THE FITZ-BOODLE PAPERS.*

FITZ-BOODLE'S CONFESSIONS.

George Fitz-Boodle, esquire, To give him up my cob in exchange for

* "The Fitz-Boodle Papers " first appeared in "Fraser's Magazine” for the year 1842.

goes; and so ravenously hungry was I, that I was obliged to walk off to Crockford's for supper.

course, I don't know; but you will remember that Richelieu and Marlborough could not spell, and, egad! I am an honest man, and desire to be no better than they. I know that it is the matter, and not the manner, which is of importance. Have the goodness, then, to let one of your understrappers correct the spelling and the grammar of my papers; and you can give him a few shillings in my name for his trouble.

Begging you to accept the assurance of my high consideration, I am, sir, Your obedient servant,

What is it that makes you literary persons so stupid? I have met various individuals in society who I was told were writers of books, and that sort of thing, and, expecting rather to be amused by their conversation, have invariably found them dull to a degree, and as for information, without a particle of it. Sir, I actually asked one of these fellows, "What was the nick to seven ?" and he stared in my face, and said he didn't know. He was hugely over-dressed in satin, rings, chains, and so forth; and at the beginning of dinner was disposed to be rather talkative and pert; but P.S. By the way, I have said in my little sally silenced him, I promise | my letter that I found all literary peryou, and got up a good laugh at his sons vulgar and dull. Permit me to expense too. "Leave George alone," contradict this with regard to yoursaid little Lord Cinqbars, "I warrant self. I met you once at Blackwall, he'll be a match for any of you literary I think it was, and really did not fellows." Cinqbars is no great wise- remark any thing offensive in your acre; but, indeed, it requires no great accent or appearance. wiseacre to know that.

What is the simple deduction to be drawn from this truth? Why, this that a man to be amusing and well-informed, has no need of books at all, and had much better go to the world and to men for his knowledge. There was Ulysses, now, the Greek fellow engaged in the Trojan war, as I dare say you know; well, he was the cleverest man possible, and how? From having seen men and cities, their manners noted and their realms surveyed, to be sure. So have I. I have been in every capital, and can order a dinner in every language in Europe.

My notion, then, is this. I have a great deal of spare time on my hands, and as I am told you pay a handsome sum to persons writing for you, I will furnish you occasionally with some of my views upon men and things; occasional histories of my acquaintance, which I think may amuse you; personal narratives of my own; essays, and what not. I am told that I do not spell correctly. This, of

GEORGE SAVAGE FITZ-Boodle.

BEFORE Commencing the series of moral disquisitions, &c., which I intend, the reader may as well know who I am, and what my past course of life has been. To say that I am a Fitz-Boodle is to say at once that I am a gentleman. Our family has held the estate of Boodle ever since the reign of Henry II.; and it is out of no ill will to my elder brother, or unnatural desire for his death, but only because the estate is a very good one, that I wish heartily it was mine: I would say as much of Chatsworth or Eton Hall.

I am not, in the first place, what is called a ladies' man, having contracted an irrepressible habit of smoking after dinner, which has obliged me to give up a great deal of the dear creatures' society; nor can I go much to country-houses for the same reason. Say what they will, ladies do not like you to smoke in their bed-rooms; their silly little noses scent out the odor upon the chintz, weeks after you have left them. Sir John has been

caught coming to bed particularly | beard, the women of the harem do not merry and redolent of cigar-smoke; disturb his meditations, but only add young George, from Eton, was absolutely found in the little green-house puffing an Havanna; and when discovered, they both lay the blame upon Fitz-Boodle. "It was Mr. Fitz-Boodle, mamma," says George, "who offered me the cigar, and I did not like to refuse him." "That rascal Fitz seduced us, my dear," says Sir John, "and kept us laughing until past midnight.” ́Her ladyship instantly sets me down as a person to be avoided. George," whispers she to her boy, promise me, on your honor, when you go to town, not to know that man. And when she enters the breakfast-room for prayers, the first greeting is a peculiar expression of countenance, and inhaling of breath, by which my lady indicates the presence of some exceedingly disagreeable odor in the room. She makes you the faintest of courtesies, and regards you, if not with a flashing eye," as in the novels, at least with a "distended nostril." During the whole of the service, her heart is filled with the blackest gall towards you; and she is thinking about the best means of getting you out of the house.

What is this smoking that it should be considered a crime? I believe in my heart that women are jealous of it, as of a rival. They speak of it as of some secret, awful vice that seizes upon a man, and makes him a pariah from genteel society. I would lay a guinea that many a lady who has just been kind enough to read the above lines lays down the book, after this confession of mine that I am a smoker, and says, “Oh, the vulgar wretch!" and passes on to something else.

