THE VICAR AND HIS WIFE--FAMILIES OF LOVE--THE NEWSPAPER
Indulge Genio: carpamus dulcia: nostrum est
Quod vivis: cinis, et manes, et fabula fies.
Vive memor lethi: fugit hora: hoc quod loquor, inde est.
Persius.
Indulge thy Genius, while the hour's thine own:
Even while we speak, some part of it has flown.
Snatch the swift-passing good: 'twill end ere long
In dust and shadow, and an old wife's song.
'Agapetus and Agapêtê,' said the Reverend Doctor Opimian, the next
morning at breakfast, 'in the best sense of the words: that, I am
satisfied, is the relation between this young gentleman and his
handmaids.'
__Mrs. Opimian.__ Perhaps, doctor, you will have the goodness to make
your view of this relation a little more intelligible to me.
_The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ Assuredly, my dear. The word signifies 'beloved'
in its purest sense. And in this sense it was used by Saint Paul in
reference to some of his female co-religionists and fellow-labourers in
the vineyard, in whose houses he occasionally dwelt. And in this sense
it was applied to virgins and holy men, who dwelt under the same roof in
spiritual love.
_Mrs. Opimian._ Very likely, indeed. You are a holy man, doctor, but
I think, if you were a bachelor, and I were a maid, I should not trust
myself to be your aga--aga--
[Illustration: Should not trust myself to be your aga--aga. 076-44]
_The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ Agapêtê. But I never pretended to this sort of
spiritualism. I followed the advice of Saint Paul, who says it is better
to marry.
_Mrs. Opimian._ You need not finish the quotation.
_The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ Agapêtê is often translated 'adoptive sister.'
A very possible relation, I think, where there are vows of celibacy, and
inward spiritual grace.
_Mrs. Opimian._ Very possible, indeed: and equally possible where there
are none.
_The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ But more possible where there are seven adoptive
sisters, than where there is only one.
_Mrs. Opimian._ Perhaps.
_The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ The manners, my dear, of these damsels towards
their young master are infallible indications of the relations between
them. Their respectful deference to him is a symptom in which I cannot
be mistaken.
_Mrs. Opimian._ I hope you are not.
_The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ I am sure I am not. I would stake all my credit
for observation and experience on the purity of the seven Vestals. I
am not strictly accurate in calling them so: for in Rome the number
of Vestals was only six. But there were seven Pleiads, till one
disappeared. We may fancy she became a seventh Vestal. Or as the planets
used to be seven, and are now more than fifty, we may pass a seventh
Vestal in the name of modern progress.
_Mrs. Opimian._ There used to be seven deadly sins. How many has modern
progress added to them?
_The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ None, I hope, my dear. But this will be due,
not to its own tendencies, but to the comprehensiveness of the old
definitions.
_Mrs. Opimian._ I think I have heard something like your Greek word
before.
_The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ Agapêmonê, my dear. You may have heard the word
Agapêmonê.
_Mrs. Opimian._ That is it. And what may it signify?
_The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ It signifies Abode of Love: spiritual love of
course.
_Mrs. Opimian._ Spiritual love, which rides in carriages and four,
fares sumptuously, like Dives, and protects itself with a high wall from
profane observation.
_The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ Well, my dear, and there may be no harm in all
that.
_Mrs. Opimian._ Doctor, you are determined not to see harm in anything.
_The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ I am afraid I see more harm in many things than
I like to see. But one reason for not seeing harm in this Agapêmonâ
matter is, that I hear so little about it The world is ready enough to
promulgate scandal; but that which is quietly right may rest in peace.
_Mrs. Opimian._ Surely, doctor, you do not think this Agapemone right?
_The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ I only say I do not know whether it is right
or wrong. It is nothing new. Three centuries ago there was a Family of
Love, on which Middleton wrote a comedy. Queen Elizabeth persecuted this
family; Middleton made it ridiculous; but it outlived them both, and
there may have been no harm in it after all.
_Mrs. Opimian._ Perhaps, doctor, the world is too good to see any
novelty except in something wrong.
