A PHALSE NOTE ON GEORGE THE FOURTH.
(A Brown Study in a Yellow Book.)
By Mortarthurio Whiskersley.
Nay, but it is useless to protest. Much bosh and bauble-tit and pop-limbo has been talked about George THE Phorth. Thackeray denunciated him in his charming style (we never find Thackeray searching for the mot juste as for a wisp of hay in a packet of needles), but inverideed he was not sufficiently merciful to the last gentleman in Europe. We must not judge a prince too harshly. How many temptations he had with all the wits and flutterpates and malaperts gyring and gimbling round him! George was a sportsman. He would spend the morning with his valet (who was a hero to him), assuming gorgeous apparel, and tricking himself, with brush and pigment, into more charm. He was implected with a passion for the pleasures of the wardrobe, and had a Royal memory for old coats. Then he would saunter into White's for ale and tittle-tattle, and drive a friend into the country, stopping on the way for cursory visits at the taverns; I mean, swearing if the ale was not good. He had his troubles. Queen Caroline was a mimsy, out-moded woman, a sly serio, who gadded hither and thither shrieking for the unbecoming. Mrs. Phox ensorcelled George with her beautiful, silly phace, shadowed with vermeil tinct and trimly pencilled. There was no secernment between her soul and surface; she was mere, insouciant, with a rare dulcedo.
George collected locks of hair and what not, and what not. He gave in his bright flamboyance a passing renascence to Society. But the Victorian era came soon, and angels rushed in where fools had not feared to tread, and hung the land with reps, and drove Artifice phorth, and set Martin Tupper on a throne of mahogany to rule over them.
In the tangled accrescency of George's degringolade—in fact when he was dyeing—he thought he had led the charge of Waterloo! Tristfully he would describe the scene, referring to the Duke of Wellington for corroboration. An unfortunate slip, for it is well known the old soldier was never there himself.
It is brillig, and from my window at the Métropole, Brighton, I see the trite lawns and cheeky minarets of the Pavilion. I can see the rooms crusted with ormolu, the fauns foisted on the ceiling, the ripping rident goddesses on the walls. Once I phancied I saw a swaying phigure, and a wine-red phace....
P.S.—I like to phancy the watchful evil phaces of my Criticks as they read this article. Phair men, but infelix, they will lavish their anger in epigramme. Not that I care a little tittle about adverse remarks kicked from a gutter into a garret! But! But let them not outgribe too soon, but rather dance and be glad, and trip the cockawhoop. For! For, slithy toves as they are, they will read it with tears and desiderium, unless I do as did Artemus of shameful memory, and in jolliness and glad indulgence whisper to them—
This is a Goak!