THE PRESCRIPTION. Doctor Snake was a M. D. as tall Never enter'd man thinner or longer. Doctor Snake had a dark little eye, That peer'd through an eyebrow of thicket One day upon rich Widow Spry, As she open'd the latch of her wicket. Doctor Snake felt a soft fascination Doctor Snake tried infusions and lotions, Horse aloes, burnt alum, agaric, Crabs eyes, calomel-all but the Church. Doctor Snake tried in vain-his disorder He fruitlessly sought to avoid her, The cause of his pain and vexation. Doctor Snake met her last at Miss Snapper's, Like most "blues" with a tongue a bell-clapper's Doctor Snake made a friend of her blueness, Said his heart to the fair was all trueness, That he dared not his sickness discover, That the system Brunonian he 'd ventured Miss Snapper look'd serious-(she'd rather "You may take quantum suff. of the lady,! Add a drachm of gold ring and a prayer, In dispensary canonical ready, Commingle, and swallow with care.” GRIMM'S GHOST. LETTER XXIII. My Wife's Relations. I was mainly induced to marry by reading in Cowper's Poems something similar to the following: Domestic happiness, thou only bliss That has survived the fall! Cowper, to be sure, was never married in propria persona: but he wrote so movingly about sofas and hissing tea-urns, and evening walks, not to mention fireplaces and shining stores of needles, that there is no doubt he would have made a jewel of a husband, if Lady Austen, Lady Throckmorton, and Mrs. Unwin had not been otherwise engaged. My aunt Edwards has him bound in two volumes, in red morocco, and always takes him in her carriage into the Regent's Park. She has two propositions, which she is ready to back for self-evidentism against any two in Euclid; the one is, that Cowper is the greatest poet in the English language, and the other, that when Fitzroy-square is finished (it has been half-finished nearly half a century), it will be the handsomest square in all London. Be that as it may, I took Cowper's hint about domestic bliss: married Jemima Bradshaw, and took a house in Coram street, Russell-square We passed the honeymoon at Cheltenham; and my aunt Edwards lent us her Cowper in two volumes to take with us, that we might not be dull. We had a pretty considerable quantity of each other's society at starting, which I humbly opine to be not a good plan. I am told that pastry-cooks give their new apprentices a carte blanche among the tarts and jellies, to save those articles from their subsequent satiated stomachs. Young couples should begin with a little aversion, according to Mrs. Malaprop; old ones sometimes end with not a little. but it is not for me to be diving into causes and consequences-Benedicts have nothing to do with the laws of Hymen, but to obey them. At Cheltenham my wife and I kept separate volumes. She studied "The Task" on a bench in the High-street, and I read Alexander Selkirk on the Well Walk. Long before the expiration of the period of our allotted banishment from town, I could repeat the whole poem by heart, uttering O Solitude, where are the charms with an emphasis which shewed that I felt what I read.-On our arrival in Coram-street, I found such a quantity of cards, containing the names of relations on both sides, all solicitous about our health, that I proposed to my wife an instant lithographic circular, assuring them severally that we were well, and hoped they were the same. This, however, would not do. In fact the bride-cake had done the business at starting. "Well, my dear Jemima," said I, “our confectioner did the civil thing at the outset, but your relations have been rather niggardly in returning the compliment. I think a few pounds of lump sugar would have been a more acceptable boon in exchange. They have filled our card-rack, and sent our japan canister empty away." My wife smiled at my simplicity, and ordered a glass-coach, to return their calls. The poor horses had a weary day's work of it: Mr. George Bradshaw lived in Finsbury-square, Mr. William Bradshaw in the Paragon, Kent-road, Mr. Eneas Bradshaw in Green-street, Grosvenor-square, Mr. and Mrs. Andrews (her maiden name was Jane Bradshaw) in Morning-lane, Hackney, and Mrs. Agatha Bradshaw, my wife's maiden aunt, in Elysium Row, Fulham. All these good people had a natural wish to gape and stare at the bridegroom: dinner-cards were the consequence, and the glass-coach was again in requisition. Mr. George Bradshaw, of Finsbury