



Produced by Donald Lainson





THE FATAL BOOTS.


by William Makepeace Thackeray




THE FATAL BOOTS:--



January.--The Birth of the Year

February.--Cutting Weather

March.--Showery

April.--Fooling

May.--Restoration Day

June.--Marrowbones and Cleavers

July.--Summary Proceedings

August.--Dogs have their Days

September.--Plucking a Goose

October.--Mars and Venus in Opposition

November.--A General Post Delivery

December.--"The Winter of Our Discontent"




THE FATAL BOOTS




JANUARY.--THE BIRTH OF THE YEAR.

Some poet has observed, that if any man would write down what has really
happened to him in this mortal life, he would be sure to make a good
book, though he never had met with a single adventure from his birth to
his burial. How much more, then, must I, who HAVE had adventures, most
singular, pathetic, and unparalleled, be able to compile an instructive
and entertaining volume for the use of the public.

I don't mean to say that I have killed lions, or seen the wonders of
travel in the deserts of Arabia or Prussia; or that I have been a very
fashionable character, living with dukes and peeresses, and writing my
recollections of them, as the way now is. I never left this my native
isle, nor spoke to a lord (except an Irish one, who had rooms in our
house, and forgot to pay three weeks' lodging and extras); but, as our
immortal bard observes, I have in the course of my existence been so
eaten up by the slugs and harrows of outrageous fortune, and have been
the object of such continual and extraordinary ill-luck, that I believe
it would melt the heart of a milestone to read of it--that is, if a
milestone had a heart of anything but stone.

Twelve of my adventures, suitable for meditation and perusal during the
twelve months of the year, have been arranged by me for this work. They
contain a part of the history of a great, and, confidently I may say,
a GOOD man. I was not a spendthrift like other men. I never wronged any
man of a shilling, though I am as sharp a fellow at a bargain as any in
Europe. I never injured a fellow-creature; on the contrary, on
several occasions, when injured myself, have shown the most wonderful
forbearance. I come of a tolerably good family; and yet, born to
wealth--of an inoffensive disposition, careful of the money that I
had, and eager to get more,--I have been going down hill ever since
my journey of life began, and have been pursued by a complication of
misfortunes such as surely never happened to any man but the unhappy Bob
Stubbs.

Bob Stubbs is my name; and I haven't got a shilling: I have borne the
commission of lieutenant in the service of King George, and am NOW--but
never mind what I am now, for the public will know in a few pages more.
My father was of the Suffolk Stubbses--a well-to-do gentleman of Bungay.
My grandfather had been a respected attorney in that town, and left my
papa a pretty little fortune. I was thus the inheritor of competence,
and ought to be at this moment a gentleman.

My misfortunes may be said to have commenced about a year before my
birth, when my papa, a young fellow pretending to study the law in
London, fell madly in love with Miss Smith, the daughter of a tradesman,
who did not give her a sixpence, and afterwards became bankrupt. My papa
married this Miss Smith, and carried her off to the country, where I was
born, in an evil hour for me.

Were I to attempt to describe my early years, you would laugh at me as
an impostor; but the following letter from mamma to a friend, after her
marriage, will pretty well show you what a poor foolish creature she
was; and what a reckless extravagant fellow was my other unfortunate
parent:--


"TO MISS ELIZA KICKS, IN GRACECHURCH STREET, LONDON.

"OH, ELIZA! your Susan is the happiest girl under heaven! My Thomas is
an angel! not a tall grenadier-like looking fellow, such as I always
vowed I would marry:--on the contrary, he is what the world would call
dumpy, and I hesitate not to confess, that his eyes have a cast in them.
But what then? when one of his eyes is fixed on me, and one on my babe,
they are lighted up with an affection which my pen cannot describe, and
which, certainly, was never bestowed upon any woman so strongly as upon
your happy Susan Stubbs.

"When he comes home from shooting, or the farm, if you COULD see dear
Thomas with me and our dear little Bob! as I sit on one knee, and baby
on the other, and as he dances us both about. I often wish that we had
Sir Joshua, or some great painter, to depict the group; for sure it is
the prettiest