§ 1.
We had left my rooms, and were walking briskly down the street towards
the river, when my friend stopped before the window of a small shop and
said:
“Gold-fish!”
I[1] looked at him very doubtfully; one had known him so long that one
never looked at him in any other way.
“Can you imagine,” he went on, “how any sane person can find pleasure
in the sight of those swift things swimming for ever and ever in a bowl
about twice the length of their own tails?”
“No,” I said, “I cannot--though, of course, they’re very pretty.”
“That is, no doubt, the reason why they are kept in misery.”
Again I looked at him; there is nothing in the world I distrust so much
as irony.
“People don’t think about these things,” I said.
“You are right,” he answered, “they do not. Let me give you some
evidence of that.... I was travelling last spring in a far country,
and made an expedition to a certain woodland spot. Outside the little
forest inn I noticed a ring of people and dogs gathered round a grey
animal rather larger than a cat. It had a sharp-nosed head too small
for its body, and bright black eyes, and was moving restlessly round
and round a pole to which it was tethered by a chain. If a dog came
near, it hunched its bushy back and made a rush at him. Except for
that it seemed a shy-souled, timid little thing. In fact, by its eyes,
and the way it shrank into itself, you could tell it was scared of
everything around. Now, there was a small, thin-faced man in a white
jacket holding up a tub on end and explaining to the people that
this was the little creature’s habitat, and that it wanted to get
back underneath; and, sure enough, when he held the tub within its
reach, the little animal stood up at once on its hind legs and pawed,
evidently trying to get the tub to fall down and cover it. The people
all laughed at this; the man laughed too, and the little creature went
on pawing. At last the man said: ‘Mind your back-legs, Patsy!’ and let
the tub fall. The show was over. But presently another lot came up; the
white-coated man lifted the tub, and it began all over again.
“‘What is that animal?’ I asked him.
“‘A ’coon.’
“‘How old?’
“‘Three years--too old to tame.’
“‘Where did you catch it?’
“‘In the forest--lots of ’coons in the forest.’
“‘Do they live in the open, or in holes?’
“‘Up in the trees, sure; they only gits in the hollows when it rains.’
“‘Oh! they live in the open? Then isn’t it queer she should be so fond
of her tub?’
“‘Oh,’ he said, ‘she do that to git away from people!’ and he
laughed--a genial little man. ‘She not like people and dogs. She too
old to tame. She know _me_, though.’
“‘I see,’ I said. ‘You take the tub off her, and show her to the
people, and put it back again. Yes, she _would_ know you!’
“‘Yes,’ he repeated, rather proudly, ‘she know me--Patsy, Patsy!
Presently, you bet, we catch lot more, and make a cage, and put them
in.’
“He was gazing very kindly at the little creature, who on her grey hind
legs was anxiously begging for the tub to come down and hide her, and I
said: ‘But isn’t it rather a miserable life for this poor little devil?’
“He gave me a very queer look. ‘There’s lots of people,’ he said--and
his voice sounded as if I’d hurt him--‘never gits a chance to see a
’coon’--and he dropped the tub over the racoon....
“Well! Can you conceive anything more pitiful than that poor little
wild creature of the open, begging and begging for a tub to fall over
it and shut out all the _light and air_? Doesn’t it show what misery
caged things have to go through?”
“But, surely,” I said, “those other people would feel the same as you.
The little white-coated man was only a servant.”
He seemed to run them over in his memory. “Not one!” he answered
slowly. “Not a single one! I am sure it never even occurred to
them--why should it? They were there to enjoy themselves.”
We walked in silence till I said:
“I can’t help feeling that your little white-coated man was acting
good-heartedly according to his lights.”
“Quite! And after all what are the sufferings of a racoon compared
with the enlargement of the human mind?”
“Don’t be extravagant! You know he didn’t mean to be cruel.”
“Does a man ever mean to be cruel? He merely makes or keeps his living;
but to make or keep his living he will do anything that does not
absolutely prick to his heart through the skin of his indolence or his
obtuseness.”
“I think,” I said, “that you might have expressed that less cynically,
even if it’s true.”
“Nothing that’s true is cynical, and nothing that is cynical is
true. Indifference to the suffering of beasts always comes from
over-absorption in our own comfort.”
“Absorption, not over-absorption, perhaps.”
