Volume II Part 4 (1/2)

I believe Pinchin's father to have been a Tailor There is no harm in the Craft, honestly exercised; but since the world first Began nine Tailors have ht of the shears without asking in your own ht brethren

Bartholomew Pinchin looked like a Tailor, talked like a Tailor, and thought like a Tailor Let it not, however, be surn the Useful Churls who make our Clothes Many a ti Faith and Generous Belief of a Tailor when I have stood in need of new Apparel, and have been under momentary Famine of Funds for the Payment thereof Those who are so ready to sneer at a Snip, and to cast Cabbage in his teeth, would do well to remember that there are Seasons in Life when the Goose (or rather he that wields it) may save, not only the Capitol, but the Soldier who stands on Guard within How doubly Agonising is Death when you are in doubt as to whence that Full Suit of Black needed on the Funeral Night will arrive! What a tremor comes over you when you remember that this Day Week you are to be Married, and that your Wedding Garment is by no means a certainty! What a dreadful shi+pwreck to your Fortune menaces you when you are bidden to wait on a Great Man who has Places to give away, and you find that your Velvet Coat shows the Cord! 'Tis in these Eencies that the brave Confidence of the Tailor is distilled over us like the Blessed Dew from Heaven; for Trust, when it is really needed, and opportunely co

About h a questionable cousin of his, would have been glad to possess his spurious kins Esquire's income as at least Twenty Hundred Pounds a year His Father had been, it cannot be questioned, a Warm Man; but I should like to know, if he was veritably, as his Son essayed to make out, a Gentleman, how he came to live in Honey-Lane Market, hard by Cheapside Gentlemen don't live in Honey-Lane Market 'Tis in Bloomsbury, or Soho, or Lincoln's Inn, or in the parish of St George, Hanover Square, that the real Quality have their habitations I shall be told next that Gentlefolks should have their mansions by the Bun-House at Pimlico, or in the Purlieus of Tyburn Turnpike No; 'twas at the sign of the Sleeveboard, in Honey-Lane Market, that our Patrician Squire made hison the North side, Highgate way

Mr Pinchin's Mamma, a Rare City Dame, had a Life Interest in the property, and, under the old Gentleht to a Whole Suain Thus it was that young Bartholoony of Terror to learn that hison a Sunday afternoon in Gray's-Inn Gardens, or taking Powdered Beef and Ratafia at the tavern in Flask Walk, or drinking of Syllabubs at Bellasise; and by every post he expected to hear the dreadful intelligence that Madam Pinchin had been picked up as a City Fortune by so Student of the Inns of Court, soth of a new Periwig and a lacquered hilt to his Sword, passes for a Macarony 'Tis not very romantic to relate, but 'tis no less a fact, that the Son and the Mother hated one another You who have gone through the World and watched it, know that these sad unnatural loathings between Parents and Children, after the latter are grown up, are by no eender between the Mother and the Daughter, that as a Babe hath hung on her Paps (or should have been so Nurtured, for too iven to the cruelly Pernicious Practice of sending their Infants to Nurse al the up the very Source and Fontinel of Natural Endearments; from which I draw the cause of many of the harsh cold Hun between the Great and their children) You ish Philosopher; but I relate s that have stricken my Mind and Sense I do know Ladies of Quality that hate their Daughters, and would willingly Whip them, did they dare do so, Grown Women as they are, for Spite I do know Fathers, Men of Parts and Rank, forsooth, jealous of their Sons, and that have kept the Youngsters in the Background, and even striven to Obscure their Minds that they ht not cross the Paternal Orbit And has it not almost passed into a proverb, that my Lord Duke's Natural and most Inveterate Enemy is my Lord Marquis, who is his Heir? But not to the World of Gold and Purple are these Jealousies and Evil Feelings confined You shall find them to the full as Venomous in hovels, where pewter Platters are on the shelves, and where Fustian and Holand, where a worthy Friend ofhis flocks froets up--until sundown The honest otten Fourteen Children He is old now, and feeble, and is despised by his Progeny He leads at Hoes from him, and, were it not for a luain for Charity's sake, he would have nothing better to eat from Week's End to Week's End than the hunch of Bread and thewhen he goes to his labour Only the other day, his sixth daughter, a cos a Holiday, granted to hioes ho to have sos, the which his last week's wages have gone some way to furnish forth I promise you that 'tis a fine Family Feast that he co Ale--none of your Harvest Clink--and old Cyder and Plualore! But his Family will have none of his co hiale himself withal 'Twas he who told the Story to my Friend, from whom I heard it What, think you, was his siainst soRoorates; he did not trample on this Brood that he had nurtured, and that had turned out worse in their Unthankfulness than Vipers; no, he just sat apart, wringing of his Hands, and , ”What, a weddin', and narrer a bit o'

