THE PANTECHNICON
The usual deadly silence of a country village in Ireland, which is never
broken but by the squeal of a pig, or the clucking of chickens, or a
high voice, heard occasionally in anger, was rudely shocked on the
following Thursday evening. The unusual commotion commenced with a
stampede of sans-culottish boys, and red-legged, wild-eyed girls, who
burst into the village streets with shouts of
"Rah! rah! the circus! the circus! the wild baste show! Rah! rah!"
In an instant every door frame was filled with a living picture. Women
of all shapes, and in all manners of _habille_ and _dishabille_, leaned
over the cross-doors and gazed curiously at the coming show. The men,
too phlegmatic even in their curiosity, simply shifted the pipe from one
side of the mouth to the other; and, as the object of all this curiosity
lumbered into the street, three loafers, who supported a blank wall
opposite my door, steered round as slowly as a vessel swings with the
tide, and leaned the right shoulder, instead of the left, against the
gable. It was a tremendous expenditure of energy; and I am quite sure
it demanded a drink. And I, feeling from these indications that
something unusual was at hand, drew back my window curtains, and stared
decorously at the passing wonder. It was a long van, drawn by two
horses, which sweated and panted under the whip of their driver. It was
painted a dark green; and in gold letters that glittered on the green, I
read the magic legend:--
PANTECHNICON.
"Pan" is Greek for "all," thought I; and "technicon" is appertaining to
art. It means an exhibition of all the arts; that is, a Gypsy wagon with
bric-à-brac, or one of these peep-shows, which exhibits to admiring
youngsters Napoleon crossing the Alps, or Marius sitting on the ruins of
Carthage. I let the curtain fall, and went back to my books; but in a
moment I heard the caravan stopping just a few doors below, and I heard
my bedroom window raised; and I knew that Hannah was half way between
heaven and earth. I have not a particle of curiosity in my composition,
but I drew back the curtain again, and looked down the street. The van
had stopped at Father Letheby's new house, and a vast crowd surged
around it. The girls kept at a respectful distance, whilst the men
unyoked their horses; but the boys stood near, in the attitude of
runners at a tournament, ready to make off the moment the first ominous
growl was heard. The adults were less excited, though quite as curious,
and I could hear the questionings over the silence of expectation that
had fallen on the village.
"Yerra, what is it?"
"How do I know? It's the place where the circus people live."
"O--yeh! what a quare place to live in? And where do they sleep?"
"In the wagon."
"An' ate?"
"In the wagon."
"Yerra, they're not Christians at all, at all."
Then the men slowly opened the door of the wagon, and took out, from a
mass of canvas and straw, a dainty satin-covered chair. A tidy, well
dressed servant, with a lace cap perched on the top of her head, and
what the village folk called "sthramers" flying behind, came out of
Father Letheby's cottage, and helped to take the furniture within. As
each pretty article appeared, there was a chorus of "oh-h-hs" from the
children. But the climax of delight was reached when a gilt mirror
appeared. Then for the first time sundry boys and girls saw their own
dear smutty faces; and huge was their delight. But I am wrong. The
climax came when the heaviest article appeared. Great was the curiosity.
"What is it? what is it?" "A bed?" "No." "A dresser?" "No." "A thing for
books?" "No."
But one enlightened individual, who had been up to the great house at a
spring cleaning, astonished the natives by declaring that it was a
piano.
"A pianney? Yeh, for what? A priest with a pianney! Yerra, his niece is
going to live wid him. Yerra, no! He'll play it himself."
Which last interpretation was received with shouts of incredulous
laughter. What a versatile people we are! And how adoration and
laughter, and reverence and sarcasm, move side by side in our character,
apparently on good terms with each other. Will the time come when the
laughter and the wit, grown rampant, will rudely jostle aside all the
reverential elements in our nature, and mount upwards to those fatal
heights which other nations have scaled like Satan,--and thence have
been flung into the abyss?
I was curious to know what Hannah thought of it all. Hannah too is
versatile; and leaps from adoration to envy with wonderful facility.
"Father Letheby's furniture, I suppose?" I said, when she brought in the
dinner.
"I believe so," she replied, in a tone of ineffable scorn,--"a parcel of
gimcracks and kimmeens."
"I thought they looked nice from here," I said.
"Don't sit on his chairs, unless you have your will made," she said.
"Did I see a looking-glass?" I asked.
"Oh yes! to curl his hair, I suppose. And a pianney to play polkas."
"It isn't as solid as ours, Hannah," I said. This opened the
flood-gates of wrath.
"No," she said, in that accent of sarcasm in which an Irish peasant is
past master, "nor purtier. Look at that sophy now. Isn't it fit for any
lady in the land? And these chairs? Only for the smith, they'd be gone
to pieces long ago. And that lovely carpet? 'T would do for a flag for
the 'lague.' You haven't one cup and saucer that isn't cracked, nor a
plate that isn't burnt, nor a napkin, nor a tablecloth, nor a
saltcellar, nor--nor a--nor a--"
"I'll tell you what, Hannah," I said. "Father Letheby is going to show
us what's what. I'll furnish the whole house from top to bottom. Was
that his housekeeper?"
