English Jests and Anecdotes

HANDEL AND THE SERPENT

The first time the musical instrument called The Serpent was used in a concert where Handel presided, he was so much surprised with the coarseness of its tones, that he called out hastily, “Vat de devil is dat?” On being informed it was the serpent, he replied, “It never can be de serpent vat seduced Eve.”

A MONARCH IN FAULT

About the time when Murphy so successfully attacked the stage-struck heroes in the pleasant farce of The Apprentice, an eminent poulterer went to a sporting-club in search of his servant, who, he understood, was that evening to make his debut in Lear; he entered the room at the moment when Dick was exclaiming, “I am the king – you cannot touch me for the coining!” “No, you dog,” cried the enraged master, catching the mad monarch by the collar; “but I can for not picking the ducks.”

SOTTISE OF A FRENCHMAN

A Frenchman, who had learnt English, wished to be particularly polite, and never neglected an opportunity of saying something pretty. One evening, he observed to Lady R – , whose dress was fawn-coloured, and that of her daughter pink, “Milady, your daughter is de pink of beauty.” “Ah monsieur, you Frenchmen always flatter.” “No madam, I only speak de truth, and what all de world will allow, dat your daughter is de pink, and your ladyship de drab of fashion!” It was with great difficulty that the Frenchman could be made to comprehend his sottise.

AN EAST INDIAN MAJOR LONGBOW

An old East Indian, who had returned from Calcutta, with a large fortune and a liver complaint, had retired to his native place (Banffshire), and was availing himself one evening of the usual privilege of travellers to a very large extent. His Scotch friends listened to his Major Longbows with an air of perfect belief; till, at last, the worthy nabob happened to say, that in a particular part of India it was usual to fatten horses upon the flesh of sheep’s heads reduced to a pulp and mixed with rice. “Oh,” exclaimed all his auditors with one voice, “Oh, that will never do. We can believe all the rest; but really, feeding horses upon sheep’s heads is too bad.” “Well, gentlemen,” said the man of the East, “I assure you, that my story about the horses is the only bit of truth that I have told you this evening!”

A QUERULOUS MAN

Mr. Tyers, the proprietor of Vauxhall Gardens, was a worthy man, but indulged himself a little too much in querulous complaints, when anything went amiss; insomuch that, he said, if he had been brought up a hatter he believed people would have been without heads! A farmer once gave him a humorous reproof for his kind of reproach of Heaven; he stepped up to him very respectfully, and asked him when he meant to open his Gardens. Mr. Tyers replied, the next Monday fortnight. The man thanked him repeatedly, and was going away; but Mr. Tyers asked him in return, what made him so anxious to know. “Why, sir,” said the farmer, “I think of sowing my turnips on that day, for you know we shall be sure to have rain.”

IMPROMPTU

A gentlemen paying a visit one morning to a family in Hanover Square, was shewn into a room, where on a writing desk was a paper, on which a lady had begun to transcribe a song from the opera of Love in a Village: remarking that she had left off at the end of the two following lines, —

In love should there meet a fond pair,
Untutor’d by fashion or art;

he took up a pen, and completed the verse by adding, —

If on earth such a couple there be,
I’ll be whipt at the tail of a cart!

SHUT THE DOOR

Among the many peculiarities of Dr. Burney, were two of a very innocent kind: the first was, the constant possession of wine of the best vintage, the next the dread of a current of air. “Shut the door,” was the first salutation uttered by him to any one who entered his apartment; and but few of his associates ever neglected the rule. This custom did not abandon him on the most trying occasions; for having been robbed by footpads while returning home one evening in his carriage to Chelsea Hospital, of which national asylum he was organist, he called them back as they were making off, exclaiming to them, in his usual peremptory tone, “Shut the door.” A voice so commanding had the desired effect; he was instantly obeyed.

MR. JEKYLL

Mr. Jekyll being told that Mr. Raine, the barrister, was engaged as counsel for a Mr. Hay, inquired, if Raine was ever known to do good to Hay?

HANDEL

While Handel was presiding at the organ, during the performance of his oratorio, entitled “Israel in Egypt,” the prima donna, Figuria Galli, commenced a song entirely out of tune – “I am an Israelite;” upon which Handel stopped the accompaniment, glared ferociously down upon the offender, and exclaimed, in a voice of ten thousand thunders, “You are von dam beesh!”

