MY POCKET-BOOK.
I crave good Mr. Du B——’s pardon for my “flat burglary” with regard to the title of the present little paper. It is very far from my intention to endeavour in any way to place myself in competition with that great satirical genius, of whose very superior talents and brilliant wit I am pleased to be thus afforded an opportunity of avowing myself an ardent admirer: but as this title suits my purpose, I must entreat his permission to appropriate it, and merely remind him of the poet Puff’s excuse on a somewhat similar occasion—“All that can be said is—that two people happened to hit upon the same thought, (title,) and Shakspeare (Du B——) made use of it first, that is all.”
Pocket-books (as implied by their name) were originally intended as portable receptacles for our different memoranda, remarks and communications. But now it is no longer honoured by an immediate attendance on our person; its station at present is confined to the bureau, desk, or private drawer. What man who can boast of being d’un assez bon air would consent to injure his exquisite adonisation of coat, by wearing a pocket-book in his side-breast pocket, and thus ungratefully frustrate all poor Mr. Stultz’s efforts at an exact and perfect fit. The ladies, for some reason, concerning which I do not so much as venture even a surmise, (for Heaven forefend that I should attempt to dive into these sacred mysteries, or, as “Uncle Selby” would call them, femalities,) have entirely given up the use of pockets, therefore I would advise that memorandum-books destined for the use of the fair sex should in future be styled—reticule-books.
Old pocket-books are like some old ladies’ chests of drawers—delightful things to rummage and recur to. Looking over an old pocket-book is like revisiting scenes of past happiness after a lapse of years. Recollections and associations of both a painful and pleasurable nature are vividly recalled, or forcibly present themselves to our mind. Treasured letters, private remarks, favourite quotations, dates of days spent in peculiar enjoyment, all these meet our eye, and rise up like the shadows of those past realities connected with them, whose memory they are intended to perpetuate to us.
——Pocket-books are indexes to their owner’s mind—were it an allowable action to inspect another’s pocket-book, we might form a tolerably shrewd guess at the character and disposition of its possessor. On picking up a lost pocket-book by chance in the streets, one can be at no loss to divine the quality of its former proprietor. A large rusty black leather pocket-book, looking more like a portmanteau than a memorandum book, stuffed with papers half printed, half written, blank stamp receipts, churchwarden’s orders and directions, long lists of parishioners, with a small ink-horn in one corner—denotes the property of a tax-gatherer. The servant-maid’s is an old greasy red morocco one—in the blank leaf is written in straggling characters reaching from the top of one side to the bottom of the other—
Sarah Price her book,
God give her grace therein to look.
In the part designated “cash account” are various items, for the most part concerning tea, sugar, and ribbon. Among the memoranda are the following:—“Spent last Easter Monday was a twel’month with Tom Hadley, at Greenwich—in great hopes I shall get leave to go again this year. My next wages comes due 4th August, 18—. Jane Thompson says she pays only 4s. for the best sowtchong tea; and I pay 4s. 6d.—to speak to Mr. Ilford the grocer about it.”—The pockets are crammed full of songs and ballads, of which her favourites are “Black eyed Susan,” “Auld Robin Gray,” and “Lord William and Fair Margaret.” Perhaps a letter from Tom Hadley, an old silver coin, his gift, and a lucky penny with a hole in it.—The young lady’s is elegantly bound in red and gilt. In the blank leaf is written in a little niminy piminy hand-writing—“To my sweet friend Ellen Woodmere, from her affectionate Maria Tillotson.” Quotations from Pope, Young, Thomson, Lord Byron, and Tom Moore, occupy the blank pages—“Memoranda. June 16th saw Mrs. Siddons riding in her chariot in Hyde Park. Mem. Wonder why pa’ won’t let me read dear lord Byron’s new work the ‘Don Juan’—there must be something odd in it. Mem. To remember and ask Maria what she paid a yard for that beautiful lace round her collar. Mem. What a horrid wretch that Robespierre must have been! I’m glad he was killed himself at last. Mem. To tell pa’ that it is quite impossible for me to go to the ball next Tuesday without a new lutstring dress. Mem. How I wish I had been Joan of Arc!—But I would not have put on the men’s clothes again in prison—I wonder why she did so—How silly!”—In the pockets are some of her dear Maria’s letters—a loose leaf torn out of sir Charles Grandison describing Miss Harriet Byron’s dress at the masquerade—and several copies of verses and sonnets, the productions of some of her former schoolfellows.
The old bachelor’s pocket-book is of russia leather, glossy with use, yet still retaining its grateful and long-enduring odour. The memoranda chiefly consist of the dates of those days on which he had seen or spoken to remarkable or celebrated people. Opposite the prognostics concerning weather, which he has since found incorrect, are to be seen the words: “No such thing”—“Pshaw, the fellow talks about what he does not understand”—“Absurd folly,” &c.—In the pockets are sundry square scraps of paper cut out at different periods from old newspapers—a copy of “The Means to be used for the recovery of persons apparently drowned”—a watch-paper cut out for him by his little grand-niece—and, (wrapped up in several folds of silver paper,) a long ringlet of auburn hair with its wavy drop, and springy relapse as you hold it at full-length between your finger and thumb. Among the leaves is a small sprig of jasmin which she had worn in her bosom a whole evening at a party, and which he had gently possessed himself of, on taking leave of her for the night.——
M. H.