DISILLUSIONS.
'The time is come,' the walrus said,
'To talk of many things.'
'Alice in Wonderland.'
It was on April 1, the green young year's beginning, that Mab arrived
in England. She had hired a seagull—no, the seagull offered his
services for nothing; I was forgetting that it was not an English, but
a Polynesian seagull—to take her across. She did not altogether admire
the missionaries, as we have seen, in their proceedings, the fact being
that she had grown used to Polynesians in the course of the centuries
she had spent among them, and the missionaries were such a remarkable
contrast to the Polynesians. But their advent was certainly a source of
mental improvement to her, for fairies as we know, understand things
almost by instinct, and Queen Mab, one evening, chanced to overhear a
good deal of the missionaries' conversation. She learned, for instance,
the precise meanings, and the bearings on modern theology and
metaphysics, of such words as kathenotheism, hagiography,
transubstantiation, eschatology, Positivist, _noumenon, begriff,
vorstellung, Paulismus, wissenschaft_, and others, quite new to her,
and of great benefit in general conversation.
With this additional knowledge she started on the voyage, leaving her
faithful subjects to take care of the island and themselves, till she
came back to tell them whether their return to England would ever be
practicable. She landed in Great Britain, then, on April 1, and the
seagull went across to the Faröe Islands and waited there till the time
which she had appointed for him to come and carry her back to
Polynesia.
Queen Mab found England a good deal altered. There were still fairy
circles in the grass; but they were attributed, not to fairy dances,
but to unscientific farming and the absence of artificial phosphates.
The country did not smell of April and May, but of brick-kilns and the
manufacture of chemicals. The rivers, which she had left bright and
clear, were all black and poisonous. Water for drinking purposes was
therefore supplied by convoys from the Apollinaris and other foreign
wells, and it was thought that, if a war broke out, the natives of
England would die of thirst. This was not the only disenchantment of
Queen Mab. She found that in Europe she was an anachronism. She did not
know, at first, what the word meant, but the sense of it gradually
dawned upon her. Now there is always something uncomfortable about
being an anachronism; but still people may become accustomed to it, and
even take a kind of a pride in it, if they are only anachronisms on the
right side—so far in the van of the bulk of humanity, for instance,
that the bulk of humanity considers them not wholly in their right
minds. There must surely be a sense of superiority in knowing oneself a
century or two in front of one's fellow-creatures that counterbalances
the sense of solitude. Queen Mab had no such consolation. She was an
anachronism hundreds of years on the wrong side; in fact, a relic of
Paganism.
Of course she was acquainted with the language of all the beasts and
birds and insects, and she counted on their befriending her, however
much men had changed. Her brief experience of modern sailors and
missionaries, whether English or German, had indeed convinced her that
men were, even now, far from perfection. But it was a crushing blow to
find that all the beasts were traitors, and all the insects.
If it had not been for the loyal birds she would have gone back to
Polynesia at once; but they flocked faithfully to her standard, led by
the Owl, the wisest of all feathered things, who had lived too long,
and had too much good feeling to ignore fairies, though he was,
perhaps, just a little of a prig. The insects, however, who,
considering the size of their brains, one might have thought would
believe in fairies and in the supernatural in general, if anybody did,
behaved disgracefully, and the ant was the worst all. She started by
saying that _her_ brain was larger in proportion than the brain of any
other insect. Perhaps Queen Mab was not aware that Sir John Lubbock had
devoted a volume to the faculties and accomplishments of ants, together
with some minor details relating to bees and wasps, of which these
insects magnified the importance. Under _these_ circumstances, it was
impossible for her to countenance a mere vulgar superstition, like
faith in fairies. She begged leave to refer Queen Mab to various works
in the International Scientific Series for a complete explanation of
her motives, and mentioned, casually, that she also held credentials
from Mr. Romanes. Then, explaining that her character with the sluggard
was at stake, she hurried away. Evidently she did not care to be seen
talking to a fairy. It may be mentioned here, however, that Queen Mab's
faith in entomological nature was considerably shaken by the fact that
when no one was looking at her the ant always folded up her work and
went to sleep—though, if surprised in a siesta, she explained that she
had only just succumbed to complete exhaustion, and lamented that mind,
though infinitely superior to, was not yet independent of matter.
