XII.
THE VALETUDINARIAN
“Some men employ their health, an ugly trick,
In making known how oft they have been sick;
And give us, in recitals of disease,
A doctor’s trouble, but without his fees.”
Cowper.
This is a talker who may very properly occupy a place in our sketches. It may not be necessary to give a description of his person. And were it necessary, it would be difficult, on account of the frequent changes to which he is subject. It is not, however, with his bodily appearance that we have to do. He cannot perhaps be held responsible for this altogether. But the fault of his tongue is undoubtedly a habit of his own formation, and may therefore be described, with a view to its amendment and cure.
The Valetudinarian is a man subject to some affliction, imaginary or real, or it may be both. Whatever may be its nature, it loses nothing by neglect on his part, for he is its devoted nurse and friend. Night and day, alone and in company, he is most faithful in his attentions. He keeps a mental diary of his complaints in their changing symptoms, and of his general experience in connection with them. Whenever you meet him, you find him well informed in a knowledge of the numerous variations of his “complicated, long-continued, and unknown afflictions.”
Mr. Round was a man who will serve as an illustration of this talker. He was formerly a merchant in the city of London. During the period of his business career he was remarkably active and diligent in the accumulation of this world’s goods. He was successful; and upon the gains of his prosperous merchandise he retired into the country to live on his “means.” The sudden change from stirring city life into the retirement and inactivity of a rural home soon began to affect his health; and not being a man of much education and intelligence, his mind brooded over himself, until he became nervous and, as he thought, feeble and delicate. His nervousness failed not to do its duty in his imagination and fancy; so that, with the two in active working, a “combination of diseases” gradually took hold of him, and “told seriously upon his constitution.”
Mr. Round, having given up his business in the city, now had a business with his afflictions in the country. He studied them thoroughly, in their internal symptoms and external signs. He could have written a volume of experience as to how he suffered in the head, the nerves, the stomach, the liver, the lungs, the heart, etc.; how he suffered when awake and when asleep; how he suffered from taking a particular kind of food or drink; and how he did not suffer when he did not take a particular kind of food and drink; how he thought he should have died a thousand times, under certain circumstances which he would not name. These things he could have pictured in a most affecting manner to his reader. But it was not in writing that Mr. Round described his multitudinous ailments. It was in talking. This to him was great relief. A description of his case to any one who was patient enough to hear him through did him more good than all the pills and mixtures sent him by Doctor Green, his medical attendant. This habit of talking about his sickness became as chronic as the sickness itself. He seemed to know little of any other subject than the real and imaginary complaints of his body; at least, he talked about little else. If in conversation he happened to commence in the spirit, he soon entered into the flesh, and there he ended. If by an effort of his hearer his attention was diverted from himself, it would with all the quickness of an elastic bow rebound to his favourite theme. Out of the sphere of his own “poor body,” as he used to call it, he was no more at home in conversation than a fish wriggling on the sea-beach.
Mrs. Blunt invited a few friends to spend an evening at her house. The company was composed mostly of young persons, in whom the flow of life was strong and buoyant. The beginning of the evening passed off amid much innocent enjoyment from conversation, singing, music, and reading. In the midst of this social pleasure, who should make his appearance but Mr. Round, accompanied by Mrs. Blunt? She introduced him to the company, and to be polite, as he thought, he shook hands with every one in the room. This performance took up the best part of half an hour, as he gave each one a brief epitome of his imaginary disorders. As he was speaking first to one and then another, the whole party might have heard his melancholy voice giving an account of some particular item of his affliction. One could hear the responses at intervals to his statements, – “Oh” – “Ah” – “A pity you are so sick” – “Why, I never” – “Dear me” – “Is it possible?” – “Why, how can you live so?” – “I wonder how you survived that,” – coming from various parts of the room. Not only on entering, but during his stay, he talked about his symptoms, his fears, his hopes, his dangers, in respect to his “dreadful sickness.” Occasionally he would point to his eyes, observing “how sunken and bedimmed!” then to his cheeks, saying “how pale and deathly they seem!” Then again, he would call attention to the thinness of his hands and arms, saying, “He was not near the man he used to be, and he feared he never should be again. Although he was out that evening, he ought not to have been, and he expected to suffer severely through the night for it. If he had the health he once had, or the health of his friend next him, there was nothing he would enjoy more than that evening; but now he was past it. His doctor had been visiting him for years; but he didn’t seem to get any better, and he thought he should have to give him up, or lose all the money he had. O dear! the room was too warm, he could not breathe; that door must be opened; that singing distracted him; he loved the piano once – now his nerves could not stand it. He thought it became young people to be very serious and devout in the prospect of an affliction which might be as melancholy as his was. But he could not remain any longer; he was afraid of stopping out nights, and therefore he must wish them good-bye and retire.”
