The Sun.
London, England, 1835-01-22 00:00:00

DELIGHTS OF A DIRTY MAN.

(From the Dublin University Magazine)
lam a dirty man—a very dirty man—the dirtiest
man perhaps you ever met with, or heard of, except
Magliabecchi, the celebrated librarian of Florence,
who, like the Chinese, as Disraeli tells us, " always
wore his shirt as long as it lasted." It is now well-
nigh an Olympiad since I endured the misery of a
change of sheets ; and the customary state of my outer
man you may gather from the 'fact, that I merely shift
my linen and shave myself when I wish to preserve a
strict incognito. My friends call me the Great Un-
washed, and sometimes (alluding to my " capillary
attractions") the Great Uncombed. Both appellations
are tolerably correct : for never, since with raptures un-
speakable, I escaped from the hands of the nursery-
maid, about my tenth year, has the repose of my locks
been troubled by the hair-brush, or the surface of my
cuticle irritated with soap and towel. From my cradle
up I had ax instinctive and insuperable horror of the
jug and basin, with all their abominable accompani-
ments.

What has been said of madness is extremely appli•
cable to dirt. There is a pleasure in it which none
but the dirty have any notion of. I have not the
slightest doubt but that I should make a host of con-
verts to my views upon this subject, could I but con-
vey anything like an accurate idea of the happy life I
have led, ever since I had the moral intrepidity to break
my looking-glass, discharge my washer-woman, put
the sweeping-brush under an interdict, and mend my
pen, and occasionally open oysters with my razor.
You would hardly believe all I have saved in time and
money, and gained in warmth, peace, and comfort of
every kind.
Then, I not only save money but time. While
others are rubbing, scrubbing, combing and currying
themselves, as if they desired nothing more ardently
then to get out of their skins, I get through a quan-
tity of business that would amaze you. The moment
I spring out of bed lamat my desk. No tarrying at
the toilette-table ; no washing, scraping, brushing,
gargling, dabbling, or any of those disgusting pro-
cesses which your fine gentlemen rejoice in, and which
take up so much of the " precious stuff that life is
made of." Such as Igo to bed at night, I rise in the
morning ; and such as I rise in the morning, I go to
bed at night. I often compare myself to the sun,
who (let the poets say what they please) never washed
his face in all his days, the best proof of which is, that
astronomers have observed a smut on his nose, which
they calculate (Sir J. Hershel informs us) to be at least
forty-five thousand miles in diameter ! That is some-
thing like a smut ! In good sooth, Lady Thetis, if
you discharge the office of nursery-maid for your fair
nephew, Sol, you have no sinecure place, nor is the
Atlantic too large a basin. It was an odd appoint-
ment for the poets to give you. I marvel, since their
ears are so sharp as to hear the sun hissing in the
ocean, they have not informed us that it was the whim-
pering of the bright-haired urchin, under his aunt's
mother-of-pearl comb.
You have often heard of the dust of the schools ; if
Ton have a fancy to see it, visit me any day you please
in my " sanctum-sanctorum." I will show it to you,
an inch and a half thick, the accumulation of some six
or seven studious years ; I would not exchange it for a
Gobelin carpet, or the gold dust under the feet of
eastern monarchs, when they condescend to walk. My
study, Sir, has never been profaned by a sweeping-
brush ; it has never seen the face of that sworn foe to
peace and literature—a house-maid. Its hangings
were manufactured in the loom of Arachne ; that's the
drapery for me, at once cheap and clasSical. Litera-
ture knows nothing about moreen or muslin. \Vas it
a Manchester weaver tapestried the Tusculan villa ?
Who was Socrates' upholsterer ? The spider, Sir, the
spider—the despised and persecuted spider.
" The sage's curtain-maker she by trade,
The poet's hangings in her loom are made,
She has illustrious customers, she spreads
Her drapery oft o'er great and good men's heads,
Beneath her canopy they slumber sound,
While villains wake with silk pavilioned round."
My poor spiders !—let me tell you how narrowly
they escaped the utter ruin of their manufacture, about
eighteen months or two years ago. I had a female
