By Dorothea Julia Ramsbottom.
(Continued.)
"When we came near the French shore, a batto (which is much the same as a boat in England) came off to us, and, to my agreeable surprise, an Englishman came into our ship; and I believe he was a man of great consequence, for I overheard him explaining some dreadful quarrel which had taken place in our Royal Family.
"He said to the master of our ship, that owing to the Prince Leopold having run foul of the Duchess of Kent while she was in stays, the Duchess had missed Deal. By which I conclude it was a dispute at cards—however, I want to know nothing of state secrets, or I might have heard a great deal more, because it appeared that the Duchess's head was considerably injured in the scuffle.
"I was very much distressed to see that a fat gentleman who was in the ship, had fallen into a fit of perplexity by over-reaching himself—he lay prostituted upon the floor, and if it had not been that we had a doctor in the ship, who immediately opened his temporary artery and his jocular vein, with a lancelot which he had in his pocket, I think we should have seen his end.
"It was altogether a most moving spectacle—he thought himself dying, and all his anxiety in the midst of his distress was to be able to add a crocodile to his will, in favour of his niece, about whom he appeared very sanguinary.
"It was quite curious to see the doctor fleabottomize the patient, which he did without any accident, although it blew a perfect harrico at the time. I noticed two little children, who came out of the boat, with hardly any clothes on them, speaking French like anything—a proof of the superior education given to the poor in France, to that which they get in England from Dr. Bell of Lancaster.
"When we landed at Callous, we were extremely well received, and I should have enjoyed the sight very much, but Mr. Fulmer, and another gentleman in the batto, kept talking of nothing but how turkey and grease disagreed with each other, which, in the then state of my stomach, was far from agreeable.
"We saw the print of the foot of Louis Desweet, the French King, where he first stopped when he returned to his country—he must be a prodigious heavy man to have left such a deep mark in the stone—we were surrounded by Commissioners, who were so hospitable as to press us to go to their houses without any ceremony. Mr. Fulmer showed our pass-ports to a poor old man, with a bit of red ribband tied to his button-hole, and we went before the Mayor, who is no more like a Mayor than my foot-boy.