Fifty Years Ago - Walter Besant

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A newly sanded floor, a bright fire, and a goodly company. James! a clean tablecloth, a couple of candles, and the snuffers, and the last joint up. What have you got in the paper? Madagascar Embassy, Massacre in New Zealand—where the devil is New Zealand?—Suicide of Champion, who made the infernal machine, Great Distress in the Highlands, Murder of a Process-server in Ireland, Crossing of the Channel in a Balloon—I hope that some day an army may not cross it—Letter from Syria, concerning the recent Great Earthquake, Conduct of the British Legion in Spain, Seven Men imprisoned for unlawfully ringing the Bells, Death of the Oldest Woman in the World, aged 162 years, said to have been the Nurse of George Washington—a good deal of news all for one evening paper. Hush! we are in luck. Here is Douglas Jerrold. Now we shall hear something good. Here is Leigh Hunt, and here is Forster, and here—ah! this is unexpected—here comes none other than ‘Boz’ himself. Of course you know his name? It is Charles Dickens. Saw one ever a brighter eye or a more self-reliant bearing? Such self-reliance belongs to those who are about to succeed. They say his fortune is already made, though but yesterday he was a reporter in the House, taking down the speeches in shorthand. Who is that tall young man with the ugly nose? Only a journalist. They say he wrote that funny paper called ‘The Fatal Boots’ in Tilt’s Annual. His name is Thackeray, I believe, but I know nothing more about him.

      JOHN FORSTER

      (From a Photograph by Elliott and Fry)

      Here comes dinner, with a tankard of foaming stout. Is there any other drink quite so good as stout? After you have taken your dinner, friend Eighty-seven, I shall prescribe for you what you will never get, poor wretch—a bottle of the best port in the cellars of the Mitre.

      CHARLES DICKENS

      My friend, there is one thing in which we of the Thirties do greatly excel you of the Eighties. We can eat like ploughboys, and we can drink like draymen. As for your nonsense about Apollinaris Water, we do not know what it means; and as for your not being able to take a simple glass of port, we do not in the least understand it. Not take a pint of port? Man alive! we can take two bottles, and never turn a hair.

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