servant who had, I suppose, been trained in some of
your desperately neat houses, where sweeping and
scrubbing are elevated to the importance of eating and
drinking, for she was scarcely an hour under my roof
before I observed her with a mop in one hand and a
pail of water in the other ; and I perceived by her con-
sequential looks, and the air of hustle about her, that
she was bent upon some great scheme. " Betty," said
I—besides alarm, I felt a little curious to know what
the girl meant—" Betty," said I, " what are you
going to do with the mop and pail ?"
" Only going to clean the house, Sir," she replied,
with as complacent a smile as if she had been about
the most laudable enterprise in the world, " and I in-
tend to begin with the study."
I felt, Sir, as if the Whigs had repealed the great
charter.- What I said, when I recovered the power of
utterance, it is needless to repeat ; but the issue was
this : Betty .lost her post ; and the trade of my poor
epiders survived the short administration of this Pou-
lett Thomson in petticoats.
" Oh I but my dear Sir," quoth somebody, " clean-
liness is so conducive to health I"
. " Balderdash, Sir, balderdash—that's what I call
balderdash. Cleanliness, Sir, kills more people than
the cholera, or the whole college of surgeons."
" Will you stand to that, Mr. Dirtyman ?"
~ Yes, Sir, I will stand to it, stand to it against
the whole world. Here are my proofs. Look at all
the agues, palsies, fevers, and deaths occasioned by
damp sheets."
" Aye, Mr. DliVman, but not by clean sheets."
" There is a logician for you ! The gentleman
has been reading Whately, for a hundred guineas !
When are sheets damp, Sir, but when they are clean ?
I never lie in damp sheets, and why so ? Because,
Sir, I never lie in clean ones.
Next to damp sheets, come damp shirts. What !
is a man's life to be daily at the mercy of a slut of a
washerwoman ? More men die of clean shirts than
Mr. Babbage himself would find it easy to count. The
distinction taken between clean and damp is quite idle.
Clean is damp, and damp is clean ; the terms are con-
vertible. Ladies and gentlemen must keep their pores
open ! Well ! all I have to say is this, my plan is
just the opposite ; I keep my pores shut, and as fast
shut as I can. If I could seal them every one herme-
tically, I would do it, and for the very same reason
that I lock my doors and bar my windows to secure
my house against thieves. . Shakspeare calls the body
the " house of life," and to carry on the metaphor,
colds and fevers may be compared to house-breakers,
and the pores are the various avenues, and approaches
which cannot be too firmly barricaded against their
burglarious designs. Your jug-and-basin man is a
simpleton, who goes to bed with his gate unbolted and
his casement wide open. No wonder when he gets up
in the morning if he finds his desk rifled and his
throat cut ! You open your pores with soap and
towel. —what .follows ? A knave of a typhus, who
has been watching you for months, like a Bengal tiger,
springs in at the breach, and you are a dead man. He
died of a fever says A ; he died of the doctor says B ;
but A and B are a pair of donkeys ; your true mur-
derer, Sir, is that knot of ruffians, Soap, Towel, Jug,
Basin,. and Co. Eschew them, Sir I Resist them 1
Fly from them! Let them not come nigh you, if you
would see a grand-child upon ycur knee, and sit under
the tree of your own planting. Shut your pores up,
shut them to constipation ; fasten them as you would
your hall-door on a winter's night in the county of
Kilkenny. Let your hatred of cold water amount,
like. mine, to hydrophobia ; get rid of all your old-
womanly, grand-motherly, childrens'-maidenly, preju-
dices against smuts, dust, and dirt of all descriptions ;
if a shower overtakes you, and washes your face,
whether you will or no, submit, without repining, to
the dispensations of an overruling Providence ; for,
says the proverb—
., What can't be cured
Must be endured;"
but never, Sir, never lift your arm against yourself 1
This is the well-Welghed, And well-meant counsel of
Diggory Dirtyman."
" You have no
_objection, I presume, Mr. Dirty-
man, to ventilation."
,14 4E6 :ventilation i no objection to ventilation I i'Vel
iiiii ohketiOn- in the world. As many objections,
Ae: 'l.ltirtteherefirijoints in the compass for the wind
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