Punch or The London charivari (3.1842)

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

219

PUNCH'S LETTERS TO HIS SON.

letter xvii'..—on social flattery: story of the dog ponto—
pig and prune sauce.

My dear Son,—Having in my last dwelt upon flattery, as necessary
to the success of a politician, I dedicate this letter to a consideration
of its utility to every man who would, by the exercise of his wits,
make his way in the world. There is a negative flattery—as there
is a positive flattery. A knowledge of the one is equally vital with
the practice of the other. For instance :—You would conciliate the
good graces of a man of wealth or interest. You hang and flutter
about him for the bounty of his purse, or the magic of his good word
in high places. This man may be a fool : I do not, understand me,
fall in with the vulgar cry of paupers, that every man who is born
rich is therefore born brainless ; but your patron, or the man you
would make your patron, may be a fool ; and, consequently, is the
more frequently tempted, like the climbing ape, to show his natural
destitution. I think it is Mr. Addison who says," He who is injured,
and having brought his enemy on his knees, declines to punish him,
was born for a conqueror." This is the sentiment, though not
perhaps the exact words ; for I 'have long since put aside The Spec-
tator with your mother's cracked china. Mark, my son, a higher, a
severer test of magnanimity. He who hears the abortive jest of a
rich fool, yet refuses to turn his folly inside out, is born to finger
ready money. This, my son, is flattery by negative. Have what wit
you will, but carry it—as courtiers carry their swords in the royal
presence—in the scabbard. Suffer your patron to run you, as he
thinks, through and through with his wooden dagger of a joke ; but
never let yourself be tempted to draw. Flattery has its martyrdom,
the same as religion—and this is of it. Bear all the wounds inflicted
upon you by wealth with a merry face ; join in the laugh that's
raised against you ; but, as you value success in life, never show an
inch of steel in self-defence. Men who do otherwise may be
chronicled for brave, expert wits ; but they die beggars.

Come we now to positive flattery. Whatever dirty-shirted philo-1
sophers may say to the contrary, flattery is a fine social thing ; the
beautiful handmaid of life, casting flowers and odoriferous herbs in j
the paths of men, who, crushing out their sweets, curl up their noses
as they snuff the odour, and walk half an inch higher to heaven by
what they tread upon.

Your patron is an ass : you hear his braying—you see his ears :
minus is written all over him in Nature's boldest round-hand. Well,
by delicately dwelling upon the melodious wisdom of his words—by
adroitly touching on the intellectual beauty with which fate has
endowed him, you make him for the time love wisdom because he
thinks it a part of himself—you draw his admiration towards the
expression of the intellectual every time he looks in a mirror. You
are thus, in an indirect way, serving the cause of wisdom and
intellect by juggling a fool into a worshipper. Let it be granted,
that you have your reward for this—that, in fact, you undertake the
labour for the wages of life : what of it ? Is not the task worthy of
payment ? When men, in the highest places too, are so well paid
for fooling common sense, shall there be no fee for him who elevates
a nincompoop \

You see an ass browsiDg upon thistles. On this, you fall into
raptures at his exquisite taste for roses ; the ass, with great compla-
cency, avers that he always had a peculiar relish for them. The ass
brays. Wherefore you make a happy allusion to the vibrations of
the iEolian harp. The ass declares it is an instrument above all
others he is most inclined to. Are not roses and iEolian harps
thus honoured, even by the hypocrisy of admiration ?

Believe whatever the rich and powerful say; that is, seem to
believe it. Albeit they narrate histories wilder than ever Ariosto
fabled, averring themselves to have been eye and ear witnesses to
what they tell, yet, without a smile upon your face, gulp it all.
Though the stories be long and nauseous as tape-worms, yet swallow
them as though they were toothsome as maccaroni. You recollect Sir
Peter Bullhead ? He owed all his fortune to a dog. I will tell you
the story.

