Tickle. (With paper.) So they’re going to make the Duchess of Marlborough pay a fine for shooting her husband’s pheasants. Rather hard, isn’t it; a wife not allowed to kill her husband’s game?
Mrs Nutts. But it’s all done to lower marriage—all done to make little of the weddin’-ring. I’m sure I wonder they don’t alter the marriage service. Talking about flesh of flesh, and bones of bones, and a lawful married woman is to take out a stamp to shoot at what belongs to her! What do you say to that, Mr Slowgoe?
Slowgoe. Why, really, Mrs Nutts, I’ve a great respect for any duchess—nevertheless, the game-laws is, I must say it, a solemn matter; mustn’t be tampered with because of the vulgar. If duchesses will insist upon using powder—I mean, in course, gunpowder—they must be properly authenticated so to do.
Nutts. But if ladies will shoot—if the taste’s coming up that way—why don’t they shirk the licence, and sport with poultry? Aren’t there hens, and ducks, and geese to be killed for the kitchen? I don’t see why the fashion shouldn’t go up from chickens to bullocks.
Tickle. Talking about shooting, I see Prince Albert shot a whole swarm of rabbits at Virginny Water on Monday—rabbits that was sent (reads paper) “to Mr Humphries of Egham, the contractor for the purchase of all rabbits killed in the home and great parks.” Isn’t that droll?—for the Queen’s husband to sell rabbits?
Slowgoe. There you go with your sneering disloyalty agin. Not at all droll, for there isn’t one of them rabbits that won’t be turned into a beef-steak or a mutton-chop.
Mrs Nutts. La! how do you mean?
Slowgoe. Why, in this way. The money that Mr Humphries gives for ’em will, of course, be laid out upon butcher’s-meat, and at Christmas be distributed to the Windsor poor!
Nutts. Shouldn’t have any objection to all the game in the world, if it could be so transmogrified. A pheasant shan’t be disgraced with ribs of beef for a proxy.
Tickle. So the Court, I see, is gone to Osborne House, in the Isle of Wight.