Old Friends: Essays in Epistolary Parody

Piscator.

XIV

From Truthful James to Mr. Bret HarteWILLIAM NYE’S EXPERIMENTAngel’s.Dear Bret Harte,                        I’m in tears,      And the camp’s in the dust,   For with anguish it hears      As poor William may bust,And the last of the Nyes is in danger of   sleeping the sleep of the just.No revolver it wasInterfered with his health,The convivial glassDid not harm him by stealth;It was nary! He fell by a scheme whichhe thought would accumulate wealth!For a Moqui came roundTo the camp – Injun Joe;And the dollars was foundIn his pockets to flow;For he played off some tricks with livesnakes, as was reckoned a competent show.They was rattlers; a pairIn his teeth he would hold,And another he’d wearLike a scarf to enfoldHis neck, with them dangerous crittersas safe as the saint was of old.Sez William, “That sameIs as easy as wink.I am fly to his game;For them rattlers, I think,Has had all their incisors extracted.They’re harmless as suthin’ to drink.”So he betted his pileHe could handle them snakes;And he tried, with a smile,And a rattler he takes,Feeling safe as they’d somehow beendoctored; but bless you, that sarpent awakes!Waken snakes! and they did      And they rattled like mad;   For it was not a “kid,”      But some medicine he had,Injun Joe, for persuadin’ the critters but   William’s bit powerful bad.So they’ve put him outsideOf a bottle of Rye,And they’ve set him to rideA mustang as kin shy,To keep up his poor circulation; andthat’s the last chance for Bill Nye.But a near thing it is,And the camp’s in the dust.He’s a pard as we’d missIf poor Bill was to bust —If the last of the Nyes were a-sleepinthe peaceable sleep of the just.

XV

From Professor Forth to the Rev. Mr. Casaubon

The delicacy of the domestic matters with which the following correspondence deals cannot be exaggerated. It seems that Belinda (whose Memoirs we owe to Miss Rhoda Broughton) was at Oxford while Mr. and Mrs. Casaubon were also resident near that pleasant city, so famed for its Bodleian Library. Professor Forth and Mr. Casaubon were friends, as may be guessed; their congenial characters, their kindred studies, Etruscology and Mythology, combined to ally them. Their wives were not wholly absorbed in their learned pursuits, and if Mr. Ladislaw was dangling after Mrs. Casaubon, we know that Mr. Rivers used to haunt with Mrs. Forth the walks of Magdalen. The regret and disapproval which Mrs. Casaubon expresses, and her desire to do good to Mrs. Forth, are, it is believed, not alien to her devoted and exemplary character.

Bradmore-road, Oxford, May 29.

Dear Mr. Casaubon, – In the course of an investigation which my researches into the character of the Etruscan “Involuti” have necessitated, I frequently encounter the root Kâd, k2âd, or Qâd. Schnitzler’s recent and epoch-making discovery that d in Etruscan = b2, has led me to consider it a plausible hypothesis that we may convert Kâd or Qâd into Kab2, in which case it is by no means beyond the range of a cautious conjecture that the Involuti are identical with the Cab-iri (Cabiri). Though you will pardon me for confessing, what you already know, that I am not in all points an adherent to your ideas concerning a “Key to All Mythologies” (at least, as briefly set forth by you in Kuhn’s Zeitung), yet I am deeply impressed with this apparent opportunity of bridging the seemingly impassable gulf between Etrurian Religion and the comparatively clear and comprehensible systems of the Pelasgo-Phoenician peoples. That Kâd or Kâb can refer either (as in Quatuor) to a four-footed animal (quadruped, “quad”) or to a four-wheeled vehicle (esseda, Celtic cab) I cannot for a moment believe, though I understand that this theory has the support of Schrader, Penka, and Baunder. 10 Any information which your learning can procure, and your kind courtesy can supply, will be warmly welcomed and duly acknowledged. – Believe me, faithfully yours,

James Forth.

P.S. – I open this note, which was written from my dictation by my secretary, Mrs. Forth, to assure myself that her inexperience has been guilty of no error in matters of so much delicacy and importance. I have detected no mistake of moment, and begin to hope that the important step of matrimony to which I was guided by your example may not have been a rash experiment.

