Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 66, No 409, November 1849

"I fear," said I, "your exertions to entertain your guests have wearied you."

He made no reply. I went up to him. He seemed to awake as from a reverie.

"Hang it!" said Gingham, in a plaintive tone, "there should have been some mashed potatoes."

"Never mind, my dear sir – excellent breakfast; everything went off capitally. I, for one, enjoyed it amazingly."

"Yes," said Gingham, mournfully; "but, to make the thing complete, there should have been some mashed potatoes with the bloaters. Had I only known of it in time! By the bye," added he, "I thought once or twice, you did not seem entirely at your ease. Nothing more gentlemanly, my dear sir, than your general manner. But at times, it struck me, you did appear a little – a little – stiffish. You must get rid of that before we reach headquarters."

"Well," said I, "I'll tell you. That 'captain' stuck in my gizzard. There's the truth. Coupled with what we heard previously, and Major M – must have known that we heard it, it was just the same as calling me a donkey to my face."

"Oh, that's nothing," said Gingham. "Don't distress yourself about such trifles as that."

"To tell you the truth," said I, "the whole thing appeared to me a little too free and easy. Here were you and I preparing to take a quiet breakfast, when those three guerilla fellows, with their off-hand Peninsular manners, actually took us by storm, made a most ferocious attack on your barrel of herrings, sunk it one-third, drank up your two bottles of liqueurs, and civilly wished us good morning. Now, when I was at college, to be sure we were merry enough, no etiquette, no ceremony there. But then there was a certain gentlemanly feeling, which forbade vulgar familiarity in any shape. And as to people that assumed, or made free, I always kept them at arm's length."

"Well, Mr Y – ," said Gingham, "I see plainly how it is. Follow my advice. If you can't take a joke, resign your appointment, forfeit your money, and return to London. You'll find it awkward enough living among military men on actual service."

"I trust," said I, "by adhering to my invariable rule, never to offer a deliberate insult, but at the same time never to brook one, go where I will, I shall be fortunate enough to escape disagreeable rencontres."

"Nonsense!" said Gingham, looking very serious, and speaking quite in a sharp and peremptory tone – "nonsense!" Then softening a little, "Rencontres, my dear sir? Rencontres? Nothing of the kind. Rencontres? You talk like a militia officer. Rencontres? You'll soon dismiss all that kind of thing from your thoughts, after you have seen two or three rencontres with the French. Rencontres? No, no; no field of forty footsteps at headquarters. Rencontres? It would be a perfect absurdity, where men have the chance of being shot gratis every day of their lives, without going out of the way for it. Rencontres? No; I did not mean that. What I meant to say was this: you would infallibly be made a general butt. Rencontres? Why, Mr Y – , if you show any nonsense of that sort, you'll be tormented to death. Rencontres? Oh, what lots of fun they'll take out of you! Meanwhile, think yourself fortunate that you are now getting a seasoning. I am truly glad, for your sake, that you have had the opportunity here at Falmouth, and will have the opportunity on your passage out, of seeing something of military men and modes before you join. You may, and probably will, be dubbed, on your arrival, a Johnny Newcome. But, at any rate, you will not be a Johnny Raw."

Gingham closed the conference by walking to the other end of the room, and steadfastly contemplating his own beautiful physiognomy in the glass. During our conversation, his hand had frequently visited his nose. He now stood opposite the mirror, slewing his head first this way, then that, and at length broke silence: —

"Well, I was not aware of it; but I do think that my nose is a little crooked."

"I presume," said I, "you have no sisters?"

"I have none," replied Gingham.

"Nor are you, I apprehend, a married man?"

"There, alas, you are right again," said Gingham; "but what has that to do with it?"

"Your wife, or your sisters, if you had any, would have told you that you have a very crooked nose."

"Well, but," said Gingham, "there's my mother. My dear mother never told me that my nose was crooked."

"Your mother, probably, is totally unconscious of the fact; and, should she hear any one else assert such a thing, would deny it most strenuously."

"Nay, but," said Gingham, "though I have neither sister nor wife, and supposing my dear mother to be blind to my personal defects, I have – in short, Mr Y – , before I left London, I took a tender leave of her whom I hope to persuade, on my next return from the Peninsula, to accept the hand and the heart of a Gingham. She did not tell me that my nose was crooked. She mentioned various obstacles to our union; but she never mentioned that."

"Then," said I, "depend upon it, she means to have you. And depend upon this, too; she will tell you your nose is crooked when you have made her Mrs Gingham, if she does not tell you so before."

"As to my walking sideways," said Gingham, "that's a palpable fiction."

"Here," said I, "come to this extremity of the room, and place yourself opposite the glass." He came, and placed himself accordingly.

"Now walk straight down upon, the glass, keeping your eye fixed upon your reflected nose."

"What nose? Which nose?" said Gingham, in a state of obvious alarm. "Do you mean the nose in my face?"

"I mean your nose in the glass." He walked as I had directed.

"Well, really," said Gingham, it's extraordinary; it's very curious. When I walk and look at my nose in the glass, it appears quite straight again – just as it ought to be, in the middle of my face."

"That's just it," said I. "Then you walk sideways. Depend upon it, if you walked straight, your nose would appear crooked."

