Punch or The London charivari (3.1842)

INTRODUCTION TO PUNCH'S LETTERS.

In humane compliance with the incessant and af-
fecting supplication of many hundred bosom
friends, these epistles are for the first time sub-
mitted to print. Yes, I swear it; and to solemnise
the oath, I am ready to kiss a bank-note of any
amount above fifty pounds,—I do not rush into
type, scourged to the act by an empty purse ;
but am wholly won to the proceeding by the
entreaties of sundry fathers, for whose children I
1 ave—as, indeed, I feel I ought to have—yearnings of peculiar
affection.

These letters were originally addressed to, I verily believe, my own
son. In these letters I have endeavoured to enshrine the wisdom of
my life. In them, I have sought to paint men as they are—to sketch
the scenes of the world as they have presented themselves to my
observation—to show the spring of human motives—to exhibit to the
opening mind of youth the vulgar wires that, because unseen, make a
mystery of common-place.

I am prepared to be much abused for these epistles. They are
written in lemon-juice. Nay, the little sacs in the jaws of the rattle-
snake, wherein the reptile elaborates its poison to strike with sudden
death the beautiful and harmless guinea-pigs and coneys of the
earth—these venomous bags have supplied the quill that traced the
mortal sentences. Or if it be not really so, it is no matter ; the
worthy, amiable souls, who would have even a Sawney Bean painted
upon a rose-leaf, will say as much : so let me for once be beforehand,
and say it for them.

The child for whose instruction and guidance through life these
letters were especially composed, has passed from this valley of
shadows—he is dead. Death, in its various modes of approach, is an
accordant mystery with the mystery of life. To one man it comes in
the guise of a grape-stone—to another in the aspect of a jackass
eating figs. To my dear son Death appeared in the tempting shape of
a fine South Down wether. Yes, mutton was his fate.

Had it pleased fortune to make me a man of Bank-paper, the life
of my darling child might have been spared. Then had I shown that
the dear boy acted only in obedience to an irresistible impulse born
with him—strengthened by maternal milk—made invincible by oft
indulgence. Then had I proved that the child in what he did was
but the innocent accessary of his unconscious mother.

I have dried my eyes, and will endeavour to explain myself.

Three months, to a day, before the birth of my child, we had not
for the previous eight-and-forty hours rejoiced our loyalty with the
sight of his majesty's head even upon copper ; and yet—be Mercury
my judge !—we worked most gallantly—handed round the hat most
perseveringly—laughed most jocosely, and all with bleeding hearts
and a slow-fire burning in our bowels. Nathless, halfpence came not.
At that time, I remember, we were terribly run upon by Parliament.
The madness of politics took away the people's brains ; and literature,
and art, and Punch, while the mania lasted, were—strange infatua-
tion of men !—neglected for the House of Commons !

Four-and-twenty times in four-and-twenty streets had we acted that
day, and yet no coin fell in the oft-presented hat. With thoughts of
an empty garret, a snpperless destiny if money came not—of my
unrepining, much-enduring wife—of all her wants in that her time of
weakness,—with all these horrid memories blazing in my brain, I
rattled away, and laughed, and cried and crowed roo-tooit-roo-tooit in

every key and cadence, and heard myself bruited by the mob as a
merciless, unfeeling rascal, without one touch of humanity for aught
that breathed. Alas ! at that moment I had an ulcer in my heart big
as a rat-hole.

Evening came on, and with it cold and drizzling rain. We were
preparing for our twenty-fifth representation, when a delicious odour
suddenly steamed through the canvas, and on the instant, a voice
— to my foolish ear sweet as the multitudinous voices of cherubim—
cried—

" Hot, hot—all hot—mutton pies, all hot I"

My dear wife placed her hand upon her heart—she knew I had not
a penny—softly sighed, then fell in a dead swoon into my arms.
There she lay, and still the retreating voice rang through the night—

" Hot, hot—all hot—mutton pies, all hot!"

At length my spouse returned to life. With the fine delicacy, the
mighty self-denial of her sex, she breathed not her wish. But I looked
in her eyes, and read—Mutton!

And who, after this, can wonder at—much more blame—my darling,
blighted son for his uncontrollable affection for South Down, or in
fact any other, wethers ?

Oh, ye thousands of philosophers dozing, dreaming, yawning in
garrets — oh, ye broad-brimmed, long-shirted, ankle-jacked sages, who
look into men's skulls as men look into glass-hives—who untwist the
cords of the human heart carefully yet surely as the huswife
untangles a skein of silk—could not twelve of ye be found to go into
a box to discuss, and by your verdict dignify as pretty a case of morals
and metaphysics as ever came from the Press-yard ? But no ! dry-
salters, hardwaremen, yea, ropemakers (for my innocent boy never
thought to challenge the last jurymen as peculiarly interested in the
verdict), judged him, and of course he was lost.

As a further illustration of the benighted intellect of the jury, it
was argued against my boy—my doomed one from the womb !—that
he had on a previous occasion shown a violent love for a bale of
Welsh flannel, the property of a hosier on Ludgate-hill. Of course
he had. It was the inevitable result of his constitution. The flan-
nel was part of the sheep. What he did, he did from necessity. He
was organized for the act. The jury—asses !—called it a second
offence. Why, it was one and the same thing. Nay, had my child
made off with a gross or two of lambs'-wool socks, and half-a-dozen
Witney blankets, a philosophic jury would have considered the col-
lective acts as but an individual emanation of pre-organized tem-
perament ; and, pitying the mother in the son, have returned a tri-
umphant acquittal. But what knew the jury of affinities ?

Had I been rich I could have proved all this, and my boy had
been saved upon a constitutional eccentricity. As it was—but I will
no longer dwell upon the theme. Enough for the curious. My boy's
fate may be found in the archives of Seven Dials.

These letters will, I trust, testify my paternal solicitude. It is my
pride, that they were treasured by my son, and were bequeathed by
him, with other effects, to the individual whose adroit attention to
my boy in his last moments was witnessed by hundreds, and com-
mented upon in the handsomest way by various distinguished writers
of the English press. It is to the liberality of this individual I am
indebted for the original documents ; for, elevated far above the
petty spirit of huckstering, he at a word took a pot of porter for the
treasure, and, with a significant wink and a light-hearted laugh,
wished me joy of my bargain.