From the Rev. Mr. Casaubon to James Forth, Esq., Professor of Etruscan, Oxford

Dear Mr. Forth, – Your letter throws considerable light on a topic which has long engaged my earnest attention. To my thinking, the Cab in Cabiri = CAV, “hollow,” as in cavus, and refers to the Ark of Noah, which, of course, before the entrance of every living thing according to his kind, must have been the largest artificial hollow or empty space known to our Adamite ancestors. Thus the Cabiri would answer, naturally, to the Patæci, which, as Herodotus tells us, were usually figured on the prows of ships. The Cabiri or Patæci, as children of Noah and men of the “great vessel,” or Cave-men (a wonderful anticipation of modern science), would perpetuate the memory of Arkite circumstances, and would be selected, as the sacred tradition faded from men’s minds, as the guides of navigation. I am sorry to seem out of harmony with your ideas; but it is only a matter of seeming, for I have no doubt that the Etruscan Involuti are also Arkite, and that they do not, as Max Müller may be expected to intimate, represent the veiled or cloudy Dawns, but rather the Arkite Patriarchs. We thus, from different starting-places, arrive at the same goal, the Arkite solution of Bryant. I am aware that I am old-fashioned – like Eumæus, “I dwell here among the swine, and go not often to the city.” Your letters with little numerals (as k2) may represent the exactness of modern philology; but more closely remind me of the formulæ of algebra, a study in which I at no time excelled.

It is my purpose to visit Cambridge on June 3, to listen to a most valuable address by Professor Tösch, of Bonn, on Hittite and Aztec affinities. If you can meet me there and accept the hospitality of my college, the encounter may prove a turning point in Mythological and Philological Science. – Very faithfully yours,

J. Casaubon.

P.S. – I open this note, written from my dictation by my wife, to enclose my congratulations on Mrs. Forth’s scholarly attainments.

From Professor Forth to Rev. Mr. Casaubon(Telegram.)

Will be with you at Cambridge on the third.

From Mrs. Forth, Bradmore-road, Oxford, to David Rivers, Esq., Milnthorpe, Yorkshire

He goes on Saturday to Cambridge to hear some one talk about the Hittites and the Asiatics. Did you not say there was a good Sunday train? They sing “O Rest in the Lord” at Magdalen. I often wonder that Addison’s Walk is so deserted on Sundays. He stays over Sunday at Cambridge.11

From David Rivers, Esq., to Mrs. Forth, Oxford

Dear Mrs. Forth, – Saturday is a half-holiday at the Works, and I propose to come up and see whether our boat cannot bump Balliol. How extraordinary it is that people should neglect, on Sundays, the favourite promenade of the Short-faced Humourist. I shall be there: the old place. – Believe me, yours ever,

D. Rivers.From Mrs. Casaubon to William Ladislaw, Esq., Stratford-on-Avon

Dear Friend, – Your kind letter from Stratford is indeed interesting. Ah, when shall I have an opportunity of seeing these, and so many other interesting places! But in a world where duty is so much, and so always with us, why should we regret the voids in our experience which, after all, life is filling in the experience of others? The work is advancing, and Mr. Casaubon hopes that the first chapter of the “Key to All Mythologies” will be fairly copied and completed by the end of autumn. Mr. Casaubon is going to Cambridge on Saturday to hear Professor Tösch lecture on the Pittites and some other party, I really forget which; 12 but it is not often that he takes so much interest in mere modern history. How curious it sometimes is to think that the great spirit of humanity and of the world, as you say, keeps working its way – ah, to what wonderful goal – by means of these obscure difficult politics: almost unworthy instruments, one is tempted to think. That was a true line you quoted lately from the ‘Vita Nuova.’ We have no books of poetry here, except a Lithuanian translation of the Rig Veda. How delightful it must be to read Dante with a sympathetic fellow-student, one who has also loved – and renounced! – Yours very sincerely,

Dorothea Casaubon.

P.S. – I do not expect Mr. Casaubon back from Cambridge before Monday afternoon.

From William Ladislaw, Esq., to the Hon. Secretary of the Literary and Philosophical Mechanics’ Institute, Middlemarch

My Dear Sir, – I find that I can be in your neighbourhood on Saturday, and will gladly accept your invitation to lecture at your Institute on the Immutability of Morals. – Faithfully yours,

W. Ladislaw.From William Ladislaw, Esq., to Mrs. Casaubon

Dear Mrs. Casaubon, – Only a line to say that I am to lecture at the Mechanics’ Institute on Saturday. I can scarcely hope that, as Mr. Casaubon is away, you will be able to attend my poor performance, but on Sunday I may have, I hope, the pleasure of waiting on you in the afternoon? – Very sincerely yours,

W. Ladislaw.

P.S. – I shall bring the ‘Vita Nuova’ – it is not so difficult as the ‘Paradiso’ – and I shall be happy to help you with a few of the earlier sonnets.

From Mrs. Casaubon to Mrs. ForthJune 5.