Square, was the first personage on the visiting list. From him I learned that the street called Old Bethlem, was newly christened Liverpool-street, and that the street adjoining took the name of Bloomfield street, (I suppose upon the principle of lucus a non lucendo, because the prime minister and the farmer's boy were never seen in either); that Bethlem Hospital was removed to St. George's Fields; and that there was not a brick of London-wall now left standing. His wife was civil and obliging; but the next time I dine there, I will trouble Mrs. George Bradshaw not to pour my shrimp sauce over my salmon, but to deposit it on a detached portion of my plate. I sat at table next to a bill-broker in boots, who remembered John Palmer at the Royalty Theatre.-The Paragon in the Kent-road next opened its semi-circular bosom to deposit my spouse and me at the dinner-table of Mr. William Bradshaw. Here a crowd of company was invited to meet us, consisting of my wife's first cousins from Canonbury, and several cousins from the Mile-end-road: worthy people, no doubt, but of no more moment to me than the body-guard of the Emperor of China. Matters were thus far rather at a discount; but the next party on the dinner-list raised them considerably above par. Mr. Æneas Bradshaw, of Green-street, Grosvenor-square, was a clerk in the Audit-office, and shaved the crown of his head to look like Mr. Canning. Whether, in the event of trepanning, the resemblance would have gone deeper down, I will not attempt to decide. Certain however it is, that he talked and walked with an air of considerable sagacity: his politeness too was exemplary: he ventured to hope that I was in good health: he had been given to understand that I had taken a house in Coram-street: he could not bring himself for a moment to entertain a doubt that it was a very comfortable house; but he must take leave to be permitted to hint, that of all the houses he ever entered, that of Mr. Canning on Richmond Terrace, in Spring Gardens, was the most complete: Lord Liverpool's house, to be sure, was a very agreeable mansion, and that of Mr. Secretary Peel was a capital affair: but still, with great deference, he must submit to my enlightened penetration that Richmond Terrace outstripped them all. It was meant to be implied by this harangue, that he, Mr. Æneas Bradshaw, was in the habit of dining at each of the above enumerated residences; and the bend of my head was meant to imply that I believed it :-two specimens of lying which I recommend to my friend Mrs. Opie for her next edition. I now began to count the number of miles that the sending forth of our bride-cake would cause us to trot over: not to mention eighteen shillings per diem for the glass-coach, and three and sixpence to the coachman. My wife and I had now travelled from Coram-street to Finsbury-square, to the Paragon in Kent-road, and to Green-street, Grosvenor square; and I did not find my "domestic happiness" at all increased by the peregrinations. As I re-entered my house from the last-mentioned visit, the housemaid put into my hands a parcel. It was a present from my aunt Edwards of the two volumes which had been lent to us during the honeymoon, with my aunt's manuscript observations in the margin. Well, thought I, at all events I have gained something by my marriage: here are two volumes of Cowper bound in red morocco: I will keep them by me, "a gross of green spectacles is better than nothing:" so saying, I opened one of the volumes at a venture, and read as follows: "The sound of the church-going bell These valleys and rocks never heard.” Happy valleys, thought I, and primitive rocks.-The entrance of my wife with another dinner-card in her hand, marred my further meditations. Mr. and Mrs. Andrews now took their turn to request the honour of our company to dinner in Morning-lane, Hackney. There was something in the sound of Morning-lane that I did not dislike. I thought of Guido's Aurora; of "Life's Morning March," in the Soldier's Dream; of "Oh, how sweet is the Morning," in Lionel and Clarissa ; and of "Across the Downs this morning," as sung by Storace in my own morning of life. What an erroneous anticipation! Morning-lane must be a corruption of Mourning-lane. Indeed the conversation at table strengthened the imputed etymology, for nothing was talked but the shameful height to which the exhumation of the dead had been carried in Hackney church-yard. And