_The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ Perhaps it is only wrong that arrests attention,
because right is common, and wrong is rare. Of the many thousand persons
who walk daily through a street you only hear of one who has been robbed
or knocked down. If ever Hamlet's news--'that the world has grown
honest'--should prove true, there would be an end of our newspaper. For,
let us see, what is the epitome of a newspaper? In the first place,
specimens of all the deadly sins, and infinite varieties of violence and
fraud; a great quantity of talk, called by courtesy legislative wisdom,
of which the result is 'an incoherent and undigested mass of law, shot
down, as from a rubbish-cart, on the heads of the people ';{1} lawyers
barking at each other in that peculiar style of dylactic delivery which
is called forensic eloquence, and of which the first and most
distinguished practitioner was Cerberus;{2} bear-garden meetings of
mismanaged companies, in which directors and shareholders abuse each
other in choice terms, not all to be found even in Rabelais; burstings
of bank bubbles, which, like a touch of harlequin's wand, strip off
their masks and dominoes from 'highly respectable' gentlemen, and leave
them in their true figures of cheats and pickpockets; societies of all
sorts, for teaching everybody everything, meddling with everybody's
business, and mending everybody's morals; mountebank advertisements
promising the beauty of Helen in a bottle of cosmetic, and the age of
Old Parr in a box of pills; folly all alive in things called réunions;
announcements that some exceedingly stupid fellow has been
'entertaining' a select company; matters, however multiform,
multifarious, and multitudinous, all brought into family likeness by the
varnish of false pretension with which they are all overlaid.
1 Jeremy Bentham.
2 Cerberus forensis erat causidicus.--Petronius Arbiter.
_Mrs. Opimian._ I did not like to interrupt you, doctor; but it struck
me, while you were speaking, that in reading the newspaper you do not
hear the bark of the lawyers.
_The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ True; but no one who has once heard the wow-wow
can fail to reproduce it in imagination.
_Mrs. Opimian._ You have omitted accidents, which occupy a large space
in the newspaper. If the world grew ever so honest, there would still be
accidents.
_The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ But honesty would materially diminish the
number. High-pressure steam-boilers would not scatter death and
destruction around them, if the dishonesty of avarice did not tempt
their employment, where the more costly low pressure would ensure
absolute safety. Honestly built houses would not come suddenly down and
crush their occupants. Ships, faithfully built and efficiently manned,
would not so readily strike on a lee shore, nor go instantly to pieces
on the first touch of the ground. Honestly made sweetmeats would not
poison children; honestly compounded drugs would not poison patients. In
short, the larger portion of what we call accidents are crimes.
_Mrs. Opimian._ I have often heard you say, of railways and
steam-vessels, that the primary cause of their disasters is the insane
passion of the public for speed. That is not crime, but folly.
_The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ It is crime in those who ought to know better
than to act in furtherance of the folly. But when the world has grown
honest, it will no doubt grow wise. When we have got rid of crime, we
may consider how to get rid of folly. So that question is adjourned to
the Greek kalends.
_Mrs. Opimian._ There are always in a newspaper some things of a
creditable character.
_The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ When we are at war, naval and military heroism
abundantly; but in time of peace these virtues sleep. They are laid up
like ships in ordinary. No doubt, of the recorded facts of civil life
some are good, and more are indifferent, neither good nor bad; but good
and indifferent together are scarcely more than a twelfth part of the
whole. Still, the matters thus presented are all exceptional cases. A
hermit reading nothing but a newspaper might find little else than
food for misanthropy; but living among friends, and in the bosom of
our family, we see the dark side of life in the occasional picture,
the bright is its every-day aspect The occasional is the matter of
curiosity, of incident, of adventure, of things that really happen
to few, and may possibly happen to any. The interest attendant on any
action or event is in just proportion to its rarity; and, happily, quiet
virtues are all around us, and obtrusive virtues seldom cross our path.
On the whole, I agree in opinion with Theseus,{1} that there is more
good than evil in the world.
1 Eurip. Suppl. 207: Herm.
_Mrs. Opimian._ I think, doctor, you would not maintain any opinion if
you had not an authority two thousand years old for it.
_The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ Well, my dear, I think most opinions worth
mentioning have an authority of about that age.