Phonetic “Petroleum”
“With,
the fearful strain that is on me night and day,” said Abraham Lincoln, “if I
did not laugh, I should die.”
Chief
among those who helped to keep Abe Lincoln alive and kicking, by keeping him
laughing, during the strenuous days of the American Civil War, was Petroleum
Vesuvious Nasby. F. B. Carpenter, an intimate artist-friend of President
Lincoln, narrates in the New York
Independent *
The
Saturday evening before President Lincoln left Washington, to go to the front,
just previous to the capture of Richmond, I was with him from seven o’clock
till nearly twelve. It had been a very hard day with him. The pressure of
office-seekers was greater at this juncture than I ever knew it to be, and he
was almost worn out. Among the callers that evening was a party composed of a
Senator, a Representative, an ex-Lieutenant Governor of a Western State, and
several private citizens. They had business of great importance, involving the
necessity of the President’s examination of voluminous documents. Pushing
everything aside, he said to one of the party, “Have you seen the Nasby Papers?” “No, I have not”, was the answer. “Who is
Nasby?” “There is a chap out in Ohio,” returned the President, “who has been
writing a series of letters in the news papers over the signature of Petroleum
V. Nasby. Someone sent me a pamphlet of them the other day. I am going to write
to “Petroleum” to come down here, and I intend to tell him if he will
communicate his talent to me, I will swap places with him.” Thereupon he arose,
went to a drawer in his desk, and taking out the ‘letters’, he sat down and
read one to the company, finding in their enjoyment of it the temporary
excitement and relief which another man would have found in a glass of grog! The
instant he had ceased, the book was thrown aside, his countenance relapsed into
its habitual serious expression, and the business was entered upon with the
utmost earnestness.
Petroleum
was the first of several American humorists to adopt a more or less phonetic
spelling, the pronunciation being not standard but cockney. The unusual (but
thoroughly sensible) spelling certainly adds to the enjoyability of the humour
of these writers............Petroleum V. Nasby, Orpheus C. Kerr, Josh Billings,
Artemus Ward (all these being pen-names).
David
Ross Locke in real life, Nasby contributed a series of letters to various
newspapers of the time. Many of them dealt with the American Civil War; and
their satirical tone was greatly appreciated by Lincoln since most of them
purported to abuse the “upstart Linkin”.
Nasby
introduces himself as follows:
I
wuz born a Whig. My parents wuz a member uv that party, leastways my mother
wuz, and she alluz did the votin, allowin my father, uv course, to go thro the
manual labor uv castin the ballot, in deference to the laws uv the country,
which does not permit females or niggers to vote, no matter how much intelleck
they may hev in2em.
Petroleum’s
letters have considerable value as the most interesting history of the Civil War,
with a lot of commentary thrown in from time to time–most of which meets with
our whole-hearted approval. He records in them all the difficulties which as
fellow trying to allude the draft has to undergo. He makes out ten points, each
worse than the other, to show why he cannot enlist, and the fourth of them is:
“I hev lost sence Stanton’s order to draft, the use uv wun eye entirely and hev
kronic katarr. But he is caught up, and he has to fall in line. Nasby is
supposed to be against the “prossekooshn uv this unconstooshnel war” and being
a sympathiser of the “sunny South”, gives himself up to the other side “ez a
deserter from the hordes uv the tyrant Linkin”. “I must say, in this
connekshun, that I wuz surprised at the style uv uniform worn by the Pelicans.
It consists uv a hole in the seet of the pants, with the tale uv the shirt
awavin gracefully therefrom”.
But
the economic situation seems to have been handled by as wise heads as we can think oft for in the course of a
post-script he says:
The
sukses of our guverment is shoor. Finances hez trubbled us, but our Sekretary
uv the Trezury hez bought 2 fast printin-presses, and lot uv paper on tick, and
we now git all we want.
(To
us of the present day, the Sekretary appears to have started a correspondence
course across the years!)
In
his letter dated June, 6th, 1863, Nasby tells us that he has become a pastor in
Ohio. He gives here one of the best proofs to show that the devil can quote
from the scriptures. He invariably read, it seems, one of the “follerin
possages uv Skripter”:
9th
chapter uv Jennysis, wich relates the cussin uv Canaan provin that niggers is
skriptoorally slaves; and the chapters about Haygers and Onesimus, wich proves
the Fugitive-slave law to be skriptooral. (The rest uv the Bible we. consider
figgerative, and pay no attenshun to it whatever).
Abe
Lincoln could not have failed to appreciate the impressive irony of the
apparently simple-minded humerist. I imagine the President chuckled most when
he read that the next item uv the program wuz “singin ‘O we’ll hang Abe Linkin
on a sour apple-tree’ or some other improvin ode, hevin a good moral.”
Himself
anti-war (even like Abe Lincoln and the rest of us), Nasby writes on Lee’s
surrender:
Good
hevins! Is this the end uv the consentrain?
Is this the dying in the last ditch? Is this the bringin up the children
to take their places, ez the old ones peg out under Yankee bullits?
Why,
this ends the biznis. Down goes the curtain. The South is conkered! Conkered!! CONKERED!!! Linkin rides into
Richmond! A Illinois rale-splitter, a buffoon, a ape, a goriller, a smutty
joker, sets himself down in President Davis’s cheer, and rites despatchis!
It
is not difficult to deduce the philosophy of Vesuvious Nasby from the above
quotations which provoke volcanic laughter. I am vain enough to think that it
is not even necessary. Suffice it Ito say he was able to view life in a much
more balanced manner than most people of the present day.
Nasby
had the supreme gift of being able to laugh at himself. He described his nose
“as the bucheous beekun lite that wuz never got out uv spring water”. He often
broke into verse, quite happily: and here are a few lines from his “Sonnit on
Whisky”, “ritten under inflooense thereof,
occasionally wettin my lips with the saim”:
Water
is good–no man uv sense denies it–
Search
thro all nacher and you will not meet
A
artikle so good for washin feet;
But
ez a bevridge–faugh! I despise it.
My
stummick turns, and for releef I fly.
Such
is the sunny humour of P. Vesuvious N., whose reputation seems to rest not on
the intrinsic merit of his humour (the saim bein kwite considerabl, ez the
reader can juj for hisself), but on Linkin’s appresiashun uv him. How sad!
* Quoted in Petroleum V. Nasby, one of those Little
Blue Books issued by Heldeman Julius Co., Girard, Kansas.