The bees hummed much to the same tune. The Queen Bee recommended our
foreigner to read a work on 'Bees and Wasps,' with a few minor details
relating to Ants, by Sir John Lubbock, in the International Scientific
Series. She was not, indeed quite so timid about her reputation as the
ant, and even volunteered to give her visitor an account of the
formation of hexagonal cells by Natural Selection, culled from the
pages of the 'Origin of Species'; but she observed that, though her
brain might be smaller in proportion than the brains of some inferior
insects, it was of finer quality, what there was of it, and that
fairies were merely an outgrowth of the anthropomorphic tendency which
had been noticed by distinguished writers as persisting even in the
present day. Then she departed, humming gaily, to the tune of a popular
hymn in the 'Ancient and Modern' collection:
'And gather honey all the day
From every opening flower?
But the whole sad history of Queen Mab's failures to enlist sympathy
and protection it would be vain to tell. The fishes, all that were left
of them, took her part; but they lived in the water, and she had never
had very much to do with them. In the birds she found her true allies.
They were not attached to the higher civilisation. The higher
civilisation, so far, had treated them inconsiderately, at sparrow
clubs. The Owl talked a good deal about the low moral tone of the human
race in this respect, and was pessimistic about it, failing to perceive
that higher types of organisms always like to signify their superiority
over lower ones by shooting them, or otherwise making their lives a
burden. The Owl, however, was a very talented bird, and one felt that
even his fallacies were a mark of attainments beyond those common to
his race. He had read and thought a great deal, and could tell Queen
Mab about almost anything she asked him. This was pleasant, and she sat
with him on a very high oak in Epping Forest, above a pond, and made
observations. It was lovely weather, just the weather for sitting on
the uppermost branches of a great oak, and she began to feel like
herself again. She had forgotten to put her invisible cloak on; but as
she was only half a foot high, and dressed in green, no one saw her up
there. Having reached the Forest at night, she had met as yet with few
British subjects; but the Owl explained that she would see hundreds of
them before the day was over, coming to admire Nature.
'The English people,' he observed, 'are great worshippers of Nature,
and write many guide-books about her, some on large paper at ten
guineas the volume. I have sometimes fancied, indeed,' he added,
doubtfully,' that it was their own capacity for admiring Nature that
they admired, but that were a churlish thought. For, do they not run
innumerable excursion trains for the purpose of bowing at her shrine?
Epping Forest must be one of Nature's favourite haunts, from the
numbers of people who come here to worship her, especially on Bank
Holidays. Those are her high festivals, when her adorers troop down,
and build booths and whirligigs and circuses in her honour, and gamble,
and ride donkeys, and shy sticks at cocoanuts before her. Also they
partake of sandwiches and many other appropriate offerings at the
shrine, and pour libations of bottled ale, and nectar, and zoedone, and
brandy, and soda-water, and ginger-beer. They _always_ leave the corks
about, and confectionery paper bags, for the next people to gaze upon
who come to worship Nature: you may see them now, if you look down. I
have often thought those corks, and cigar-ends, and such tokens that
the British public always leaves behind it, must be symbolical of
something—offerings to Nature, you know, an invariable part of the
rite, and typical—well, the question is, of what are they typical?'
mused the Owl, getting beyond his depth, as he had a way of doing.
'However,' he resumed, 'it is certain that their devotion is strong,
and they offer to Nature the sacrifices dearest to their own hearts,
and probably dearest, therefore, to the heart of Nature. They cut their
names all over her shrine, which is, I have no doubt, a welcome
attention; but they do not look at her any more than they can help, for
they stay where the beer is, and they are very warm, and flirt.'
'What is "flirt"?'
'A recreation,' said the Owl decorously; 'a pastime.'
'And does _nobody_ believe in fairies?' sighed Queen Mab.
