In Competition No. 2436 you were invited to supply a very rude letter in which the writer terminates the services of an employee, tradesman or professional person.
The most successfully rude letter ever written is surely Dr Johnson’s to Lord Chesterfield with its superb combination of sarcasm and sorrow: ‘Is not a patron, my lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man struggling for life in the water, and when he has reached ground encumbers him with help?’ For the curious, Max Beerbohm’s samples of very rude letters can be found in the essay ‘How shall I word it?’ in And Even Now. ‘Even Jehovah’s witnesses avoid our door.’ ‘You have the dress sense of a Rutland scarecrow.’ ‘You are to PR what Karl Marx was to landscape gardening.’ ‘Your inability even to carry a spear convincingly takes lack of talent to new depths.’ With your insults ringing in my ears I award the prizewinners, printed below, £25 each and hand the bonus fiver to Hugh King.
Dear Miss Whiplash,
As a result of your excruciatingly painless performance yesterday and a recent deterioration in discipline I am terminating our agreement and cancelling your standing order. Like many in the public services, you may be suffering ‘burnout’, but that is no excuse for exchanging your stilettos for hideously cosy slippers; nor is the inclement weather grounds for woolly rather than the customary fishnet tights. Your half-hearted inquiries as to who’s been a naughty boy sound like an insipid interview on Woman’s Hour. Those pathetic handcuffs might have come out of a Christmas cracker and the botched Sellotape repairs to your whip disgrace your profession. Perhaps you misunderstand the convention that your appearance should be rather scary: your recently acquired blubber and untended whiskers give you the menace of a walrus. As to your latest wig, let me confine myself to the observation that tangerine is not your colour.
Hugh King
Dear Mr Sackbottle,
Thank you for your bill for £326.45 for ‘labour and materials’. In return, I enclose bills for £5,086.50 (working time lost through your depredations) and £1,450.72 (interim payment for repairs by Patel Builders — I have switched allegiance from the cowboys to the Indians). The final straw was not your attempt at a conservatory, though I have seen better-planned road accidents. Nor was it your spectacular simultaneous transection of the electricity cable and the water pipe. It was your inspired bricking up of the toilet doorway with quick-drying cement shortly before our lunch for the Ambassador. Had you not been inside, I would have suspected unconscious malice. As it was, your escape through that small window impressed us all. Your trousers are on the ruins of the front gate.
You have frequently assured me, Mr Sackbottle, that you are a professional. Your mother certainly was.
Michael Swan
Dear —–,
I refer to your outrageous press release, which has acutely incensed the nation’s scientific community. The flippancy with which you undermine the tenets of particle physics transcends belief. This organisation leads the field in an exquisite and exciting discipline; our credibility cannot be compromised by disingenuous journalism peppered with infantile puns. What malice or madness fired you to inform the media that superstring theory is ‘all but tied up’; that black holes are ‘a waste of space’; and the Almighty Architect was — was! — ‘basically just a lab technician’? The feigned discovery of a new subparticle, which you fatuously identify as the ‘pi-moron’, condemns you to unmitigated vilification. That you never were a committed team player is beyond dispute; to continue your employment here at QuarkQuest would jeopardise our research programme and the generous corporate funding we have long enjoyed. You are dismissed forthwith.
Mike Morrison
Dear Everrett,
It has been brought to my attention that this is the second anniversary of your employment as the governess to my three children, all of whom continue to labour in the vineyard in which you cast your shadow — and, if I may continue my metaphor, to suppurate quietly under your tutelage in the winery to which you have ample recourse. They have learnt many things, things they are doubtless too modest to reveal to either myself or Lady Pinnington, having acquired a paradoxical coyness about education. I have no hesitation in attributing this to your peculiar skill. Each one of them is in some way dumbfounded.
Unhappily, children grow, and it is with pleasure that I must tell you that their forthcoming birthdays mark the occasion when your service, arduous as it has been, will no longer be required. We look forward to the celebrations attending your departure.
Bill Greenwell
Dear Mr Festridge,
Thank you for the draft of my will. Let me say at once that it is by some distance the shoddiest piece of work I have ever seen in my long years as a connoisseur of incompetence. You misspell my name, refer to a ‘request’ to the Injured Jockeys’ Fund (adding a ruinous zero to my donation) and make no mention of my brother. Such a wretched document could only be issued by an imbecile or a charlatan. As you have the requisite initials after your name, I assume that the mental strain of acquiring your paper qualifications brought on some kind of brain hernia, leaving you more to be pitied than condemned. Even so, all I can offer as the fruit of your labours in this matter is a reverberating raspberry. If you are thinking of suing, do seek the advice of a solicitor.
W.J. Webster
Dear Mr Mazuma,
Did I perchance succeed in conveying at our last meeting some paltry inkling of the depth of my sentiments regarding your medical skills? Harley Street is too pitifully cramped a theatre for their singular qualities to take wing and soar unabashed toward your most predictable aspirations! I pray merely that your success in treating my distressing affliction, after 23 trouserless sessions and 500 guineas per consultation, be rewarded with the degree of comfort I now experience when your own fundamental structures also begin to suffer the effects of the passing years. It would be no more than you truly deserve. And I am delighted to say that I now have no hesitation in dispensing with your services.
Mark Leonard
No. 2439: Complimentary
You are invited to write a poem (maximum 16 lines) in praise of a friend. Entries to ‘Competition No. 2439’ by 13 April.
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