“Gentlemen, I am in favour of other measures of political and social amelioration which benefit all, but injure none, in their comprehensiveness and beneficence, that I find it impossible to properly explain, within the limit of a printed address, but upon which I shall have many opportunities to offer explanations when I meet you face to face in public meeting, in your own houses, and upon the hustings on the day of nomination.
“Gentlemen,
I have the honour to subscribe myself,
Your very faithful and obedient servant,
Horatio Mount-Stephen Fipps.”
The bill-sticker lost no time in placarding the walls of the town; but his functions had been largely anticipated by the disclosures of the toll-bar keeper, Boniface, his boots, Bung, and his ostler.
The town was set in a commotion. The Green Swan with Two Tails was crowded in the bar-parlour, in front of the bar, and in every public room it had. Mr. Smith (I mean Mr. Horatio Mount-Stephen Fipps) received a dozen offers of professional assistance, two or three score of requests for the honour of making his acquaintance, letters innumerable for his autograph, with other delicate and indelicate overtures of good-will and friendship,—all within a few hours. Mr. Fipps, after he had returned to London, and been retransformed into “Smith,” told me it was the “jolliest spree” he had ever been engaged in during his life; and my man told me that the fictitious candidate played his part with the skill of a genius.
In the course of the morning a crowd assembled in front of the Swan with Two Tails, and loud huzzas were heard in honour of “the independent” and now “popular candidate.” A speculative printer had, without orders, either in the excess of political zeal, or in reliance upon a careless auditing of accounts, got another placard stuck upon the walls, which read thus:
“Fipps for ever!!!”
The mob became towards afternoon a little impatient and uproarious, and the candidate had to present himself on the balcony of the hotel, and harangue his admirers. I regret to say, no short-hand writer being present, I cannot give the reader a report of this speech, which I am sorry for, because I have been told it was one of the grandest orations of the kind ever uttered by a pretended or real candidate. However, let that pass.
Towards evening a deputation asked permission to wait upon Horatio Mount-Stephen Fipps, Esq., to express their admiration of the principles so clearly and exactly enunciated in his address, and so beautifully illustrated and enforced in his most eloquent speech. Their request was granted with the utmost cordiality by that great man, and he supplicated them to do him the honour of dining with him.
The hospitality of the Green Swan with Two Tails was, I am told, worthy of a more pretentious establishment; and ample justice was done, as the penny-a-liners say, to the culinary skill of the hostess. Mine host’s vintages were also duly appreciated, or at least I judge so by the items of account which I afterwards saw under the date of this entertainment. It is true that the good things bore familiar names; but that circumstance may rather be ascribed to the English character of the candidate and his admirers, than to the limited capacity or means of the landlord and his better half. Sherry and port and champagne—champagne and port and sherry—seemed to have been mingled in profusion with cigars that, in the aggregate, weighed a few score pounds, and were (I take it from the price they cost me or my principal) the finest that Havannah could produce.
At this improvised banquet speeches were of course delivered, toasts were drunk, and songs were sang, until the finale,—a medley of variations from “Rule Brittania,” “God Save the Queen,” and “We won’t go Home till Morning,”—which last chorus embodied a resolution that the patriotic admirers of Fipps did faithfully perform.