While the Parson and his wife are entertaining their guest, I propose to
regale the reader with a small treatise apropos 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 spilt 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. _Ex. gr._
(_Plaintive._)
"I know very well that whatever I do is wrong, Charles dear."
"Nay, I am only glad you amused yourself so much without me, Charles
dear."
"Not quite so loud! If you had but my poor head, Charles dear," &c.
_Arch._
"If you _could_ spill the ink anywhere but on the best table-cloth,
Charles dear!"
"But though you must always have your own way, you are not _quite
faultless_, own, Charles dear," &c.
In this collocation occur many dears, parental as well as conjugal;
as--"Hold up your head, and don't look quite so cross, dear."
"Be a good boy for once in your life--that's a dear," &c.
When the enemy stops in the middle of a sentence, its venom is naturally
less exhausted. _Ex. gr._
"Really I must say, Charles dear, that you are the most fidgety person,"
&c.
"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."
"Do you think, Charles dear, that you could put your feet anywhere but on
the chintz sofa?"
"But you know, Charles dear, that you care no more for me and the
children than," &c.
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; is generally more than simple objurgation--it prefaces
a sermon. My candor 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 _pater familias_--the head of the family--boding, not perhaps
"peace, and love, and quiet life," but certainly "awful rule and right
supremacy." _Ex. gr._
"My dear Jane--I wish you would just put by that everlasting tent-stitch,
and listen to me for a few moments," &c.
"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," &c.
"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 husbands' property," &c.
"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, Capt. Prettyman,"
&c.
Now, if that same "dear" could be thoroughly raked and hoed out of the
connubial garden, I don't think that the remaining nettles would signify
a button. But even as it was, Parson Dale, good man, would have prized
his garden beyond all the bowers which Spenser and Tasso have sung so
musically, 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 _umbrosa, florens, spicata_; the dear _savis_, 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,
fortunately, was far from being the case--the _dears_ of Mrs. Dale were
only wild flowers after all!
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