_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!” {146} 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
{147}—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,