THE BEST OF 1854

By Magnus Xavier Fizzleworth esq. & Prof. Phillius P. Trundlebottom

Wherein noted word fandangalizer Magnus Fizzleworth and his Distinguished contemporary Professor Phillius P. Trundlebottom disclose with indomitable retrospective enthusiasm the Wonders of this year of our Lord Eighteen Hundred and Fifty Four.

Best Canal

Fizzleworth: There can be no Question that the Suez Canal takes top honours this year, being not only the most Southern canal but also the most conducive to cementing lasting peace in the heathen Middle East. May Her Majesty’s britches fly above their capital in Defiance for an aeon.


Trundlebottom: You Pompous, ignominious blunderbuss, have you not heard tell of that most promising a canal, the Panama? I should throttle your children for a Fortnight with a cricket bat for the mere suggestion that the sand-laden conduit of the Moorish hordes would stand strong against a channel of Western Sensibilities.

Best Ether

Fizzleworth: Truly a man can hope to find no Finer ambrosia than Philligan and Son’s new Ether Lite, containing half the magical færies of previous ethers while still providing comical fits sure to amuse at any gala. If it isn’t Philligans, you’re likely a traitor to the Crown.


Trundlebottom: How audacious! That you pay Credence to the ignorant theories espoused by some dubious charlatans claiming Ether should be prescribed with less potency serves only to prove your loyalties lie with the insidious Philligan and Son Consortium. Show me facts, I say, for until then, it will only be full strength Potions for me!

Most Ample Girdle



Fizzleworth: If there can be said to be a feeling more Satisfying than the secure containment of one’s protruding corpulence, I have yet to encounter it. Providing a lift to both one’s spirit and one’s syrupy bosom, Marwick and Phlaggelan’s X-Treme Whalebone Girdle is a cut above and no mistake.


Trundlebottom: For once, you bumbling euphuist, I agree with your claim! The X-Treme is a Stunning example of the craft, excelling not only in its Amplification of buxomness, but also its grant of posterior shapeliness. The decadent Whalebone awakes my loins in a way that thuswise, only Queen Vicki herself had heretofore been able.

Most Efficacious Tonic



Fizzleworth: For volatile humours, leprous boils, consumption, lycanthropy, opium addiction, opium withdrawal, diluting opium, complementing opium and syphilitic Madness, there can be no more brilliant panacea than that most efficacious of tonics: Philligan and Son’s Tonic.


Trundlebottom: An indulgence of opulence indeed; Philligan and Son can remove their lavish “cures” to their most sinful of orifices. In my youth, we used leeches where this cosseted new breed uses Naught but tonics, and we are scarcely worse off for’t.

Most Promising Hair-Brained Invention

Fizzleworth: Mark my words, if the electromatronic fandangalizer does not revolutionize the study of aethereal vapours and cog repair, my name is not Magnus Fizzleworth and my mother is a French whore. You may be assured that she is not.

Trundlebottom: While I certainly see the pith in researching the aethereal vapors, I dismiss your Embrace of electricity. Effective only for purging the daemon humours from ill minds, electrification seems unfit to provide technology of Any other sorts save gadgetry. The future lies in steam-powered shovels, which we shall use to form her Majesty’s Empire whence it is taken from the Godless to whom which it does not rightfully belong.

Most Efficacious Sanitarium

Fizzleworth: Never have my genitals been electrocuted with such clinical Efficacy as by the staff of Switzerland’s famed Ubermachtenvaltinheimlenstein spa. My vapours were gone within a fortnight and my bowels moved with almost Frighteningly clockwork regularity!


Trundlebottom: If sanctity and sanity are to be conserved, I advocate the immediate translocation to Germany’s Nervenkliniken forthwith for prompt electrical treatments contrived to interfere with the poisonous humours that cause illness of mind. I can think of no more propitious a place for those whose race Impedes their intellectual capabilities.

Most Riveting Foriegn Conflict

Fizzleworth: Bloody Russians, always knee deep in borsht and edible babies, as my great grandmother used to scream in her delusional fits. If it’s a Crimean War those godless Cossacks want, by jove it’ll be a Crimean War they get. Who better to defend Palestine than the British? None, you filthy syphilitic ne’er do well.


Trundlebottom: As interesting as the condition in Crimea is, the award goes with auspice to the Taiping Rebellion. It is said that the rebels are trying to bring God to the common Chinaman, and while I respect the providers of Our glorious Opium, I should be much more at ease riding the dragon of a decent, God-fearing ethnic.