When I compare with the foregoing the habits of the present day, and see the grandsons of those joyous and vigorous sportsmen mincing their fish and tit-bits at their favourite box in Bond-street; amalgamating their ounce of salad on a silver saucer; employing six sauces to coax one appetite; burning up the palate to make its enjoyments the more exquisite; sipping their acid claret, disguised by an olive or neutralized by a chesnut; lisping out for the scented waiter, and paying him the price of a feast for the modicum of a Lilliputian, and the pay of a captain for the attendance of a blackguard;—it amuses me extremely, and makes me speculate on what their forefathers would have done to those admirable Epicenes, if they had had them at the “Pilgrimage” in the huntsman’s cottage.
To these extremes of former roughness and modern affectation, it would require the pen of such a writer as Fielding to do ample justice. It may, however, afford our reader some diversion to trace the degrees which led from the grossness of the former down to the effeminacy of the latter; and these may, in a great measure, be collected from the various incidents which will be found scattered throughout these sketches of sixty solar revolutions.
Nothing indeed can better illustrate the sensation which the grandfathers, or even aged fathers, of these slim lads of the Bond-street and St. James’s-street establishments, must have felt upon finding their offspring in the elegant occupations I have just mentioned, than an incident relating to Captain Parsons Hoye, of County Wicklow, who several years since met with a specimen of the kind of lad at Hudson’s, in Covent-Garden.
A nephew of his, an effeminate young fellow, who had been either on the Continent or in London a considerable time, and who expected to be the Captain’s heir, (being his sister’s son) accidentally came into the coffee-room. Neither uncle nor nephew recollected each other; but old Parsons’ disgust at the dandified manners, language, and dress of the youth, gave rise to an occurrence which drew from the bluff seaman epithets wonderfully droll, but rather too coarse to record:—the end of it was, that, when Parsons discovered the relationship of the stranger, (by their exchanging cards in anger,) he first kicked him out of the coffee-room, and then struck him out of a will which he had made,—and died very soon after, as if on purpose to mortify the macaroni!
Commodore Trunnion was a civilized man, and a beauty (but a fool), compared to Parsons Hoye,—who had a moderate hereditary property near Wicklow; had been a captain in the royal navy; was a bad farmer, a worse sportsman, and a blustering justice of peace: but great at potation! and what was called, “in the main, a capital fellow.” He was nearly as boisterous as his adopted element: his voice was always as if on the quarter-deck; and the whistle of an old boatswain, who had been decapitated by his side, hung as a memento, by a thong of leather, from his waistcoat button-hole. It was frequently had recourse to, and, whenever he wanted a word, supplied the deficiency.
In form, the Captain was squat, broad, and coarse: a large purple nose, with a broad crimson chin to match, were the only features of any consequence in his countenance, except a couple of good-enough bloodshot eyes, screened by most exuberant grizzle eye-brows. His powdered wig had behind it a queue in the form of a hand-spike,—and a couple of rolled-up paste curls, like a pair of carronades, adorned its broad-sides; a blue coat, with slash cuffs and plenty of navy buttons, surmounted a scarlet waistcoat with tarnished gold binding—the skirts of which, he said, he would have of their enormous length because it assured him that the tailor had put all the cloth in it; a black Barcelona adorned his neck; while a large old round hat, bordered with gold lace, pitched on his head, and turned up on one side, with a huge cockade stuck into a buttonless loop, gave him a swaggering air. He bore a shillelagh, the growth of his own estate, in a fist which would cover more ground than the best shoulder of wether mutton in a London market.[[20]] Yet the Captain had a look of generosity, good nature, benevolence, and hospitality, which his features did their very best to conceal, and which none but a good physiognomist could possibly discover.
[20]. I once saw the inconvenience of that species of fist strongly exemplified. The late Admiral Cosby, of Stradbally Hall, had as large and as brown a fist as any admiral in His Majesty’s service. Happening one day unfortunately to lay it on the table during dinner, at Colonel Fitzgerald’s, Merrion Square, a Mr. Jenkins, a half-blind doctor, who chanced to sit next to the admiral, cast his eye upon the fist: the imperfection of his vision led him to believe it was a roll of French bread, and, without further ceremony, the doctor thrust his steel fork plump into the admiral’s fist. The confusion which resulted may be easily imagined:—indeed, had the circumstance happened any where but at a private table, the doctor would probably never have had occasion for another crust. As it was, a sharp fork, sticking a sailor’s fist to the table, was rather too irritating an accident for an admiral of the blue to pass over very quietly.