to the delight of them by tinkling on
a dulcimer and dancing before him.
When Professor Strumpff of Göttin-
gen takes down No. 13 from the wall,
with a picture of Beatrice Cenci upon
it, and which holds a pound of canas-
ter, the Frau Professorin knows that
for two hours Hermann is engaged,
and takes up her stockings and knits
in quiet. The constitution of French
society has been quite changed within
the last twelve years: an ancient and
respectable dynasty has been over-
thrown; an aristocracy which Napo-
leon could never master has disap-
peared: and from what cause? I do
not hesitate to say,-from the habit of
smoking. Ask any man whether, five
years before the revolution of July, if
you wanted a cigar at Paris, they did
not bring you a roll of tobacco with a
straw in it? Now, the whole city
smokes; society is changed; and be
sure of this, ladies, a similar combat
is going on in this country at present
between cigar-smoking and you. Do
you suppose you will conquer? Look
over the wide world, and see that
your adversary has overcome it. Ger-
many has been puffing for threescore
years; France smokes to a man.
you think you can keep the enemy
out of England? Psha! look at his
progress. Ask the club-houses, Have
they smoking-rooms, or not? Are
they not obliged to yield to the gene-
ral want of the age, in spite of the
resistance of the old women on the
committees? I, for my part, do not
despair to see a bishop lolling out of

Do

The Athenæum" with a cheroot in his mouth, or, at any rate, a pipe stuck in his shovel-hat.

The fact is, that the cigar is a But as in all great causes and in rival to the ladies, and their conqueror promulgating new and illustrious thetoo. In the chief pipe-smoking na-ories, their first propounders and extions they are kept in subjection. ponents are generally the victims of While the chief, Little White Belt, their enthusiasm, of course the first smokes, the women are silent in his preachers of smoking have been wigwam; while Mahomet Ben Jaw- martyrs, too; and George Fitzbrahim causes volumes of odorous in- Boodle is one. The first gas-man cense of Latakia to play round his was ruined; the inventor of steam

I

sprung towards that unfortunate
person, to set him an imposition.
Every thing, in fact, but tobacco he
could forgive. Why did cursed for-
tune bring him into the rooms over
mine? The odor of the cigars made
his gentle spirit quite furious; and
one luckless morning, when I was
standing before my oak," and
chanced to puff a great bouffée of
Varinas into his face, he forgot his
respect for my family altogether (I
was the second son,
was the second son, and my brother
a sickly creature then, he is now
sixteen stone in weight, and has a
half-score of children); gave me a
severe lecture, to which I replied
rather hotly, as was my wont. And
then came demand for an apology;
refusal on my part; appeal to the
dean; convocation; and rustication
of George Savage Fitz-Boodle.

engine printing became a pauper. began to smoke in days when the task was one of some danger, and paid the penalty of my crime. I was flogged most fiercely for my first cigar; for, being asked to dine one Sunday evening with a half-pay colonel of dragoons (the gallant, simple, humorous Shortcut heaven bless him! I have had many a guinea from him who had so few), he insisted upon my smoking in his room at The Salopian," and the consequence was, that I became so violently ill as to be reported intoxicated upon my return to Slaughter-House School, where I was a boarder, and I was whipped the next morning for my peccadillo. At Christ Church, one of our tutors was the celebrated lamented Otto Rose, who would have been a bishop under the present Government, had not an immoderate My father had taken a second wife indulgence in water-gruel cut short (of the noble house of Flintskinner), his elegant and useful career. He and Lady Fitz-Boodle detested smokwas a good man, a pretty scholar and ing, as a woman of her high principoet (the episode upon the discovery ples should. She had an entire of cau-de-Cologne, in his prize-poem mastery over the worthy old gentleon "The Rhine," was considered a man, and thought I was a sort of masterpiece of art, though I am not demon of wickedness. The old man much of a judge myself upon such went to his grave with some similar matters), and he was as remarkable for notion, heaven help him! and left his fondness for a tuft as for his ner-me but the wretched twelve thousand vous antipathy to tobacco. As ill- pounds secured to me on my poor luck would have it, my rooms (in mother's property. Tom Quad) were exactly under his; and I was grown by this time to be a confirmed smoker. I was a baronet's son (we are of James the First's creation), and I do believe our tutor could have pardoned any crime in the world but this. He had seen me in a tandem, and at that moment was seized with a violent fit of sneezing (sternutatory paroxysm he called it) at the conclusion of which I was a mile down the Woodstock Road. He had seen me in pink, as we used to call it, swaggering in the open sunshine across a grass-plat in the court; but spied out opportunely a servitor, one Todhunter by name, who was going to morning chapel with his shoestring untied, and forthwith.

In the army, my luck was much the same. I joined the — th Lancers, Lieut.-Col. Lord Martingale, in the year 1817. I only did duty with the regiment for three months. We were quartered at Cork, where I found the Irish doodheen and tobacco the pleasantest smoking possible; and was found by his lordship, one day upon stable duty, smoking the shortest, dearest little dumpy clay-pipe in the world.

"Cornet Fitz-Boodle," said my lord, in a towering passion, " from what blackguard did you get that pipe?"

I omit the oaths which garnished invariably his lordship's conversation. "I got it, my lord," said I, "from

one Terence Mullins, a jingle-driver, | gets only benevolent silence and with a packet of his peculiar tobacco. thoughtful good-humored observation You sometimes smoke Turkish, I - I found at the age of twenty all believe; do try this. Isn't it good? my prospects in life destroyed. And in the simplest way in the world cared not for woman in those days: I puffed a volume into his face. "I the calm smoker has a sweet compansee you like it," said I, so coolly, that ion in his pipe. I did not drink imand I do believe the horses moderately of wine; for though a friend to trifling potations, to excessively strong drinks tobacco is abhorrent. I never thought of gambling, for the lover of the pipe has no need of such excitement; but I was considered a monster of dissipation in my family, and bade fair to come to ruin.