Letter to the editor

I came across a letter written to the editor of an Australian newspaper dated 1840, which contained the most splendid insults! I can’t imagine anything like this would be published today… ‘paltrywhelp’, ‘ invidious malevolence’, ‘this waddling fat boy, this pound of lard and tallow mixed, this sixpenny’orth of coppers,’, ‘ludicrous specimen of dwarfish vanity’, ‘this turnip headed moon-calf’…

Enjoy:

A word: to THE FAT BOY of the Herald

The reporter of the Herald has taken certain insulting liberties with the Editor of this journal in his report of the late New Zealand meeting. Such liberties are alike discreditable to the paltrywhelp who practised the impertinence we refer to, and to the conductors of the paper in which so ungentlemanly a piece of spleen was tolerated. But it is really nothing but what might be expected from such a quarter.

Little contemptible creatures have generally recourse to mean and contemptible expedients to gratify their invidious malevolence towards those whom they cannot injure, and who might, therefore, regard their hostility as beneath their notice. The sneer of ridicule is the only weapon which we would deign to employ against such reptiles.

Only imagine this waddling fat boy, this pound of lard and tallow mixed, this sixpenny’orth of coppers, having the audacity to convey an insinuation of egotism against the Editor of this journal, when unavoidably called upon to offer a public explanation in his own defence. Egotism indeed! Why there is not in connexion with the Sydney Press a more contemptible and ludicrous specimen of dwarfish vanity and self-esteem than this creature, whose ‘nom de guerre is “THE FAT BOY” of the Herald.

This consequential pigmy is in fact a perfect curiosity of the human species, and was doubtless intended by nature to occupy a niche in the gallery of the Australian Pickwick. Risen from the bench of the mechanic this turnip headed moon-calf has” the overweening presumption to aspire to the bench of magistracy! This hope with which he flatters himself, is his dream by night and his self-complacent anticipation by day. With neither the origin, the manners, nor the feelings of a gentleman, and with none of its qualifications but his “fair round belly and capon well lined,” this aspirant to the magistracy is after all but an object of contempt!

Let him just attend to his present humble calling of fag for the Herald, let him beware in future of taking such liberties as he has done with regard to his superiors; let him, we say, learn to act as a gentleman in the discharge of his duty (if nature forbid it not;) and if he does not rise to the dignity of J.P., as he fondly expects, he may at least be esteemed as a useful underling in the station he is in.