yet we are watched, said one. Ay, and gas-lighted, said another. It is a shame, cried a third, that honest people cannot rest quiet in their graves. It will never be discontinued, cried a fourth, till a few of those felonious fellows are hanged at the Old Bailey with their shovels about their necks :—and so on to the end of the first course. As every body looked at the bridegroom in seeming expectation of a seconder of their multifarious motions, I ventured to set forth the grounds of my dissent. I observed, that, as the days of Amina in the Arabian Nights had passed away, I took it for granted that these highly-rebuked exhumators did not raise the bodies to eat them that their object, in all probability, was to sell them to the anatomists for dissection: that the skill of the latter must be held to be greatly improved by the practice; and, therefore, that I saw no great objection to taking up a dead body, if the effect produced was that of prolonging the continuance upon earth of a living one. My line of argument was not at all relished by the natives of a parish who all feared a similar disturbance; and Mrs. Oldham, whose house looks into the church-yard, on the Homerton side, whispered to a man in powder with a pigtail, her astonishment that Jemima Bradshaw should have thrown herself away upon a man of such libertine principles. One more glass-coach yet remained to be ascended. I felt not a little wearied; but the sight of land encouraged me. So, like a young stock-broker enrolled a member of the Whitehall Club, I pulled for dear life, and entered the haven of Mrs. Agatha Bradshaw, my wife's maiden aunt, in Elysium-row, Fulham. The poodle-dog bit the calf of my leg; the servant-maid crammed my best beaver hat into that of a chuckle-headed Blackwell-hall factor, who wore powder and pomatum; and there was boiled mutton for dinner! All this, however, time and an excellent constitution might have enabled me to master. But when Agatha Bradshaw, spinster, began to open the thousand and one sluices of self-love, by occupying our ears with her "Memoirs, Anecdotes, Facts and Opinions," shewing that her butcher was the best of all possible butchers, and her baker the best of all possible bakers reminding us that her father, the late Sir Barnaby Bradshaw, knight and leather-seller, was hand and glove with the butler of the late Lord Ranelagh,-the trees of whose mansion waved sullenly in our view that Mat, the Fulham coach-driver, grew his jokes, and Delve, the market-gardener, his cucumbers, upon hints given by the said late Sir B. B.: and that she, the said Agatha, in answer to a question as to the second series of Sayings and Doings, "read very little English," I could not but mutter to myself, "Will nobody move for an injunction to stay this waste of words? Here is a palpable leaf stolen from the family-tree of another spinster higher up the stream of the same river!" So much for my wife's relations; and, for ought I know, the mischief may not end here. There may be uncles and aunts in the back-ground. It is all very well for my wife: she is made much of: dressed in white satin and flowers, and placed at the right-hand of the lady of the mansion at dinner as a bride; whilst I, as a bridegroom, am thought nothing of at all, but placed, sans ceremonie, at the bottom of the table during this perilous month of March, when the wind cuts my legs in two every time the door opens. I must confess I am not so pleased with Cowper's Works as I used to be. "Domestic happiness" (if every married body's is like mine,) may have "survived the Fall," but it has received a compound fracture in the process. These repeated glasscoaches, not to mention dinners in return, will make a terrible hole in our eight hundred and fifty pounds a-year (my wife will keep calling it a thousand) and all this to entertain or be entertained by people who would not care three straws if I dropped into a soapboiler's vat. It is possible that felicity may reach me at last perhaps when my aunt Edwards' Fitzroy-square gets its two deficient sides and becomes the handsomest square in all London. In the mean time "the grass grows." I say nothing but this I will say, should any thing happen to the present soother of my sorrows, and should I be tempted once more to enter the Temple of Hymen, my advertisement for a new helpmate shall run in the following form: "Wanted a wife whose relations lie in a ring-fence." |