This was about the substance of all he said during his visit. He was like an iceberg rolled into the genial temperature of the social atmosphere. What did those young people care to know about his health, excepting the usual compliments at such times? The room was not an hospital, and the company a collection of inquiring, medical students. He was no worse that evening than he had been months before. But as he had not seen most of them until now he probably thought that would be an interesting opportunity to entertain them with a full and particular account of “his complicated and long-continued afflictions.”
As soon as Mr. Round had gone from the room a general rallying was the result.
“The bore is gone, the valetudinarian has made his exit,” exclaimed Master Thompson, rather excited.
“O how pleased I am that he has left!” said Miss Young.
“So am I,” responded Mr. Baker, “for he is one of the greatest plagues that ever came near me. He is enough to give one the horrors, in hearing so much of his sick talk.”
“He was not satisfied in simply telling us that he was not very well; but he must enter into a long and tedious detail of all his sicknesses,” observed Mr. Wales.
“Well, poor man, he is to be pitied, after all. He suffers a great deal more in his imagination from his sickness than we have in reality by hearing him tell of it,” said Miss Swaithe, a little sympathetically.
“I don’t know about that,” said young Spencer.
“Is Round gone, then?” asked Mr. Burr, a young man who had left the room soon after he came in, having been annoyed with his valetudinarian twaddle.
“He’s no more,” answered Miss Glass, in a tone somewhat ironically funereal.
“Why, he’s not dead, is he?” inquired Mr. Burr, quickly. “I should not be surprised if he were; for, judging from what he said, one would expect him to die any moment.”
“O no; he’s not the one to die yet, be sure of that; but he’s gone for the night,” said Miss Glass.
“Thank goodness for his departure: I do not mean to another world, but from this company. Yet where would be the harm in wishing him in heaven, where none shall ever say they are sick?” said Mr. Ferriday.
“I see no harm in wishing a good thing like that,” said Miss Bond – “a good thing for him and other people too.”
“Don’t be so unkind and unmerciful,” said Mrs. Grant.
“I do not think I am so,” replied Miss Bond, “for if he was in heaven, he would be cured of all his diseases; and he says he never shall be in this world. And then other people would be happily exempted from the misery of listening to his invalid tales every time they met with him.”
“How his wife does to live with him I cannot tell,” remarked Miss Bond.
“I suppose she is used to him,” said Mr. Burr.
“Come now, let us have no more talk about Mr. Round, or we shall be catching some of his diseases,” said Miss Crane.
Soon after the above talk had ceased, Mr. Burr took up a copy of Cowper’s poems which lay on the table. He opened on the subject of “Conversation,” and, in reading, came to the part which describes the Valetudinarian. Having read it over to himself, he could not refrain asking permission to read it aloud.
“Although we have dismissed the subject of Mr. Round,” said Mr. Burr, “yet, if the company have no objection, I would like to read from Cowper’s poems a short piece which I think will interest you, as being descriptive of the Valetudinarian, who has been with us this evening.”
General consent being given, Mr. Burr read as follows: —
“Some men employ their health, an ugly trick,
In making known how oft they have been sick;
And give us, in recitals of disease,
A doctor’s troubles, but without his fees;
Relate how many weeks they kept their bed,
How an emetic or cathartic sped;
Nothing is slightly touched, much less forgot,
Nose, ears, and eyes, seem present on the spot.
Now the distemper, spite of draught or pill,
Victorious seemed, and now the doctor’s skill;
And now – alas for unforeseen mishaps! —
They put on a damp nightcap and relapse;
They thought they must have died, they were so bad;
Their peevish hearers almost wish they had.”
“That’s capital,” cried out Mr. Strong.