"I suppose so," she said contemptuously. "Some poor girl from an
orphanage. If she wasn't, she wouldn't wear them curifixes."
I admit that Hannah's scorn for my scanty belongings was well bestowed.
The sofa, which appeared to affect her æsthetic sense most keenly, was
certainly a dilapidated article. Having but three legs, it leaned in a
loafing way against the wall, and its rags of horsehair and protruding
springs gave it a most trampish and disreputable appearance. The chairs
were solid, for the smith had bound them in iron clamps. And the
carpet?--Well, I pitied it. It was threadbare and transparent. Yet,
when I looked around, I felt no feminine scorn. They all appealed to me
and said:--
"We have been forty years in your service. We have seen good things and
evil things. Our faces are familiar to you. We have spent ourselves in
your service."
And I vowed that, even under the coming exigencies, when I should have
to put on an appearance of grace and dignity,--exigencies which I
clearly foresaw the moment my curate made his appearance, these old
veterans should never be set aside or cast as lumber, when their
aristocratic friends would make their appearance. And my books looked at
me as much as to say:--
"You're not ashamed of us?"
No, dear silent friends, I should be the meanest, most ungrateful of
mortals if I could be ashamed of you. For forty years you have been my
companions in solitude; to you I owe whatever inspirations I have ever
felt; from you have descended in copious streams the ideas that raised
my poor life above the commonplace, and the sentiments that have
animated every good thing and every holy purpose that I have
accomplished. Friends that never obtruded on my loneliness by idle
chatter and gossip, but always spoke wise, inspiriting things when most
I needed them; friends that never replied in irritation to my own
disturbed imaginings, but always uttered your calm wisdom like voices
from eternity, to soothe, to control, or to elevate; friends that never
tired and never complained; that went back to your recesses without a
murmur; and never resented by stubborn silence my neglect,--treasures of
thought and fountains of inspiration, you are the last things on earth
on which my eyes shall rest in love, and like the orphans of my flock
your future shall be my care. True, like your authors, you look
sometimes disreputable enough. Your clothes, more to my shame, hang
loose and tattered around you, and some of your faces are ink-stained or
thumb-worn from contact with the years and my own carelessness. I would
dress you in purple and fine linen if I may, yet you would reproach me
and think I was weary of your homely faces. Like the beggar-maid you
would entreat to be allowed to go back from queenly glory and pomp to
the tatters and contentment of your years. So shall it be! but between
you and me there must be no divorce, so long as time shall last for me.
Other friends will come and go, but nothing shall dissolve our union
based upon gratitude and such love as man's heart may have for the ideal
and insensible.
When there had been time for perfecting all his arrangements, I strolled
down to pay a formal visit to Father Letheby. The atmosphere of absolute
primness and neatness struck my senses when I entered. Waxed floors,
dainty rugs, shining brasses, coquettish little mirrors here and there,
a choice selection of daintily bound volumes, and on a writing desk a
large pile of virgin manuscript, spoke the scholar and the gentleman. My
heart sank, as I thought how sick of all this he will be in a few weeks,
when the days draw in, and the skies scowl, and the windows are washed,
and the house rocked under the fierce sou'westers that sweep up the
floor of the Atlantic, and throw all its dripping deluges on the little
hamlet of Kilronan. But I said:--
"You have made a cosey little nest for yourself, Father Letheby; may you
long enjoy it."
"Yes," he said, as if answering my horrible scepticism, "God has been
very good to send me here."
Now what can you do with an optimist like that?
"There is just one drawback," I said, with a faint attempt at humor, "to
all this æstheticism." I pointed to a window against which four very
dirty noses were flattened, and four pairs of delighted eyes were
wandering over this fairy-land, and a dirty finger occasionally pointed
out some particularly attractive object.
"Poor little things," he said, "it gives them pleasure, and does me no
harm."
"Then, why not bring them in?" I said.
"Oh, no," he replied, with a little laugh, "I draw the line there." He
pointed to the shining waxed floors. "Besides, it would destroy their
heaven. To touch and handle the ideal, brings it toppling down about our
ears."
We spoke long and earnestly about a lot of things. Then, looking a
little nervously at me, he made a great leap of thought.
"Would you mind my saying a serious word to you, sir?" said he.
"Certainly not," I replied, "go ahead."
"It seems to me, then," he said, deliberately, "that we are not making
all that we might out of the magnificent possibilities that lie at our
disposal. There is no doubt things are pretty backward in Ireland. Yet,
we have an intelligent people, splendid natural advantages,--an
infernally bad government, it is true,--but can we not share the blame
with the government in allowing things to remain as they are? Now, I am
not an advocate for great political designs: I go in for
decentralization, by which I mean that each of us should do his very
best exactly in that place where Providence has placed him. To be
precise, what is there to prevent us from improving the material
condition of these poor people? There is a pier to be built. I am told
shoals of fish whiten the sea in the summer, and there are no appliances
to help our fishermen to catch them and sell them at a vast profit.