puddin'--narrer a bit, a bit o' puddin'!” The poor soul had set his head on a slice of dough with raisins in it, and even this crumb fro, is it not, Neighbour, to be come to Threescore Years, and to have had Fruitful Loins, and to be Mocked and Misused by those thou hast begotten? How infinitely better do we dee, and yet how often do we i the Tooth and Nail with therown But there is as much to be said on the one side as on the other; and for every poor old Lear wandering up and down, pursued by the spite of Goneril and Regan, shall you find a Cordelia whose heart is broken by her Sire's Cruelty

We did not long abide in Ostend Presently s, and longed for change He had no better words for the Innkeepers, Merchants, and others who attended him, than to call them a parcel of Extortionate Thieves, and to vow that they were all in a conspiracy for robbing and bringing him to the Poor House He often did us the honour to accuse us of being in the Plot; and many a tiel the abusive little ue andthe Chaplain's advice, and hu this little Man-monkey in all his caprices, I found that he was not so bad a master after all, and that when he was Drunk, which was alh When he was sober and bewailed his excessive Expenditure, our policy was to be Mum, or else to Flatter him; and so no bones were broken, and I ell clad and fed, and always had a piece of gold in an to Feel my Feet

We visited most of the towns in the Low Countries, then under the Austrian rule, enjoying ourselves with but little occasion for repining

Now our travelling was done on Horseback, and nohen there was a Canal Route, by one of those heavy, lu, jovial old boats called Treyckshuyts I know not whether I spell the word correctly, for in the Languages, albeit fluent enough, I could never be accurate; but of the pleasant old vessels themselves I shall ever preserve a lively recollection Youhies, the charge aenerally to about a Guinea a day for each Gentleer, and half the sum for a servant And the Domestic's place on the fore-deck and in the fore-cabin was by no ood store of cofraus comelier still, with their clean white caps, Linsey-woolsey petticoats, wooden shoes, and little gold crosses about their necks FarPriest or tho tried Hard to Convert you, if by any means he discovered you to be a Heretic, ers forward; but I, as a servant, was often called aft, and had the pick of both cohting cock For no sooner was our Passage-Money paid than it becae,to put up with the ordinary country Fare of dried fish, salted beef, pickled cabbage, hard-boiled eggs, faro-Beer, Schiedae's direction, to purchase Gaetables, Preserves, Cheeses, and other condiments, with a sufficient nu cordial, for fear of Accidents And aboard the Treyckshuyt it was all Singing and Dancing and Carding and drinking of Toasts The quantity of Tobacco that the country people took was alar to Mr Pinchin; but I, from my sea education, and the Time I had passed in the Western Indies, was a seasoned vessel as to tobacco; and often when ht was pere, who dearly loved his Pipe of Virginia The Chaplain always calledthe character as well as the naerous My life was passed in the Plenitude of Fatness; and I may say almost that I was at Grass with Nebuchadnezzar, and had one Life with the beasts of the field; for ences, and I was no better than a stalled ox But the old perils and troubles ofI was to becoain