“It is Mr. Round’s character to a tick,” said Mrs. Blunt, who was better acquainted with him than any one else in the room.
“It seems to me,” said Miss Young, “that Cowper must have had Round before him when he wrote those lines.”
“Cowper is a splendid poet,” observed young Brown, who was rather pedantic; “he is my favourite among the poets. I have been accustomed to read him from my boyhood. I always admire his description of character. Who but a Cowper could have written that admirable extract just given to us by Mr. Burr, and which was read with such elegance?”
“Come,” said Mr. Burr, “give us a tune on the piano, Miss Armstrong.”
The company again left the Valetudinarian for their social enjoyments; and not long after left Mrs. Blunt’s for their respective homes.
XIII.
THE WHISPERER
“And when they talk of him they shake their heads,
And whisper one another in the ear;
And he that speaks doth gripe the hearer’s wrist,
Whilst he that hears makes fearful action
With wrinkled brows, with nods, and rolling eyes.”
Shakespeare.
His stock of information is always of the most original kind, and no want of it into the bargain. No one is acquainted with the facts treasured in his memory but himself. Nor does he want any one else to know, excepting a particular friend in whom he has the greatest confidence. And he will only inform him in a whisper, lest any other should hear; and this upon the sacred condition that he will never discover the secret to his nearest friend, not even to the wife of his bosom. And lo, when the grand secret is divulged into his inclining and attentive ear, it is either an old story which everybody knows, or a communication of gossip about some one in whom he has no interest whatever.
Peter Hush is a Whisperer often met with in the ranks of life. He is a descendant from an ancient family of that name, which has lived so long that the origin can scarcely be traced out. He stands related to a vast number of Hushes located in different parts of the world. It is the business of Peter, in the first place, to walk around in the neighbourhood where he resides in order to pick up what scraps of information he can find. He cares not where he finds them, nor how, nor what they are; he has a use for them. He collects stories in the private history of individuals, mixed up with a slight degree of scandal. The sickness of persons, evening parties, clandestine visits, secret courtships, elopements, marriages, difficulties of tradesmen, quarrels of husbands and wives, rumours from abroad respecting a newly located neighbour, with such-like things, constitute the commodity which he gathers. He is seldom or ever without a stock on hand; if he cannot give you of one kind, he can of another. Sometimes I have met him in a bye-road, and, before he told me what he had to say, he came close to me, and being a little shorter than myself, stood on tip-toe, and whispered in my ears; then telling me aloud, “Be sure now you say nothing about it; I wouldn’t have it repeated for all the world.” Poor Peter need not have been alarmed, for I knew the thing long before he did. I have been alone with him in a large room, and he would take me up one corner to whisper something in my ears. He has a way sometimes of ending his whispering revelations with a loud, “Do not you think so?” then whisper again, and then aloud, “But you know that person,” then whisper again. The thing would be well enough if Peter whispered to keep the folly of what he says among friends; but, alas! he does it to preserve the importance of his own thoughts. It is a wonderful thing that, although he is never heard to talk about things in nature, and never seen with a book in his hand, yet he can whisper something like knowledge of what has and of what now passes in the world, which one would think he learned from some familiar spirit that did not think him worthy to receive the whole story. But the truth is, he deals only in half accounts of what he would entertain you with. A help to his discourse is, “That the town says, and people begin to talk very freely, and he had it from persons too considerable to be named, what he will tell you when things are riper.” He informs you as a secret that he designs in a very short time to reveal you a secret; you must say nothing to any one. The next time you see him the secret is not yet ripened, he wants to learn a little more of it, and in a fortnight’s time he hopes to tell you everything about it.
You may sometimes see Peter seat himself in a company of eight or ten persons whom he never saw before in his life; and after having looked about to see that no one overheard, he has communicated unto them in a low voice, and under the seal of secrecy, the death of a great man in the country, who was perhaps at that very moment travelling in Europe for his pleasure. If upon entering a room you see a circle of heads bending over a table, and lying close to one another, it is almost certain that Peter Hush is among them. Peter has been known to publish the whisper of the day by eight o’clock in the morning at one house, by twelve at a second, and before two at a third. When Peter has thus effectually launched a secret, it is amusing to hear people whispering it to one another at second hand, and spreading it about as their own; for it must be known that the great incentive to whispering is the ambition which every one has of being thought in the secret and being looked upon as a man who has access to greater people than one would imagine.
