The barber's chair; and, The hedgehog letters

by Douglas William Jerrold

Mrs Nutts. There now, Mr Tickle, I don’t want to hear your heathen discourse. If I was to look upon such puddin’s—coming from the Prince’s sty—as the blood royal, what’s that to you? And if Mr Nutts was like any other man—which he isn’t—he’d hardly hear his wife talked to in this manner. And then, Mr Slowgoe—not but what the pigs carry away the bell with me—then you should have only seen the Prince’s heifer!

Slowgoe. Here it is, I see (reads): “Extra Stock.—Cattle.—H. R. H. Prince Albert, of Windsor Castle, a two-years-and-eleven-months-old Highland Scot and Durham heifer, bred by Mr Milnes, Downham, Norfolk, and fed on cake, meal, hay, Swedes, and mangold-wurzel! travelled to the show on foot nine miles, and by railway twenty-two miles.—Silver medal.” Now, does the medal, I wonder, go to the Prince or to Mr Milnes?

Mrs Nutts. To Mr Milnes, indeed! Like his impudence! To Prince Albert, of course; and I should hope on state days and drawing-rooms, and so forth, he’ll wear it.

Tickle. No objection to that at all. As there’s the Order of the Golden Fleece, and the Order of the Elephant, and suchlike—given to statesmen and soldiers, very often for swindling and killing one another—eh, Mr Peabody? you’re a scholar, and know all about it—I don’t see why at these cattle-shows there shouldn’t be the Order of the Ox—the Order of the Steer—the Order of the Ram—the Order of the Wether Sheep—the Order of the China Pig—and the Order of the Pig of Any Breed.

Peabody. Why not? With Knights Companions of Oilcake, Mangold-Wurzel, Buckwheat, and Barleymeal? I don’t see why a very pretty sort of heraldry might not be got up of prize cattle; much wiser and more serviceable, after all, to mankind, than the prize Unicorns and prize Griffins won upon battle-fields. Then, as for the shedding of blood, I don’t think that’s the best sort that grows us laurels; but that that runs to black puddings.

Nutts. Well, of the two, I know which does the least mischief, and gives the wholesomest bellyful. And as there’s a good many of the aristocracy—by-the-by, you can’t think what a while I was mustering that word, but I’ve got hold of him at last—as the aristocracy go in every year for a show of fat, I shouldn’t wonder to see the day come when medals for killing men, and, as Mr Tickle says, for swindling ’em in cabinets, haven’t all the shine taken out of ’em by the medals of cattle-shows.

Peabody. Very true, Mr Nutts. Put a case now. There is M. Bresson: I believe he has had bestowed upon him the Order of the Golden Fleece.

Nosebag. What was the beginnin’ of that Order?

Peabody. To reward the flaying of a whole people! Well, Mons. Bresson has the Fleece because he kidnapped that little girl—the Infanta—as a daughter-in-law for Louis Philippe. Poor little Merino Lamb! the Fleece had a meaning in it, as payment for such work. Nevertheless, when the Frenchman walks with it about his neck—as though he carried a star out of heaven under his chin—do you think, all matters considered, the Order is as honest a looking thing—as honourable to him who carries it, and as serviceable to the world, as the gold medal given to—here it is (reads)—to “Mr J. Painter of Burley, near Oakham, Rutland” for “a pen of three twenty-one-months-old new Leicester wethers”? Tell me that, Mr Slowgoe.

Tickle. I should think not: that’s something like Fleece, that is; and the wethers were fed upon good honest corn, and meal, and pulse, I’ll be bound—while for the poor little Spanish girl, I wonder what sort of promise the Frenchman crammed her with, that made her a Prize Bride, and so rewarded him with the Prize Order.