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Title: A Little Dinner at Timmins's
Author: William Makepeace Thackeray
Release Date: October, 2001 [Etext #2859]
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A LITTLE DINNER AT TIMMINS'S.
by William Makepeace Thackeray
I.
Mr. and Mrs. Fitzroy Timmins live in Lilliput Street, that neat
little street which runs at right angles with the Park and
Brobdingnag Gardens. It is a very genteel neighborhood, and I need
not say they are of a good family.
Especially Mrs. Timmins, as h
er mamma is always telling Mr. T.
They are Suffolk people, and distantly related to the Right
honorable the Earl of Bungay.
Besides his house in Lilliput Street, Mr. Timmins has chambers in
Fig-tree Court, Temple, and goes the Northern Circuit.
The other day, when there was a slight difference about the payment
of fees between the great Parliamentary Counsel and the Solicitors,
Stoke and Pogers, of Great George Street, sent the papers of the
Lough Foyle and Lough Corrib Junction Railway to Mr. Fitzroy
Timmins, who was so elated that he instantly purchased a couple of
looking-glasses for his drawing-rooms (the front room is 16 by 12,
and the back, a tight but elegant apartment, 10 ft. 6 by 8 ft. 4),
a coral for the baby, two new dresses for Mrs. Timmins, and a
little rosewood desk, at the Pantechnicon, for which Rosa had long
been sighing, with crumpled legs, emerald-green and gold morocco
top, and drawers all over.
Mrs. Timmins is a very pretty poetess (her "Lines to a Faded Tulip"
and her "Plaint of Plinlimmon" appeared in one of last year's
Keepsakes); and Fitzroy, as he impressed a kiss on the snowy
forehead of his bride, pointed out to her, in one of the
innumerable pockets of the desk, an elegant ruby-tipped pen, and
six charming little gilt blank books, marked "My Books," which Mrs.
Fitzroy might fill, he said, (he is an Oxford man, and very
polite,) "with the delightful productions of her Muse." Besides
these books, there was pink paper, paper with crimson edges, lace
paper, all stamped with R. F. T. (Rosa Fitzroy Timmins) and the
hand and battle-axe, the crest of the Timminses (and borne at
Ascalon by Roaldus de Timmins, a crusader, who is now buried in the
Temple Church, next to Serjeant Snooks), and yellow, pink, light-
blue and other scented sealing waxes, at the service of Rosa when
she chose to correspond with her friends.
Rosa, you may be sure, jumped with joy at the sight of this sweet
present; called her Charles (his first name is Samuel, but they
have sunk that) the best of men; embraced him a great number of
times, to the edification of her buttony little page, who stood at
the landing; and as soon as he was gone to chambers, took the new
pen and a sweet sheet of paper, and began to compose a poem.
"What shall it be about?" was naturally her first thought. "What
should be a young mother's first inspiration?" Her child lay on
the sofa asleep before her; and she began in her neatest hand--
"LINES
"ON MY SON BUNGAY DE BRACY GASHLEIGH TYMMYNS, AGED TEN MONTHS.
"Tuesday.
"How beautiful! how beautiful thou seemest,
My boy, my precious one, my rosy babe!
Kind angels hover round thee, as thou dreamest:
Soft lashes hide thy beauteous azure eye which gleamest."
"Gleamest? thine eye which gleamest? Is that grammar?" thought
Rosa, who had puzzled her little brains for some time with this
absurd question, when the baby woke. Then the cook came up to ask
about dinner; then Mrs. Fundy slipped over from No. 27 (they are
opposite neighbors, and made an acquaintance through Mrs. Fundy's
macaw); and a thousand things happened. Finally, there was no
rhyme to babe except Tippoo Saib (against whom Major Gashleigh,
Rosa's grandfather, had distinguished himself), and so she gave up
the little poem about her De Bracy.
Nevertheless, when Fitzroy returned from chambers to take a walk
with his wife in the Park, as he peeped through the rich tapestry
hanging which divided the two drawing-rooms, he found his dear girl
still seated at the desk, and writing, writing away with her ruby
pen as fast as it could scribble.
"What a genius that child has!" he said; "why, she is a second Mrs.