Old Friends: Essays in Epistolary Parody. Lang Andrew
who of them poisoned which or for why in a slime draught, it makes my poor head go round, nor could such be soothing to the temper. So let bygones be bygones between us. For, wanting of my Betsy, I am now in a nice state of confusion, with a patient as was well beknown to me in younger days, when there wasn’t so much of a shadder on this mortial vial, 2 meaning Mr. Pecksniff. Which you will not forget of him, by reason of his daughter as married that Jonadge, and his collars as mints of money must have gone to the getting them up; but is now at Todgers’s, and confused in his poor mind, thinking hisself Somebody else high in Parliament. And wonder at it I do not, them Chuzzlewidges and Chuffeys being that distracting, and ever proving to be some other pusson in disguise, as would confuge a calkilating boy.
So being applied to for to nightly him, there in that very sick room – for why should I deceive you? – I meets the daily nuss; and, Betsy, I was that overcome to have such a pardner propoged to me as I had to ring and ask the young woman immediate for a small glass of their oldest rum, being what I am not accustomed to but having had a turn. For, will you believe it, she was not a widger woman as has experience in the ways of men, but a huzzy in a bragian cap like them the Nuns wear in “Mariar Monk,” as you may have seen it in the small sweet-shops, at a penny. And her hands as white as her papistry cap, and she a turning up of her nose at what I had took, and a presuming to give me advice about nussing, as St. Pancradge’s Churchyard wouldn’t hold them I’ve seen comfortable to their long homes, and no complaints made but ever the highest satigefaction. So I ups and gives her a bit of my mind; and Mrs. Todgers coming down, “It’s she goes or me,” says I, “for never will Sairey Gamp nuss, sick or monthly, with a pardner as has not confidence in me, nor I in her, but contrary.” Then she says she’ll go and speak to the doctor about it; and out she tramps with her nose in the air, and sneezing most awful, not being accustomed to that which I take, find it strengthening, but as it have been a cause of sorrow and strife let it be nameless between you and me. For to have the name “Snuffey” brought forward it is what the heart can forgive, but never forget in this valley of the shaddock.
I have nussed a many lunacies, Betsy, and in a general way am dispoged to humour them rather than set them right up agin the fire when fractious. But this Pecksniff is the tryingest creature; he having got it in his mind as he is Somebody very high, and talking about the House, and Bills, and clauses, and the “sacred cause of Universal Anarchy,” for such was his Bible language, though meaning to me no more than the babe unborn. Whereby Mrs. Harris she have often said to me, “What do them blessed infants occupy their little minds with afore they are called into that condition where, unless changed at nuss, Providence have appointed them?” And many a time have I said, “Seek not, Mrs. Harris, to diskiver; for we know not wot’s hidden in our own hearts, and the torters of the Imposition should not make me diwulge it.”
But Pecksniff is that aggravating as I can hardly heed the words I now put on the paper.
“Some of my birds have left me,” says he, “for the stranger’s breast, and one have took wing for the Government benches. 3 But I have ever sacrificed my country’s happiness to my own, and I will not begin to regulate my life by other rules of conduct now. I know the purity of my own motives, and while my Merry, my little Sir William, playful warbler, prattles under this patriarchal wing, and my Cherry, my darling Morley, supports the old man’s tottering walk, I can do without my Goschy, my dears, I can do without him.” And wants to borrer my umbreller for them “to rally round,” the bragian idgiot!
A chattering creature he always were, and will be; but, Betsy, I have this wery momink fixed him up with a shoehorn in his mouth, as was lying round providential, and the strings of my bonnet, and the last word as he will say this blessed night was some lunacy about “denouncing the clogeure,” as won’t give much more trouble now.
So having rung for a shilling’s worth of gin-and-water warm, and wishing you was here to take another of the same, I puts my lips to it, and drinks to one as was my frequent pardner in this mortial vale, and am, as in old days, my Betsy’s own
V
Herodotus describes, in a letter to his friend Sophocles, a curious encounter with a mariner just returned from unknown parts of Africa.
To Sophocles, the Athenian, greeting. Yesterday, as I was going down to the market-place of Naucratis, I met Nicaretê, who of all the hetairai in this place is the most beautiful. Now, the hetairai of Naucratis are wont somehow to be exceedingly fair, beyond all women whom we know. She had with her a certain Phocæan mariner, who was but now returned from a voyage to those parts of Africa which lie below Arabia; and she saluted me courteously, as knowing that it is my wont to seek out and inquire the tidings of all men who have intelligence concerning the ends of the earth.
“Hail to thee, Nicaretê,” said I; “verily thou art this morning as lovely as the dawn, or as the beautiful Rhodopis that died ere thou wert born to us through the favour of Aphrodite.” 4
Now this Rhodopis was she who built, they say, the Pyramid of Mycerinus: wherein they speak not truly but falsely, for Rhodopis lived long after the kings who built the Pyramids.
“Rhodopis died not, O Herodotus,” said Nicaretê, “but is yet living, and as fair as ever she was; and he who is now my lover, even this Phanes of Phocæa, hath lately beheld her.”
Then she seemed to me to be jesting, like that scribe who told me of Krôphi and Môphi; for Rhodopis lived in the days of King Amasis and of Sappho the minstrel, and was beloved by Charaxus, the brother of Sappho, wherefore Sappho reviled him in a song. How then could Rhodopis, who flourished more than a hundred years before my time, be living yet?
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