When talking to a wise friend a while ago I told her of the feeling of
horror which had invaded me when watching a hippopotamus.
"Indeed," said she, "you do not need to go to the hippopotamus for a
sensation. Look at a pig! There is something dire in the face of a
pig. To think the same power should have created it that created a
star!"
Those who love beauty and peace are often tempted to scamp their
thinking, to avoid the elemental terrors that bring night into the
mind. Yet if the fearful things of life are there, why not pluck up
heart and look at them? Better have no Bluebeard's chamber in the
mind. Better go boldly in and see what hangs by the wall. So salt, so
medicinal is Truth, that even the bitterest draught may be made
wholesome to the gentlest soul. So I would recommend anyone who can
bear to think to leave the flower garden and go down and spend an hour
by the pigstye.
There lies our friend in the sun upon his straw, blinking his clever
little eye. Half friendly is his look. (He does not know that
I--Heaven forgive me!--sometimes have bacon for breakfast!) Plainly,
with that gashed mouth, those dreadful cheeks, and that sprawl of his,
he belongs to an older world; that older world when first the mud and
slime rose and moved, and, roaring, found a voice: aye, and no doubt
enjoyed life, and in harsh and fearful sounds praised the Creator at
the sunrising.
To prove the origin of the pig, let him out, and he will celebrate it
by making straight for the nearest mud and diving into it. So strange
is his aspect, so unreal to me, that it is almost as if the sunshine
falling upon him might dissolve him, and resolve him into his original
element. But no; there he is, perfectly real; as real as the good
Christians and philosophers who will eventually eat him. While he lies
there let me reflect in all charity on the disagreeable things I have
heard about him.
He is dirty, people say. Nay, is he as dirty (or, at least, as
complicated in his dirt) as his brother man can be? Let those who know
the dens of London give the answer. Leave the pig to himself, and he
is not so bad. He knows his mother mud is cleansing; he rolls partly
because he loves her and partly because he wishes to be clean.
He is greedy? In my mind's eye there rises the picture of human
gormandisers, fat-necked, with half-buried eyes and toddling step. How
long since the giant Gluttony was slain? or does he still keep his
monstrous table d'hote?
The pig pushes his brother from the trough? Why, that is a commonplace
of our life. There is a whole school of so-called philosophers and
political economists busied in elevating the pig's shove into a social
and political necessity.
He screams horribly if you touch him or his share of victuals? I have
heard a polite gathering of the best people turn senseless and rave at
a mild suggestion of Christian Socialism. He is bitter-tempered? God
knows, so are we. He has carnal desires? The worst sinner is man. He
will fight? Look to the underside of war. He is cruel? Well, boys do
queer things sometimes. For the rest, read the blacker pages of
history; not as they are served up for the schoolroom by private
national vanity, but after the facts.
If a cow or a sheep is sick or wounded and the pig can get at it, he
will worry it to death? So does tyranny with subject peoples.
He loves to lie in the sun among his brothers, idle and at his ease?
Aye, but suppose this one called himself a lord pig and lay in the sun
with a necklace of gold about his throat and jewels in his ears,
having found means to drive his brethren (merry little pigs and all)
out of the sun for his own benefit, what should we say of him then?
No; he has none of our cold cunning. He is all simplicity. I am told
it is possible to love him. I know a kindly Frenchwoman who takes her
pig for an airing on the sands of St. Michel-en-Greve every summer
afternoon. Knitting, she walks along, and calls gaily and endearingly
to the delighted creature; he follows at a word, gambolling with
flapping ears over the ribs of sand, pasturing on shrimps and seaweed
while he enjoys the salt air.
Clearly, then, the pig is our good little brother, and we have no
right to be disgusted at him. Clearly our own feet are planted in the
clay. Clearly the same Voice once called to our ears while yet
unformed. Clearly we, too, have arisen from that fearful bed, and the
slime of it clings to us still. Cleanse ourselves as we may, and
repenting, renew the whiteness of our garments, we and the nations are
for ever slipping back into the native element. What a fearful command
the "Be ye perfect" to earth-born creatures, but half-emerged, the
star upon their foreheads bespattered and dimmed! But let us (even
those of us who have courage to know the worst of man) take heart. In
the terror of our origin, in the struggle to stand upon our feet, to
cleanse ourselves, and cast an eye heavenward, our glory is come by.
The darker our naissance, the greater the terrors that have brooded
round that strife, the more august and puissant shines the angel in
man.
_Grace Rhys._