The Insidious Letter

Island Night

The Insidious Letter written by The Gargoyle

Carlo

From The Canadian Forum, November 1920, p. 54

Life is not altogether an easy thing in these days. It is really open to serious doubt whether life is entirely worth living. Yet there seems to be nothing else to do. One is beset by such a swarm of these unpleasant mosquito-like words beginning with p. There is something sly and insidious, something subtly penetrating, about psycho-analysis, psychopathology, pleuropneumonia, dementia praecox, that even an average healthy-minded Philistine like one of Walt Whitman's cows, who does not lie awake in the dark and think about his sins, finds himself insensibly succumbing to mental valetudinarianism. Life has become a burden to me of late. First there were these abominable clinics. I was dragged in by an enthusiastic friend to assist at some of these unholy performances. As the inquisitors gloated over the symptoms of something which they described mysteriously as d.p., I shuddered, and went home to lie awake in the dark and watch for the signs of dementia praecox. My wife's letters lay in my pocket unposted for weeks. I forgot the anniversary of our wedding-day. I felt the insidious approach of the disease, and knew myself doomed to shriek out my life in a padded cell.

Then there came along this Freudian business. My friend, the Office-Boy, gave up smoking and became gloomy and absorbed. I discovered from slight hints which he let fall that he was searching for signs of baffled instincts and repressed desires. I found that the real key to these subterranean dangers lay in one's dreams. If you could catch a fleeting dream, and find an interpreter, a Joseph, who might expound it to you and reveal to you your dark forgotten past, then there was hope, you might be saved. But the trouble was that while my nights might be riotous with a wealth of dream imagery that would provide a dozen Josephs with overtime, the morning light found my mind in its usual state of healthy vacuity. I saw no hope of salvation.

But now another and more terrible p. has attacked me. Bolshevism is bold, blunt, blatant. There is nothing secret or insidious about the letter b. As a substantial property owner I felt safe from the inroads of any bolshevistic bug. But a new and horrible p. has begun to threaten me. It has put me off my putting completely. I cannot concentrate upon the ball. I am continually asking myself whether I am a victim of the latest disease of Potterism. Apparently it usually attacks comfortable, well-to-do, ordinary people. I am, it seems, of a Potterite diathesis. Its symptoms appear to include a dislike of what its discoverer calls "hard crisp facts". Its victims have a cheerful optimistic view of life. They talk about "the dear Queen". They read the novels of Harold Bell Wright and Ethel M. Dell. They follow the crowd, they support the Church and State, and are generally easy and agreeable to live with. All this has made me very uncomfortable. I cannot deny that I am always a little hazy about my score, or the length of my drive. Now the pleasure has wholly gone out of my game. Hard crisp facts sit on my bed-rail at night and gibber at me. I remember that the drive at the tenth hole did not really go into the river, and that I did not putt out at least five putts of six feet or so, and all the glow of pride at a putative score of 79 vanishes. A voice mockingly cries "Potterite", as I walk to church in my silk hat, and carry the plate round the crowded pews of St. Gabriel. I am attacked in my inmost fastnesses. I think I would submit to psycho-analysis, put up with dementia praecox, be cheerful under pleuropneumonia.

But this is too much. My mind is made up. Tomorrow, instead of playing golf in the afternoon which is so necessary for my health, I shall interview the member of parliament for my constituency. I shall put the whole matter before him and shall insist that at the very next session of Parliament he introduce a bill instructing the Minister of Education to remove from the language entirely and totally the letter p. and all combinations of that letter with sibilants or liquids. It is a bold move, but I feel sure that it will bring relief to thousands of innocent and respectable citizens. I shall urge that a strict censorship be established and that all persons found using or propagating this letter or such combinations of it as I have mentioned shall be deported at once as a menace to the State. I shall suggest that they be interned for life in Pennsylvania, Patagonia, or Prinkipo. Then I shall be able to enjoy golf and life once more.

P.S. — I saw the member, a most charming man. He agreed with me absolutely. He confided to me in strict secrecy that he had suffered in the same way for years, especially from Potterism. He promised to act upon my suggestion at once. We are going to play golf together next Monday.

The Gargoyle