POLITICS OF THE OUTWARD MAN!
Wisdom is to be purchased only of the tailor. Morality is synonymous with millinery; whilst Truth herself—pictured by the poetry of the olden day in angelic nakedness—must now be full-dressed, like a young lady at a royal drawing-room, to be considered presentable. You may believe that a man with a gash in his heart may still walk, talk, pay taxes, and perform all the other duties of a highly civilised citizen; but to believe that the same man with a hole in his coat can discourse like a reasoning animal, is to be profoundly ignorant of those sympathetic subtleties existing between a man’s brain and a man’s broad-cloth. Party politics have developed this profound truth—the divine reason of the immortal creature escapes through ragged raiment; a fractured skull is not so fatal to the powers of ratiocination as a rent in the nether garments. GOD’S image loses the divine lustre of its origin with its nap of super-Saxony. The sinful lapse of ADAM has thrown all his unfortunate children upon the mercies of the tailor; and that mortal shows least of the original stain who wraps about it the richest purple and the finest linen. Hence, if you would know the value of a man’s heart, look at his waistcoat.
Philosophers and anatomists have quarrelled for centuries as to the residence of the soul. Some have vowed that it lived here—some there; some that, like a gentleman with several writs in pursuit of him, it continually changed its lodgings; whilst others have lustily sworn that the soul was a vagrant, with no claim to any place of settlement whatever. Nevertheless, a vulgar notion has obtained that the soul dwelt on a little knob of the brain; and that there, like a vainglorious bantam-cock on a dunghill, it now claps its wings and crows all sorts of triumph—and now, silent and scratching, it thinks of nought but wheat and barley. The first step to knowledge is to confess to a late ignorance. We avow, then, our late benighted condition. We were of the number of sciolists who lodged the soul in the head of man: we are now convinced that the true dwelling place of the soul is in the head’s antipodes. Let SOLOMON himself return to the earth, and hold forth at a political meeting; SOLOMON himself would be hooted, laughed at, voted an ass, a nincompoop, if SOLOMON spoke from the platform with a hole in his breeches!
PLATO doubtless thought that he had imagined a magnificent theory, when he averred that every man had within him a spark of the divine flame. But, silly PLATO! he never considered how easily this spark might be blown out. At this moment, how many Englishmen are walking about the land utterly extinguished! Had men been made on the principle of the safety-lamp, they might have defied the foul breath of the world’s opinion—but, alas! what a tender, thin-skinned, shivering thing is man! His covering—the livery of original sin, bought with the pilfered apples—is worn into a hole, and Opinion, that sour-breathed hag, claps her blue lips to the broken web, gives a puff, and—out goes man’s immortal spark! From this moment the creature is but a carcase: he can eat and drink (when lucky enough to be able to try the experiment), talk, walk, and no more; yes, we forgot—he can work; he still keeps precedence of the ape in the scale of creation—for he can work for those who, thickly clothed, and buttoned to the throat, have no rent in their purple, no stitch dropped in their superfine, to expose their precious souls to an annihilating gust, and who therefore keep their immortal sparks like tapers in burglars’ dark-lanthorns, whereby to rob and spoil with greater certainty!
Gentle reader, think you this a fantastic chapter on holes? If so, then of a surety you do not read those instructive annals of your country penned by many a TACITUS of the daily press—by many a profound historian who unites to the lighter graces of stenography the enduring loveliness of philosophy.
Some days since a meeting was held in the parish of Saint Pancras of the “Young Men’s Anti-Monopoly Association.” The place of gathering, says the reporter, was “a ruined penny theatre!” It is evident in the brain of the writer that the small price at which the theatre was ruined made its infamy: to be blighted for a penny was the shame. Drury Lane and Covent Garden have been ruined over and over again—but then their ruin, like PHRYNE’S, has ever been at a large price of admission; hence, like court harlots, their ruin has been dignified by high remuneration. What, however, could be expected from a theatre that, with inconceivable wickedness, suffered itself to be undone for a penny? Let the reporter answer:—
“—— FORSTER, Esq., advanced, and, assuming a teapot position on the stage, moved the first resolution, to the effect ‘That the bread-tax was the cause of all distress, and that they should use their strenuous efforts to remove it.’ ‘Ladies (there was one old woman in a shocking bad black and white straw bonnet present) and gentlemen (said he), this is a public meeting to all intents and purposes.’”
For ourselves we care not for an orator’s standing like a teapot, if what he pours out be something better than mere hot-water or dead small beer. If, however, we were to typify orators in delf, there are many Tory talkers whom we would associate with more ignominious shapes of crockery than that of a teapot—senators who are taken by the handle, and by their party used for the dirtiest offices.