Besides the character of Peter Hush, as a whisperer, there is Lady Blast, about whom a word or two must be said. She deals in the private transactions of the sewing circle, the quilting party, with all the arcana of the fair sex. She has such a particular malignity in her whisper that it blights like an easterly wind, and withers every reputation it breathes upon. She has a most dexterous plan at making private weddings. Last winter she married about five women of honour to their footmen. Her whisper can rob the innocent young lady of her virtue; and fill the healthful young man with diseases. She can make quarrels between the dearest friends, and effect a divorce between the husband and wife who never lived on any terms but the most peaceful and happy. She can stain the character of the clergymen with corruption, against which no one could ever utter the faintest moral delinquency. She can beggar the wealthy, and degrade the noble. In short, she can whisper men base or foolish, jealous or ill-natured; or, if occasion requires, can tell you the failings of their great-grandmothers, and traduce the memory of virtuous citizens who have been in their graves these hundred years.
A few words more respecting the Whisperer taken from the Bible. The Psalmist regarded those who whispered against him as those who hated him. “All that hate me whisper together against me: against me do they devise my hurt” (Ps. xli. 7). “A whisperer separateth chief friends,” is the declaration of the wise man (Prov. xvi. 28). And again, he says, “Where there is no whisperer (marginal reading) the strife ceaseth” (Prov. xxvi. 20). “Whisperers” is one of the names given by St. Paul to the heathen characters which he describes in the first chapter of Romans. Let my reader, then, beware of the Whisperer. Give no ear to his secrets. Guard against an imitation of his example. Favour the candid and honest man who has nothing to say but what is truthful, charitable, and wise. Cultivate the same disposition in your own bosom, and so avoid in yourself the disreputable character of a Whisperer, and prevent the mischievous consequences in others.
XIV.
THE HYPERBOLIST
“He was owner of a piece of ground not larger
Than a Lacedemonian letter.”
– Longinus.
“He was so gaunt, the case of a flagelet was a mansion for him.”
– Shakespeare.
The habit of this talker is to exaggerate. He abides not by simple truth in the statement of a fact or the relation of a story. What he sees with his naked eye he describes to others in enlarged outlines, filled up with colours of the deepest hues. What he hears with his naked ears he repeats to others in words which destroy its simplicity, and almost absorb its truthfulness. A straw is a beam, a mole-hill a mountain. His ducks are geese, his minnows are perch, and his babes cherubs. The fading light of the evening he merges into darkness, and the mellow rays of the morning into the dazzling sunshine of noonday. He turns the pyramid on its apex, and the mountain on its peak. If he has a slight ache in the head, he is distracted in his senses, and a brief indisposition of his friend is a sickness likely to be of long duration and serious consequence.
Simple truth is not sufficient for the Hyberbolist to set forth his views and feelings in conversation. He wishes to convey the idea that he has seen and experienced things in number, quality, and circumstances exceeding anything within the range of your knowledge and experience. He is wishful that you should “wonder” and utter words of exclamation at his statements. If you do not, he may perchance repeat himself with enlarged hyperbolisms; and should you then hear in a matter-of-course manner, he may give you up as one stoical or phlegmatic in your temperament.
The following lines, written by Dr. Byrom in the last century, will serve to show the nature and growth of hyperbolism in many instances; especially in the repetition of facts: —
“Two honest tradesmen, meeting in the Strand,
One took the other briskly by the hand;
‘Hark ye,’ said he, ‘’tis an odd story this,
About the crows!’ ‘I don’t know what it is,’
Replied his friend. – ‘No! I’m surprised at that;
Where I come from, it is the common chat.
But you shall hear: an odd affair indeed!
And, that it happen’d, they are all agreed;
Not to detain you from a thing so strange,
A gentleman that lives not far from ’Change,
This week, in short, as all the Alley knows,
Taking a puke, has thrown up three black crows.’
‘Impossible!’ ‘Nay, but it’s really true;
I have it from good hands, and so may you.’
‘From whose, I pray?’ So having nam’d the man,
Straight to enquire his curious comrade ran.
