John Thomas: “Par bokhoo, mamzelle—par bokhoo. I’ve—aw—been so accustomed to—aw—gaiety in town, that I’m—aw—a’most killed with arnwee down here.”
The immortal Briggs made his first appearance in Punch in the year 1849, and with one or two records of his career I regret to say I must close my selected list of Leech’s early works. To say I regret this is to say little, for I am obliged to forego numberless delightful works, many as good as, and some perhaps better than, those I have presented to my readers. Mr. Briggs first appears with newspaper in hand in his snug breakfast-room, listening to a complaint from the housemaid that a slate is off the roof, and the servant’s bedroom in danger of being flooded. Mr. Briggs replies that the sooner it is put to rights the better, before it goes any further—and he will see about it. Mr. Briggs does see about it; he sees the builder, who tells him that “a little compo” is all that is wanted. The drawings show that eight or ten men are required to manage the little compo, much to Mr. Briggs’ astonishment.
In the next scene a huge scaffolding is raised, and a small army of labourers are at work on Mr. Briggs’s roof. A noise enough to wake the dead has awoke Mr. Briggs at the unpleasant hour of five in the morning. Flower-pots and bricks fall past his dressing-room window. He finds “no time has been lost, and that the workpeople have already commenced putting the roof to rights.” The builder would not be true to his craft if he did not improve the occasion and show his employer how easy, now that the workpeople were about, it would be to make certain additions in the shape of a conservatory, etc., to the house. Briggs weakly listens to the voice of the charmer; walls are battered down to enlarge the dining-room, and the entrance-hall is enlarged. Mr. Briggs’s health gives way, and he calls in the doctor, who prescribes horse exercise.
I think it was at one of those never-to-be-forgotten dinners at Egg’s that, the talk having turned upon shooting experiences, Dickens said that the sudden rising of a cock-pheasant under one’s nose was like a firework let off in that uncongenial locality. The following week Leech subjected Mr. Briggs to the startling experience so admirably recorded in the drawing which faces this page.
For a further acquaintance with Mr. Briggs’s performances on horseback, as well as his escapades with gun and fishing-rod, I must content myself with referring those curious on the matters to the pages of Punch, where they will find entertainment that is inexhaustible.
CHAPTER III.