Punch (7.1844)

2

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI

My Dear Sir James,
Having, as I
modestly believe, writ-
ten a Complete Letter-
Writer — yes, having
penned some fifty models
of epistolary correspon-
dence, involving all the
afFeetions, interests, rights, wrongs, and courtesies of social life,—
I am naturally anxious to obtain for the work the protecting coun-
tenance of a high, appropriate name. Your official privilege makes
you, in truth, the very interesting object I have some time looked for
with increasing despair. I confess it ; I desponded lest I should fail
to obtain a patron whose natural genius and finely educated taste
would immediately appreciate in my labour the manifold heart-
touches, the subtleties of style, with—greater glory than all that—
practical golden wisdom, without which the very finest writing is
little more than the very finest glass-blowing.

A mere high title at the head of a Dedication is a piece of pompous
lumber. In the shallowness of our judgment, we bestow a humiliat-
ing pity on the forlorn savage who lays his offering of fruits and
flowers before his wooden idol with a formidable name ; an idol cer-
tainly with gold rings in its nose and ears, and perhaps an uncut
diamond in its forehead ; but nevertheless, an insensible block. The
fruits shrivel and rot ; the flowers die a death of profitless sweetness;
for the idol has no gustatory sense—no expanding nostril. I say, we
pity the poor, darkened fool, who may have risked his limbs for
cocoa-nuts, who may have tempted the whole family of mortal
snakes, groping his way through woods, scrambling up ravines to
gather flowers, and only to lay the hard winnings of his toil before a
stock, a stone, that cannot even so much as wink a thankfulness for
such desperate duty done.

And what shall we say of the author who, choosing a patron merely
for his titles—for the gold rings in his nose and ears, and certainly
not for the diamond in his head—lays before him a book for which
the poor creature has not the slightest relish ? He is incapable of
tasting its deliciousness. Its most sapid morsels lie in his mouth
like bran. He chews ^nd chews a prime cut, yea, the very pope's-
eye of philosophy, as it were chopped hay. I bestow ink upon no such
man. And thou, sagacious and therefore pacific goose, still enjoy
thy common right; still with snaky neck search the short grass,
still, with fixed and meditating look, eye man askance—I disturb
thee not ; I rifle not thy wing of its gray wealth to nib a pen for such
a patron.

But hither, hither, ye sprites and genii—old visitants of dimmest

garrets—ye who have made the musty air musical with your quivering
pinions, and with kindly conjurations given state to stateless kings,
who, from their attic thrones, rule the thankless and despising world
beneath,—hither ye, who from the phials of hope have sweetened
the bitterness of the present,—who first did crown the poet in hia
solemn solitude, and—no illusion but sweetest truth !—made him see
in every growing line a grove of budding laurel—made him with a
shuddering glee hear the far-off praises of the future, even as men
hear the distant music of a coming triumph ! Hither, hither, ye
Parnassian fays, and bring me ink—bright ink—odorous ink—ink
made in the deep recesses of some Indian wood, dark as night, yet
fragrant as the morn.

Well done. It is black and liquid as a black eye smiling sweet
mischief on unconscious man. And now, boys, a pen ! Stay, know
ye the vicarage of Purplecloth ? It is a fruitful nook, where there
is an hourly struggle between the rector and his geese which shall be
the fattest, man or birds. Hie ye there, and straightway choose the
primest goose. Kill him, yet kill him quickly, humanely, singing some
sacrificial melody the while. He will give up his quills serenely,
quietly as a dying laureat. When the goose is dead, take care that
the creature be properly buried ; to which end I charge ye give his
body to the poor.

So ! An errand quickly done. Here is pen and ink. As for paper
—no matter ; out of the most beautiful, yet costly bravado, I will
write my Dedication on the back of a £50 note, which—the words
enshrined in type—be it known, remains the perquisite of the printer.
May he make the most he can of it ! And now to begin my Dedica-
tion in good earnest.

My Dear Sir James,

I perceive from the works of those daily law-breakers, the
reporters of Parliamentary speeches, that you have the right—a right
solemnised by law—to burglariously break and enter into every
package, bundle, letter, note, or billet-doux, sent through the Post-
office. Yes ; you are permitted this high privilege by the Act of
I Victoria (whom God preserve !)

I protest, Sir James, that henceforth I shall never think of that
crowning pile of St. Martin's-le-Grand, without seeing you in imagi-
nation working away with a crow-bar, smashing red and black wax—
or, by the more subtle agency of steam, softening wafers, that the
letter may open its lips, and yield up the contents of its very heart
to the Secretary of the Home Department.

I am not a squeamish creature, Sir James. I have not what is
called by the world false modesty : a modesty, I presume, to be classed
with false ringlets and false teeth, and therefore never used but
when the real thing is wholly departed. No ; I have seen too much
of the world to care a great deal for its turned-up noses and the
ugly mouths it may make at me. Nevertheless, Sir James, there is
a point between philosophy and apathy. Yes; the rhinoceros has
his tender part—I have mine : so tender, and withal so vital, that I
cannot get rid of it. Were I, like Achilles, vulnerable only in
one heel, I would instantly cheat fate of its malice, have my limb
amputated, and laugh securely at destiny on a wooden leg. This,
Sir JAMes, I would do : but a man cannot take the weak parts of
his heart away as dexterously as a careful housewife removes the
fly-blow from meat. Hence my complaint.

My one weakness—(for weaknesses, strangely enough, are like
wives ; no man, whatever the truth may be, thinks it proper to own
to more than one at a time,)—my one weakness is a disgust, a horror,
that any man should dare to profane the sanctity of my letters ! I
know not—for if a man can save a bit of self-flattery out of his
weakness, it is so much virtue got, as one may say, out of the fire—I
know not if this aversion may not, in some degree, arise from my
love of mankind, and consequently my annoyance at seeing it in a
paltry, pitiable condition, pushing its brazen nose where only its
brass can protect it. Be this as it may ; when I learned this morning
that you, Sir James, made yourself a sort of horse or ass-hair sieve,
through which the correspondence of men was passed, that, if there,
the daggers, pikes, and pistols of the writers might be duly deposited
in the state vessel appointed to detect them—I confess it, I felt in a
paroxysm of passion, for the proper expression of which no words
have as yet been fashioned.

And for this just reason. I knew that my name was too much
noised in the world to escape even the ears of Cabinet Ministers.
Hence, I felt assured that my letters—and the thousands I receive !
—had all of them been defiled by the eyes of a spy ; that all my
most domestic secrets had been rumpled and touzlcd, and pinched
here and pinched there—searched by an English Minister as shud-
dering modesty is searched at a French custom-house! My first