‘Sir, did you tell?’ – relating the affair.
‘Yes, sir, I did; and if it’s worth your care,
Ask Mr. Such-a-one, he told it me, —
But, by-the-bye, ’twas two black crows, not three.’
Resolv’d to trace so wondrous an event,
Whip, to the third, the virtuoso went.
‘Sir,’ – and so forth. ‘Why, yes; the thing is fact,
Though in regard to number not exact;
It was not two black crows, but only one;
The truth of that you may depend upon.
The gentleman himself told me the case.’ —
‘Where may I find him?’ – ‘Why, in such a place.’
Away goes he, and having found him out,
‘Sir, be so good as to resolve a doubt;’
Then to his last informant he referr’d,
And begg’d to know, if true what he had heard,
‘Did you, sir, throw up a black crow?’ – ‘Not I.’
‘Bless me! how people propagate a lie!
Black crows have been thrown up, three, two, and one:
And here, I find, all comes, at last, to none!
Did you say nothing of a crow at all?’
‘Crow – Crow – perhaps I might, now I recall
The matter over.’ – ‘And, pray, sir, what was’t?’
‘Why I was horrid sick, and, at the last,
I did throw up, and told my neighbour so,
Something that was —as black, sir, as a crow.’”
An Englishman and a Yankee were once talking about the speed at which the trains travelled in their respective countries. The Englishman spoke of the “Flying Dutchman” travelling sixty miles an hour.
“We beat that hollow,” said the Yankee. “Our trains on some lines travel so fast that they outgo the sound of the whistle which warns of their coming, and reach the station first.”
Of course the “Britisher” gave the palm to his American cousin, and said no more about English locomotive travelling.
Hyberbolism is a fault too much cultivated and practised among the “young ladies” of our schools and homes. They think it an elegant mode of speaking, and seem to rival each other as to which shall best succeed. An ordinary painting of one of their friends is “an exquisitely fine piece of workmanship, and really Reynolds himself could scarcely exceed it.” And that bouquet of wax flowers on the side-board “are not surpassed by the products of nature herself.” That young man lately seen in company at the house of Mrs. Hood “is one of the handsomest young gentlemen that I ever beheld; indeed, Miss Spencer, I never saw any one to equal him in reality or in picture.” To tell the truth, courteous reader, this said “young gentleman” was scarcely up to an ordinary exhibition of that sex and age of humanity; but this young lady, for some reason or other, could not help speaking of him as the “highest style of man.”
Our children are even found indulging in this exaggerated mode of speech, as the following may illustrate: —
“Oh, mother,” said Annie, as she threw herself into a chair, on her return from a walk, “I cannot stir another step.”
“Why, Annie,” answered her mother, “I thought your walk was pleasant, and not tiring at all.”
“It was such a long one,” said Annie; “I thought we should never have got home again. I would not walk it again for all the world.”
“But did you not enjoy the walk in the fields, Annie?”
“Oh, no; there were so many cows that I was frightened to death.”
“What a little angel our baby is,” said Nancy, one day to her sister, “I feel as though I could eat it up.”
“O what a monstrous brute our governess is!” said Marian to a school-fellow one afternoon, because she had corrected her rather sharply for some misdemeanour.
“I say, Fred, we have strawberries in our garden as big as my fist,” said David one day to him.
Fred opened his eyes in wonder, and said, “I should like to see them.”
Fred went to see them, and David’s garden strawberries were found to be no larger than one of his ordinary-sized marbles.
“Come,” says James to Harry, “let us go and get some blackberries; there are oceans of them on yonder hedge.”
“Oceans!” said James in wonder.
“Yes, oceans; only you must mind in getting them that you don’t fall into the ditch, or you will be over your head in mud.”
James went with Harry, and found that the blackberries were as sparse on the hedge as plums in his school pudding, and as for mud to cover him, he saw scarcely enough to come over his boots.