Dear Lady, – You will be surprised at receiving a letter from a stranger! How shall I address you – how shall I say what I ought to say? Our husbands are not unknown to each other, I may almost call them friends, but we have met only once. You did not see me; but I was at Magdalen a few weeks ago, and I could not help asking who you were, so young, so beautiful; and when I saw you so lonely among all those learned men my heart went out to you, for I too know what the learned are, and how often, when we are young, we feel as if they were so cold, so remote. Ah, then there come temptations, but they must be conquered. – We are not born to live for ourselves only, we must learn to live for others – ah! not for Another!

Some one 13 we both know, a lady, has spoken to me of you lately. She too, though you did not know it, was in Magdalen Walk on Sunday evening when the bells were chiming and the birds singing. She saw you; you were not alone! Mr. Rivers (I am informed that is his name) was with you. Ah, stop and think, and hear me before it is too late. A word; I do not know – a word of mine may be listened to, though I have no right to speak. But something forces me to speak, and to implore you to remember that it is not for Pleasure we live, but for Duty. We must break the dearest ties if they do not bind us to the stake – the stake of all we owe to all! You will understand, you will forgive me, will you not? You will forgive another woman whom your beauty and sadness have won to admire and love you. You will break these ties, will you not, and be free, for only in Renunciation is there freedom? He must not come again, you will tell him that he must not. – Yours always,

Dorothea Casaubon.

XVI

From Euphues to Sir Amyas Leigh, Kt

This little controversy on the value of the herb tobacco passed between the renowned Euphues and that early but assiduous smoker, Sir Amyas Leigh, well known to readers of “Westward Ho.”

(He dissuadeth him from drinking the smoke of the Indian weed.)

Sir Amyas, – Take it not unkindly that a traveller (though less wide a wanderer than thou) dissuadeth thee from a new-found novelty – the wanton misuse, or rather the misuseful wantonness, of the Indian herb. It is a blind goose that knoweth not a fox from a fern-bush, and a strange temerity that mistaketh smoke for provender. The sow, when she is sick, eateth the sea-crab and is immediately recovered: why, then, should man, being whole and sound, haste to that which maketh many sick? The lobster flieth not in the air, nor doth the salamander wanton in the water; wherefore, then, will man betake him for nourishment or solace to the fire? Vesuvius bringeth not forth speech from his mouth, but man, like a volcano, will utter smoke. There is great difference between the table and the chimney; but thou art for making both alike. Though the Rose be sweet, yet will it prove less fragrant if it be wreathed about the skunk; and so an ill weed from the land where that beast hath its habitation defileth a courteous knight. Consider, if this practice delights thee, that the apples of Sodom are outwardly fair but inwardly full of ashes; the box-tree is always green, but his seed is poison. Mithridate must be taken inwardly, not spread on plasters. Of his nature smoke goeth upward and outward; why wilt thou make it go inward and downward? The manners of the Cannibal fit not the Englishman; and this thy poison is unlike Love, which maimeth every part before it kill the Liver, whereas tobacco doth vex the Liver before it harmeth any other part. Excuse this my boldness, and forswear thy weed, an thou lovest

Euphues.From Sir Amyas Leigh to Euphues

Whereas thou bringest in a rabble of reasons to convince me, I will answer thee in thine own kind. Thou art like those that proffer a man physic before he be sick, and, because his pleasure is not theirs, call him foolish that is but early advised. Nature maketh nothing without an end: the eye to see with, the ear to hear, the herb tobacco to be smoked. As wine strengtheneth and meat maketh full, tobacco maketh the heart at rest. Helen gave Nepenthe to them that sorrowed, and Heaven hath made this weed for such as lack comfort. Tobacco is the hungry man’s food, the wakeful man’s sleep, the weary man’s rest, the old man’s defence against melancholy, the busy man’s repose, the talkative man’s muzzle, the lonely man’s companion. Indeed, there was nothing but this one thing wanting to man, of those that earth can give; wherefore, having found it, let him so use as not abusing it, as now I am about doing. – Thy servant,

Amyas Leigh.

XVII

From Mr. Paul Rondelet to the Very Rev. Dean Maitland. 14

That Dean Maitland should have taken the political line indicated in Mr. Rondelet’s letter will amaze no reader of ‘The Silence of Dean Maitland.’ That Mr. Paul Rondelet flew from his penny paper to a Paradise meet for him is a matter of congratulation to all but his creditors. He really is now in the only true Monastery of Thelema, and is simply dressed in an eye-glass and a cincture of pandanus flowers. The natives worship him, and he is the First Æsthetic Beach-comber.

Te-a-Iti, The Pacific.

