Probably there are few things more common, and at the same time more
opposed to good taste, than punning upon people's names. Possibly the
impertinence of it has some attraction; for, of course, all such
'witticisms' are impertinent--unless, indeed, a man puns on his own
name, or, if he puns upon another's, takes care to make the observation
complimentary. No doubt, neither Mrs. Cuffe nor Mrs. Tighe was very
offended when Sydney Smith described one as 'the cuff that every one
would wear,' and the other as 'the tie that no one would loose.' These
are word-plays of the innocuous sort. Would that all such jests were
equally inoffensive!
However, it is of little use to complain of a 'stream of tendency' which
cannot be diverted from its course. The most distinguished people have
had to tolerate the liberties taken with their names. Even the first of
men has had to suffer, Hood having long ago said what a pity it was
that, when Eve offered him the apple, poor Adam was not adam-ant. And
when one turns to the celebrities of one's own country, one finds that
many of them have had to endure attentions of the kind. There was, for
example, that distinguished Marquis of whom it was said on one occasion
that 'The nation's asleep, and the minister Rockingham.' There was also
that Mr. Ward, afterwards Lord Dudley, of whom Byron declared that he
would return to the Whigs if they would re-Ward him. How hard, again,
was _Punch_ upon Sir Francis Head, for his well-known apologia for Louis
Napoleon:
'He wrote to the _Times_
In defence of the crimes
Disgraceful to the heart and to the Head, Head, Head.'
Hood pretended that, when he heard 'Those Evening Bells,' they did but
remind him of the statesman who had invented and established the
income-tax:
'Recalling only how a Peel
Has taxed the comings-in of Time!'
That Mr. Disraeli's popular diminutive should suggest punning was
inevitable, and so we find Shirley Brooks proposing, in 1865, that,
'Having finished his Iliad and ceased to be busy,
Lord Derby should try and translate his Odd-Dizzy.'
The annals of the Church are no more free from jingles on names than
those of any other institution. Familiar to many is the laconic epitaph
on Archbishop Potter:
'Alack and well-a-day:
Potter himself is turned to clay!'
Horace Walpole wrote bitterly of Thomas Secker, Archbishop of
Canterbury, that 'His grace signed his own proper name--Thomas _Cant._,'
which would certainly have read better as 'Thomas Cantuar.' But the
bishops' signatures have always been regarded as fair game. What puns
have been made on the unhappy, because so obvious, 'Oxon!' In 1848,
when Bishop Hampden was accused of heresy by the party headed by the
Bishop of Oxford, the would-be satirist wrote that
'As once the Pope with fury full,
When Luther laid his heavy knocks on,
At the Reformer loosed a Bull--
So these at Hampden set an Ox-on.'
Again, when Archdeacon Hale figured prominently in the old churchyard
controversy, _Punch_ observed:
'The intramural churchyard's reeking pale
Breathes health around it, says a reverend party;
But though the spot may keep a parson Hale,
Can people who in-hale its fumes be hearty?'
Turning to the records of the other professions, one finds a good deal
of the same sort of thing. Literature affords such examples as those
which are supplied in the well-known lines by John Henley on William
Broome and by Lord Byron on Tom Moore ('Now 'tis Moore that's Little').
There were journal writers before Greville and Carlyle, and, when Lady
Bury published her 'Diary of the Times of George IV.,' Hood, no doubt,
was justified in crying, as he did:
'Oh, may I die without a Diary,
And be interred without a Bury-ing!'
In a very different spirit were James Smith's lines on Miss Edgeworth's
works:
'Good and bad join in telling the source of their birth;
The bad own their _edge_, and the good own their _worth_.'
The vocal and histrionic arts have often had their victims. Who can
possibly have forgotten Luttrell's famous compliment to Miss Tree:
'On this Tree when a nightingale settles and sings,
The Tree will return her as good as she brings.'
