My dear F.--When I think how welcome the sight of a letter from the
world where you were born must be to you in that strange one to which
you have been transplanted, I feel some compunctious visitings at
my long silence. But, indeed, it is no easy effort to set about a
correspondence at our distance. The weary world of waters between us
oppresses the imagination. It is difficult to conceive how a scrawl
of mine should ever stretch across it. It is a sort of presumption
to expect that one's thoughts should live so far. It is like writing
for posterity; and reminds me of one of Mrs. Rowe's superscriptions,
"Alcander to Strephon, in the shades." Cowley's Post-Angel is no more
than would be expedient in such an intercourse. One drops a packet at
Lombard-street, and in twenty-four hours a friend in Cumberland gets
it as fresh as if it came in ice. It is only like whispering through a
long trumpet. But suppose a tube let down from the moon, with yourself
at one end, and _the man_ at the other; it would be some balk to the
spirit of conversation, if you knew that the dialogue exchanged with
that interesting theosophist would take two or three revolutions of a
higher luminary in its passage. Yet for aught I know, you may be some
parasangs nigher that primitive idea--Plato's man--than we in England
here have the honour to reckon ourselves.
Epistolary matter usually compriseth three topics; news, sentiment,
and puns. In the latter, I include all non-serious subjects; or
subjects serious in themselves, but treated after my fashion,
non-seriously.--And first, for news. In them the most desirable
circumstance, I suppose, is that they shall be true. But what security
can I have that what I now send you for truth shall not before you
get it unaccountably turn into a lie? For instance, our mutual friend
P. is at this present writing--_my Now_--in good health, and enjoys
a fair share of worldly reputation. You are glad to hear it. This is
natural and friendly. But at this present reading--_your Now_--he may
possibly be in the Bench, or going to be hanged, which in reason ought
to abate something of your transport (_i.e._ at hearing he was well,
&c.), or at least considerably to modify it. I am going to the play
this evening, to have a laugh with Munden. You have no theatre, I
think you told me, in your land of d----d realities. You naturally
lick your lips, and envy me my felicity. Think but a moment, and you
will correct the hateful emotion. Why, it is Sunday morning with
you, and 1823. This confusion of tenses, this grand solecism of _two
presents_, is in a degree common to all postage. But if I sent you
word to Bath or the Devises, that I was expecting the aforesaid treat
this evening, though at the moment you received the intelligence my
full feast of fun would be over, yet there would be for a day or two
after, as you would well know, a smack, a relish left upon my mental
palate, which would give rational encouragement for you to foster a
portion at least of the disagreeable passion, which it was in part my
intention to produce. But ten months hence your envy or your sympathy
would be as useless as a passion spent upon the dead. Not only does
truth, in these long intervals, un-essence herself, but (what is
harder) one cannot venture a crude fiction for the fear that it may
ripen into a truth upon the voyage. What a wild improbable banter I
put upon you, some three years since ---- of Will Weatherall having
married a servant-maid! I remember gravely consulting you how we
were to receive her--for Will's wife was in no case to be rejected;
and your no less serious replication in the matter; how tenderly you
advised an abstemious introduction of literary topics before the lady,
with a caution not to be too forward in bringing on the carpet matters
more within the sphere of her intelligence; your deliberate judgment,
or rather wise suspension of sentence, how far jacks, and spits, and
mops, could with propriety be introduced as subjects; whether the
conscious avoiding of all such matters in discourse would not have a
worse look than the taking of them casually in our way; in what manner
we should carry ourselves to our maid Becky, Mrs. William Weatherall
being by; whether we should show more delicacy, and a truer sense of
respect for Will's wife, by treating Becky with our customary chiding
before her, or by an unusual deferential civility paid to Becky as
to a person of great worth, but thrown by the caprice of fate into a
humble station. There were difficulties, I remember, on both sides,
which you did me the favour to state with the precision of a lawyer,
united to the tenderness of a friend. I laughed in my sleeve at your
solemn pleadings, when lo! while I was valuing myself upon this
flam put upon you in New South Wales, the devil in England, jealous
possibly of any lie-children not his own, or working after my copy,
has actually instigated our friend (not three days since) to the
commission of a matrimony, which I had only conjured up for your
diversion. William Weatherall has married Mrs. Cotterel's maid. But to
take it in its truest sense, you will see, my dear F., that news from
me must become history to you; which I neither profess to write, nor
indeed care much for reading. No person, under a diviner, can with any
prospect of veracity conduct a correspondence at such an arm's length.
Two prophets, indeed, might thus interchange intelligence with effect;
the epoch of the writer (Habbakuk) falling in with the true present
time of the receiver (Daniel); but then we are no prophets.
Then as to sentiment. It fares little better with that. This kind
of dish, above all, requires to be served up hot; or sent off in
water-plates, that your friend may have it almost as warm as yourself.
If it have time to cool, it is the most tasteless of all cold meats.
I have often smiled at a conceit of the late Lord C. It seems that
travelling somewhere about Geneva, he came to some pretty green spot,
or nook, where a willow, or something, hung so fantastically and
invitingly over a stream--was it?--or a rock?--no matter--but the
stillness and the repose, after a weary journey 'tis likely, in a
languid moment of his lordship's hot restless life, so took his fancy,
that he could imagine no place so proper, in the event of his death,
to lay his bones in. This was all very natural and excusable as a
sentiment, and shows his character in a very pleasing light. But when
from a passing sentiment it came to be an act; and when, by a positive
testamentary disposal, his remains were actually carried all that way
from England; who was there, some desperate sentimentalists excepted,
that did not ask the question, Why could not his lordship have found
a spot as solitary, a nook as romantic, a tree as green and pendent,
with a stream as emblematic to his purpose, in Surrey, in Dorset, or
in Devon? Conceive the sentiment boarded up, freighted, entered at the
Custom House (startling the tide-waiters with the novelty), hoisted
into a ship. Conceive it pawed about and handled between the rude
jests of tarpaulin ruffians--a thing of its delicate texture--the
salt bilge wetting it till it became as vapid as a damaged lustring.
