Bracebridge Hall

Bachelors

I am led to make these remarks by the conduct of Master Simon and the

general, who have become great cronies. As the former is the younger by

many years, he is regarded as quite a youthful gallant by the general,

who moreover looks upon him as a man of great wit and prodigious

acquirements. I have already hinted that Master Simon is a family beau,

and considered rather a young fellow by all the elderly ladies of the

connexion; for an old bachelor, in an old family connexion, is something

like an actor in a regular dramatic corps, who seems "to flourish in

immortal youth," and will continue to play the Romeos and Rangers for

half a century together.

Master Simon, too, is a little of the chameleon, and takes a different

hue with every different companion; he is very attentive and officious,

and somewhat sentimental, with Lady Lillycraft; copies out little

namby-pamby ditties and love-songs for her, and draws quivers, and

doves, and darts, and Cupids, to be worked in the corners of her pocket

handkerchiefs. He indulges, however, in very considerable latitude with

the other married ladies of the family; and has many sly pleasantries to

whisper to them, that provoke an equivocal laugh and tap of the fan. But

when he gets among young company, such as Frank Bracebridge, the

Oxonian, and the general, he is apt to put on the mad wig, and to talk

in a very bachelor-like strain about the s*x.

In this he has been encouraged by the example of the general, whom he

looks up to as a man who has seen the world. The general, in fact, tells

shocking stories after dinner, when the ladies have retired, which he

gives as some of the choice things that are served up at the

Mulligatawney Club, a knot of boon companions in London. He also repeats

the fat jokes of old Major Pendergast, the wit of the club, and which,

though the general can hardly repeat them for laughing, always make Mr.

Bracebridge look grave, he having a great antipathy to an indecent

jest. In a word, the general is a complete instance of the declension in

gay life, by which a young man of pleasure is apt to cool down into an

obscene old gentleman.

I saw him and Master Simon, an evening or two since, conversing with a

buxom milkmaid in a meadow; and from their elbowing each other now and

then, and the general's shaking his shoulders, blowing up his cheeks,

and breaking out into a short fit of irrepressible laughter, I had no

doubt they were playing the mischief with the girl.

As I looked at them through a hedge, I could not but think they would

have made a tolerable group for a modern picture of Susannah and the two

elders. It is true the girl seemed in no wise alarmed at the force of

the enemy; and I question, had either of them been alone, whether she

would not have been more than they would have ventured to encounter.

Such veteran roisters are daring wags when together, and will put any

female to the blush with their jokes; but they are as quiet as lambs

when they fall singly into the clutches of a fine woman.

In spite of the general's years, he evidently is a little vain of his

person, and ambitious of conquests. I have observed him on Sunday in

church eyeing the country girls most suspiciously; and have seen him

leer upon them with a downright amorous look, even when he has been

gallanting Lady Lillycraft with great ceremony through the churchyard.

The general, in fact, is a veteran in the service of Cupid rather than

of Mars, having signalised himself in all the garrison towns and country

quarters, and seen service in every ball-room of England. Not a

celebrated beauty but he has laid siege to; and if his words may be

taken in a matter wherein no man is apt to be over veracious, it is

incredible what success he has had with the fair. At present he is like

a worn-out warrior, retired from service; but who still c***s his beaver

with a military air, and talks stoutly of fighting whenever he comes

within the smell of gunpowder.

I have heard him speak his mind very freely over his bottle, about the

folly of the captain in taking a wife; as he thinks a young soldier

should care for nothing but his "bottle and kind landlady." But, in

fact, he says, the service on the continent has had a sad effect upon

the young men; they have been ruined by light wines and French

quadrilles. "They've nothing," he says, "of the spirit of the old

service. There are none of your six-bottle men left, that were the souls

of a mess-dinner, and used to play the very deuce among the women."

As to a bachelor, the general affirms that he is a free and easy man,

with no baggage to take care of but his portmanteau; but, as Major

Pendergast says, a married man, with his wife hanging on his arm, always

puts him in mind of a chamber candlestick, with its extinguisher hitched

to it. I should not mind all this if it were merely confined to the

general; but I fear he will be the ruin of my friend, Master Simon, who

already begins to echo his heresies, and to talk in the style of a

gentleman that has seen life, and lived upon the town. Indeed, the

general seems to have taken Master Simon in hand, and talks of showing

him the lions when he comes to town, and of introducing him to a knot of

choice spirits at the Mulligatawney Club; which, I understand, is

composed of old nabobs, officers in the Company's employ, and other "men

of Ind," that have seen service in the East, and returned home burnt out

with curry and touched with the liver complaint. They have their

regular club, where they eat Mulligatawney soup, smoke the hookah, talk

about Tippoo Saib, Seringapatam, and tiger-hunting; and are tediously

agreeable in each other's company.