While the parson and his wife are entertaining their guest, I propose to
regale the reader with a small treatise /a propos/ of that "Charles
dear," murmured by Mrs. Dale,--a treatise expressly written for the
benefit of The Domestic Circle.
It is an old jest that there is not a word in the language that conveys
so little endearment as the word "dear." But though the saying itself,
like most truths, be trite and hackneyed, no little novelty remains to
the search of the inquirer into the varieties of inimical import
comprehended in that malign monosyllable. For instance, I submit to the
experienced that the degree of hostility it betrays is in much
proportioned to its collocation in the sentence. When, gliding
indirectly through the rest of the period, it takes its stand at the
close, as in that "Charles dear" of Mrs. Dale, it has spilled so much of
its natural bitterness by the way that it assumes even a smile, "amara
lento temperet risu." Sometimes the smile is plaintive, sometimes arch.
For example:--
(Plaintive.) "I know very well that whatever I do is wrong, Charles
dear."
"Nay, I am very glad you amused yourself so much without me, Charles
dear."
"Not quite so loud! If you had but my poor head, Charles dear," etc.
(Arch.) "If you could spill the ink anywhere but on the best tablecloth,
Charles dear!"
"But though you must always have your own way, you are not quite
faultless, own, Charles dear," etc.
When the enemy stops in the middle of the sentence, its venom is
naturally less exhausted. For example:--
"Really, I must say, Charles dear, that you are the most fidgety person,"
etc.
"And if the house bills were so high last week, Charles dear, I should
just like to know whose fault it was--that's all."
"But you know, Charles dear, that you care no more for me and the
children than--" etc.
But if the fatal word spring up, in its primitive freshness, at the head
of the sentence, bow your head to the storm. It then assumes the majesty
of "my" before it; it is generally more than simple objurgation,--it
prefaces a sermon. My candour obliges me to confess that this is the
mode in which the hateful monosyllable is more usually employed by the
marital part of the one flesh; and has something about it of the odious
assumption of the Petruchian paterfamilias--the head of the family--
boding, not perhaps "peace and love, and quiet life," but certainly
"awful rule and right supremacy." For example:--
"My dear Jane, I wish you would just put by that everlasting crochet, and
listen to me for a few moments," etc. "My dear Jane, I wish you would
understand me for once; don't think I am angry,--no, but I am hurt! You
must consider," etc.
"My dear Jane, I don't know if it is your intention to ruin me; but I
only wish you would do as all other women do who care three straws for
their husband's property," etc.
"My dear Jane, I wish you to understand that I am the last person in the
world to be jealous; but I'll be d---d if that puppy, Captain Prettyman,"
etc.
Now, few so carefully cultivate the connubial garden, as to feel much
surprise at the occasional sting of a homely nettle or two; but who ever
expected, before entering that garden, to find himself pricked and
lacerated by an insidious exotical "dear," which he had been taught to
believe only lived in a hothouse, along with myrtles and other tender and
sensitive shrubs which poets appropriate to Venus? Nevertheless Parson
Dale, being a patient man, and a pattern to all husbands, would have
found no fault with his garden, though there had not been a single
specimen of "dear,"--whether the dear /humilis/ or the dear /superba/;
the dear /pallida, rubra/, or /nigra/; the dear /suavis/ or the dear
/horrida/,--no, not a single "dear" in the whole horticulture of
matrimony, which Mrs. Dale had not brought to perfection. But this was
far from being the case; Mrs. Dale, living much in retirement, was
unaware of the modern improvements, in variety of colour and sharpness of
prickle, which have rewarded the persevering skill of our female
florists.