MEDDLA
IT was not far in the afternoon when my companion, taking a look ahead,
gave a long, low whistle and laughed. He had recognised some feature of
the land we were now approaching. “You will have some fun here,” he
said. “We shall have to bridge our way over the lunatic asylum of the
archipelago. It is a series of islets on which we have classified and
quarantined our cranks for many ages. Anyone ridden by a fixed idea or
habit is shipped off to those of his own kin. So we keep our communities
clear of quixotism and crazy eccentricity. You will see each for
yourself, for we cannot get to Figlefia unless by passing over every one
of these islets in order to provision our canoe for each voyage across
the passages between them. We call the group Loonarie; but each has its
own special and grandiloquent name to distinguish it, for they have a
supreme contempt for one another.”
We paddled and drifted with considerable rapidity, and the features of
an island grew more and more distinct; for the current which bore us
evidently ran close inshore. The beach swarmed with people as we
approached; their fantastic dresses made a brilliant but grotesque
scene; everyone seemed to have tried to produce as loud and individual
an effect as possible by the colour and shape of his garments and the
slovenly way in which he had pitchforked them on. It was not the colours
of the rainbow, but a complete diapason of discordant colours. As we got
nearer they seemed to have chosen garments by lottery. Their lean, lank
forms showed like May-poles in the loose finery; and their sharp faces
and small red heads almost disappeared in the enormous beribboned
turbans they wore. They all looked preternaturally solemn and wise.
There was much buttonholing amongst them, and most confidential
communications were evidently passing from lip to ear.
I feared some sinister purpose with regard to ourselves. But Sneekape
laughed when I mentioned the idea. “They only wish to convert you to
their way of thinking, and each is getting ready for the assault. One
soul gained to their side, they say, is one soul saved. Propaganda is
their passion.”
We beached our canoe amid much dignified fussing that really delayed us
instead of helping us. I thought the efforts they made to do us a
service would have landed us all in the surf—a matter of little
consequence to us in our rags, but somewhat serious to them and their
ill-harmonised finery. We were like to be torn into fragments by the
candidates for our friendship when we had got our feet on the sand. They
were all eager to clothe us. Sneekape rescued me from a dozen who
clutched at my rags; and we followed the most dignified personage in the
crowd and got re-clothed. I had imagined that it was in pure charity
they had been eager to substitute something better for our rags. But it
turned out that we had to pay most handsomely for our new and gorgeous
garments, and that they were the uniform of a party. The benevolence lay
in taking the custom to a shop owned by one of the party, and perhaps in
saving our souls by giving us the badge of that party.
The majestic ribbon-pole who had captured us entered into conversation
with me in Aleofanian. He had seen me in Aleofane when he was there on a
mission to the heathen; and he had yearned to save my soul from the
baneful influence of men who had not the true faith—faith in altruism.
He asked me if I knew that I had landed in one of the noblest countries
in the universe, Meddla, the Isle of Philanthropy. Here was the true
centre of the universal fire of love. Here lived those who yearned to
save the souls of their neighbours, who cared not what became of
themselves, if only other men were saved. Had I thought over the
momentous question of the true harmony of colours? Of course a man of
experience such as I was had thought it out and decided that green and
blue were the divine mixture, were indicative of the noblest qualities
that God had conferred on human character. I looked down and saw that my
new garments were a motley of green and blue; and of course I knew that
black and yellow were the colours of the principle of evil. Ah, if only
men knew how much the difference meant to their souls and to the destiny
of the world, they would not trifle with the question! It was the
deadliest poison, the rankest sin to wear black and yellow. All moral
evils went with this mixture. And if I knew how serious a thing life
was, I would join them in their crusade against this diabolism in
colour, would put forth every effort to suppress it and prevent the
world being lost.
I would have burst into a roar of laughter, but that I caught a warning
glance in Sneekape’s eye. I kept serious and he helped to rescue me from
the enthusiast and devotee of green and blue, by whispering something in
his ear that spread a radiant smile over the meagre face.
He had not left us many minutes, when I was pounced upon by another
May-pole, who thrust his little head into my face and addressing me in
Aleofanian wished to know what I thought of Meddla. Was it not the
greatest community on the globe? Had it not reached the acme of
civilisation? Did not its fundamental principle of anxiety for the souls
of others make it the centre of the universe?
I told him that I was afraid that I had not had time or opportunity for
forming a judgment. I had just landed and had never seen the island
before. He must excuse me if I did not answer his questions.
But I had spoken with Wispra, one of their leaders; what did I think of
him? What were his faults? The speaker had the deepest love for his
fellow-men as all Meddlarians must have, but he must exercise that love
in sweeping all faults and vices out of their civilisation. Foreigners
were the most apt critics; they could see flaws, which home eyes passed
over from long custom.
Well, if he would insist, I thought that Wispra was a little dogmatic.
At the word, the little head shook with excitement and wagged with
stifled wisdom. Was that his fault? Of course it was. And it was the
fault of all Meddlarian human nature. Oh, he was delighted to have found
it out! And he would cure it straightway. The legislature was just
sitting. He would call a meeting and get a resolution passed in favour
of the complete abolition of dogmatism. He would send large posters and
tracts all over the island urging immediate action. His agents and
supporters would get up public meetings in every village and settlement;
and mile-long petitions would soon roll in to the assembly, asking it to
suppress this vice. A law would be passed, I should see, within a week
prohibiting the use of dogmatism in conversation, or in any form of
speech under the most rigorous penalties. He would be the saviour of his
country.
