Editor's Drawer.
It was Thomas Hood, if we remember rightly ("poor Tom's a-cold" now)! whose "Bridge of Sighs," and "Song of the Shirt," both of them the very perfection of pathos, will be remembered when his lighter productions are forgotten, or have ceased to charm—it was Tom Hood, we repeat, who described, in a characteristic poetical sketch, the miseries of an Englishman in the French capital, who was ignorant of the language of that self-styled "metropolis of the world." He drew a very amusing picture of the desagrémens such as one would be sure to encounter; and among others, the following
"Never go to France,
Unless you know the lingo,
If you do, like me,
You'll repent, by Jingo!
"Signs I had to make,
For every little notion;
Arms all the while a-going,
Like a telegraph in motion.
"If I wanted a horse,
How d'you think I got it?
I got astride my cane,
And made-believe to trot it!"
There was something very ridiculous, he went on to say, we remember, about the half-English meaning of some of the words, and the utter contradiction of the ordinary meaning in others. "They call," said he,
"They call their mothers mares,
And all their daughters fillies!"
and he cited several other words not less ludicrous. The celebrated Mrs. Ramsbottom, and her accomplished daughter Lavinia, the cockney continental travelers, those clever burlesques of "John Bull," were the first, some thirty years ago, to take notice of this discrepancy, and to illustrate it in their correspondence. The old lady, writing from Paris to friends in her peculiar circle in London, tells them that she has been to see all the curious things about the French capital; and she especially extols the bridges, with their architectural and other adornments. "I went yesterday afternoon," she wrote, "to see the statute of Lewis Quinzy, standing close to the end of one of the ponts, as they call their bridges here. I was told by a man there, that Lewis Quinzy was buried there. Quinzy wasn't his real name, but he died of a quinzy sore-throat, and just as they do things here, they called him after the complaint he died of! The statute is a more superior one than the one of Henry Carter (Henri Quatre), which I also see, with my daughter Lavinia. I wonder if he was a relation of the Carters of Portsmouth, because if he is, his posteriors have greatly degenerated in size and figure. He is a noble-looking man, in stone." The same old ignoramus wrote letters from Italy, which were equally satirical upon the class of would-be "traveled" persons, to which she was assumed to belong.
Speaking of Rome, and certain of its wonderful and ancient structures, she says: "I have been all through the Vacuum, where the Pope keeps his bulls. Every once in a while they say he lets one out, and they occasion the greatest excitement, being more obstinater, if any thing, than an Irish one. I have been, too, to see the great church that was built by Saint Peter, and is called after him. Folks was a-looking and talking about a knave that had got into it, but I didn't see no suspicionary person. I heard a tedium sung while I was there, but it wasn't any great things, to my taste. I'd rather hear Lavinia play the 'Battle of Prag.' It was very long and tiresome." Not a little unlike "Mrs. Ramsbottom," is a foreign correspondent of the late Major Noah's paper, the "Times and Messenger," who writes under the nom de plume of "A Disbanded Volunteer," from Paris. He complains that the French language is very "onhandy to articklate;" that the words wont "fit his mouth at all" and that he has to "bite off the ends of 'em," and even then they are cripples. "The grammer," he says, "is orful, specially the genders, and oncommon inconsistent. A pie is a he, and yet they call it Patty, and a loaf is a he, too, but if you cut a slice off it, that's a she! The pen I'm a-driving is a she, but the paper I'm a-writing on is a he! A thief," he goes on to say, "is masculine, but the halter that hangs him is feminine;" but he rather likes that, he adds, there being something consoling in being drawn up by a female noose! F-e-m-m-e, he contends, "ought to spell femmy—but I'm blowed if they don't pronounce it fam!"
Like the English cockney travelers, he was pleased with the public monuments, particularly one in the "Plaster La Concord," built by Louis Quartz, so called, in consequence of the kind of stone used in its erection. The "Basalisk of Looksir," and the "Jargon da Plant," also greatly excited his admiration. No one who has ever studied French, but will be reminded by the "Disbanded Volunteer's" experience of the difficulty encountered in mastering the classification of French genders.
We find, on a scrap in our "Drawer," this passage from a learned lecture by a German adventurer in London, one "Baron Vondullbrainz." He is illustrating the great glory of Mechanics, as a science: "De t'ing dat is made is more superior dan de maker. I shall show you how in some t'ings. Suppose I make de round wheel of de coach? Ver' well; dat wheel roll five hundred mile!—and I can not roll one, myself! Suppose I am de cooper, what you call, and I make de big tub to hold de wine? He hold t'ons and gallons; and I can not hold more as fives bottel!! So you see dat de t'ing dat is made is more superior dan de maker!"