The (almost really) Complete Works of Lewis Carroll

Representative Men1

Source: The Rectory Umbrella

The first section ends with “(continued page …)”, the second with “(continued at page …)” in the original.

Parody on Representative Men by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Lecture 1st. “On the Uses of Little Men”

A man carries a tray with dumplings, another man is sitting at a table with knife and fork.

“The world is made of little men.” ’Tis a little saying, but how true! Go where you will, you meet them: they are the majority of the people, the nobility, the army, the orators. Can an army exist without private soldiers? no more than a house without bricks. For every great man, there are 10,000 little men: aye, and there is work for them, which no great man would do. Do not little men build our houses and ships, till our land, and supply our various wants? Ask the great Alexander to make a pudding. Faugh! But the pudding must be made. A most important class truely! and all-worthy of a representative. How profoundly little was the saying of the countryman2 when the dumplings came to table. “them’s the jockeys for my money!”

The great men round him laughed at it; we know it’s value. Look at the Times: “the smallest terrier in England, lowest price £25” Little! little! is still the cry. Draw up the curtain! Enter, little man!

Lecture 2nd. “Cuffey, or the Chartist”

A man pointing to a woman who is putting washing on a line.

Chartism, or democracy, has always had it’s little men. It is intrinsically a little ambition which inspires it’s followers: they would have all men level: natural representative is Cuffey.3 The little Cuffey was born in humble life: so are all little men: it is a remarkable and peculiar trait of little men: in body4 he was little, in mind, less: his wife took in washing: he gloried in making the fact public: could anything be littler? One fact shews the profound littleness of this man: he declared in public, “I gave my wife leave to take in washing.” Leave! no doubt his wife boxed his ears for it afterwards: it was a fitting reward for such littleness. His little seditious attempts had little effect: he and his littleness were transported. Ah! little, little man!

Lecture 3d. “Jack Sprat, or the Epicure”

A thin man and a fat woman are sitting at tables.

We have the highest authority for stating the fact that Jack, or John Sprat5 could eat no fat. The conviction bursts upon us with such a blaze of evidence, that room for doubt there is none. Now, even if we grant that he had a “little” appetite, and so was not sufficiently hungry to desire to eat fat—even granting this, I say, and the admission, instead of lessening, would but strengthen my argument for the littleness of the man—still how can anyone pretend to set aside or step over the fact that he permitted his wife to refuse lean? Yes! it is so stated: “his wife would eat no lean”: not a word his said of his pulling a stop to her whims: no, he submitted with true littleness of mind. All epicures are little, and he is but a common specimen of the class.

  1. after “Emerson’s Representative Men.” ↩
  2. a well-known anecdote. ↩
  3. the history of this man may be found in the Times. ↩
  4. he was a tailor and therefore only ninth part of a man, as every one knows. ↩
  5. a shade of doubt has been cast over the authenticity of this anecdote on account of the rhyme between “Sprat” and “fat” a singular coincidence. ↩