Here, if ever, was a pun on a name defensible. Less well known is this
quatrain on the famous actor, William Farren, who died in 1861:
'If Farren, cleverest of men,
Should go to right-about,
What part of town will he be then?
Why, "Farren-done-Without"!'
Those ladies of beauty and fashion whose names were susceptible at once
of pun and compliment have naturally inspired the wits of their
respective days. Thus, it was said of the charming sisters Gunning,
that Cupid, perceiving that the beaux of the time were proof against his
darts, had now laid down his bow and conquered by 'gunning.' But perhaps
the best thing of the sort ever composed was Lord Lyttelton's tribute to
Lady Brown:
'When I was young and debonair,
The brownest nymph to me was fair;
But now I'm old and wiser grown,
The fairest nymph to me is Brown.'
Other celebrities could be named who came off badly in their encounter
with the punsters. But, indeed, the list of such jests might be
indefinitely extended, for the habit of making puns on patronymics has
always been very widely spread, and has found many a sympathetic
historian.
'YOURS TRULY.'
Nobody ever yet found very great difficulty in starting a letter. Young
lovers may have hesitated from time to time between such modes of
address as 'Dear,' 'Dearest,' 'Sweetest,' 'Darling,' and the like; but
only for a moment. Usually, the overburdened heart hits at once upon the
exact word or phrase which best expresses its ecstatic feeling. And so
with less impassioned matters. There is a well-recognised gradation in
the methods of epistolary salutation. The stranger is addressed as
'Sir,' the person of whom something is known as 'Dear Sir.' 'My Dear
Sir' accompanies a rather better acquaintance; 'Dear Mr. Brown' marks an
approach to intimacy; while 'Dear Brown' signifies the acme of
friendship and of _camaraderie_. Here, again, there may be a temporary
pause before passing from 'Sir' to 'Dear Sir,' and so forth, but in
general the transitions are sufficiently well emphasized to be obvious
to the average intelligence.
Very different is it with the other end of the letter. There we find
opportunity for the widest divergence. Royal or official, pompous or
irate, people have been known to finish an epistle, abruptly, with the
simple appendix of their name; but these are the exceptions which prove
the rule. And the rule is certainly to preface the name by some
expression of feeling, however brief and perfunctory. The least you can
do is to describe yourself as 'yours.' We find Sterne thus describing
himself to Garrick; while, by way of slight variety, Cowper, writing to
Joseph Hill, ends with a 'Yours, dear Joe.' Still further variety is
secured when, as in the case of Lord Eglinton addressing his countess in
1619, the hackneyed 'I remain, yours' takes the form of 'I rest,
yours'--a phrase which is not, however, likely to be often used. And let
it not be supposed that plenty of meaning cannot be thrown into the
'yours' alone. Take, for instance, the reply made by 'The' Macdonald,
when Glengarry claimed the chieftainship of the clan. 'As soon,' said
the former, 'as you can prove yourself my chief I shall be ready to
acknowledge you as such, but in the meantime I am yours, Macdonald.'
There, for once in a way, the 'yours' meant something.
When we go farther than the mere 'yours,' the possible variations are,
of course, endless. There is 'yours truly'--perhaps the most widely used
of all such combinations; but there are persons who rebel against its
tyranny, and who with daring originality substitute the heartier and
less conventional 'very truly,' 'most truly,' or 'right truly.' Second
only to 'yours truly' come 'yours faithfully' and 'yours sincerely,'
with their comparative 'very faithfully' and superlative 'most
sincerely;' and many people are well content to keep within the safe
borders of these wholly innocent and uncompromising forms. On the other
hand, less indifferent minds will go farther afield for their
qualifying adverbs, and say, with Sterne, 'very cordially yours,' or,
with Father Matthew, 'yours devotedly,' and so on. Whewell, asked once
for his autograph, signed himself 'yours autographically,' and of such
deviations there are abundant examples, mostly with a tendency to the
flippant. 'Yours ever' Byron declared himself to John Murray; 'yours
ever and evermore,' wrote Cowper to a friend; while Steele, in a letter
to his wife, protested that he was, with his whole heart, hers for
ever--which may be pronounced the best of the three.