'No, or at least hardly anyone. A few of the children, perhaps, and a
very, very few grown-up people—persons who believe in Faith-healing and
Esoteric Buddhism, and Thought-reading, and Arbitration, and Phonetic
Spelling, can believe in anything, except what their mothers taught
them on their knees. All of these are _in_ just now.'
'What do you mean by "in"?'
'In fashion; and what is fashionable is to be believed in. Why, you
might be the fashion again,' said the Owl excitedly. 'Why not? and then
people would believe in _you_. What a game it all is, to be sure! But
the fashions of this kind don't last,' the bird added; 'they get
snuffed out by the scientific men.'
'Tell me exactly who the scientific men are,' said the fairy. 'I have
heard so much about them since I came.'
'They are the men.' sighed the Owl, 'who go about with microscopes,
that is, instruments for looking into things as they are not meant to
be looked at and seeing them as they were never intended to be seen.
They have put everything under their microscopes, except stars and
First Causes; but they had to take telescopes to the stars, because
they were so far off; and First Causes they examined by stethoscopes,
which each philosopher applied to his own breast. But, as all the
breasts are different, they now call First Causes no business of
theirs. They make most things their business, though. They have had a
good deal of trouble with the poets, because the poets liked to put
themselves and their critics under their own microscopes, and they
objected to the microscopes of the scientific men. You know what poets
are?'
'Yes, indeed,' said Queen Mab, feeling at home on the subject. 'I have
forgotten a good many things, I daresay, with living in Polynesia, but
not about the poets. I remember Shakespeare very well, and Herrick is
at my court in the Pacific.'
'Ah, he was a great man, Shakespeare, almost too large for a
microscope!' said the Owl reflectively. They have put him under a good
many since he died, however, especially German lenses. But we were
talking about the philosophers—another name for the scientific men —the
men who don't know everything.'
'I should have thought they did,' said Queen Mab.
'No,' said the Owl. 'It is the theologians who know everything, or at
least they used to do so. But lately it has become such a mark of
mental inferiority to know everything, that they are always casting it
in each other's teeth. It has grown into a war-cry with both parties:
"You think you know everything," and it is hard for a bird to find out
how it all began and what it is all about. I believe it sprang
originally out of the old microscope difficulty. The philosophers
wanted to put theology under the microscope, and the theologians
excommunicated microscopes, and said theology ought never to be looked
at except with the Eye of Faith. Now the philosophers are borrowing an
eye of Faith from the theologians, and adding it on to their own
microscope like another lens, and they have detected a kind of
Absolute, a sort of a Something, the Higher Pantheism. I could never
tell you all about it, and I don't even know whether they have really
put theology under the microscope, or only theologians.'
'And the people worship St. George still?' asked Queen Mab, who, being
only a fairy, and owning no soul, had private theories of belief, based
merely on observation of popular customs.
'Oh yes, St. George and the Dragon. They have them both together on the
beads of their rosaries—the yellow things they count, and pray with, or
pay with.' said the Owl rather vaguely.
'St. George _and the Dragon!_ Why, St. George killed the Dragon.'
'Ah! the Dragon was not really killed.' said the Owl coolly. 'It was
only syncope, and he kept quiet for a time, and grew seven other heads
worse than the first. Some say St George worships the Dragon now,
himself; but people always are saying unpleasant things, and probably
it isn't true. At all events, the English worship St George and the
Dragon till they don't seem to know which is which.'
'What, has St George grown like the Dragon then?' cried Queen Mab
distractedly, wringing her hands.
'Oh no,' replied the Owl, with some condescending pity for the
foreigner's ignorance. 'But the Dragon has grown vastly like St.
George.'
'Is that all they worship?' said Queen Mab.
'Oh no, there are plenty of other patent religions. A hundred religions
and only one sauce—melted butter, as the Frenchman said, but the sauce
has outlived many of the patent religions.'
'I don't understand how religions are patent.' remarked her inquisitive
Majesty.