Dear Maitland, – As my old friend and tutor at Lothian, you ask me to join the Oxford Home Rule Association. Excuse my delay in answering. Your letter was sent to that detested and long-deserted newspaper office in Fleet Street, and from Fleet Street to Te-a-Iti; thank Heaven! it is a long way. Were I at home, and still endeavouring to sway the masses, I might possibly accept your invitation. I dislike crowds, and I dislike shouting; but if shout I must, like you I would choose to chime in with the dingier and the larger and the more violent assembly. But, having perceived that the masses were very perceptibly learning to sway themselves, I have retired to Te-a-Iti. You have read “Epipsychidion,” my dear Dean? And, in your time, no doubt you have loved? 15 Well, this is the Isle of Love, described, as in a dream, by the rapt fancy of Shelley. Urged, perhaps, by a reminiscence of the Great Aryan wave of migration, I have moved westward to this Paradise. Like Obermann, I hide my head “from the wild tempest of the age,” but in a much dearer place than “chalets near the Alpine snow.” Long ago I said, to one who would not listen, that “all the religions of the world are based on false foundations, resting on the Family, and fatally unsound.” Here the Family, in our sense, has not been developed. Here no rules trammel the best and therefore the most evanescent of our affections. And as for Religion, it is based upon Me, on Rondelet of Lothian. Here nobody asks me why or how I am “superior.” The artless natives at once perceived the fact, recognised me as a god, and worship me (do not shudder, my good Dean) with floral services. In Te-a-Iti (vain to look for it on the map!) I have found my place – a place far from the babel of your brutal politics, a place where I am addressed in liquid accents of adoration.

You may ask whether I endeavour to raise the islanders to my own level? It is the last thing that I would attempt. Culture they do not need: their dainty hieratic precisions of ritual are a sufficient culture in themselves. As I said once before, “it is an absurdity to speak of married people being one.” Here we are an indefinite number; and no jealousy, no ambitious exclusiveness, mars the happiness of all. This is the Higher Life about which we used ignorantly to talk. Here the gross temporal necessities are satisfied with a breadfruit, a roasted fish, and a few pandanus flowers. The rest is all climate and the affections.

Conceive, my dear Dean, the undisturbed felicity of life without newspapers! Empires may fall, perhaps have fallen, since I left Fleet Street; Alan Dunlop may be a ditcher in good earnest on an estate no longer his; but here we fleet the time carelessly, as in the golden world. And you ask me to join a raucous political association for an object you detest in your heart, merely because you want to swim with the turbid democratic current! You are an historian, Maitland: did you ever know this policy succeed? Did you ever know the respectables prosper when they allied themselves with the vulgar? Ah, keep out of your second-hand revolutions. Keep your hands clean, whether you keep your head on your shoulders or not. You will never, I fear, be Bishop of Winkum, with all your historical handbooks and all your Oxford Liberalism.

But I am losing my temper, for the first time since I discovered Te-a-Iti. This must not be. – Yours regretfully,

Paul Rondelet.

P.S. – Don’t give any one my address; some of these Oxford harpies are still unappeased. The only European I have seen was not an University man. He was a popular Scotch novelist, and carried Shorter Catechisms, which he distributed to my flock. I only hope he won’t make “copy” out of me and my situation.

P. R.

XVIII

From Harold Skimpole, Esq., to the Rev. Charles Honeyman, M.A

These letters tell their own tale of Genius and Virtue indigent and in chains. The eloquence of a Honeyman, the accomplishments of a Skimpole, lead only to Cursitor Street.

Coavins’s, Cursitor Street, May 1.

My Dear Honeyman, – It is May-day, when even the chimney-sweeper, developing the pleasant unconscious poetry of his nature, forgets the flues, wreathes the flowers, and persuades himself that he is Jack-in-the-Green. Jack who? Was he Jack Sprat, or the young swain who mated with Jill! Who knows? The chimney-sweeper has all I ask, all that the butterflies possess, all that Common-sense and Business and Society deny to Harold Skimpole. He lives, he is free, he is “in the green!” I am in Coavins’s! In Cursitor Street I cannot hear the streams warble, the birds chant, the music roll through the stately fane, let us say, of Lady Whittlesea’s. Coavins’s (as Coavins’s man says) is “a ’ouse;” but how unlike, for example, the hospitable home of our friend Jarndyce! I can sketch Coavins’s, but I cannot alter it: I can set it to music, on Coavins’s piano; but how melancholy are the jingling strains of that dilapidated instrument! At Jarndyce’s house, when I am there, I am in possession of it: here Coavins’s is in possession of me – of the person of Harold Skimpole.

