The Malaprops
Theodore Hook’s series of “Ramsbottom Papers” were the precursors of all the Mrs. Malaprops, Tabitha Brambles, and Mrs. Partingtons of a later generation. Let Dorothea Julia Ramsbottom speak for herself, in a few sentences from her “Notes on England and France:”
“Having often heard travellers lamenting not having put down what they call the memorybilious of their journey, I was determined, while I was on my tower, to keep a dairy (so called from containing the cream of one’s information), and record everything which occurred to me.
“Resolving to take time by the firelock, we left Montague Place at 7 o’clock by Mr. Fulmer’s pocket thermometer, and proceeded over Westminster Bridge to explode the European continent. I never pass Whitehall without dropping a tear to the memory of Charles II., who was decimated after the rebellion of 1745, opposite the Horse Guards.
“We saw the inn where Alexander, the Autograph of all the Russias, lived when he was here; and, as we were going along, we met twenty or thirty dragons mounted on horses. The ensign who commanded them was a friend of Mr. Fulmer’s: he looked at Lavinia as if pleased with her tooting assembly. I heard Mr. Fulmer say he was a son of Marr’s. He spoke as if everybody knew his father: so I suppose he must be the son of the poor gentleman who was so barbarously murdered a few years ago near Ratcliffe Highway: if so he is uncommon genteel.
“Travellers like us, who are mere birds of prey, have no time to waste: so we went to-day to the great church which is called Naughty Dam, where we saw a priest doing something at an altar. Mr. Fulmer begged me to observe the knave of the church; but I thought it too hard to call the man names in his own country.”