The barber's chair; and, The hedgehog letters

by Douglas William Jerrold

Dear Grandmother,—Of course you must have heard of the potato blight. There are some subjects that women don’t want newspapers to teach ’em about, and “potatoes is one.” I can’t tell how your red Yorks and Kidneys may be in your part of the world: with us, they’re things to weep over. But, of course, your potatoes are all right: you’ve done nothing to bring down rot upon ’em from heaven. But it’s very different with us, grandmother. Our potato blight was got up by her Majesty’s Ministers, and—would you think it?—consented to by her blessed Majesty! It is now as plain as light that the great Maynooth has done it all! One William Ferrie—who writes in a hair shirt, with a girdle of tenpenny nails next his skin—has let out the terrible secret in the Witness, an Edinburgh paper (Nov. 8). He groans as follows:—

“Had we set ourselves to consider by what display of His sovereignty the Lord could most thoroughly and very severely have distressed Ireland, whilst He in some degree afflicted also both England and Scotland, in token of His indignation at the sin of their joint rulers in enacting that which, whilst it insulted Him, was justified on the plea that it would benefit Ireland, could we have conceived a more effectual one than the blasting of the potato crop!”

Now, grandmother, this, I know, is stuff after your own heart. Popery is at the root of the root! The Lord has been insulted; and His terrible vengeance is a blight upon potatoes! There can be no doubt that this is the fact—a fact so after the good old times! Nevertheless, for my part, I think it rather hard that Protestant potatoes—potatoes that, if they could talk, would cry, “No surrender!”—should suffer equally with potatoes of Roman Catholic principles. I know it’s very conceited in me to give an opinion against men like William Ferrie—men who always bawl and scribble (I’ve heard ’em in their pulpits, as well as read their stuff in print) as if they were nothing less than livery servants to Providence, and knew all the household secrets! And Willy Ferrie, depend on ’t, is flunky after this fashion.

A rotten potato is a rotten potato—at least so I should have thought it afore I’d been taught better by ranting Willy; but now, I can see into the thing just as well as if Erasmus Wilson—the magician of the microscope—had lent me his glass, and his eyes and brains into the bargain. I can see into the decayed parts, for I won’t bother your dear head with hard words (though when a man’s got ’em for the first time, he likes to sport ’em), and can behold nothing but what you used to call “the murdering Papishes.” I’ve a ’tato before me, as rotten as the heart of any talking ’tato that ever spouted blarney in the face of starvation. Well, with the microscope, I can see the Old Woman in Scarlet, with her toe polished with holy kisses—cardinals and abbots, and friars and priests, in white and red and gold—and canopies, and dolls of the Virgin, and saints, and little boys swinging censers. I can see all this by the assistance of Willie Ferrie—all of it in one potato—as plainly as once I saw all sorts of sharks in a drop of New River water. I shall write this blessed night to Sir Andrew Agnew (by the way, dear grandmother, it was said that Sir Andrew was lately caught in a Sunday train—but it isn’t true: it’s now proved to be somebody I won’t mention to you, who sometimes, out of spite to the Baronet, goes about in his likeness)—I’ll write to Sir Andrew, and get him to give a Potato Lecture, after this fashion, at Exeter Hall. If with one potato he wouldn’t make the women cry, then there’s no weeping to be got out of an onion! Sir Andrew with one rotten potato, like David with a smooth pebble, would kill Goliath Peel as dead as Tamworth mutton.

And yet when it’s plain that it’s the Maynooth Grant, and not the wet—certainly not the wet—that’s rotted the potato, we find big-wig doctors sent to Ireland (a further insult to Providence, grandmother) to inquire, as it is presumptuously said, into the cause of the disease. Why, I know what you or any other good old woman would have done; after you’d tasted the Maynooth Grant—and there’s no mistaking the flavour—in your early kidneys, you’d at once have stopped the rot;—and how would you have done it? Why, you’d have got the Queen to send a message to Parliament, to order a repeal of the Maynooth Grant. Of course you would. But no: sinful men are made foolhardy by success. Because, when they granted Catholic ’Mancipation, the fly spared our turnips, it was thought we could give money to Maynooth College, and yet save our ’tatoes! Ha! Dear grandmother, when you take your kidney baked, steamed, or mashed, think of us sinners, and say a short prayer for us.

I’d forgotten to tell you that the potatoes in Belgium are as bad, or even worse, than ours. Besides the wet, I can’t precisely tell the cause of this; because there’s been no Maynooth Grant there, nearly all the wicked people being Catholics,—but then, I suppose, that’s it. Mr Flunky Ferrie declares that “the present judgment is connected with Popery.” There’s no doubt of it:—

“The blight being general over three kingdoms, points out the rulers of the land as the persons whose sin has secured it; and the blight being in the potato crop, directs attention to their dealings with Ireland as the particular sins which have immediately called it down.”

This is, doubtless, true enough, and no less true because the whole people must suffer for the dozen rulers. Now, had the blight fallen only upon Tamworth, or Strathfieldsaye, or all the ’tatoes of all the Ministers, the disease would doubtless have been hushed up. Yes,—it was necessary that every man should suffer in his potatoes; not only the sinful Protestant who consented to the Grant, but the lucky Catholics who accepted it. The judgment fell upon all tribes alike—the tribes of the Established Church and of the Church of Babylon. The Bishop of London’s ’tatoes are in as forlorn a way as the ’tatoes of the Irish Lion of Judah: that’s some comfort, grandmother.

Well, and what does this blight say to the Catholics—what does every potato cry (with the little voice that what they call tubercular consumption has left it)—what does it cry to the “Papishes,” but, “Change your religion, and henceforth be happy in your ’tatoes!” At first, I thought this change of religion a ticklish matter; but when I see how easily the nobs—the bright examples of the world—do it, why, it’s only conceit in smaller people to hesitate: for I’ve just read a long story about the Emperor Nicholas, who’s in Italy with his poor dying wife. (By the way, it seems that the Emperor, like many other folks, is such a good-tempered, jolly fellow when he’s out, that it’s a pity he should ever go home again.) The Emperor’s daughter, the Duchess Olga (a good playbill name, isn’t it?) was to marry an Austrian Archduke; but her father wouldn’t let her alter her religion from the Greek to the Catholic Church. Now, however, Nicholas has thought better of it,—and his daughter may change her religion for a husband, just as she’ll put on a new gown to be married in. When emperors and kings play at hustle-cap with creeds, isn’t it downright impudence in mere nobodies to be nice!

When I think, though, that the Maynooth Grant has brought the rot in potatoes, I can’t help looking round about the world, and fearing what may by-and-by become of us for our friendship with heathens. We take tea of the Chinese—a people, evidently an insult to heaven—though long put up with, and mustering hundreds of millions. Doesn’t Mr Ferrie fear that some day all us men may rise in the morning with pig-tails, and the women get up with a little foot apiece? We buy rhubarb from the wicked Turk. A time may come when—for a visitation—the drug may deceive all the doctors, and Old Gooseberry only know what mischief may happen! We get tallow from Russia. How do I know that I mayn’t in every six to a pound, without thinking of it, set up a candle to the Greek Church! Will Flunky Ferrie think of these things?—for there are many of his kidney who’d like to be enlightened.