Another boy says, “I am so thirsty, I could drink the sea dry.” Another, “I learned my lessons to-day in no time.” Another, standing in the cold, says, “I am frozen to death.” Another, in the heat, says, “I am as hot as fire.” “My father’s horse is the best in the kingdom,” says John. “My father’s is the best in the world,” says Alexander in reply. “Oh, how it did hail in our parts yesterday,” said a boy to his schoolmate; “the hail-stones were as big as hens’ eggs.” “That’s nothing,” said his rival in return; “in our parts it rained hens and chickens.” “Well,” said the other, despairing of going beyond that, “that was wonderful; I never heard of it raining like that before.”
The above kind of talk may by some be regarded as only “inoffensive ebullitions” of childhood and youth. It is not said that moral guilt may be its immediate consequence; but is it a kind of talk altogether innocent? Does it sound truthful? Is it a habit to be encouraged or connived at? Should not all who have the education and training of young persons correct the evil when it appears, and in the place of it cultivate that speech which is made up of words of “truth and soberness”?
The Hyperbolist not only shows himself in talk which magnifies beyond the natural, the simple, and the true; but which also diminishes. “He said nothing of any account – nothing worth your hearing,” observed one friend to another, respecting a certain lecturer; when perhaps he uttered thoughts of weight and force worthy the attention of highest wisdom. He expressed this hyperbolism to allay some disappointment which his friend felt in not hearing him. “The affair is really of such little consequence that it is not worth your while to think about it;” at the same time it involved questions of vital importance to him. This he said to divert his mind from brooding over it to his injury. “I never saw such a small watch in all my life; it was hardly bigger than a sixpence;” and yet it was of the ordinary size of a lady’s watch. “It is no distance to go, and the hill is nothing to climb; you will get there in the time you are standing hesitating;” and this a father said to induce his son to go into the country on an errand for which he showed strong disinclination. “The duties are of such a trifling nature, you may perform them with perfect ease;” so said a minister to persuade a member of his church to undertake a responsible office against which he had conscientious objections.
Thus the Hyperbolist stands on either side of truth, and takes from or adds to, according to the temper of his mind and the object he wishes to accomplish. On whichever side he stand his talk is alike blamable.
Let me, in conclusion, caution my readers, and especially my young readers, against the formation and practice of this intemperate habit in talking. It is of no service to truth. It does no good to you or others, but harm. It will grow upon you, and may end in the habit of absolute false speaking. You do not mean now to be recognized as telling lies: you would perhaps shudder at the thought; but what you now shudder at, you may fall into, by the inadvertent formation of habitual exaggerated talk. Therefore guard against these excessive and thoughtless hyperbolisms of speech. Speak of things, persons, and places as you see them, not as you fancy; speak to convey correct views, not to excite wonder or to rival others in “large talk,” and in “strange things.” Simple truth is always more welcome in society than swollen fiction. The frog in the fable killed itself by trying to be as big as the ox; so you are in danger of killing truth when you inflate it beyond its own natural proportions. Truth needs no extraneous aids to commend it; or, as Cowper says, —
“No meretricious graces to beguile,
No clustering ornaments to clog the pile,
From ostentation as from weakness free,
Majestic in its own simplicity.”
“The apocrypha,” says the Rev. J. B. Owen, “into which you may elaborate your observations will ultimately be sifted from the canonical, and you will appear before society as interpolaters, inserting your own spurious statements among the genuine records of facts already received as simple, authentic truths. Have the modesty to suppose that others know a thing or two as well as yourselves. The scraps of facts which may lie scattered among the profusion of your hyperbolisms may be old acquaintances of your hearers. Let them speak for themselves in their own artless, ingenuous way, and take their own chance of success to whatever branch of the lovely family of truth they may belong.
“Hyperbole is a fault of no trivial importance in conversation. Carried, as it generally is, to such an extent, it is nothing more nor less than equivalent to lying. It frequently places the Hyperbolist in a position of distrustful scrutiny and strong doubt, on the part of those with whom he converses. His authentication of a rumour reacts as its contradiction. He himself robs it of a large amount of evidence, by welcoming the proof of anybody else as better than his own. He anticipates the discount which will be made off his commodity, and so adds exorbitancy to his statements, which will leave a balance in hand after all. But people will not be deceived again and again. His credit becomes damaged. His moral bill returns dishonoured. His extravagance of diction, like extravagance in expenditure, involves him in difficulties, and thus the immediate fate of mendacity symbolizes that awful retribution which will finally exclude all liars from the society of the good and true.”