FITZ-BOODLE’S CONFESSIONS.

New Zealand Colonist and Port Nicholson Advertiser, Volume I, Issue 36, 2 December 1842, Page 4

FITZ-BOODLE’S CONFESSIONS.

(Extracted from Fraser s Magazine.) I am not, in the first place, what is called a ladies' man, having contracted an irrepressible habit of smoking alter 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 vou to smoke in their bed-rooms ; their silly little noses scent out the odour upon the chintz, weeks after you have left them. Sir John has been caught coming to bed particularly* merry, and redolent of cigar smoke. Young George, from Eton, was absolutely found in the little green-house pulling a Havannuli; and when discovered, they both lay the blame upon Fitz-Boodle. “ It was Mr. Fitz-Boodle, mamma/’ says George, “ who offered me the citrar, and I didn’t like to refuse him.” “That rascal Fitz seduced us, my dear,” says Sir John, “ and kept us laughing until past midnight.” ! Icr ladyship instantly sets me down as a person t o be avoided. “ George,” whispers she to her boy, “ promise me, on your honour, 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 odour in the room. She makes you the faintest of curtseys, 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. The fact is, that the cigar is a rival to the ladies, and their conqueror too. In the chief pipesmoking nations they are kept in subjection. While the chief, Little White Belt, smokes, the women are silent in his wigwam ; while Mahomet Ben Jawbrakine causes volumes of odorous incense of Latakia to play round his beard, i the women of the harem do not disturb his meditations, but only add to the delight of them by tinkling on a dulcimer, and dancing before him. When Professor Strumpff, of Gottingen, takes down No. 13. from the wall, with a picture of Beatrice Cenci upon it, and which holds a pound of canaster, the Frau Professor in knows that for two hours her 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 overthrown; an aristocracy which Napoleon could never master has disappeared : 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. Germany has been puffing for three-score years; France smokes to a man. Do you think you can keep the enemy out of England ? Pshaw ! look at his progress. Ask the club-houses—Have they smoking-rooms, or not ? Are they not obliged to yield to the general 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 the Athenaeum with a cheroot in his mouth, or, at any rate, a pipe stuck in his shovel-hat. But, as in all great causes, and in promulgating new and illustrious theories, their first propounders and exponents are generally the victims of their enthusiasm—of course, the first preachers of smoking have been martyrs too; and George Fitz-Boodle is one. The first gasman was ruined; the inventor of steam-engine printing became a pauper. I 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!—l 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 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 indulgence in water-gruel cut short his elegant and useful career. He was a good man, a pretty scholar and poet (the episode upon the discovery of eau de Cologne, in

his prize poem on . “ The Rhine,” was considered a masterpiece of art, though I am not much of a judge myself upon such matters,) and he was as remarkable for his fondness for a tuft as for his nervous"antipathy to tobaccon As ill-luck would have it, my rooms (in 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’s first 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 (a 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 iffioe-string untied, and forthwith sprung towai™ that unfortunate person, to set him in imposition. Everything, in fact, but tobacco, he could forgive. Why did cursed fortune bring him into the rooms over mine ? The odour 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 bouffec cf Varinas into his face, he forgot his respect for my family altogether (I was the second son, and my brother a sickly creature then —he is now sixteen stone in weight, and has a halfscore 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 Edward Fitz-Boodle. My father had taken a second wife (of the noble house of Flint-skinner), and Lady Fitz-Boodle detested smoking, as a woman of her high principles should. She had an entire mastery over the worthy old gentleman, and thought I was a sort of demqn of wickedness. The old man went to his grave with some similar notion —Heaven help him! and left me but the wretched twelve thousand pounds secured to'me on my poor mother’s property. In the army, my luck was much the same. I joined the th lancers, Lieut. Colonel 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 the tobacco the pleasantest smoking possible; and was found one day upon stable duty, smoking the shortest, dearest, little, dumpy clay-pipe in the world. “ Cornet FitzBoodle,” 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 jingledriver, with a packet of his peculiar tobacco. You sometimes smoke Turkish, I believe ; do try this. Isn’t it good ?” And in the simplest way in the world I puffed a volume into his face. “ I see you like it,” said I, so coolly, that the men, and I do believe the horses, burst out laughing. He started back —choking almost, and recovered himself only to vent such a storm of oaths and curses, that I was compelled to request Captain Rawdon (the captain on duty) to take note of his lordship’s words ; and urn luckily, could not help adding a question which settled my business. “ You were good enough,” I said, “to ask me, my lord, from what blackguard I got my pipe ; might I ask from what blackguard you learned your language ?” This was quite enough. Had I said, “ from what gentleman did your lordship learn your language?” the point would have been quite as good, and my Lord Martingale would'have suffered in my place : as it was, I was so strongly recommended to sell out by his royal highness the commander-in-chief, that, being of a good-natured disposition, never knowing how to refuse a friend, I at once threw up my hopes of military distinction, and retired into civil life. My lord was kind enough to meet me afterwards, in a field in the Glaumireroad, where he put a ball into my leg. This I returned to him some years later, with about twenty-three others—black ones—when he came to be ballotted for at a club of which I have the honour to be a member. Thus, by the indulgence of a simple and harmless propensity—of a propensity which can inflict an injury upon no person or thing, except the coat and the person of him who indulged in it —of a custom honoured and observed in almost all the nations of the world —of a custom which, far from leading a man into any wickedness or dissipation to which youth is subject, but, on the contrary, begets only benevolent silence and thoughtful good-humoured observation, I found at the age of twenty, all my prospects in life destroyed. I cared not for woman in those days: the calm smoker has a sweet companion in his pipe : I did not drink immoderately 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. “ Look at George,”, my mother-in-law said to the genteel young Flint-skinners ; “ he entered the world with every prospect in life, and see in what an abyss of degradation his fatal habits have plunged him ! At school he

