Three courses and a dessert / The decorations by George Cruikshank. [Anon].

  • William Clarke
Date:
1830
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Three courses and a dessert / The decorations by George Cruikshank. [Anon]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    the last child she had nursed, for one of her daughters, was now “ a stout and stalwart ” young fellow, nearly six feet high; and those, to whom she had told tales of other times, when her me- mory and breath were both equal to the task, were getting old themselves, and beginning to relate the same chronicles, round the kitchen fire, on winter nights; generally without acknowledging, and often forgetting, to whom they were indebted for that legendary lore, the possession of which so exalted them in the opinions of the young. From the dark cloud, which usually obscured Dame Deborah’s mental faculties, a gleam of youthfid memory occasionally shot up, which much amazed many of her descendants. One evening, a warm discussion took place in the kitchen where she sat, as to the precise ages of Ralph Hickory and his cousin Harry. After a world of talk, without an atom of conclusion, Dame Deborah placed her hand upon the arm of one of the disputants, and said, in a tremulous but distinct tone: “ Susanna Hickory, who was big Anthony Blake’s seventh child, and only daughter, and married one of the young Hickories of Hickory Hatch, was brought to bed of a boy on the second day of our Whitsun revel, the same hour that her cousin Polly had twins,—both boys,—but only one of them lived to be christened. I stood godmother to the two babes. Susey’s boy was called Ralph, after my first husband, and Polly’s after my second goodman, Harry. That was the year when light- ning struck the steeple, and Matty Drew, the witch, was drowned. She told the children’s fortunes, and said of them,— ‘ Merry meeting—sorry parting ; Second greeting—bitter smarting ; Third struggle ’ Dame Deborah could not finish Matty Drew’s prediction; and this was the seventh time, within as many years, that she had at- tempted to do so, but in vain; a fit of coughing or abstraction invariably seizing her on these occasions, before she could arti- culate the remainder of the line. The debaters stared with wonder on each other at the old dame’s unusual fluency; for she had not spoken, except in monosyllables, during many preceding months; and they looked upon it as an omen of Deborah’s death, or some great calamity to one of her living descendants. On examining the church books, they found her account to be correct, so far as regarded the baptism of the two boys, and the interment of one of c 2
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