No. I.—TO SOCIAL AMBITION.
DEAR SIR, OR MADAM,
I trust you will observe and appreciate the discreet ambiguity of style with which I have chosen to address you. I may assure you at once that I have done this not without considerable thought. For, though I have often watched you in the exercise of your energies, I have never yet been able to satisfy myself as to whether I ought to class you amongst our rougher sex, or include you in the ranks of those who wear high heels, and very low dresses. Sometimes you fix your place of business in a breast adequately covered by a stiff and shining shirt-front and a well-cut waistcoat. Sometimes you inhabit the expansive bosom of a matron. Nor do you confine yourself to one class alone out of the many that go to the composition of our social life. You have impelled grocers to ludicrous pitches of absurdity; you have driven the wife of a working-man to distraction because her neighbour's front room possesses a more expensive carpet, of a sprucer pattern than her own. Clerks have suffered acutely from your stings, and actresses have spent many a sleepless night under your malign influence. You have tortured Dukes on the peaks of gracious splendour where they sit enthroned as far above common mortals as they ought to be above the common feeling of envy; and you have caused even Queens to writhe because there happened to be a few stray Empresses in the world.
On the whole, then, I think I do wisely in leaving the question of your sex a doubtful one. You would wish it so left yourself, otherwise so powerful a personality as yours would, I am certain, have revealed itself with greater clearness to an honest investigator, such as I humbly trust I have proved myself. But, be that as it may, I can assert with perfect confidence that you are no respecter of persons, though it must, in fairness, be added, that one of your chief functions seems to be to implant an exaggerated respect and admiration of others in the minds of your victims. In saying this I praise your impartiality, while I hint a dislike of your ordinary methods. Not that I have any hope of causing you to desist. For to desist would be to cease to exist, and I cannot fairly expect you to commit suicide, however much I may desire it. Moreover, your subjects—for, to be candid, you are a despot—seem to like you. You minister so craftily to their self-esteem, you flatter their vanity with an adroitness so remarkable, that, after a few feeble struggles, they resign themselves, body and soul, to your thrall. Even then you proceed warily. Your first labour is to collect, with patient care, all the little elements of dissatisfaction that are latent in every nature, and to blend them with the petty disappointments to which even the best of us are liable. The material thus obtained you temper with intentions that seem to be good, and eventually you forge out of it a weapon of marvellous point and sharpness, with which you mercilessly goad your victims along the path that leads to ridicule and disaster.
Let me take an instance which I am sure you will remember. When I first met little DABCHICK, I thought I had never seen a happier mortal. He was clever, good-natured, and sprightly. He sold tea somewhere in Mincing Lane, and on the proceeds of his sales he managed to support a wife and two pleasant children in reasonable comfort at Balham. Mrs. DABCHICK could not be accused by her best friends of over-refinement, but everybody agreed that she was just the homely, comfortable, housewifely person who would always make DABCHICK happy, and be a good and careful mother to his children. Often in the old days when I came down to Balham and took pot-luck with DABCHICK, while Mrs. DABCHICK beamed serenity and middle-class satisfaction upon me from the other end of the table, and the juvenile JOHNNY DABCHICK recited in a piping treble one of Mr. GEORGE R. SIMS's most moving pieces for our entertainment, often, I say, have I envied the simple happiness of that family, and gone back to my bachelor chambers with an increased sense of dissatisfaction. Why, I thought to myself, had fate denied to me the peaceful domesticity of the DABCHICKS? I was as good a man as DABCHICK, probably, if the truth were known, a better than he. Yet there he was with a good wife, an agreeable family, and a comfortable income to compensate him for his extravagance with the letter h, while I had to toil and moil in solitary gloom.
Now, however, all is changed. In an evil moment for himself, DABCHICK speculated largely and successfully in the Gold Trust of Guatemala. In a very short time his income was multiplied by ten. The usual results followed. The happy home in Balham was given up. "People about here," said DABCHICK, "are such poor snobs"—and a more ornate mansion in South Kensington was taken in its stead. The old friends and the old habits were dropped. JOHNNY DABCHICK was sent to Eton with an immoderate allowance of pocket-money, and was promptly christened "PEKOE" by his schoolfellows. Mrs. DABCHICK rides in a huge landau with blue wheels, and leaves cards on the fringes of the aristocracy. DABCHICK himself aspires to Parliament, and never keeps the same circle of friends for more than about six months. He knows one shady Viscount to whom rumour asserts that he has lent immense sums of Guatemalan money, and the approach of a Marquis makes him palpitate with emotion. But he is a profoundly miserable man. Of that I am assured. It amuses me when I meet him in pompous society to address him lightly as "DAB," and remind him of the dear old Balham days, and the huge amount of bird's-eye we used to smoke together. For his motto now is, "Delenda est Balhamia"—I speak of course figuratively—and half-crown havannahs have usurped the place of the honest briar. I know the poor wretch is making up his mind to cut me, but I must bear it as best I may.
Now, my dear Sir or Madam, for this melancholy deterioration in the DABCHICKS you are entirely responsible. I am saddened as I contemplate it, and I appeal to you. Scarify Dukes and Duchesses, make vain and useless social prigs as miserable as you like, but leave the DABCHICKS of this world alone. They are simple folk, and really I cannot think that the game is worth the candle.
Believe me to be, your obedient servant,
DIOGENES ROBINSON.