JABBEROO
BETWEEN it and Awdyoo, but farther to the north than the current was
likely to carry us, lay a group of islands that Sneekape declared would
have been as good as a play to see. He entertained me with an account of
them as we drew away from the odours of Awdyoo. I listened with reserve
of judgment; for his story, as usual, sounded like fiction; and I had no
means of testing it. It was interesting enough, and drew my mental
energy from my nose to my ears. I knew afterwards that there was a good
deal of truth at the basis of it, even though the tricky, airy manner
made me doubt the whole of it. The nearest of the group to Awdyoo was
called Jabberoo, and seemed to be the inferno of talkers. Hither were
banished all who had become insufferable for their loquacity. For a time
it was said to have been the silentest island in the archipelago, such
an effect had the encagement of so many praters in one place upon the
disposition of each. They had all been so enamoured of the sound of
their own voices that they could not bear to hear anyone else speak;
that was the disease for which they had been quarantined; and it looked
as if this drastic step of exile was about to be an effectual cure of
it. Once the patients from the different islands realised that Jabberoo
was nothing but a huge garrulity hospital, they howled with rage and
found a certain distraction in airing their grievance to one another.
Each tested the listening power of every other inhabitant of the island,
and, finding that it was no greater than his own, settled down into
sullen taciturnity. Not even the variety of dialects in which they spoke
gave them any consolation; the babel only intensified their horror and
disgust at being cooped up with men and women as passionately fond of
babble as they were. Every talk they started became almost at once a
competitive duologue; the two voices rose into a shout that made hearing
the words an impossibility. Not one of them could bear to see his
neighbour begin to talk; he knew he could not get a word in except by
main force of lung, and he dared not risk the torrent of babble. The
first few days on land left them hoarse and exhausted; and thereafter
they muzzled their passion and went about mute as fish. Mariners and
boatmen avoided the shores of the island after a time; for those that
landed at first were almost torn to pieces by the Jabberoon mob, each
eager to secure a good listener; and even if any arrival had the good
fortune to meet only one Jabbaroon and be monopolised by him in secret,
he was glad to make his escape, lest he should turn into a pillar of
salt under the infliction of fluency; the only successful means of
flight was to bear the torrent till the darkness of night, slip out of
his upper garments which his buttonholer held, and leave in his place a
wooden substitute. The sullen silence had been no cure of the disease
after all.
A benevolent Swoonarian took pity on the wretched islanders and invented
an automatic listener. But, like all the inventions of his people, it
came to nothing. In theory it seemed as if it would work. He made a
figure in human form with a sensitive word-repeater inside it that at
certain sounds could by internal mechanism set it swaying and
gesticulating, as if in high nervous excitement. It could be wound up
for a whole day, or in some of the more expensive specimens even for a
whole week. As it heaved and swung about, one would have said that it
was a real, human listener moved by the eloquence of a speaker; but the
shipment failed. Superior though the automatic audience was to most
human beings in responsiveness and emotional endurance, something was
wanting; the look of suppressed despair on the face, the irritable
attempts at interjection, and the unavailing efforts to escape. The
inventor intended, if this venture had succeeded, to add those movements
to his figures; but unfortunately the first purchasers lost their
tempers over the monotonous acceptance of all they said and the
repetition of the gestures and attitudes as they repeated their
favourite phrases; they grew frantic with rage and smashed the whole
consignment to pieces.