“Ha! Let us see that! Very soon after seeing the racoon I was staying
at the most celebrated health resort of that country, and, walking in
its grounds, I came on an aviary. In the upper cages were canaries,
and in the lower cage a splendid hawk. It was as large as our buzzard
hawk, brown-backed and winged, light underneath, and with the finest
dark-brown eyes of any bird I ever saw. The cage was quite ten feet
each way--a noble allowance for the very soul of freedom! The bird
had every luxury. There was water, and a large piece of raw meat that
hadn’t been touched. Yet it was never still for a moment, flying from
perch to perch, and dropping to the ground again and again so lightly,
to run, literally run, up to the bars to see if perhaps--they were not
there. Its face was as intelligent as any dog’s----”
My friend muttered something I couldn’t catch, and then went on:
“That afternoon I took the drive for which one visits that hotel, and
it occurred to me to ask my chauffeur what kind of hawk it was. ‘Well,’
he said, ‘I ain’t just too sure what it is they’ve got caged up now;
they changes ’em so often.’
“‘Do you mean,’ I said, ‘that they die in captivity?’
“‘Yes,’ he answered, ‘them big birds soon gits moulty and go off.’
Well, when I paid my bill I went up to the semblance of proprietor--it
was one of these establishments where the only creature responsible is
‘Co.’--and I said:
“‘I see you keep a hawk out there?’
“‘Yes. Fine bird. Quite an attraction!’
“‘People like to look at it?’
“‘Just so. They’re uncommon--that sort.’
“‘Well,’ I said ‘I call it cruel to keep a hawk shut up like that.’
“‘Cruel? Why? What’s a hawk, anyway--cruel devils enough!’
“‘My dear sir,’ I said, ‘they earn their living just like men,
without caring for other creatures’ sufferings. You are not shut up,
apparently, for doing that. Good-bye.’”
As he said this, my friend looked at me, and added:
“You think that was a lapse of taste. What would _you_ have said to a
man who cloaked the cruelty of his commercial instincts by blaming a
hawk for being what Nature had made him?”
There was such feeling in his voice that I hesitated long before
answering.
“Well,” I said, at last, “in England, anyway, we only keep such
creatures in captivity for scientific purposes. I doubt if you could
find a single instance nowadays of its being done just as a commercial
attraction.”
He stared at me.
“Yes,” he said, “we do it publicly and scientifically, to enlarge
the mind. But let me put to you this question. Which do you consider
has the larger mind--the man who has satisfied his idle curiosity by
staring at all the caged animals of the earth, or the man who has been
brought up to feel that to keep such indomitable creatures as hawks and
eagles, wolves and panthers, shut up, to gratify mere curiosity, is a
dreadful thing?”
To that singular question I knew not what to answer. At last I said:
“I think you underrate the pleasure they give. We English are so
awfully fond of animals!”
§ 2.
We had entered Battersea Park by now, and since my remark about
our love of beasts we had not spoken. A wood-pigeon which had been
strutting before us just then flew up into a tree and began puffing out
its breast. Seeking to break the silence, I said:
“Pigeons are so complacent.”
My friend smiled in his dubious way, and answered:
“Do you know the ‘blue rock?’”
“No.”
“Ah! there you have a pigeon who has less complacency than any living
thing. You see, it depends on circumstances. Suppose, for instance,
that we happened to keep Our Selves--perhaps the most complacent class
of human beings--in a large space enclosed by iron railings, feeding
them up carefully, until their natural instincts caused them to run up
and down at a considerable speed from side to side of the enclosure.
And suppose when we noticed that they had attained the full speed and
strength of their legs we took them out, holding them gingerly in order
that they might not become exhausted by struggling, and placed them in
little tin compartments so dark and stuffy that they would not care of
their own accord to stay there, and then stood back about thirty paces
with a shot gun and pressed a spring which let the tin compartment
collapse. And then, as each one of Our Selves ran out, we let fly with
the right barrel and peppered him in the tail, whereon, if he fell, we
sent a dog out to fetch him in by the slack of his breeches, and after
holding him idly for a minute by the neck we gave it a wring round;
or, if he did not fall, we prayed Heaven at once and let fly with the
left barrel. Do you think in these circumstances Our Selves would be
complacent?”
“Don’t be absurd!” I said.
“Very well,” he replied, “I will come to ‘blue rocks’--do you still
maintain that they are so complacent as to deserve their fate?”
“I don’t know--I know nothing about their fate.”
“What the eyes do not swallow, the heart does not throw up! There are
other places, but--have you been to Monte Carlo?”
“No, and I should never think of going there.”
“Oh, well,” he answered, “it’s a great place; but there’s just one
little thing about it, and that’s in the matter of those ‘blue rocks.’
You’ll agree, I suppose, that one can’t complain of people amusing
themselves in any way they like so long as they hurt no one but
themselves----”