Away bustled the lank agitator, oscillating his wise head in excitement;
he must set the crusade afoot that very minute. Before I left the island
I found him and his disciples persecuting the dissentients from his
views and calling them by the most opprobrious epithets; they would have
no conditioning of their dogmas, and no questioning of their assertions;
they would listen to no argument, but howled down in their meetings
everyone who dared to advise caution and consideration before venturing
on a crusade against so widespread and delightful a method of speech.
Such mild protest was taken up and used as a missile for wounding the
protester and his sympathisers. It showed, the speakers from the
platform said, how necessary the reform was when a man would have the
hardihood to stand up in a respectable audience and declare in the same
breath that the habit was universal and yet that it should be approached
with caution. Before the week was out, I had to leave; but I saw that
the agitation was working its way through the island and splitting up
parties into new and surprising sections; households were rent asunder,
old friendships broken, old loyalties dissolved; I began to regret that
I had ever uttered the word to my buttonholer. And so did Sneekape; for
he knew that they would send out missionaries to the adjacent islands to
disturb and harass the souls of their inhabitants in order to achieve
their salvation.
Some of the greatest popular movements of their past had had, I
ascertained, marvellous results. One of them had been for the spread of
the custom of wiping the nose with a handkerchief; a section of the
community had been satisfied for centuries with their sleeve or their
fingers. After two or three ages of wild political agitation, a law was
passed making it penal to accomplish the act without an officially
marked piece of cloth; and there was a large charity organisation which
spent all its days and nights in making and distributing amongst the
poor patent attachments that would keep the government handkerchiefs
hung close to the nose; and it had a paid staff of teachers and
preachers who went around educating the people how to save their souls
by wiping their noses in the proper way.
Another great reform that had come about after long searchings of the
national spirit and untold sufferings on the part of its advocates and
martyrs was the abolition of the practice of thrusting the hands in the
pockets. The reformers saw that this introduced indolence and its
attendant maladies and vices, and this imperilled the salvation of
thousands of innocent victims to the habit, who began it in childhood
when they did not know what to do with their hands, or in cold seasons,
when they needed warmth; the practice was most insidious; it had
generally mastered a man before he knew that he had begun it; and no
preaching, no demonstration of its awful consequences could break him of
it. After heroic efforts, a law was passed prohibiting the habit under
the severest penalties. Yet it was by no means eradicated; men preferred
being imprisoned to giving it up. So there was a great society, chiefly
of women, who busied themselves in watching offences against the laws
and prosecuting the offenders. But they were too philanthropic to
confine themselves to such negative proceedings; they distributed gloves
gratis in winter and the members went about with needle and thread
sewing up the openings of trousers pockets. They were the busiest of all
the citizens yet; for gloves had a trick of getting lost and sewing a
trick of coming undone; and the kind-hearted women found themselves worn
to shadows in their unselfish endeavours to make the law a reality.
Another law had been passed after great commotion to compel the people
to wear table napkins when feeding; slovenliness and uncleanliness were
two of the most soul-destroying vices; and, if the meals were taken in
order and without soil, all other virtues would follow. Another huge
organisation busied itself in distributing tracts on the nobleness of
the practice that the law commanded and in supplying napkins to those
who could not afford them; recently they had, on the suggestion of one
whom they revered as a genius, combined their two functions and printed
their tracts on the napkins they gave gratis. The members all felt that
the eyes of mankind were upon them, as they went round the various
villages seeing that their napkins were tied on properly.
They had a multitude of prohibitory laws for the cure of every habit
that anyone had considered evil or worked up a movement for the
suppression of. One forbade the raising of the little finger in
drinking, another the wearing of hats so large as to occupy too much
space in the streets, another the use of expletives, another the
mutilation of a guttural sound that was apt to pass into a palatal,
another the habit of boys standing on their heads in public places,
another the use of worms in fishing, another the following of any
business on certain hours of certain days.
The statute-book was an enormous one, and was filled with such laws as
these. A considerable number clashed with others, and yet there were
societies founded to see the carrying out of each of the conflicting
statutes, and their agents and supporters often came into fierce
collision, reaping on each side a full harvest of bloody noses and
cracked crowns. But this only made the devotees more devoted. Most of
the prohibitions ended in rooting the habit more deeply, by sending it
underground. One instance was the law for the suppression of winking
except on the approach of sleep; prosecutions always failed because the
culprit generally contrived to fall asleep on the way to court or prison
and so destroyed the case against him. I never saw so much winking in
any community of the same size; I thought at first that they were all in
the incipient stage of eye disease or of paralysis; but an arrest by an
agent of the anti-winking society cleared up the mystery for me.
Of course I soon saw that the greater matters of the law had to be
neglected in order to join in these quixotic crusades. The population
had fallen into drunkenness, lying, thieving, slandering, fornication,
and even murder. Every man and woman had some one or more of these
vices; and all were accomplished hypocrites, I discovered before I left.
Yet they all spent as much time as they could save from business or
amusement in the pursuit of the salvation of their neighbours. Every
citizen of either sex was a member and spy of one or more of these
philanthropic societies, and was ever joining in some movement for
getting the legislature to make the prohibition more rigorous and
detailed; and none of them but thought that the gaze of creation was
upon them as they followed their crusade. They were the true saviours of
the world; they had the salt of love and altruism that would never lose
its savour; they had reached the secret of true happiness. In spite of
their philanthropy, they were eaten up with envy, jealousy, malice, and
all the minor evil feelings that sting men and make men sting each
other.
I was quite prepared to believe Sneekape when he said that the
archipelago translated the name of the island differently from the
inhabitants; it was the Isle of Busybodies. The gradual discovery of the
true nature of the people made me glad to escape. We went off without
notice one midnight in our canoe, which we had well provisioned some
days before.
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