It looked, indeed, at one time as if the community of Jabberoons would
go furiously mad for want of good listeners, and commit suicide in a
body; but a missionary arrived from a neighbouring island, called
Tubberythumpia, or the island of demagogues; and though his sufferings
often rose to torture at first, he knew from experience in his own land
how to endure them. In the end he conquered; he was able to get a word
in now and again; and this occasional word won its way by slow degrees
into the brains of the Jabberoons and bore fruit. They listened to the
gospel of the newcomer once a week or so, and resolved to adopt the new
evangel of alternation of eloquence. They organised themselves into
councils, assemblies, senates, conferences, synods, mob meetings,
boards, election meetings, parliaments, cabinets, conclaves, chambers,
convocations, congresses, consistories, diets, juntas, comitias,
directories, commissions, sanhedrims, and committees, so that every man
and woman was a member of forty or fifty of these bodies and could
attend the meetings of two or three dozen of them every day. They
adopted it as a basis of their new constitution that only one was to
speak at once in any sitting, and, whenever two began to speak together,
it was thereby dissolved. It is quite true that there were dissolutions
every hour of the day; but some speaker had had his say out, and those
who were disappointed in getting an escape-valve for their tongue energy
had plenty of other meetings to attend, where they might have a chance
of evacuating their own particular section of the dictionary.
The plan was a miraculous success for a time. It saved the Jabberoons
from universal frenzy and suicide. Every one of them was able to get off
half a dozen eloquent speeches every day to an audience more or less
unwilling, but that had by the constitution of the country to listen;
and it was easier for them to keep the mouth shut when they knew that
they too would have their chance before long. They worked just enough to
keep the wolf from the door; and then all the rest of the time was given
up to those delightful meetings and conferences, where each felt that he
could make others hear the sweet sound of his voice. They never settled
anything of any importance to anybody; but they felt that the existence
of the universe depended on their oratory. To satisfy themselves they
discussed every possible topic that had occurred or could ever occur to
any human mind, and they passed resolutions upon it to send on to other
meetings and conferences and assemblies. By the time these resolutions
had got through the various bodies and come back to the originators,
they had become so transformed as to be unrecognisable, and so
bewildering in their labyrinth of clauses and amendments as to be beyond
human intelligence; but they were recommitted and recreated and again
sent on their career of transformation. They kept the jaws working and
the tongues wagging. And every ambiguity introduced served the same
national and benign purpose.
With all this development of eloquence and elaboration of counsel, it
might have been expected that Jabberoo was the best governed country in
the world. Every citizen worked the clack-mill night and day for the
good government and guidance of every other citizen. Nothing could
surpass the earnestness and enthusiasm of the whole community in
pounding out the arguments for and against every possible course that
any member or section of it might take in life. They were in danger of
starving, so busy were they in deliberation over the questions, how
every man should earn his food, how he should cook his food, how he
should eat it, and how he should dispose of his surplus. They had not
time to drink, so strenuous in their tongue exertions were they over
what to drink and what not to drink. They left their children to run
naked, and their own clothes to fall into rags, whilst they discussed
the best kind of cloth for different weathers and climates, and the best
form of garments for various ages, and the best way of wearing garments.
No people in the world had ever held so many deliberations and
consultations, or ever spent so much eloquence and wisdom over the
proper way of bringing up a family; meantime every family was allowed to
tumble up in the best way it could, till the momentous questions were
settled. Never was there a nation that so strove to get at the highest
ideal of government as the Jabberoons did in meeting and conference and
assembly; and never was there a nation so devoid of all pure government
or even co-operation for their own internal administration or their
defence. There was nothing they would not do in their speeches on behalf
of their country, so fiery were they in their patriotism; but when a
pirate landed with a small boatload of men, there was not a Jabberoon to
be seen within shooting distance, and once, when a mad dog was let loose
on the beach, the silence and solitude of the island could be felt.
For himself, Sneekape asserted that, if the Jabberoo women were worth a
thought, he would land and walk off with the whole of them; but they had
such predominant and huge mouths and such pestilential tongues that no
ordinary human nature could endure them. Their recent developments under
the Tubbery-thumpian missionary had made their shores safe for strangers
to visit; but for his part he would keep at a safe distance from such a
nation of magpies. He could not endure the endless chatter of a prating,
gossipy woman. He preferred her with a good stormy channel between him
and her.
The latest development of their commonweal had again made landing
dangerous. Their tongue-courage had grown too mild for the expression of
all they felt. Argument and eloquence had given way to vituperation and
insult, and their meetings now generally ended in free fights. Scratched
noses and cracked crowns had become the natural accompaniment of
political fervour.
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