We now come to the bad old woman whose excess of iniquity was blazoned in her “bad black and white straw bonnet.” This woman might have been an ASPASIA, a DE STAEL, a Mrs. SOMERVILLE,—nay, the SYBILLA CUMEA herself. What of that? The “bad” bonnet must sink the large souled Grecian to a cinder-wench, make the Frenchwoman a trapes from the Palais Royal, our fair astronomer a gipsy of Greenwich Park, and the fate-foretelling sybil a crone crawled from the worst garret of Battle-bridge. The head is nothing; the bonnet’s all. Think you that Mrs. Somerville could have studied herself into reputation, that the moon and stars would have condescended to smile upon her, if she had not attended their evening parties in a handsome turban, duly plumed and jewelled?
Come we now to the next recorded atrocity:—
“There jumped now upon the stage a red-haired, laughing-hyena faced, fustian-coated biped, exclaiming—‘My name is Wall! I have a substantive amendment to move to the resolution now proposed—(‘Go off, off! ooh, ooh, ooh! turn him out, out, out!’) We are met in a place where religion is taught (groans). Well, then, we are met where they “teach the young idea how to shoot”’—(laughter, groans, and ‘Go on, Wall.’) Turning to the young gents on the platform, ‘You,’ quoth Mr. Wall, ‘have not read history: you clerks at 16s. a week, with your gold chains and pins.’”
Red hair was first made infamous by JUDAS ISCARIOT; hence the reporter not only shows the intensity of his Christianity, but his delicate knowledge of human character, by the fine contempt cast upon the felon locks of the speaker. Red hair is doubtless the brand of Providence; the mark set upon guilty man to give note and warning to his unsuspicious fellow-creatures. Like the scarlet light at the North Foreland, it speaks of shoals, and sands, and flats. The emperor Commodus, who had all his previous life rejoiced in flaxen locks, woke, the morning after his first contest in the arena, a red-haired man! But then, with a fine knowledge of the wholesome prejudices of the world, he turned the curse upon his head into a beauty; for he—powdered it with gold-dust. Could Mr. WALL, of the penny theatre, induce the Master of the Mint to play his coiffeur, how would the reporter fall on his knees and worship the divinity!
Mr. WALL, being of the opposite faction, in addition to the unpowdered ignominy of his hair, has also the face of a hyena! This fact opens a question too vast for our one solitary page. We lack at least the amplitude of a quarto to prove that all men are fashioned, even in the womb, with features that shall hereafter beautifully harmonise with the politics of the grown creature. Now WALL, being ordained a poor man and a Chartist, is endowed with a “laughing hyena” countenance. He even loses the vantage ground of our common humanity, and is sunk by his poverty and his politics to the condition of a beast, and of a most unamiable beast into the bargain. However, the vast enfolding iniquity is yet to be displayed and duly shuddered at; for WALL, the biped hyena, wears—a fustian coat!
As journalists, we trust we have our common share—which is no little—of human vanity. Nevertheless, with the highest private opinion of our own powers, we feel we can add nothing to the picture drawn by the reporter. The fustian coat, with a tongue in every button-hole, discourses on its own inwoven infamy.
We recognise with great pleasure a growing custom on the part of political reporters to merge the orators and listeners at public meetings in their several articles of dress. This practice has doubtless originated in a most philosophical consideration of the sympathies between the outer and the inner man, and has its source in the earliest records of human life. The patriarchs rent their garments in token of the misery that lacerated their souls: then rags and tatters were ennobled by sorrow—there was a deep sentiment in sackcloth and ashes. We have, however, improved upon the ignorance of primitive days; and though we still admit the covering of man to be typical of his condition of mind, we wisely keep our respect for super-Saxony, and expend contempt and ridicule on corduroy and fustian. We yet hope to see the day when certain political meetings will be briefly reported as follow:—
“Faded Blue Coat, with tarnished Brass Buttons, took the chair.
“Velveteen Jacket moved the first resolution, which was seconded by Check Shirt and Ankle-jacks.
“Brown Great Coat, with holes in elbows, moved the second resolution—seconded by Greasy Drab Breeches and Dirty Leather Gaiters.
“After thanks to Blue Coat had been moved by Brown Surtout and Crack under both Arms, the Fustian Jackets departed.”
Would not this be quite sufficient? Knowing the philosophy of appearance in England, might we not by our imagination supply a truer speech to every orator than could be taken down by the most faithful reporter?
Q.