And why am I here? Why am I far from landscape, music, conversation? Why, merely because I will follow neither Fame nor Fortune nor Faith. They call to us in the market-place, but I will not dance. Fame blows her trumpet, and offers her shilling (the Queen’s). Faith peals her bells, and asks for my shilling. Fortune rattles her banking-scales. They call, and the world joins the waltz; but I will not march with them. “Go after glory, commerce, creeds,” I cry; “only let Harold Skimpole live!” 16 The world pursues the jangling music; but in my ear sound the pipes of Pan, the voices of the river and the wood.

Yet I cannot be in the playground, whither they invite me. Harold Skimpole is fettered – by what? By items! I regret my incapacity for details. It may be the tinker or the tailor at whose suit I am detained. I am certain it is not at that of the soldier, or the sailor, or the ploughboy, or the thief. But, for the apothecary – why, yes – it may be the apothecary! In the dawn of life I loved – who has not? – I wedded. I set about surrounding myself with rosy cheeks. These cheeks grow pallid. I call for the aid of Science – Science sends in her bill! “To the Mixture as Before,” so much to “the Tonic,” so much. The cheeks are rosy again. I pour forth the blessings of a father’s heart; but there stands Science inexorable, with her bill, her items. I vainly point out that the mixture has played its part, the tonic has played its part; and that, in the nature of things, the transaction is ended. The bill is unappeasable. I forget the details; a certain number of pieces of yellow and white dross are spoken of. Ah, I see it is fifteen and some odd shillings and coppers. Let us say twenty.

My dear Honeyman, you who, as I hear, are about to follow the flutes of Aphrodite into a temple where Hymen gilds the horns of the victims 17– you, I am sure, will hurry to my rescue. You may not have the specie actually in your coffers; but with your prospects, surely you can sign something, or make over something, or back something, say a post obit or post vincula, or employ some other instrument? Excuse my inexperience; or, I should say, excuse my congenital inability to profit by experience, now considerable, of difficulties– and of friendship. Let not the sun of May-day go down on Harold Skimpole in Coavins’s! – Yours ever,

H. S.

P.S. – A youthful myrmidon of Coavins’s will wait for a reply. Shall we say, while we are about it, Twenty-five?

From the Rev. Charles Honeyman to Harold Skimpole, EsqCursitor Street, May 1.

My Dear Skimpole, – How would I have joyed, had Providence placed it within my power to relieve your distress! But it cannot be. Like the Carthaginian Queen of whom we read in happier days at dear old Borhambury, I may say that I am haud ignarus mali. But, alas! the very evils in which I am not unlearned, make it impossible for me to add miseris succurrere disco! Rather am I myself in need of succour. You, my dear Harold, have fallen among thieves; I may too truly add that in this I am your neighbour. The dens in which we are lodged are contiguous; we are separated only by the bars. Your note was sent on hither from my rooms in Walpole Street. Since we met I have known the utmost that woman’s perfidy and the rich man’s contumely can inflict. But I can bear my punishment. I loved, I trusted. She to whose hand I aspired, she on whose affections I had based hopes at once of happiness in life and of extended usefulness in the clerical profession, she was less confiding. She summoned to her council a minion of the Law, one Briggs. His estimate of my position and prospects could not possibly tally with that of one whose hopes are not set where the worldling places them. Let him, and such as he, take thought for the morrow and chaffer about settlements. I do not regret the gold to which you so delicately allude. I sorrow only for the bloom that has been brushed from the soaring pinions of a pure and disinterested affection. Sunt lacrymæ rerum, and the handkerchief in which I bury my face is dank with them.

Nor is this disappointment my only cross. The carrion-birds of commerce have marked down the stricken deer from their eyries in Bond Street and Jermyn Street. To know how Solomons has behaved, and the black colours in which Moss (of Wardour Street) has shown himself, is to receive a new light on the character of a People chosen under a very different Dispensation! Detainers flock in, like ravens to a feast. At this moment I have endured the humiliation of meeting a sneering child of this world – Mr. Arthur Pendennis – the emissary of one 18 to whom I gave in other days the sweetest blossom in the garden of my affections – my sister – of one who has, indeed, behaved like a brother —in law! My word distrusted, my statements received with a chilling scepticism by this Nabob Newcome, I am urged to make some “composition” with my creditors. The world is very censorious, the ear of a Bishop is easily won; who knows how those who have envied talents not misused may turn my circumstances to my disadvantage? You will see that, far from aiding another, I am rather obliged to seek succour myself. But that saying about the sparrows abides with me to my comfort. Could aught be done, think you, with a bill backed by our joint names? On July 12 my pew-rents will come in. I swear to you that they have not been anticipated. Yours afflictedly,