was flogged and disgraced, he was disgraced and rusticated at the university, he was disgraced and expelled from the army. He might have had. the living of Boodle (her ladyship gave it to one of her nephews), but he would liot take his degree ; his papa would have purchased him a troop —nay, a lieutenant-colonelcy some day, but for his fatal excesses. And now as long as my dear husband will listen to the voice of a wife who adores him—never, never shall he spend a shilling upon so worthless a young man. He has a small income from his mother, (I cannot but think that the first Lady Fitz-Boodle was a weak and misguided person); let him live upon his mere pittance as he can, and I heartily pray we may not hear of him in gaol!” My brother, after he came to the estate, married the ninth daughter of our neighbour, Sir John Spreadeagle; and Boodle-hall has seen a new little Fitz-Boodle with every succeeding spring. The dowager retired to Scotland with a large jointure and a wondrous heap of savings .Lady Fitz is a good creature, but she thinks me something diabolical, trembles when she sees me,, and gathers all her children about her, rushes into the nursery whenever I pay that little seminary a visit, and actually slapped poor little Frank’s ears one day when 1 was teaching him to ride upon the back of a Newfoundland dog. “ George,” said my brother to me, the last time I paid a visit to the old hall, “ don’t be angry, my dear fellow, but Maria is in a —hum—in a delicate situation, expecting her—hum—(the eleventh) —and do you know you frighten her ? It was but yesterday you met her in the rookery, you were smoking that enormous German pipe, and when she came in she had an hysterical seizure, and Drench says that in her situation it’s dangerous ; and I say, George, if you go to town you’ll find a couple of hundred at your bankers,” and with this the poor fellow shook me by the hand and called for a fresh bottle of claret. Since then he told me, with many hesitations, that my room at Boodle-hall had been made into a second nursery. I see my sister-in-law in London twice or thrice in the season, and the little people, who have almost forgotten to call me Uncle George. It’s hard, too, for I am a lonely man after all, and my heart yearns to them. The other day I smuggled a couple of them into my chambers, and had a little feast of cream and strawberries to welcome them. But it had like to have cost the nur-sery-maid (a Swiss girl that Fitz-Boodle hired somewhere in his travels) her place. My stepmamma, who happened to be in town, came flying down in her chariot, pounced upon the poor thing and the children in the midst of the entertainment; and when I asked her, with rather a bad grace to be sure, to take a chair and'a share of the feast, —“ Mr. Fitz-Boodle,” said she, “ I am not accustomed to sit down in a place that smells of tobacco like an alehouse —an alehouse inhabited by a serpent, sir ! A serpent! do you understand me ? who carries his poison into his brother’s own house, and purshues his eenfamous designs before his brother’s own children. Put on Miss Maria’s bonnet this instant. Mamsell, ontondy voo ? Metty le bonny a mamsell; and I shall take care, mamsell, that you return to Switzerland tomorrow. I’ve no doubt you are a relation of Courvoisier: out, oai, C-ourvoisier; vous comprenny ? and you shall certainly be sent back to your friends.”

The Crops. —We hear from all parts of the district that the young crops are unusually healthy, and already in such a forward state as to encourage the agriculturist to hope for an abundant harvest. Most of the corn crops have been sown early, in the prudent apprehension of the drought setting in to check their growth, which not having taken place, but on the contrary a series of moist weather has been experienced, they have had the advantage of more slow and natural vegetation, and hence a strong and sound stalk, which nothing now can affect but the hot winds, which, comparing the lateness and wetness of this season with that of former years, are' not likely to prevail until that stage of germination is past when they cannot act injuriously. The crops chiefly consist of wheat and oats, and but a very small portion of barley. It is not reckoned that the wheat grown this year will be sufficient to maintain the province without importing this article from other colonies, although it will considerably lessen it, and it may therefore be safely expected, from the encouragement received in this, that a much greater quantity of land will be laid down in wheat next; but it is believed there will be an abundance of oaten-hay produced to meet our wants, and supersede the necessity of making importations from Van Diemen’s Land, hitherto received in exchange for our beef and mutton, which, if they continue to want, must be paid for in hard cash. The potatoe crops also look well, both those planted early and late, and it is expected that a large quantity can be spared for exportation after our own wants have been supplied. There are but few new potatoes in the market, owing to the lateness of the season, and those of but an inferior description. The same remark applies to new peas, which are but scarce and of an inferior quality, from the same cause. —Cornwall Chronicle.