Page:All the Year Round - Series 1 - Volume 9.djvu/335

Charles Dickens.] SMALL-BEER CHRONICLES. [May 30, 1863.] 327 stance we have at once illustrated Simple Humbug, and Compound Humbug, and the Humbug of Sustaining Humbug in others. It is not often that one kills so many birds with one stone.

Somehow—one never can tell how—it does not happen that these extremely artless and simple personages show their simplicity in pecuniary transactions; they are never too innocent to look after the main chance. They know a florin from a half-crown, and a ten-pound note from a five; and this is the more remarkable, because as to all other matters they seem to live quite in the clouds.

It has been said that the Humbug, simple or innocent, is nearly allied to the Mysterious Humbug. In like manner are the Rough Humbug and the Simple Humbug intimately connected: the former being indeed only a Simple Humbug; who is grumpy instead of civil. The Humbug of roughness, like that of simplicity, is characterised by great unconsciousness and ignorance of the ways of the world; but, unlike Simple Humbug, it is distinguished by an entire absence of courteousness and amiability. The Rough Humbug, too, is a ferocious denouncer of the world, and is a malignant despiser of the forms of society. He associates, however, with the people whom he despises. He abuses people openly, for this is part of his plan; but continues to mix with them. "What a humbug that man is," he will say of one of his toadies, "yet the creature has qualities for which one forgives him." Of course the Rough Humbug is a being much too sublime to know anything about costume, or what are the fashions of the period, and consequently he wears very often garments which are very unlike other people's. But this can hardly be done in pure unconsciousness and carelessness about appearances, because sometimes the cut of his clothing is quite peculiar to himself, so that it becomes a matter of certainty that he must go into minute explanations of what he requires, whenever he has to call in the services of a new tailor. There is no real indifference to appearances here. I suppose the first Rough Humbug of whom we have any knowledge was Diogenes; but who shall say when we may hope to commemorate the last? It is a rôle which may not be taken up by any man, unless he has got some position in the world, for otherwise it would not be tolerated; but having got the position, he may take up the part and stick to it. First of all, it is needful that he settle with himself comfortably, that all men, he excepted, are fools and idiots. He will decide that in every case the beaten track is to be avoided, and that what has been settled by all men, at all places, and of all times, to be right, is most probably wrong. He will hold that to enjoy the society of one's fellow-creatures is folly, unless, indeed, it be to make one of a group of satellites who sit at his feet, or at those of the one or two others of the same stamp whom he acknowledges to have a little gleam of something in them. He thinks that to have your clothes cut after the fashion, is weakness; and that to dress for dinner is lunacy. He despises dinner-parties, balls, riding in the Park, field-sports, and race-courses; but yet will startle you by some tastes which he affects, and which you would have thought the least compatible with his character. Perhaps he will suddenly take to going to the Opera, though he will not know what is the right time to go there, or how he ought to dress, or the names of the different operas. He will say he likes the jingle and tinsel of the thing; and he will get hold of some man initiated in the ways of the world (generally pretty high up in it, too), and will walk off with him to a shop, and make him choose "the kind of thing that a man ought to twist about his neck, and the kind of foolish attire that he should thrust his legs into, in order to be allowed to go and listen in peace to the fiddling and the rest of it."

You have only to encourage the Humbug Rough sufficiently, by playing into his hands, to see how he he will "come out." Perhaps you have asked him to dinner, and invited a number of friends to meet him. I wish you joy. It is two to one that he keeps you waiting an hour, and then, when you have at last sat down to dinner, and are half through the meal, walks in in a shooting jacket, and says he had forgot all about it, and had fallen asleep while sitting in his garden and listening to a cuckoo—which remined him of the talk of a man whom he met the last time he dined out. Or, perhaps, when you have him fairly seated at your table, he will astonish your guests by requesting your servant not to bring him any of those kickshaw monstrosities, which are not fit for the stomach of a plain man, but to fetch him a plate of meat, if there is such a thing in the house, and to bring him a mug of beer. And all this time the Humbugs, who support Humbug in others, will nudge each other, and whisper "that Diogenes is in great force to-night."

I once knew a Humbug of this species who told me one day that he had had occasion that afternoon to walk through a certain part of the town, and that he had found himself in the midst of a mass of people dressed up in all sorts of outlandish costumes—men in tack gowns, and with wigs on their heads, and men in red coats, and men in dresses like those worn by footmen, only with bits of black silk fastened to the backs of their coat-collars, and with swords hanging by their sides—and the street was full of soldiers on horseback, and crowded with a gaping mob looking on at it all with their mouths open. And seeing all this, Diogenes had selected one out of this gaping herd, and had asked him what all this might mean? Unto which question the man had replied indignantly: using some expression which D. could not remember, not being familiar with the same. I asked if the word in question were "gammon," and, curiously enough, my conjecture proved to be right. The man in the street had conceived it to be "gammon" that Diogenes