But there is no reason in the world, to be sure, why we should cling to
the 'yours' in any shape or modification. There are multitudinous other
ways of being valedictory with effect. There is the simple word 'Adieu.'
'And so, my dear madam, adieu,' writes Pepys to a lady. 'With all my
love, and those sort of pretty things, adieu!' wrote the future Mrs.
Scott to her sweetheart, the Great Magician. And then there is the
English equivalent of the word--surely not less available. 'I wish you
were at the devil,' wrote Sir Philip Francis to Burke, 'for giving me
all this trouble, and so farewell!' In the old days, as we read in the
'Paston Letters,' they had a sufficiently formal fashion of concluding
epistles. 'By your cousin, Dame Elizabeth Brews'--'By your man, Thomas
Kela;' such are two examples of the custom. 'Written at Norwich, on St.
Thomas's even, in great haste, by your mother, Agnes Paston'--there is
another. 'From your Russell,' is the end of a letter from the famous
Lady Russell to her husband; and it does not read or sound untenderly.
Junius signed himself to Woodfall, 'your friend.' Less cold was Mrs.
Maclehose to Burns: 'I may sign, for I am already sealed, your friend,
Clarinda.'
The elaborate style of description has always largely obtained, as being
obviously suitable for so many occasions. Thus one is not surprised to
find the future Charles II. professing to be his father's 'most humble
and most obedient son and servant,' or to note how that very complete
letter-writer, James Howell, claimed to be the Countess of Sunderland's
'most dutiful servant.' Dr. Johnson did well to announce himself
haughtily as Chesterfield's 'most humble, most obedient servant;' while
what could Sir Walter Scott be to his Duke of Buccleuch other than 'your
Grace's truly obliged and grateful'? A similar sense of propriety
induced Hood, in a certain memorable epistle, to tell Sir Robert Peel
that he had the honour to be, Sir, his most grateful and obedient
servant. One cannot object, either, to the 'Your most obliged and
faithful friend' of Evelyn when addressed to Pepys, or to the 'Your very
faithful, humble servant' of Bishop Percy, when penned to Boswell. It
is, however, a little diverting to observe that Sir Simonds d'Ewes,
after addressing his ladylove as 'Fairest,' concludes with 'Your humble
servant,' and that the _Tatler_ of his time, rounding off a dedicatory
letter to his 'Prue,' says: 'I am, Madam, your most obliged husband, and
most obedient, humble servant, Richard Steele.'
Over and over again have letter-writers made their final description of
themselves so wholly a part of their last sentence that the former
cannot be dissociated from the latter. 'I have not room to tell you any
more,' wrote Stephen Duck to Joseph Spence in 1751, 'than that I am,
Dear Sir, your most affectionate.' 'These,' said her royal mistress to
Mrs. Delany in 1785, 'are the true sentiments of my dear Mrs. Delany's
very affectionate Queen, Charlotte.' Hood once finished a charming
epistle to a child in this way: 'Give my love to everybody, from
yourself down to Willy, with which and a kiss, I remain, up hill and
down dale, your affectionate lover, Thomas Hood.' Most people remember
the pithy correspondence between Foote and his mother: 'Dear Sam,--I am
in prison for debt; come and assist your loving mother, E.
Foote.'--'Dear Mother,--So am I; which prevents his duty being paid to
his loving mother by her affectionate son, Sam Foote.' Not everybody,
however, can wind up a letter so neatly as that. A certain commercial
house abroad was, perhaps, over-ingenious in its turn of phrase when,
writing to an English correspondent, and desiring to be very civil to
him, it said: 'Sugars are falling more and more every day; not so the
respect and esteem with which we are,' etc., etc.