Suppose it in material danger (mariners have some superstition about
sentiments) of being tossed over in a fresh gale to some propitiatory
shark (spirit of Saint Gothard, save us from a quietus so foreign
to the deviser's purpose!) but it has happily evaded a fishy
consummation. Trace it then to its lucky landing--at Lyons shall
we say?--I have not the map before me--jostled upon four men's
shoulders--baiting at this town--stopping to refresh at t'other
village--waiting a passport here, a license there; the sanction of the
magistracy in this district, the concurrence of the ecclesiastics in
that canton; till at length it arrives at its destination, tired out
and jaded, from a brisk sentiment, into a feature of silly pride or
tawdry senseless affectation. How few sentiments, my dear F., I am
afraid we can set down, in the sailor's phrase, as quite sea-worthy.
Lastly, as to the agreeable levities, which, though contemptible
in bulk, are the twinkling corpuscula which should irradiate a
right friendly epistle--your puns and small jests are, I apprehend,
extremely circumscribed in their sphere of action. They are so far
from a capacity of being packed up and sent beyond sea, they will
scarce endure to be transported by hand from this room to the next.
Their vigour is as the instant of their birth. Their nutriment
for their brief existence is the intellectual atmosphere of the
bystanders: or this last, is the fine slime of Nilus--the _melior
Lutis_,--whose maternal recipiency is as necessary as the _sol pater_
to their equivocal generation. A pun hath a hearty kind of present
ear-kissing smack with it; you can no more transmit it in its pristine
flavour, than you can send a kiss.--Have you not tried in some
instances to palm off a yesterday's pun upon a gentleman, and has
it answered? Not but it was new to his hearing, but it did not seem
to come new from you. It did not hitch in. It was like picking up
at a village ale-house a two days old newspaper. You have not seen
it before, but you resent the stale thing as an affront. This sort
of merchandise above all requires a quick return. A pun, and its
recognitory laugh, must be co-instantaneous. The one is the brisk
lightning, the other the fierce thunder. A moment's interval, and the
link is snapped. A pun is reflected from a friend's face as from a
mirror. Who would consult his sweet visnomy, if the polished surface
were two or three minutes (not to speak of twelve-months, my dear F.)
in giving back its copy?
I cannot image to myself where about you are. When I try to fix it,
Peter Wilkins's island comes across me. Sometimes you seem to be in
the _Hades_ of _Thieves_. I see Diogenes prying among you with his
perpetual fruitless lantern. What must you be willing by this time to
give for the sight of an honest man! You must almost have forgotten
how _we_ look. And tell me, what your Sydneyites do? are they th**v*ng
all day long? Merciful heaven! what property can stand against such
a depredation! The kangaroos--your Aborigines--do they keep their
primitive simplicity un-Europe-tainted, with those little short
fore-puds, looking like a lesson framed by nature to the pickpocket!
Marry, for diving into fobs they are rather lamely provided _a
priori_; but if the hue and cry were once up, they would show as fair
a pair of hind-shifters as the expertest loco-motor in the colony.--We
hear the most improbable tales at this distance. Pray, is it true that
the young Spartans among you are born with six fingers, which spoils
their scanning?--It must look very odd; but use reconciles. For their
scansion, it is less to be regretted, for if they take it into their
heads to be poets, it is odds but they turn out, the greater part of
them, vile plagiarists.--Is there much difference to see to between
the son of a th**f, and the grandson? or where does the taint stop? Do
you bleach in three or in four generations?--I have many questions to
put, but ten Delphic voyages can be made in a shorter time than it
will take to satisfy my scruples.--Do you grow your own hemp?--What is
your staple trade, exclusive of the national profession, I mean? Your
lock-smiths, I take it, are some of your great capitalists.
I am insensibly chatting to you as familiarly as when we used
to exchange good-morrows out of our old contiguous windows, in
pump-famed Hare-court in the Temple. Why did you ever leave that quiet
corner?--Why did I?--with its complement of four poor elms, from whose
smoke-dyed barks, the theme of jesting ruralists, I picked my first
lady-birds! My heart is as dry as that spring sometimes proves in
a thirsty August, when I revert to the space that is between us; a
length of passage enough to render obsolete the phrases of our English
letters before they can reach you. But while I talk, I think you hear
me,--thoughts dallying with vain surmise--
Aye me! while thee the seas and sounding shores
Hold far away.
Come back, before I am grown into a very old man, so as you shall
hardly know me. Come, before Bridget walks on crutches. Girls whom you
left children have become sage matrons, while you are tarrying there.
The blooming Miss W----r (you remember Sally W----r) called upon us
yesterday, an aged crone. Folks, whom you knew, die off every year.
Formerly, I thought that death was wearing out,--I stood ramparted
about with so many healthy friends. The departure of J.W., two springs
back corrected my delusion. Since then the old divorcer has been busy.
If you do not make haste to return, there will be little left to greet
you, of me, or mine.