It gives me great satisfaction to hear that the pig turned out so
well: they are such interesting creatures at a certain age. What a
pity such buds should blow out into the maturity of rank bacon! You
had all some of the crackling and brain sauce. Did you remember to rub
it with butter, and gently dredge it a little, just before the crisis?
Did the eyes come away kindly with no Oedipean avulsion? Was the
crackling the colour of the ripe pomegranate? Had you no complement of
boiled neck of mutton before it, to blunt the edge of delicate desire?
Did you flesh maiden teeth in it? Not that _I_ sent the pig, or can
form the remotest guess what part Owen could play in the business. I
never knew him give anything away in my life. He would not begin with
strangers. I suspect the pig, after all, was meant for me; but at the
unlucky juncture of time being absent, the present somehow went round
to Highgate. To confess an honest truth, a pig is one of those things
which I could never think of sending away. Teal, widgeon, snipes,
barn-door fowls, ducks, geese--your tame villatic things--Welsh
mutton, collars of brawn, sturgeon, fresh or pickled, your potted
char, Swiss cheeses, French pies, early grapes, muscadines, I impart
as freely unto my friends as to myself. They are but self extended,
but pardon me if I stop somewhere. Where the fine feeling of
benevolence giveth a higher smack than the sensual rarity, there my
friends (or any good man) may command me; but pigs are pigs, and
I myself therein am nearest to myself. Nay, I should think it an
affront, an undervaluing done to Nature who bestowed such a boon upon
me, if in a churlish mood I parted with the precious gift. One of the
bitterest pangs of remorse I ever felt was when a child--when my kind
old aunt had strained her pocket-strings to bestow a sixpenny
whole plum-cake upon me. In my way home through the Borough I met a
venerable old man, not a mendicant, but thereabouts; a look-beggar,
not a verbal petitionist; and in the coxcombry of taught charity I
gave away the cake to him. I walked on a little in all the pride of an
Evangelical peacock, when of a sudden my old aunt's kindness crossed
me; the sum it was to her; the pleasure she had a right to expect
that I--not the old impostor--should take in eating her cake; the
ingratitude by which, under the colour of a Christian virtue, I had
frustrated her cherished purpose. I sobbed, wept, and took it to
heart so grievously, that I think I never suffered the like; and I was
right. It was a piece of unfeeling hypocrisy, and it proved a lesson
to me ever after. The cake has long been masticated, consigned to
the dunghill with the ashes of that unseasonable pauper. But when
Providence, who is better to us than all our aunts, gives me a pig,
remembering my temptation and my fall, I shall endeavour to act
towards it more in the spirit of the donor's purpose.
Yours (short of pig) to command in every thing.