A year passed away in this eating and drinking, dozy, lazy kind of life

I was past seventeen years of age, and it was the autu for a time--not that Master, Chaplain, or Man ever did -place of Spa, close to the Ger, where ere entertained in very Handsome Style Spa, or the Spaw, as it was sometimes called, was then one of the most Renowned Baths in Europe, and was attended by the very Grandest company Here, e arrived, was hest Figure, accompanied by my Lady duchess, the Lord Marquis of Newa tables, hich the place abounded; the Ladies Kitty and Bell Jockeyhters; and attended by a Numerous and sumptuous suite Here also did I see the famous French Prince de Noisy-Gevres, then so of a Lampoon on one of his Eminence the Cardinal Minister's Lady Favourites; the Great Muscovite Boyard Stchigakoff, who had been here ever since the Czar Peter his master had honoured the Spaith his presence; and any nun Notabilities, of the most Illustrious Rank, and of either sex

Money was the great Master of the Cereest Purse was bidden to the Bravest Entertainlish of Quality, indeed (as is their custoners), kept themselves very much to themselves, and my Lord Duke of Tantivy's party, with the exception of the Marquis of Newold pieces frohtest notice ofto be introduced into Polite Society, and spread abroad those fictions of his cousinage to Lady Betty Heeltap and my Lord Poddle everywhere he went; but the French and Gerlad to receive an English Traveller hen his Vanity was concerned, would spend his cash without stint We drank a great deal of the Water of the Spaw, and unco of vital necessity to take the Taste of it out of our Mouths as soon asWaters

Frone, a dirty, foul-ss, and saw all that was to be seen, that is to say, the churches, which Abound Greatly The Jesuits' Church is the neatest, and this was shown us in a very coh 'tis not the custom to allow Protestants to enter it Our Cicerone was a bouncing young Jesuit, with a Face as Rosy as the sunny side of a Katherine Pear; but it shocked ed in Drolleries and Raileries in the very edifice itself He quizzed both the Magnificence and Tawdriness of the Altars, the I of the Relics, and all he ca no er Fellow in Westminster Abbey when he shows the Waxwork to a knot of Yokels at sixpence a head

”Surely,” I thought, ”therein a Faith whose Professors ht of its ceremonies, and turn Buffoons in the very Te inwardly at that profusion of Pearls, Diamonds, and Rubies bestowed on the adorns A Fine English Lady, all paint and Furbeloas in the church with us, honestly owned that she coveted St Ursula's great Pearl Necklace, and, says she, ”'Tis no sin, and not coveting one's neighbour's goods, for neither St Ursula nor the Jesuits are any Neighbours of mine;” and as for hty fine in Silver, and said that it would have looked very well as an Ornaarden at Ha was five days, travelling post from Frankfort; and here we observed the difference between the Free Towns of Gerovern are well built, and full of People; the shops are loaded with Merchandise, and co there was but a sort of shabby finery: a number of dirty People of Quality sauntered out: narrow nasty streets out of repair; and above half of the coe, ould have his jest, coher's wife, and a Petty Prince's capital to a poor Town Lady of Pleasure, painted and ribboned out in her Head-dress, with tarnished Silver-lace shoes, and a ragged Under Petticoat--athey had Su coree, and the Better sort only being licensed to wear Rich suits of clothes And, to ht prove soland if so of Excess and Extravagance in Apparel As folks dress nowadays, it is ihest Quality What with the cheapness of Manufactured goods, and the pernicious introduction of imitation Gold and Silver-lace, you shall find Drapers' apprentices, Tavern drawers, and Cook wenches, ure on Sundays as their ht to the Gallows, and h an over Fondness for cheap Finery, and a crazy conceit for dressing like their betters

