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Title: The Fitz-Boodle Papers

Author: William Makepeace Thackeray

Release Date: May 27, 2006 [EBook #2823]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FITZ-BOODLE PAPERS ***

Produced by Donald Lainson

THE FITZ-BOODLE PAPERS.

By William Makepeace Thackeray

CONTENTS

THE FITZ-BOODLE PAPERS.

FITZ-BOODLE'S CONFESSIONS:--

Preface

Dorothea

Ottilia

FITZ-BOODLE'S PROFESSIONS:--

First Profession

Second Profession

FITZ-BOODLE'S CONFESSIONS.*

PREFACE.

GEORGE FITZ-BOODLE, ESQUIRE, TO OLIVER YORKE, ESQUIRE.

OMNIUM CLUB, May 20, 1842.

DEAR SIR,--I have always been considered the third-best whist-player in
Europe, and (though never betting more than five pounds) have for many
years past added considerably to my yearly income by my skill in the
game, until the commencement of the present season, when a French
gentleman, Monsieur Lalouette, was admitted to the club where I usually
play. His skill and reputation were so great, that no men of the club
were inclined to play against us two of a side; and the consequence has
been, that we have been in a manner pitted against one another. By a
strange turn of luck (for I cannot admit the idea of his superiority),
Fortune, since the Frenchman's arrival, has been almost constantly
against me, and I have lost two-and-thirty nights in the course of a
couple of score of nights' play.

* The "Fitz-Boodle Papers" first appeared in Fraser's
Magazine for the year 1842.

Everybody knows that I am a poor man; and so much has Lalouette's luck
drained my finances, that only last week I was obliged to give him that
famous gray cob on which you have seen me riding in the Park (I can't
afford a thoroughbred, and hate a cocktail),--I was, I say, forced to
give him up my cob in exchange for four ponies which I owed him. Thus,
as I never walk, being a heavy man whom nobody cares to mount, my time
hangs heavily on my hands; and, as I hate home, or that apology for
it--a bachelor's lodgings--and as I have nothing earthly to do now unt