'Gad, Sir, we used to
get pines from Carabas, and pheasants from Carabas, and it was--"Ponto,
when will you come over and shoot?"--and--"Ponto, our pheasants want
thinning,"--and my Lady would insist upon her dear Mrs. Ponto coming
over to Carabas to sleep, and put me I don't know to what expense for
turbans and velvet gowns for my wife's toilette. Well, Sir, the election
takes place, and though I was always a Liberal, personal friendship of
course induces me to plump for St. Michaels, who comes in at the head of
the poll. Next year, Mrs. P. insists upon going to town--with lodgings
in Clarges Street at ten pounds a week, with a hired brougham, and new
dresses for herself and the girls, and the deuce and all to pay. Our
first cards were to Carabas House; my Lady's are returned by a great big
flunkey; and I leave you to fancy my poor Betsy's discomfiture as the
lodging-house maid took in the cards, and Lady St. Michaels drives away,
though she actually saw us at the drawing-room window. Would you believe
it, Sir, that though we called four times afterwards, those infernal
aristocrats never returned our visit; that though Lady St. Michaels gave
nine dinner-parties and four DEJEUNERS that season, she never asked us
to one; and that she cut us dead at the Opera, though Betsy was nodding
to her the whole night? We wrote to her for tickets for Almack's; she
writes to say that all hers were promised; and said, in the presence of
Wiggins, her lady's-maid, who told it to Diggs, my wife's woman, that
she couldn't conceive how people in our station of life could so far
forget themselves as to wish to appear in any such place! Go to
Castle Carabas! I'd sooner die than set my foot in the house of that
impertinent, insolvent, insolent jackanapes--and I hold him in scorn!'
After this, Ponto gave me some private information regarding Lord
Carabas's pecuniary affairs; how he owed money all over the county; how
Jukes the carpenter was utterly ruined and couldn't get a shilling of
his bill; how Biggs the butcher hanged himself for the same reason; how
the six big footmen never received a guinea of wages, and Snaffle, the
state coachman, actually took off his blown-glass wig of ceremony and
flung it at Lady Carabas's feet on the terrace before the Castle; all
which stories, as they are private, I do not think proper to divulge.
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