Nure hath its store of Churches and Relics, and the like; and even the Lutherans, who are usually thought to be so strict and severe in the adorne Cross fairly set with jewels But this is nothing to the Popish High Church, where they have at least a score of Saints, all dressed out in laced clothes, and fair Full-bottos, plentifully powdered Here did we come across a Prince Bishop of one of the Electoral Gerhty Retinue of Canons and Priests, and assessors and Secretaries, and a long train of Mules uard of a hundred Musketeers, with violet liveries and Mitres broidered on their cartouch-boxes, to keep the Prince Bishop froe, although Mr Hodge, to maintain the purity of his cloth, kept aloof from any such Papistical entertain my duty to wait behind the Squire's chair We dined at two of the clock on very rich h spiced, as I have usually found Princes and Bishops to like their victuals (for the Plainer sort soon Pall on their Palates), and after dinner there was a Carousal, which lasted well nigh till bed-tih the title of Master of the Mules, on which beasts the coot somewhat too Merry on Rhenish about Dusk, and was carried out to the stable, where the Palefreneers littered hih he had been a Horse or a Mule himself; and then a little fat Canon, as the Buffoon or Jack Pudding of the party, sang songs over his drink which were not in the least like unto Hymns or Canticles, but rather of a hness (ore the Biggest Elove, that ever I saw) took a great fancy to ed hi for that purpose a Silver Bell holding at least a Pint and a half English Out of this Bell he takes the clapper, and holding it mouth upwards, drains it to the health of ain, Topsy-turvies his goblet, and rings a peal on the bell to show that he is a right Skinker

My Master does the saot before the ringing-tis essayed to do the same, but was in such a Quandary of Liquor, that he spills a pint over Mr Secretary's lace bands, and the tould have fallen to Fisticuffs but for his Episcopal Highness (who laughed till his Sides Shook again) co that they should be separated by the Lacqueys This was the most jovial Bishop that I did ood kind of n to his subjects, especially to the Fe as I was, and given to Pleasures, I could not help lifting upkind of life held by a Christian Prelate And it is certain that nitaries were at this tiht no scandal in a Bishop to Drink, or to Dice, or to gallivant after Damosels: but woe be to hi (that had a cassock over it) was held to be a most Heinous and Unpardonable Sin

Next to Ratisbon, where Mr Pinchin was Laid up with a Fever brought on by High Living, and forboth to Mr Hodge and myself the Greatest Anxiety; for, with all his Faults and absurd Hu about the Little Man that made us Bear with him And to be in his Service, for all his capricious and passing Meannesses, was to be in very Good Quarters indeed He was dreadfully frightened at the prospect of Slipping his Cable in a Foreign Land, and was accusto the Delirium that accompanied the Fever, to callhi with the Waves in the Agonies of the crarew better, to our Infinite Relief, the old fit of Economy came upon him, and he must needs make up hisno other nourishment, until his Doctor tells him that if he did not fall to with a Roast chicken and a flask of White Wine, he would sink and Die froan to Pick up a bit, and to Relish his Victuals; but it oful to see the countenance he pulled when the Doctor's Bill was brought hihty Pounds sterling to pay for a Sickness of Forty Days Of course he swore that he had not had a tithe of the Draughts and Mixtures that were set down to him,--and he had not indeed consumed them bodily, for the poor little Wretch would have assuredly Died had he sed a Twentieth Part of the Vile Messes that the Pill-blistering Gentlehts and Mixtures had all duly arrived, and we in our Discretion had uncorked them, and thrown the ue forsooth (so he said) with the Doctor to Eat and Ruin him, and 'twas not till the latter had threatened to appeal to the Burgomaster, and to have us all clapped up in the Town Gaol for roving adventurers (for they h Hand at Ratisbon), that the convalescent would consent to Discharge the Pill-blisterer's de even that all this Muckwash had been supplied, the Doctor must have been after all an Extortioner, and have made a Smart Profit out of that said Fever; for he presses a co me also privately a couple of Golden Ducats; nor have I any doubt that the Innkeeper had also his colishman, and was duly satisfied by Meinheer Bolus

There was the Innkeeper's bill itself to be unpouched, and ato think that because he had been sick it was our Duty to have laid abed too, sing nought but Draughts and Slops Truth was, that we should not have been Equal to the task of Nursing and Tending so difficult a Patient had we not taken Fortifying and Substantial Nourishup with a Grave and Reverent countenance, and taking our Four Meals a day, with Refreshi+ng Soups bethiles