He repeated the experiment again, and again, muttering to himself, "Very remarkable, very curious; quite a natural phenomenon."

"Don't distress yourself about your nose," said I; "it is a good enough nose, in magnitude respectable, though not strictly rectilinear. Make yourself easy; and say, with Erasmus, 'Nihil me pœnitet hugeous nasi.'"

CHAPTER III

Where Gingham got his classical knowledge, I had not at this time ascertained. Certain it is, he was a very fair classic. But there was one dreadful drawback to his character, and, in a man of his gravity, a strange one: I mean his offensive, horrid practice of making most atrocious Latin puns. A pun in English he viewed with utter contempt. It stirred his bile. No English pun escaped his lips. But for a Latin pun, he scrupled not to lay under contribution even the first-rate Latin poets, Virgil, Ovid – nay, his favourite author, Horace; and if I, influenced by bad example, was weak enough, in an unguarded moment, to commit the same offence, he stole my puns, and made them again as his own.

On the eve of our embarkation we strolled forth, after an early dinner, for a parting view of the sunset from the castle. Walking up town, we met the man of rum, the sleep-murdering Macbeth of the mail-coach. Still he was talking – for want of company, talking to himself. But his eyes were set, half-closed, and dim; his aspect was peculiarly meditative, and his course curvilinear. He had taken on board plus æquo of his own samples. Perceiving our approach, he gave a lurch to clear us. But his legs, being not altogether under management, brought him exactly in the direction which he sought to shun; his stomach, which had already suffered so many assaults in the coach, most unfortunately impinged upon my elbow; and again it was "ugh!" His gummy eyes expanded, and gleamed on us like two fresh-opened oysters. Awhile he gazed with drunken gravity; then, turning round, bent over the roadside gutter, as if about to tumble in, and jocosely imitated the operation of drawing a cork. His organs of vision then assumed a slow movement of horizontal oscillation, and gradually settled on a pastry-cook's shop over the way. Towards this point he directed his zigzag approaches, recommencing his agreeable conference with himself, in terms of which we could catch only the words – "Archimedes – screw – pneumatic chemistry – soda water – pop!" He left with us the odour of a very bad cigar, which led Gingham to remark that he was "backy plenus" in more senses than one.

The influence of bad example is dreadful. Emerging from the town in our way to the castle, we met a merry party, male and female, all equestrians save some six or eight, who occupied the interior and exterior of a post-chaise. Gingham, who saw into a thing at once, pronounced them a wedding party; and a buxom dame, who was mounted on a lively little west country galloway, the bride. "Pony subit conjux," said I. "Yes," said Gingham; "but if that dear lady rides so near the carriage, oh! oh! oh! she will infallibly be capsized! 'Pony sub curru nimium propinqui!'" We reached the hill in time, saw a glorious sunset, and returned to letter-writing, and a light supper on hashed duck.

As Gingham appears more than once upon the stage in the course of my Peninsular adventures, and I should really be sorry to annoy the reader, as much as I was annoyed myself, with his perpetual and abominable perversions of classic latinity, I beg leave to dispose of this part of the subject at once, before we get to sea. Suffice it to say, then, that in the spring of the year 1838, just a quarter of a century after the period of which I am now writing, I once more left London for Falmouth, en route to Lisbon, though with an object far different from that of my voyage now to be recorded, and in a far different capacity. Science, in these five-and-twenty years, had done wonders; and I had secured my passage in London, not by a miserable tub of a sailing packet, but by a well-found and fast Peninsular steamer. The day before the steamer was to start from Falmouth, I walked down to the water's side to take a view of her. On the quay stood Gingham. By one of those strange coincidences which sometimes happen in life, we had again met at Falmouth, and were again to cross the Bay of Biscay in company. I recognised him: he did not recognise me. Time had somewhat changed his look, his dress very little. Its predominant aspect was still white. His nose, too, was unmistakeable. Perceiving at once that he was, like myself, a passenger to the Peninsula, I availed myself of the freedom conceded in such cases, and commenced a conversation by some remark on the steamer.

"I presume, sir," said he, "you are a passenger?"

"Yes, Mr Gingham, and so are you. Glad to meet you." He stared, but admitted the fact.

"But, sir," said he, "you have the advantage of me."

"Well, well," said I, "you'll find me out to-morrow on board the Guadalquivir. Fine ship that. To-morrow, you know, as Horace said, when he was off by the steamer: – 'Cras, ingins! iterabimus æquor!"

The effect was instantaneous. Gingham did not speak, he shouted: – "Dine with me: I have got a john dory."

We walked off to the town – I rubbing my shoulder, which Gingham shook, when he shook my hand – he, for a few paces, thoughtful and silent. I expected a burst of sentiment.

"By the bye," said Gingham, "while your hand was in, you might just as well have quoted the other line, for that, also, refers to our voyage."

"The other line?"

"Yes, the other line. Don't you see that pair of rooks flying over the harbour?"

"Rooks fly in droves. I see no rooks."

"Right," said he; "they are a couple of crows."

"But the line from Horace, referring to our voyage?"

"Not only referring to it," said Gingham, "but highly encouraging. 'Nil desperandum two crow duce, et auspice two crow."

"Gingham, you are incorrigible."