[1]. Two Dublin aldermen lately made baronets; one by his Majesty on his landing in Ireland (Alderman King); and the other by the Marquess of Wellesley on his debarkation (Alderman James), being the first public functionary he met. The Marquess would fain have knighted him; but being taken by surprise, he conferred the same honour which Aldermen Stammer and King had previously received.
There are now four baronets amongst that hard-going corporation.
It is said that this joke was first cracked at the Castle of Dublin by a gentleman of the long robe, and that Mr. Gobbio gave one of the footmen (who attended and took notes) half a guinea for it. Though a digression, I cannot avoid observing that I hear, from good authority, there are yet some few wits surviving in Dublin; and it is whispered that the butlers and footmen in genteel families (vails having been mostly abolished since the Union) pick up, by way of substitute, much ready money by taking notes of the “good things” they hear said by the lawyers at their masters’ dinner parties, and selling them to aldermen, candidates for the sheriffry, and city humourists, wherewith to embellish their conversation and occasionally their speeches. Puns are said to sell the best, they being more handy to a corporator, who has no great vocabulary of his own: puns are of easy comprehension; one word brings on another, and answers for two meanings, like killing two birds with one stone, and they seem much more natural to the memory of a common councilman than wit or any thing classical—which Alderman Jekey Poole used to swear was only the d—’d garbage (gibberish) of schoolmasters.
Had the Jubilee concern ended here, all would have been smooth and square:—but as events in families seldom come alone, Providence had decreed a still more severe trial for Sir William Steemer—because one of a more important character, and requiring a more prompt as well as expensive decision.
Soon after the luxurious celebration of the Jubilee throughout the three united kingdoms (except among such of the Irish as happened to have nothing in their houses to eat or drink, let their loyalty be ever so greedy), I chanced to call at the Mansion House on official business; and Sir William, always hospitable and good-natured, insisted on my staying to taste (in a family way) some “glorious turtle” he had just got over from the London Tavern, and a bottle of what he called “old Lafitte with the red nightcap,” which, he said, he had been long preserving wherewith to suckle his Excellency the Duke of Richmond.
I accepted his invitation: we had most excellent cheer, and were busily employed in praising the vintage of 1790, when a sealed packet, like a government dispatch, was brought in by the baronet’s old porter. We all thought it was something of consequence, when Sir William, impatiently breaking the seal, out started a very beautiful painting on parchment or vellum, gilded and garnished with ultramarine, carmine, lapis caliminaris, and all the most costly colours.
“Heyday!” said Sir William, staring: “what the deuce have we here? Hollo! Christopher—Kit—I say Kit—who—who—or where the devil did this come from?”
“By my sowl, my lord,” replied Christopher, “I dunnough who that same man was that fetched it; but he was neat an’ clean, and had good apparel on his body, though it was not a livery like mine, my lord.”