Punch or The London charivari (3.1842)

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

PUNCH'S LETTERS TO HIS SON.

LETTER VIII.—CONCLUSION OF THE " HERMETICAL" PHILOSOPHY.

I hate learned another trick in this solitude. I have learned to
separate the twin natures with which, it is my belief, every man is
born, and to sit in judgment upon the vices, the follies, the high
feelings, arid grovelling appetites, that make up the double me. Make
a trial of the process, reader. Quit the world for a season. Look
boldly into yourself; and however high may have been your notion
of the cleanliness of your moral temple, you will, if you look with
steady, courageous eyes, blush and marvel at its many dirty little
holes and corners, the vile, unswept nooks—the crafty spiders and
their noisome webs. And in this temple, to your surprise, you will
behold two pulpits for two preachers. In the innocency of your
knowledge you thought there was but one divine, and that a
most respectable, orthodox, philanthropic creature ; punctual in his
discourses, exemplary in his discipline—indeed, the very pattern of a
devout and cheerful man. You look, and behold, there is another
preacher, a fellow with no more reverence in him than in a Malay
amuck ; a pettifogging, mean-spirited, albeit quick-witted, shuffling
scoundrel, whose voice, too, in the throng and press of the world has
appeared to you so like the voice of the good grave gentleman
whom you deemed alone in his vocation, that you have a thousand
times, without reflection, followed his bidding—unhesitatingly obeyed
his behests, and only now, when you have set apart a season for con-
sideration, only now perceive the imposture—recognize the coun-
terfeit.

" What!" you exclaim, " and was it he who prompted me with
that bitter answer to poor inoffensive Palemon ?" " Was it he
who bade me button up my pocket and growl—'No,'to such a
petitioner on such a day 2" " Was it he who whispered me to
cross the road, and cut to the heart the ruined, shabby-coated
Damon V And still further considering the matter, you remember
that the interloper monitor, the fellow whose very existence
you never suspected, has had nearly all the talk "to himself;
the grave gentleman, whose voice has been so well imitated,
and whom you thought your pastor and your master, having
been silenced, out-talked,by the chattering of an unsuspected opponent.
I say it, you are twin-souled. Step into my hermitage. Submit to
wholesome discipline of thought, and, be assured of it, you will, in
due season, be able to divorce self from self; to arraign your fallen
moiety at the bar of conscience; to bring against it a thousand score of
crimes, a thousand peccadilloes, all the doings of the scurvy rascal
yon bear within you, and whose misdeeds are for the first time
made known to you.

Well, the court is open.

Who,—you cry,—is that beetle-browed, shuffling, cock-eyed knave
at the bar ? Is he a poacher, a smuggler, a suborner of false-testi-
mony, a swindler, a thief 1

Gently, gently, sir; that unfortunate creature is your twin-soul.
It was he who in the case of Mr. Suchathing advised you to—

God bless me ! I remember—don't speak of it—shocking !—
I'm very sorry.

And it was he who, when poor widow Soandso—

There, hold your tongue ! I recollect all about it. How have
I been deceived by that scoundrel ! But then, how could I ever
have believed that I carried such a rascal about me ?

For my own part, I am firm in the faith that I should never
have discovered my own twin varlet had I not shut the door upon
the world and taken a good inside stare at myself. No ; my hair
would have grown grey and my nose wine-coloured—for it hath a
purpureal weakness,—and as a distinguished statesman, whose name
I forget, once said, I might have patted the back of my naughty
twin soul, deeming him a remarkably fine sample of the article ;
and so gone on, working for a handsome epitaph, and dying with a
Christian-like assurance that I had earned the same. I might have
lived and died thus self-deluded, but for this retreat so happily
opened to me by the illustrious nobleman aforesaid.

" A work of this nature is not to be performed upon one leg ; and should
smell of oil, if duly and deservedly handled.."

Such is the solemn avowal of a fantastically grave philosopher, on
the completion of his opus magnum,- but surely that vaunt hath a
more fitting abiding-place in the present page. My subject, too,
like that of my brother philosopher, from its innate dignity, its
comprehensive usefulness, might employ the goose-quills of a whole
college. It were easy to tell off at least five hundred men-—many of
them having the ears of kings, and, what are sometimes longer, the
purse-strings of nations at their command—all of them, by nature
and practice, admirably fitted for the work. From their very suc-
cesses the world has a claim upon them for the encyclopaedic labour.
However, until the time arrives when these men, touched by a sense
of their ingratitude, shall repair the wrong, let the present little
book receive the welcome due to good intentions. I am content, in
the whirl and mutation of all mundane things, to be trumped by a
minister, a cardinal, a philosopher, a commercial philanthropist, by
any one or one hundred of these :—when such men shall have grown
sufficiently ingenuous to respond to the crying wants of their fellow-
creatures, and shall publish Humbug in extenso, I shall sleep quietly
beneath the marble monument which the gratitude of my country
will erect to my memory, although this little volume, superseded by
the larger work, shall be called in like an old coinage, and no longer
be made the class-book of the young, the staff of the middle-aged,
and the solacing chronicle of the old.

Imperfect as the work may be, it would, I feel, have been im-
possible to write at all upon Humbug amid the delicious distractions
of London. Is it asked,—wherefore 1 Alas ! the writer would have
been confounded by the quantity of his materials. Solitude—con-
tinued, profound solitude—was necessary to the gestation and safe
delivery of this book. I have endeavoured to show that the true so-
lemnities, the real sweetnesses of death—the mystery of our inner
selves, which said mystery we walk about the world with, deeming
it of no more complexity than the first mouse-trap,—are only to be
approached and looked upon in their utter nakedness when safe
from the elbows and the tongues of the world. Now, if life be a
mystery, Humbug is at once the art and heart of life. A man may,
indeed, get a smattering of moral philosophy in a garret within
ear-shot of th •» hourly courtesies of hackney-coachmen ; but Hum-
bug, though sh^ often ride in a coach of her own through the
highways of the city, like a fine lady, suffers her pulse to be felt only
in private. Humbug is the philosopher's Egeria, and to be wooed
and known in secret.

Think you, reader, there is no other reason for the sundry pro-
rogations of Parliament, than that the excellent men, (selected only
for their wisdom and their virtue from their less wise and less
virtuous fellows,) having generously presented so many pounds to
S the state, their services are for a time no longer required 2 Such
I is not the profound intent of prorogation. Its benevolent purpose
is to send every senator into healthful solitude, that he may fortify
himself with a frequent contemplation of his past votes ; that he
may call up and question his twin soul, and rejoice himself to know
that the Dromios within him have given their voices in accordance
—that one of the sneaking gemini, out of the baseness of expected
gains, has not cried " Ay," when its nobler fellow stoutly intended
"No!"

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1 conclusion of the "hermit's" fragments.