And I have always found that the vicinage of a Sick Roory and Thirsty, and that a Moribund, albeit he can take neither Bite nor Sup his, the cook's best Friend, and the Vintner's ain, Mr Pinchin falls nevertheless into a state of Dark Melancholy and Despondency, talking now of returning to England and ending his days there, and now entertaining an even Stranger Fancy that had co his sickness according to the best of our Capacity, but felt nevertheless the want of some Woman's hand to help us Now all the Maids in the House were mortally afraid of the Fever, and would not so much as enter the Sick Man's apartment, much less make his bed; while, if we had not taken it at our own Risk to pro, the cowardly knave would have turned us out, Neck and Crop, and we should have been forced to convey our poor Sufferer to a common Hospital But there was in this City of Ratisbon a convent of Pious Ladies who devoted themselves wholly (and without Fee or Reward for the e happening to lish Banker--one Mr Sturt, as a Romanist, but a very civil kind of man--he sends to the convent, and there comes down forthwith to our Inn a dear Good Nun that turned out to be the most zealous and patient Nurse that I have ever ht and day with the Patient, and could scarcely be persuaded to take ever so little needful Rest and Refresh to the sufferer's wants, she was Praying, although it did scandalise Mr Hodge a little to see her tell her Beads; and when Mr

Pinchin ell enough to eat his first slice of chicken, and sip his first beaker of white wine, she Clapped her Hands for joy, and sang a little Latin Hymn When it came to her dismissal, this Excellent Nun (the whole of whose Behaviour was ) at first stoutly refused to accept of any Recompense for her services (which, truly, no Gold, Silver, or Jewels could have fitly rewarded); and I am ashahtcap on, was at first inclined to take the Good Sister at her Word Mr

Hodge, however, showed hi, and, as was usual with hi, however, like a Calf when the Chaplain told him that he could not in Decency do less than present a su about Forty Pounds of our Money) to the convent; for personal or private Guerdon the Nun positively refused to take So the Money was given, to the great delectation of the Sisterhood, who, I believe, lish Lord as they called him, whether he desired it or not

Sorry a an Incident should have had anything like a Dark side But 'tis always thus in the World, and there is no Rose without a Thorn My master, thanks to his Chaplain, and, it may be, likewise to my own Hu of hi, had come out of this convent and sick-nurse affair with Infinite credit to hieneral Everywhere in Ratisbon was his Liberality applauded; but, alas! the publicity that was given to his Donation speedily brought upon us a Plague and Swarm of Ravenous Locusts and Bloodsuckers There were as e; there were Nuns of all kinds of orders, many of whom, I am afraid, no better than they should be; there were Black Monks and Gray Monks and Brown Monks and White Monks, Monks of all the colours of the Rainbow, for aught I can tell There were Canons and Chapters and Priories and Brotherhoods and Sisterhoods and Ecclesiastical Hospitals and Priors' Aler fry of holyto live only for the next world, but reasy, lazy, worthless Rabble-Rout they were, ion a mere Pretext for Mendicancy and the worst of crie School them of the Jesuit, Capuchin, and Benedictine orders; uages, and able to twist you round their Little Fingers with False Rhetoric and Lying Persuasions These Snakes in the grass got about h we, as True Protestants and Faithful Servants, did our utainst 'em, they would come in at the Keyhole, and if you made the Window fast, they would slip down the Chi Petitions, and Fraudulent Representations, did so Badger, Bait, Beleaguer, and Bully him, that the poor Man knew not which Way to Turn

They too did y, and each order of Friars see opinion that all ore cowls cut in another shape than theirs, or shaved their pates differently,at Mr Pinchin's Purse-strings, and their cry was ever that of the Horse-Leech's Three Daughters--”Give, give!”

Thus they did extract fro the Sallee Rovers ten Citizens of Ratisbon fallen into that doleful captivity; although I do on my conscience believe that there were not five native-born men in the whole city who had ever seen the Salt Sea, much less a Sallee Rover Next was a donation for a petticoat for this Saint, and a wig for that one; a score of Ducats for a School, another for an Hospital for Lepers; until it was Ducats here and Ducats there all day long Nor was this the worst; for an to be Troubled in the Spirit, and to cry out against the Vanities of the World, and to sigh after the Blessedness of a Life passed in Seclusion and Contemplation

”I'll turn Monk, I will,” he cried out one day; ”my Lord Duke of Wharton did it, and why should not I?”