In early life, Sir Peter became footboy to Lord Tamarind ; a man
who returned from the East Indies with a million of money, and his
liver no bigger than the roasted liver of a capon. Lord Tamarind
was a liar of the very finest courage. There was no story he would
not tvndertake, and make his own. Had he resolved upon it, he
would have been present at the siege of Troy, and, sure, have shown
you the knee-buckles he had, in single combat, won of Nestor.
Mercury must have been proud of him.

Lord Tamarind-had a favourite story of a dog; which story he
would pull in upon all occasions. His Lordship, go where he would,
never went without his dog. " Very curious, indeed, very ; and
talking of the great player reminds me of an extraordinary anecdote
of a dog. You never heard it, I know; a remarkable case of
conscience,—very remarkable ;" and then his Lordship proceeded—
his hearers meekly resigning themselves to the too familiar tale.

"You must know that in Batavia—it was when I was there—■
there was a certain Dutch merchant ; I mention no names, for I
respect his family. Well, this mei'chant—a shocking thing!—he
was a married man ; sweet little woman—five or seven children, and
all that. Well, this merchant—very dreadful!—kept a mistress,
country-house, and all things proper. Well, every evening he used
to leave his lawful home to pass an hour or two with the fatal syren.
He had a dog, a faithful, humble dog, that always followed him ;—

that was, moreover, greatly petted by the illegal enchantress. The
dog, being particularly fond of his lawful mistress, became, day
by day, very melancholy, sad, heavy-eyed, and moping*. This arose
suspicions of hydrophobia—talk of poison, double-barrelled gun, and
all that. Still the dog followed his master on his evening call. One
evening, however—all day long it had been remarked that Ponto was
more than usually meditative—the dog paused at the Dalilah's door.
' Ponto, Ponto,' cried the merchant, gaily entering the abode of
wickedness, and whistling his dog to follow him—'Ponto, Ponto !'—
But the dog stood with his fore-feet on the door step, and wouldn't
budge. 'Ponto,Ponto—sweet Ponto—good Ponto,' cried the wicked
woman herself, coming to the door, and offering from her white hand
the whitest cake. Ponto was immovable. Then looking at his
master, the dog shook his head four or five times, as much as to say,
' Arn't you ashamed of yourself ?'—sighed very deeply, and dropping
his tail, walked solemnly home. The merchant was so affected by
the dog's reproof,—(all this happened while I was in Batavia,)—
that he followed Ponto back to his lawful hearth, and for the rest of
his natural life was never known to make an evening call again."

Lord Tamarind had three nephews ; he cut every one off with a
shilling for having boisterously expressed a doubt of the truth of
what had occurred whilst he was in Batavia ; but Peter Bullhead,
who never failed to ask for the story of the dog—Peter, who had

* The sagacity of Ponto is nothing to the sensibility of the race of King Charles's
spaniels, that ever since the martyrdom of Charles the First, have betrayed an
inconsolable melancholy. The spaniels lost their liveliness when Charles lost his
head. We take this assurance from a French author. In the Journal des Chasseurs
ou Sporting Magazine Frangais, for March 1842, will be found the story, as related

by theComte de St. P- The Count was in the bnis terriers in the autumD o-f

1841, shooting with a spaniel, when he falls in with an Englishman, who enlarges
in this way (as told by the Count) on the merits of spaniels generally :—

"Ce sont des queteurs infatigables, me djt-il; excellens pour les fourres, dontils
fouillent les moindres buissons : nous les employons beaucoup en Angleterre, oH
le prix de tel individu est, suivant sa genealogie, fort eleve. II n't/ a qu'un se°il
reproche A leur /aire; mais, ajoute-il, ce defaut s'applique malheureusement a l'espece
entiSre.

— Et quel est-il! demandai-je a mon interlocuteur.

— Ils son'T tristes—reprit gravement celui-ci —n.Ercis la mort. du «oi

ClIARI.es ! "

— (Upon this the Count observes, as well he may)—
" Superstition naSve, et touchante I "