There is an old mill lying idle down near the creek. Why not furnish it
up, and get work for our young girls there? We have but a poor water
supply; and, I am told, there is a periodical recurrence of fever.
Pardon me, sir," he continued, "if I seem to be finding fault with the
ministry of the priests here, but I am sure you do not misunderstand
me?"
"Certainly not," said I, "go on."
And he went on with his airy optimism, drawing wonderful castles with
the light pencils of his young fancy, and I seemed to hear my own voice
echoing back from thirty years long passed by, when the very same words
were on my lips and the same ideas throbbed through my brain. But would
it be kind to leave him undeceived? I decided not.
"Your first step," I said, "is to see the landlord, who owns the sloping
fields and the foreshore."
"Certainly," he said, "that's quite easy. What's his address?" He took
up his note-book.
"I am not quite sure," I replied. "He is probably this moment staking
half his property on the red at Monte Carlo, or trying to peep into a
harem at Stamboul, or dining off bison steak in some cañon in the
Sierras."
He looked shocked.
"But his agent,--his representative?"
"Oh! he's quite available. He will be very polite, and tell you in well
chosen words that he can do--nothing."
"But the Governmental Office,--the Board of Works?"
"Quite so. You'll write a polite letter. It will be answered in four
weeks to the day: 'We beg to acknowledge receipt of your communication,
which shall have our earliest attention.' You'll write again. Reply in
four weeks: 'We beg to acknowledge receipt of your communication, which
we have placed before the Board.' You'll hear no more on the matter. But
don't let me depress you!"
"But is there no redress? What about Parliament?"
"Oh, to be sure! A question will be asked in the House of Commons. The
Chief Secretary will reply: 'The matter is under the deliberation of the
Board of Works, with whose counsels we do not wish to interfere.'"
He was silent.
"About the factory," I continued. "You know there is a large shirt
factory in Loughboro, six miles away. If you apply to have a branch
factory established here, the manager will come down, look at the store,
turn up his nose, ask you where are you to find funds to put the
building in proper order, and do you propose to make the store also a
fish-curing establishment; and then he will probably write what a
high-born lady said of the first Napoleon: 'Il salissait tout ce qu'il
touchait.'"
"It's a damned lie," said Father Letheby, springing up, and, I regret to
say, demolishing sundry little Japanese gimcracks, "our people are the
cleanest, purest, sweetest people in the world in their own personal
habits, whatever be said of their wretched cabins. But you are not
serious, sir?"
He bent his glowing eyes upon me. I liked his anger. And I liked very
much that explosive expletive. How often, during my ministry, did I
yearn to be able to utter that emphatic word! Mind, it is not a
cuss-word. It is only an innocent adjective--condemned. But what
eloquence and emphasis there is in it! How often I could have flung it
at the head of a confirmed toper, as he knelt at my feet to take the
pledge. How often I could have shot it at the virago, who was disturbing
the peace of the village; and on whom my vituperation, which fell like a
shot without powder, made no impression! It sounded honest. I like a
good fit of anger, honest anger, and such a gleam of lightning through
it.
"I am," I said, "quite serious. You want to create a Utopia. You forget
your Greek."
He smiled.
"I am reserving the worst," I said.
"What is it?" he cried. "Let me know the worst."
"Well," I said slowly, "the people won't thank you even in the
impossible hypothesis that you succeed."
He looked incredulous.
"What! that they won't be glad to lift themselves from all this squalor
and misery, and be raised into a newer and sweeter life?"
"Precisely. They are happy. Leave them so. They have not the higher
pleasures. Neither have they the higher perils. 'They sow not, neither
do they spin.' But neither do they envy Solomon in all his glory. Jack
Haslem and Dave Olden sleep all day in their coracles. They put down
their lobster pots at night. Next day, they have caught enough of these
ugly brutes to pay for a glorious drunk. Then sleep again. How can you
add to such happiness? By building a schooner, and sending them out on
the high seas, exposed to all the dangers of the deep; and they have to
face hunger and cold and death, for what? A little more money, and a
little more drink; and your sentence: Why didn't he leave us alone?
Weren't we just as well off as we were? which is the everlasting song
of your respected predecessor, only he put it in Latin: _Cui bono?_"
He pondered deeply for a long time. Then he said: "It sounds sensible;
but there is some vile fallacy at the bottom of it. Anyhow, I'll try.
Father, give me your blessing!"
"There again," I said, "see how innocent you are. You don't know the
vernacular."
He looked surprised.
"When you know us better," I answered, in reply to his looks, "you will
understand that by that formula you ask for a drink. And as I don't
happen to be under my own roof just now--"
His glorious laugh stopped me. It was like the ringing of a peal of
bells.
"No matter," he said. "I may go on?"
"Certainly," I replied. "You'll have a few gray hairs in your raven
locks in twelve months time,--that's all."
"What a hare," I thought as I went home, "is madness, the youth, to leap
over the meshes of good counsel, the cripple." Which is not mine, but
that philosopher, Will Shakespeare; or is it Francis Bacon?