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 youseen 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 theymay 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 wecan 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.