Pickwick Abroad: or, The Tour in France — page 17: what you’re looking at

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

vl PREFACE. It will be seen that there are numerous tales and legends episodically introduced into this work’: it is therefore necessary to inform the reader, that they are all purely original, and were composed at the moment before the manuscript was required, save in few instances where acknowledgment is made of a foun- dation existing in the records of facts. Some of these tales are termed Legends of the buildings in which the principal incident or interest lies, merely to suit a received conventional form, and not to express an adherence to some popular belief, superstition, or tradition. With regard to the numerous songs and other spe- cimens ot poetry introduced into the work, the source of those that are not original is invariably. mentioned At page 117, there is an anecdote relative to the Duke of Wel- _ lington, which caused, at the time of its appearance in Part IV ot the monthly livraisons, a considerable sensation amongst the admirers of the illustrious warrior. The Naval and Military Gazette took up the subject in a very warm, but gentlemanly manner; and in answer to a leader, which appeared in. that journal upon the subject, a letter was written to the newspapers, from which it is my incumbent duty to re-publish here the fol- lowing extract, in order that the amendment may be found in the same volume with the anecdote that occasioned it :-— “The Duke of Wellington did not purposely insult the Marshals of France by proceeding two hours too lateto the place of entertainment. He had been detained by the un-anticipated length of a review; and, in order to keep his hosts waiting as short a time as possible, hastened in his morning garb to the Hotel de Ville. Marshal Macdonald did not give his Grace time to make the necessary apology, which the Duke had commenced on his entrance into ‘the banquetting-room, but tendered him his card as a challenge toa duel... The English officers at that period had been perpetually provoked to similar extreme measures by the French officers, whose exquisitively superior skill in the use of their weapons usually gave them the advantage; and on this | ~ occasion did his Grace take a long-wished-for opportunity of sanctioning the refusal of a cartel upon ridiculous pretences, by rejecting one himself. Such is the concise summary of the anecdote; and such are the amendments it as my intention to have made to the tale ona future occasion, as I assured GOMIGDOOKS (EO) im