Life — August 6, 1908 — page 31: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

“LIFE- Newport—As Seen By a Foreigner Two letters from Sir Reginald Browne Browne Bunbury to Major Ponsonby Marr-Cavendish. (Letter No. 1.) Newrort, August, 1908, Tue Reavinc-Room, DBE PONSE I have had less than a day in Newport and I am_ stony broke and bally well dead. 1 give you my solemn word that I am balmy with it all. Socker football is needlework compared to it. - I brought my servant down with me—poor old Catchpole— and he is ready to swear that he has never seen anything like it, and, mind you, he saw grueling service in South Africa. Well, my boy, I hooked down and reached here yesterday, Friday, at seven in the evening, king T would have a snack and tumble to by-by, but I was. never more fearfully wrong in all my life. I came right to Beachcourt, the Nestor’ . and they certainly have led me a dance. He, N, is rolling with the oof, and she had a little matter of five or six million sterling on her own, to say nothing of his mater, who seems to own all the shops and tram-lines in| New York. Nestor, who is a Lit of a pincher, still sweats away in the city, but his wife lives about, ladling it out like a crazy Rajah. Catchpole brought my guns—against bears, pheasants, caribou, Indians, ter- rapin and all that sort of muck—but the men here only chaff me and T have seen The Bird on the Twig. No USE TALK- ING. THAT MOCKING HIRD 1S A WONDFR. By P. Dormer Cuesterrietp ro good country and no signs of game, coverts or hounds. Nestor, who is a great toff here, has palace like Cliveden or Chatsworth, only a jolly sight larger. It resembles the Carlton or the Savoy. Everybody has an enormous house and no land, and all the palaces are huddled together like the hotels at Brighton or Eastbourne. On arriving, I tubbed in a biggish hath made of porcelain—they fave them everywhere here—cold, slippery and over-ornate, but deucedly ingenious. A footman brought me a thing called a Perfect Cocktail—perfectly disgusting it was, 100. I dressed and went downstairs and shook hands with my hostess, who looks, for all the world, like one of ‘attier’s show-cases. There was a monstrous dinner on, sixty, at least The food was beastly, of course. Crabs, with ugly-looking legs; rivers of sweet pop; ducks, swimming in blood, and parts of a terrapin, a messy beast with no white meat or breast, and full of slimy bones. Fortunately for me, the footmen in Newport are all for pounc- ing on your plates and carting them off aS soon as ever they set them down, so, that I got through with the thing, after a fashion, but I longed for a cold joint and some Brussels sprouts! I was presented to about thirty brace of pretty women—plastered with tur- quoises and other stones—and they all, more or less, asked me to dine, to pic- nic, to bridge, to golf and to motor. I have seventeen invitations for dinner to-morrow night. It's a bit awkward knowing whom one is dining with here, as they never mention their names, and one can’t tell where they bunk, unless one is a native. To make matters worse, they all call each other by pet names— Birdie, Pussy, Tessy, Mamie—so there's the very deuce to pay. After dinner we had a rubber or two of bridge, and I won a bit over a mon- key from a devilish pretty woman, whose name has escaped me. Some of the men in the smoking-room told me she was a stiff ‘un, and deuced bad pay. They wanted to lay me odds I wouldn’t get a penny of it. A bit of bad Iuck— what? And just when I need it, too, for the number of people I must tip at Nes- tor’s is simply sickening. Thank Heaven, there is no bailiff, no between- girl, no warrener and no groom-of-the chambers, or I should go up the pole with worry. The tips are worse than when you and I went up to shoot with the Cameron, a year ago come Michacl- mas. . After bridge there began what I'll swear was the fearfulest night I've ever put in, A baby-party (at which I car- ried a sand-pail and fell into a foun- tain); a motor ride in a ninety, driven by a chap who was sullen screwed; a coon-hunt; a poker game at the Casino; more pop, more bridge, and fresh hor- rors every hour or so, At seven in the morning I got to bed and had a snooze until leven, when up and motored, lunched on an infernal yacht, golfed and bridged, and here I am, at the Reading- Room (no one ever reads here) with a hally headache and a thousand horrors before me for the night. My liver, nerves, head and back have had such a bumping-race as you never saw on the Cam. I am fairly well ready for the little churchyard at Grimsbury Abbey. Ever. yours, dear boy, Rroetr. P. S. If you ever come to Americ take my tip and avoid Newport. Go straight to the Rockies. You are good as lost if you get within hail of these ladies, with nothing on their minds but diamonds, dinners, dukes and dances. P,P. S. Would you mind secing Thorneyeroft’s Bank and asking the to cable me a thousand quid? I have taken the knock. To Major Ponsonby Marr-Cavendish, The Barracks, Ore-Stoke-Cloddington, Ivernesshire. GONT SPEAK |) Torre MAN AT Ime WHEEL THE STEEKSMAN comicbooks.com