'We call it a patent religion.' said the Owl, 'when it has only been
recently invented, and is so insufficiently advertised, that it is only
to be found in a very few houses indeed, and is not a commodity in
general request. The Patentees then call themselves a Church, and
devote their energies to advertising the new "Cult," as they generally
style it. For example, you have Esoteric Buddhism, so named because it
is not Buddhism, nor Esoteric. It is imported by an American company
with a manufactory in Thibet, and has had some success among
fashionable people.'
'What do the Esoteric Buddhists worship?'
'Teacups and cigarettes, standing where they ought not.' replied the
owl; 'but I believe these things are purely symbolical, and that _au
fond_ the Priestess of Esoteric Buddhism herself adores the Dragon.'
'That is enough about _that_. Are there no patent religions warranted
free from Dragon worship?'
'Well.' said the Owl dubiously, 'there are the Altruists. '_They_
worship humanity. As a rule, you may have noticed that adorers think
the object of adoration better than themselves,—an unexpected instance
in most cases, of the modesty of their species. But the Altruists
worship Humanity.'
'And they don't think Humanity better than themselves?'
'Far from it. Their leading idea is that they are the cream of
Humanity. Their principal industry is to scold and lecture Humanity.
Whatever Humanity may be doing—making war or making peace, or making
love to its Deceased Wife's Sister—the Altruists cry out, "Don't do
that." And they preach sermons to Humanity, always beginning, "We
think;" and they publish their remarks in high-class periodicals, and
they invariably show that everyone, and especially Mr. Herbert Spencer,
is in the wrong, and nobody pays the slightest attention to them. In
their way the Altruists do to others as they would have others do to
them, To my mind, while they pretend that Humanity is what they
worship, they really want to be worshipped by Humanity.'
'Are there many of this sect?' asked Mab.
'There were twenty-seven of them.' said the Owl, 'but they quarrelled
about canonising the Emperor Tiberius, and now there are only thirteen
and a half.'
'Where do you get the fraction?' said Mab.
'That is a mystery.' said the Owl. 'Every religion should have its
mystery, and the Altruists possess only this example; it is a cheap
one, but they are not a luxurious sect.'
'Well.' said Mab mournfully at last, 'I must go back to Samoa; there is
too much mystery here for me. But who is that?'
She broke off suddenly, for a new and mysterious object had just
entered the glade, and was advancing towards the pool.
'Hush!' said the Owl. 'Do take care. It is a scientific man—a
philosopher.'
It was a tall, thin personage, with spectacles and a knapsack, and what
reminded Queen Mab of a small green landing-net, but was really
intended to catch butterflies. He came up to the pond, and she imagined
he was going to fish; but no, he only unfastened his knapsack and took
some small phials and a tin box out of it Then, bending down to the
edge of the water, he began to skim its surface cautiously with a ladle
and empty the contents into one of his phials. Suddenly a look of
delight came into his face, and he uttered a cry—'Stephanoceros!'
Queen Mab thought it was an incantation, and, trembling with fear, she
relaxed her hold of the bough and fell. Not into the pond! She had
wings, of course, and half petrified with horror though she was, she
yet fluttered away from that stagnant water. But alas, in the very
effort to escape, she had caught the eye of the Professor; he sprang
up—pond, animalcule all forgotten in the chase of this extraordinary
butterfly. The fairy's courage failed her: her presence of mind
vanished, and the wild gyrations of the owl, who, too late, realised
the peril of his companion, only increased her confusion. In another
moment she was a prisoner under the butterfly-net.
Beaming with delight, the philosopher turned her carefully into the tin
box, shut the lid and hastened home, too much enraptured with his prize
even to pause to secure the valuable Stephanoceros.
But Queen Mab had fainted, as even fairies must do at such a terrible
crisis; and perhaps it was as well that she had, for the professor
forbore to administer chloroform, under the impression that his lovely
captive had completely succumbed. He put her, therefore, straight into
a tall glass bottle, and began to survey her carefully, walking round
and round. Truly, he had never seen such a remarkable butterfly.