Punch (49.1865)

September 9, 1865.1

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

93

A SEASONABLE REMONSTRANCE

IR,—You know me
well enough to be
sure that I am
not a misanthrope;
yet I confess that
there are times

when I hate the very sight of people. Tor instance, after some ten months or so
of London whirl and bustle, I feel an utter detestation of the “ human face divine,”
as some poet has expressed it. After working all that while “ in populous city
pent,” as some other poet phrases it, I have a wish to spend my holiday upon some
desert island, where I may live in utter solitude, as Mr. Crusoe had the luck to do,
before he met his black friend Friday. Lagged, flurried, and fatigued as one feels
after the season, one wants to rest, and would be thankful to get away from every-
body. My hospitable friend Smith is a good fellow enough, but to my mind, in
September, a cock grouse is a better. To quote Shakspeare, slightly altered—

“ Oh, happy month that gives me to the Moor.”

How I revel in the ease of my flannel shirt, my shooting coat and pair of loose
old knickerbockers ! How I exult in my escape from my tyrannous tight hat, and
glory in the freedom of my weather-beaten wide-awake! Lor me, until November,
no more the wretched martyrdom of walking in a chimney-pot; no more the social
misery of making morning calls, or attending evening parties. Until then, I can
breakfast in my shirt-sleeves, if I please; and can sit down to my dinner without
having to put on a dress coat and white choker. Only they who live in town can
tell the joy one feels in leaving it, and living for a while a life of utter loneliness.

You will pity, then, the sorrows of a poor young man, when I tell you I have
weakly yielded to my wife, and have agreed to waste this autumn in paying
country visits. Women are, by nature, more gregarious than men, and a month
or so of solitude is not much to their liking. Somehow, wives don’t value as they
ought to do the luxury of sitting in the cottage of a gamekeeper, or the hovel of a
gillie, and waiting for their husbands while the grouse are being slaughtered. Soli-
tude plus fleas is little to their taste; and, after a day’s shooting, the best of men
assuredly are not the best of company. So, as married life is a series of com-
promises, I agreed, in expiation of my absence on the Derby Day—I agreed, I
say, most nobly to give up the grouse this autumn, and do penance for a month
or more by visiting a number of my wife’s rural relations.

Now, living in a country house is pleasant life enough, even when one has a
wife and one’s flirting days are over, if one is only suffered to do just what one
likes, and serenely to enjoy the quiet of the country. But, unluckily, when town
folk star about the provinces, a most unfair advantage is taken of their advent.
Dull and dismal dinners are given in their honour, and dreary evening parties
are attempted for the purpose, it is said, of entertaining them. If you venture a
remonstrance, “Oh !” exclaims your charming hostess, “I must ask a few friends,
or you’d be bored to death with us. You gay Londoners could never live
our humdrum country life. Besides, I really wanted an excuse to give a party.
It is such an age since the Hawkshawes came to see us.” The Hawk-

shawes, as you discover, are the chieftains of a neighbour-
ing tribe, and no chance is ever lost of luring them to visit
your friend’s hospitable wigwam. Indeed, you cannot help
suspecting that your presence is the bait thrown out on
this occasion, and that you will be expected to make your-
self agreeable, and to trot out your best talk to entertain
the Hawkshawes. Avida novitatis est yens rustica, you
find; and although they have no interest in it, the country
folk are greedy for the latest London gossip. So out
must come all your old stories which you know so well
by heart, and have so often told at table during the past
season: and forth must come those brilliant epigrams and
impromptu sparks of wit, which so repeatedly have served
to light up a dull dinner party. In fact, instead of finding
you can wear your oldest clothes and let your intellect lie
fallow, you have to brush up your dress-coat and to brush
your wits up also.

Now really this is taking a most mean advantage of a
man, and clearly something should be done to put a stop to
such iniquity. If I can’t go to the grouse, I don’t mind
going to see Smith, if his wife will only suffer me to live in
peace and quiet. But wearied as I am with London work
and worry, I don’t want to be trotted out to entertain
Smith’s neighbours, and be expected to amuse them, and
to twist my wits about as though I were a mental acrobat.
One does such work in London, in the season, it is true ;
but there one is accustomed to it, moreover there are
other acrobats to bear one company. But in the country
this is not so, and, besides, one’s wits want rest, and forcing
them to work then is sheer cruelty to intellect. Moreover,
in the country one is gifted with an appetite, and it is abso-
lute barbarity to make men talk when they are hungry.
In the country, moreover, one is out shooting all day, and
one comes home more disposed to take a nap after one’s
dinner than to make oneself agreeable.

So let us keep one’s wits for London, and one’s withers
for the country; and don’t let us outrage Nature by work-
ing both together. My jokes will be the better, when I
return to town, for the rest my brains have had; while
my lungs will have had quite sufficient work to do, in
whistling to my dogs and taking “ breathers” through the
bean-fields.

In the hope that you will help to save me from my
friends by publishing this letter, I sign myself,

Yours gratefully, Joseph Miller Jones.