FOOTE AND THE EARL OF KELLY

When the Earl of Kelly paid Foote a visit at his country villa, that celebrated wit took him into his garden, and, alluding to the beaming honours of his lordship’s face, said, “Pray, my lord, look over the wall upon my cucumber bed; it has had no sun this year.”

A COMPLIMENT QUIZZED

A gentleman walking in the fields with a lady, picked a blue bell, and taking out his pencil, wrote the following lines, which, with the flower, he presented to the lady.

This pretty flower, of heavenly hue,
Must surely be allied to you;
For you, dear girl, are heavenly too.

To which the lady replied: —

If, sir, your compliment be true,
I’m sorry that I look so blue.

KILLING THE DEVIL

A young girl from the country, on a visit to Mr. H – , a Quaker, was prevailed on to accompany him to the meeting. It happened to be a silent one, none of the brethren being moved by the spirit to utter a syllable. When Mr. H. left the meeting-house with his young friend, he asked her, “How dost thou like the meeting?” To which she pettishly replied, “Like it? why, I can see no sense in it; to go and sit for whole hours together without speaking a word, – it is enough to kill the Devil.” “Yes, my dear,” rejoined the Quaker, “that is just what we want.”

THE GREATEST BORE IN LONDON

When Sir William Curtis returned from his voyage to Italy and Spain, he called to pay his respects to Mr. Canning, at Gloucester Lodge. Among other questions, Sir William said, “But, pray, Mr. Canning, what do you say to the tunnel under the Thames?” “Say,” replied the secretary, “why, I say it will be the greatest bore London ever had, and that is saying a great deal.”

RADCLIFFE OF DERWENTWATER

It has often been observed, that a habitual sayer of good things will have his joke under whatever circumstances he may be placed. Radcliffe, brother of the unfortunate Earl of Derwentwater, and who was himself executed in 1746, for his concern in the insurrection of 1715, was brought to the bar to receive sentence of death, in company with an old man of Falstaffian dimensions. The judge asking the usual question of this other prisoner, “Plead your belly, plead your belly,” said the grandson of Charles II, with a sly look at that part of his companion’s person.

SHERIDAN UPON REGULARITY, WITH NOTES BY THE EARL OF GUILDFORD

Just about the time that Mr. Sheridan took his house in Saville Row, he happened to meet Lord Guildford in the street, to whom he mentioned his change of residence, and also announced a change in his habits. “Now, my dear Lord, everything is carried on in my house with the greatest regularity; everything, in short, goes like clockwork.” “Ah!” replied Lord Guildford, “tick, tick, tick, I suppose.”

ANTI-CLIMAX

Mr. H – , the Professor of Chemistry in the University of Dublin, who was more remarkable for the clearness of the intellect than the purity of his eloquence, adverted in one of his lectures to the celebrated Dr. Boyle, of whose talents he spoke with the highest veneration: he thus concluded his eulogy: – “He was a great man, a very great man; he was the father of chemistry, gentlemen, and brother of the Earl of Cork.”

MR. FOX’S ESTIMATE OF THE FRENCH CHARACTER

In one of the latter days of Fox, the conversation turned on the comparative wisdom of the French and English character. “The Frenchman,” it was observed, “delights himself with the present; the Englishman makes himself anxious about the future. Is not the Frenchman the wiser?” “He may be the merrier,” said Fox; “but did you ever hear of a savage who did not buy a mirror in preference to a telescope.”

UPRIGHT JUDGE

Judge Richardson, in going the western circuit, had a great stone thrown at him, which, as he happened to stoop at the moment, passed clear over his head. “You see,” he said to the friends who congratulated him on his escape, “you see, if I had been an upright judge I had been slain.”

KITES

Boys fly kites for recreation, and men for other motives; the first require the wind to raise the kite, the second the kite to raise the wind.

COLLEGE JOKE

They have, at the very head-quarters of orthodoxy, Oxford, sayings which would be termed profane anywhere else. For instance, when a tradesman has grown rich by trusting the scholars, they say, that “his faith hath made him whole.”

SEA CAPTAIN’S OPINION OF A FUTURE STATE

A sea captain, being asked for his opinion of a future state, answered, “he never troubled himself about state affairs.”