkling salt upon their tails, so the best and the most numerous dinners are secured by a judicious management of Attic salt.
I fear me that the works of Josephus, and of his imitators—of that Joseph and his brethren, I mean, whom a friend of mine calls “The Miller and his men”—I fear me, I say, that these are well-nigh exhausted. Yet I have known very ancient jokes turned with advantage, so as to look almost equal to new. But this requires long practice, ere the final skill be attained.
Etherege, Sedley, Wycherley, and Vanbrugh are very little read, and were pretty fellows in their day; I think they may be safely consulted, and rendered available. But, have a care. Be sure you mingle some of your own dulness with their brighter matter, or you will overshoot the mark. You will be too witty—a fatal error. True wits eat no dinners, save of their own providing; and, depend upon it, it is not their wit that will now-a-days get them their dinner. True wits are feared, not fed.
When you tell an anecdote, never ascribe it to a man well known. The time is gone by for dwelling upon—“Dean Swift said”—“Quin, the actor, remarked”—“The facetious Foote was once”—“That reminds me of what Sheridan”—“Ha! ha! Sydney Smith was dining the other day with”—and the like. Your ha! ha!—especially should it precede the name of Sam Rogers—would inevitably cost you a hecatomb of dinners. It would be changed into oh! oh! too surely, and too soon. Verbum sat.
I would have you be careful to sort your pleasantries. Your soup jokes (never hazard that one about Marshal Turenne, it is really too ancient,) your fish, your flesh, your fowl jests—your side-shakers for the side dishes—your puns for the pastry—your after-dinner excruciators.
Sometimes, from negligence (but be not negligent) or ill-luck, which is unavoidable, and attends the best directed efforts, you sit down to table with your stock ill arranged or incomplete, or of an inferior quality. Your object is to make men laugh. It must be done. I have known a pathetic passage, quoted timely and with a happy emphasis from a popular novel—say, “Alice, or the Mysteries”—I have known it, I say, do more execution upon the congregated amount of midriff, than the best joke of the evening. (There is one passage in that “thrilling” performance, where Alice, overjoyed that her lover is restored to her, is represented as frisking about him like a dog around his long-absent proprietor, which, whenever I have taken it in hand, has been rewarded with the most vociferous and gleesome laughter.)
And this reminds me that I should say a word about laughers. I know not whether it be prudent to come to terms with any man, however stentorian his lungs, or flexible his facial organs, with a view to engage him as a cachinnatory machine. A confederate may become a traitor—a rival he is pretty certain of becoming. Besides, strive as you may, you can never secure an altogether unexceptionable individual—one who will “go the whole hyaena,” and be at the same time the entire jackal. If he once start “lion” on his own account, furnished with your original roar, with which you yourself have supplied him, good-bye to your supremacy. “Farewell, my trim-built wherry”—he is in the same boat only to capsise you.
“And the first lion thinks the last a bore,”
and rightly so thinks. No; the best and safest plan is to work out your own ends, independent of aid which at best is foreign, and is likely to be formidable.
I may perhaps resume this subject more at large at a future time. My space at present is limited, but I feel I have hardly as yet entered upon the subject.
LAM(B)ENTATIONS.
Ye banks and braes o’ Buckingham,
How can ye bloom sae fresh and fair,
When I am on my latest legs,
And may not bask amang ye mair!
And you, sweet maids of honour,—come,
Come, darlings, let us jointly mourn,
For your old flame must now depart,
Depart, oh! never to return!
Oft have I roam’d o’er Buckingham,
From room to room, from height to height;
It was such pleasant exercise,
And gave me such an appetite!
Yes! when the dinner-hour arrived,
For me they never had to wait,
I was the first to take my chair,
And spread my ample napkin straight.
And if they did not quickly come,
After the dinner-bell had knoll’d,
I just ran up my private stairs,
To say the things were getting cold!
But now, farewell, ye pantry steams,
(The sweets of premiership to me),
Ye gravies, relishes, and creams,
Malmsey and Port, and Burgundy!
Full well I mind the days gone by,—
‘Twas nought but sleep, and wake, and dine;
Then John and Pal sang o’ their luck,
And fondly sae sang I o’ mine!
But now, how sad the scene, and changed!
Johnny and Pal are glad nae mair!
Oh! banks and braes o’ Buckingham!
How can you bloom sae fresh and fair!
CHELSEA.
(From our own Correspondent.)
This delightful watering-place is filling rapidly. The steam-boats bring down hundreds every day, and in the evening take them all back again. Mr. Jones has engaged a lodging for the week, and other families are spoken of. A ball is also talked about; but it is not yet settled who is to give it, nor where it is to be given. The promenading along the wooden pier is very general at the leaving of the packets, and on their arrival a great number of persons pass over it. There are whispers of a band being engaged for the season; but, as there will not be room on the pier for more than one musician, it has been suggested to negotiate with the talented artist who plays the drum with his knee, the cymbals with his elbow, the triangle with his shoulder, the bells with this head, and the Pan’s pipes with his mouth—thus uniting the powers of a full orchestra with the compactness of an individual. An immense number of Margate slippers and donkeys have been imported within the last few days, and there is every probability of this pretty little peninsula becoming a formidable rival to the old-established watering-places.