Punch or The London charivari (3.1842)

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

PUNCH'S LETTERS TO HIS SON.

■LETTER X.—EVERY MAN HIS OWN APPRAISER.—LEGEND OF THE

RIGHT LEG.

Your last letter, my dear son, annoyed, oppressed me. What!
-you wish you had been born an Esquimaux, a Chippewaw, a Hottentot,
rather than a member of the most civilised, most generous nation (as
I every people modestly say of themselves) on the face of the earth ?
; 'Ungrateful boy ! is this the return you make me for the very hand-
some present of your existence,—is this your gratitude for being called
■out of nothing to become an eating, drinking, tax-paying animal ?

Despondency, my child, is the slow suicide of the mind. Heaven
inows what I have suffered at the hands of the world !—how, with
i my heart bleeding into my very shoes, I have still chirped and
ccrowed roo-tooit-tooit, despising while I laughed with and chattered to
, the reeking rascals, niggard of their pence, who still thronged and
gaped about me !

" Alas, 'tis true, I have gone here and there,
And made myself a motley to the view,
Gor'd mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is most dear,
Made old offences of affections new ! "

Nevertheless, if now and then my heart has been a little slack, I
iiave braced it up again with my drum, and looking upon life at the
4>est to be composed of just so many pleasurable sensations, I have
•enjoyed myself as often as I could, which I have thought the very
; wisest way of showing my gratitude for my existence. When I
-could not obtain large pleasures, I put together as many small ones
as possible. Small pleasures, depend upon it, lie about us thick as
•daisies ; and for that very reason are neglected, trodden under foot,
instead of being worn in our button-holes. We can't afford to buy
moss-roses at Christmas, or camellias at any time ; and so, all the
year round we couple buttercups with vulgarity ; and the lovely,
odorous things that grow in the hedge-side, we let wither where they
grow, for no other reason than that the king's highway is not a royal
garden.

At the same time, my dear boy, I would not have you copy the
-contentment of your father. Contentment is very well in a pastoral;
^and I have seen something which called itself contentment, sitting
smugly at a small-coal fire, enjoying its crust and half-a-pint of beer
in a tin mug on the hob,—only because it would not stir itself to get
the port and olives, that with very little exertion were within its
j reach. Though I know this to be pusillanimity, and not content-
ment, nevertheless, my dear child, I cannot altogether acquit myself
of it. Be warned by your sire. I might, with my genius, have trod
j the boards of a stage,-—have had my name upon the walls, in type
that blacking-makers should have envied ; I might have danced
-quadrilles in Cavendish-square on my off-nights, and been trundled
about the town in my own air-cushioned carriage ; for I have all the
•qualifications in the highest degree which lead to such a golden
result; of this I am assured by their success when once poorly
a.nd extravagantly copied by another : but no, I was doomed to be a
•street vagabond, and came into the world with a base taste for mud

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in my infant mouth, and an ear throbbing for drum and pandeans.
Hence, I have—when doing my best—been scoffed at, and abused by
fish-wives, when with the sagacious application of the same powers,
I might have been pelted by heiresses with bouquets from the boxes !

Mv child, know not diffidence : it is an acquaintance that hourly
picks your pocket—that makes you hob-and-nob with plush breeches,
when otherwise, you might jostle it with court ruffles. Receive this for
an axiom : nineteen times out of twenty the world takes a man at his
own valuation. A philosopher—I forget his name—has called the
human soul, on its first manifestation in this world, thickly veiled as
it is in baby-flesh—a blank sheet of paper. Now I, my son, call every
full-grown man at his outset in life, a piece, not of blank, but of bank
paper; in fact, a note, in all things perfect save that the amount is
not written in. It is for the man himself to put down how many-
pounds it shall pass for ; to snatch an eagle-quill, and, with a brow
of bronze and eye of brass, to write down

or else, with shaking hand and lips of indigo, to scratch a miserable,
pauper-stricken, squalid—

j£ Owe

It is, I say, for the man himself to give value to his own moral paper ;
and though, I grant, now and then, the prying and ill-natured may-
hold up the article to the light to search for the true water-mark, the
owner of the note has only to swagger and put the face of a Caesar on
the transaction, to silence every scruple.

As an instance, my dear boy, of what perseverance will do—of
what an inexorable advocacy of merit (or fancied merit, for that is the
thing) will do, for the professor,—I will give you a short story, drawn
from a Dutch annalist of the sixteenth century.

Serene and balmy was the 9th of June morning, 1549, when three
men dressed as heralds, and superbly mounted on pie-bald horses,
appeared in the streets of Utrecht. Immediately behind them,
mounted on a mule richly caparisoned, rode a man, or rather a
human bundle—a hunchback, with his right leg less than a goose's
over-roasted drumstick ; the leg was moreover bowed like a pot-hook;
and, as at first was thought, that its deformity might be fully seen,
was without hose or shoe ; in plain words—it was a naked leg. The
dwarf was followed by six horsemen handsomely arrayed, and
strongly mounted.

The procession halted before the burgomaster's door, when the
heralds, putting their trumpets to their lips, blew so loud a blast that
every man's money danced in his pocket. The crowd with gaping
mouths and ears awaited the proclamation of the herald, who thus
unburthened himself:

"Let it be known to alleorners of the creation, that our most noble,
most puissant master, now present, the right valorous and worthy
Vandenhoppenlimpen, has the most perfect right leg of all the sons
of earth ! In token whereof, he now exhibiteth the limb ; whereat, let
all men shout and admire ! "

On the instant, the dwarf cocked up his withered stump, self-com-
placently laying his hand upon his heart; and at the same moment
the crowd screamed and roared, and abused and reviled the dwarf,
whilst some market-women discharged ancient eggs and withered
apples at him,—and the procession, followed by the roaring populace,
made their way back to their hostelry.

The next morning, at the same place and like hour, the same pro-
clamation was made. Again the undaunted dwarf showed his limb,
and again he was chased and pelted.

And every day for six months, the unwearied heralds proclaimed
the surpassing beauty of Vandenhoppenlimpen's right leg, and every
day the leg was exhibited. And after a time, every day the uproar
of the mob decreased ; and the leg was considered with new and
growing deference.

"After all, we must have been mistaken—there surely is something
in the leg," said one contemplative burgher.

" I have some time thought so," answered another.

" 'Tisn't likely," said a third, " that the man would stand so to the
excellence of his leg, unless there were something in it not to be seen
at once."

" It is my faith," said the burgomaster's grandmother—" a faith
I'll die in, for I have heard the sweet man himself say as much a
hundred-and-fifty times, that all other right legs are clumsy and ill.-