CARRIAGE PEOPLE.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXX, Issue 4553, 23 October 1875, Page 2 (Supplement)

CARRIAGE PEOPLE.

(From Belyi-avia.) The modern profligate is an cihinently well behaved, precise, reserved young simpleton He wastes his estates, aud sometimes wholly ruins himself before ho is twenty-five, without vetting any enjoyment for his expenditure. Ho loses thousands by bettiug; but he is ashamed to bo seen in the ring or at Tattersali's, and Captain Kitely, late of the ISthPandours, hots for his lordship “ on commission.” He would shudder at the thought of entering a common gambling-house, or calling a main with a vulgar box of “bones;” so ho is elegantly swindled at baevamt or chemin de fain the cardrooin at the Richelieu Club, or he loses five thousand pounds at the ingenious and intellectual game of American bowls. As for Kate HackabOut aud Dolly Drury, those youug ladies are far too sensible nowadays to incur the risk of being sent to Bridewell, there to beat hemp and suffer stripes. What do I speak of ? Bridewell itself has disappeared, and Mr. Koyser’s new hotel has risen, and the new Royal Mint will rise, on the site of the old grimy gaol, every brick in whoso dingy walls might Lavo been cemented by Hie tears of

hapless women and naughty 'prentice lads. Mesdames Hackahout and Drury have nothing to fear from a sudden visit on the part of Justice de Veil and the parish constables. Only fancy Sir Thomas Henry or Mr. Knox going the round of the realms of naughtiness, and taking a fair (and false) haired Brompton and piebald-pouy-driving South Belgravia (it used to be called Pimlico) into custody. As Alcibiades lias grown more and more brainless and vapid, so have the naughty dames of Athens grown more and more shrewd and worldly-wise. Do you know Mrs. Catesby Parkhack ? You may oa’l her Mrs. Colonel Parkhack, it being currently reported (by herself) that her gallant husband, late of the Omnithug Irregulars, is in India, political resident at the Court of the Rajah of Rottencore, If you write to her as the Hou. Mrs. Parkhack, she will not be displeased ; and in her dining-room hangs a fine line engraving after Sir Pabian Fitzdottrel's R.A. well-known portrait of the Right Hon. the Earl of Notimberlaud, presented to him by his tenantry on the Elsewhere estate. "Was not Mrs. Catesby Parkhack a relative of that distinguished nobleman? She was nothing whatever of the kind. A hundred and odd years ago she was Kate. Hackahout —Hogarth’s Kate Hackahout, who came to Loudon in the waggon, and was met I in the inn-yard by vile old Chartres ; who was kept by the Jew money-broker, and jilted him ; who lived with Jemmy Dalton the highwayman ; who fell into poverty, and stole a watch, and was taken up by Justice de Veil and his merry men, and was so sent to Bridewell to have her shoulders swinged by the beadle. But Mrs Colonel Catesby Parkhack has the tiniest, prettiest house in Mayfair you ever beheld. Her equipage—a low phaeton, with a pair of exquisitely-matched bright bay ponies—is the talk of the town ; she has been seen on the box-seat of the Duke of Doublethong’s drag (his grace is a leading member of the Jarvey Club); the broughams and the cabriolets of the grandest dandies in Loudon wait at all hours of the day and night at her door; she patronises the entire brigade of Foot Guards, but rather looks down on the Blues as being sons of country squires, rich merchants, and the like; and she knows all the Corps Diplomatique. She toils not, neither does she spin (the hussey!) but she lives at the rate of at least three thousand a year; and more than that, she never runs into debt; is the most punctual of paymistresses ; deals at the Civil Service Co-operative Stores ; has a banking account and a cheque-book; and, I have not the slightest doubt, has put by something comfortable for a rainy day in Indian Guaranteed or Turkish Consolides. Mrs. Catesby Parkhack is an eminently well-behaved, discreet, and mngee person. She is too judicious to attend St. James’s, Piccadilly, or St. Kidwhite’s Chapel, Lavender-street, Mayfair ; hut she never misses any of the Sunday “functions” at the fashionable Ritualistic church of St. Punchinello, Pimlico.